i thought i would let you all know that i have a really nice powermatic 66 table saw for sale for $1350. f.o.b. my shop in dorset,vermont.  it’s (imho), in perfect shape, has a foot operated off switch, and is wired for 220, though i think it can be changed to 110.  you can see by the plate next to the crank that it was at one point ‘remanufactured’ by the famous woodshop specialties in rutland.   i have purchased one of those hot dog saving sawstop saws and that will be arriving later today.  below is how we have it configured in our shop and if you have the space, it is a really handy set up.  our layout has it at about 6′ wide by 7′ deep, but it could probably be done in a space maybe 66 x 72 or even smaller.  let me know if any of you are interested … terms or swaps can be considered … click the photos to enlarge them …

you all have a really fine weekend …  dan

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“We live by night and dance fast so the grass can’t grow under our feet. That’s our creed.”

The problem with superlative work by any type of artist is that anything that comes after it is measured against it and usually found wanting. I’m still waiting for the Coens to make another Fargo, but at least Orson Welles is finally free from the millstone of Citizen Kane.

Some authors, after having scaled a sheer cliff to a critical and commercial success, suddenly acquire a terrible fear of heights. (The Harper Lee phenomenon?) It has to be a bit unnerving to suspect that you may have already written the book that all of the others will be measured against, but veteran climbers are always looking toward higher peaks and good writers are probably not all that different.

Still, I wonder if Shirley Jackson ever snapped at some unsuspecting fan, “Dammit, The Lottery isn’t the only thing I ever wrote!”

Would the rifle have beckoned so fatally to Hemingway if A Farewell to Arms had just been published? Would the tinfoil promise of Hollywood have seemed so alluring to Faulkner if Light In August was only in a rough draft status? Would Scott Fitzgerald have saved on his liquor bill if he had saved The Great Gatsby for later rather than sooner? Who knows.

Dennis Lehane was up against a formidable obstacle when I picked up my copy of Live By Night, a new novel that continues the bullet-riddled saga of the Coughlin clan of Boston that the author began in The Given Day. It was, however, strictly of Mr. Lehane’s own doing because the obstacle was my lasting admiration for the first book, one that I automatically recommend, along with The Killer Angels and The Sisters Brothers, to someone who wants “a really good read.”

Live By Night was off to a hopeful start. The title reminded me of Nicholas Ray’s smart little noir thriller with Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell. The new book opened in Boston. Boston is my favorite city even though I haven’t been to too many cities what with my thing about how many bolts hold the wings onto planes. (I’m still sure that I like it better than I’d like Paris or Detroit.) But the sequel didn’t stay in Boston very long. I detected storm clouds on my horizon of expectations. They amassed and darkened.

While The Given Day had an expansive — even epic — sweep to it, Live By Night is an episodic and stylistically uneven crime and redemption-of-sorts story revolving around the inevitable problems when a gangster is cursed with a conscience.  Lehane seamlessly incorporated many incidents in Boston’s tumultuous history into the first book and only drops a few familiar names (Sacco and Vanzetti come to mind) into the sequel. The ploy only reminded me of how memorable the first book really was.

Personally, I find fictional characters with functioning consciences to be tedious bores. Mr. Lehane, to his great credit, does not cast Joe Coughlin into a pit of misbegotten nobility, even if he isn’t the easiest guy to get a fix upon. Joe is the youngest son of Thomas Coughlin, the Boston police captain, whose checked career formed the centerpiece of the story of The Given Day. Tom brought a whole new dimension to the concept of tough love fatherhood — blacker and bluer, all in the name of love.  The old man only stoked the flames of rebellion. Young Joe jettisoned an education to become a henchman for Albert King, a ruthless kingpin of crime in Boston.

Joe makes a huge career mistake by falling hard for Albert’s girl, the enticingly inscrutable Emma Gould. He clings desperately to the hope that Emma hasn’t been killed after the car in which she is riding plunges into the sea and her body is not recovered from the wreck. As they tend to do, the years pass and Joe finally resigns himself to the loss, although the reader might be tempted to conclude that the poor guy has just never read a mystery.

After serving hard time in prison for a bank robbery gone suspiciously sour, Joe relocates to Tampa, Florida to repair some potholes in the mob’s booze highway up the east coast. He expands into other nefarious enterprises, but still manages to cling to a touching naivety about the destructive impact his chosen line of work has on the people he cares about. The premise that evil only begets more evil might be fairly obvious to most people, but Joe’s quandary provides the book’s central, if slightly unoriginal, theme.

The elegantly smooth prose of The Given Day here is supplanted by an obvious effort to pay homage to the Raymond Chandler/James M. Cain school of rapier-sharp dialog. Too often, however, the banter in Live By Night smacks more of Warner Brothers than of Chandler. The catchy talk conceit is one that should be used sparingly in anything except books about a knockout blond with ice in her veins and murder on her mind. Lehane tends to ladle it on as if his characters were auditioning for Howard Hawks.

Some of the descriptive passages seem a touch overbaked, too.  “His teeth were grey and slanted, several tipping back into his mouth like old headstones in a flooded graveyard.” I thought that Mr. Lehane had a written a wonderfully evocative simile until he felt compelled to add the part about the flooded graveyard and capsized the whole thing.

I doubt if my guarded opinion is going to drive Dennis Lehane to paroxysms of despair and I sincerely hope that Live By Night is another big success for him; that it finds a secure perch on the Times’ Best Seller list; that Eastwood or Scorcese opt it for the movies. It deserves its success because of all that it is: Fiercely entertaining, often exciting, and verdantly atmospheric.

If The Given Day remains Mr. Lehane’s triumphant flag on a mountain peak, he makes it beyond the snow line in his new novel. That’s further than a lot of climbers ever get.

Live By Night will be published by HarperCollins in October.

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The recent blog of May 7^th (allowing our readers to post and enter into a contest for winning a Julia Alvarez book) made me think about my favorite Alvarez book. I have sung the praises of her Tia Lola series in some of my own blogs, but it was Before We Were Free I have always considered my favorite.

Before We Were Free is a beautiful and sad story of courage and strength.  During 1960 the Dominican Republic is under political and social unrest. Revolution is every place, but Anita tries to be normal. But how can you be normal when your family has many secrets? And because of them must leave her beloved home and country? Old friends become enemies; neighbors no longer trusted and at any moment she and her family could be arrested. Or worse.

Julia Alvarez tells this story with amazing detail, brilliant images and wonderful feeling. She has written a story for ages 12 and up, but all can access this must read. Alvarez allows her readers to become part of a piece of history.  While Alvarez now lives in Vermont, you know by reading her novels or even if you have the pleasure of hearing her speak, she loves her home. Her novels are her way of allowing us to be part of her cherished home and past.

You can find this and other books by Alvarez on the shelves of the Northshire Bookstore. You might not be able to travel to the Dominican Republic yourself, but because of Alvarez (or other authors) you do not have to leave home to become part of another world.

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on the way back, i took the scenic route over lincoln gap, to visit a client i made a table for in 1991.  i had seen her recently at an art opening and she mentioned her table could use a little sprucing up.  i could see that it had been used a lot, but after an hour or so of sanding and a new coat of oil/poly mix and it looked like a 20 year old table that was in great shape.  i plan to stop on my way back from dropping off the curved bench and give it another coat … after that, it should be good for another 20.

sam’s got a number of projects winding down.  he rebuilt one of these forms he made a few months ago, and made two new ones.  it’s and interesting project in that he made the cad drawing in 2d, printed it at 1/8″ to the inch, cut it out, folded it up and sent it to melanson’s, where they cut the pieces on their waterjet and folded them on their computerized brake.  very slick …

it’s a challenging concept as they have to fit and look good in some pretty rough stone openings.  we made some mdf mockups and fitted the trim pieces in place before getting underway … worked slick …

 

a view of the painted bottom planks … she’s a big one ..36 x 132. it will have the x base like in the mockup photo.

we glued and nailed the copper on using jacks to the ceiling to press it into place.

 

 

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If the image of the FBI that you want to nurture is the one garnered from watching Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. every week on television, you probably should avoid Enemies, a comprehensively scary history of the Bureau, from its origins during Theodore Roosevelt’s administration to the present. The book is by Tim Weiner, who won a Pulitzer for his similar examination of the labyrinthine byways of the CIA, Legacy of Ashes, in 2007.

Mr. Weiner begins this impressive history by dispelling a common myth — that the FBI primarily exists as a sort of super police force, possessing power and resources that far exceed those of local and state law enforcement agencies. The power and resources aspect may be true, but the Bureau was originally formed as an intelligence service, with its cloaks more impenetrable and the daggers a little bit sharper.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation  has never been tethered to a conventional blueprint. The rules have been formulated as the organization evolved. For most of the years of its existence, its focus was shaped by the messianic personality of the man whose name has become synonymous with crime-busting in America. And a history of the FBI that isn’t inextricably entwined with the life of J. Edgar Hoover would be like staging a Passion play without Christ.

If there could be said to be a “hero” in Enemies, the dubious honor would have to be bestowed upon the  inflexible shoulders of Mr. Hoover, a larger-than-life figure that Weiner never patronizes, condescends to, or judges. And, with Hoover, that is no small accomplishment.

Hoover never tired of trumpeting the admirable aspects of the Bureau. No one defended the principles of American life so vehemently, especially the kind that made for riveting congressional testimony that, in turn, spawned blazing newspaper headlines. If there was a self-promotional aspect to Hoover’s brand of patriotism, its sincerity was genuine and his motives weren’t entirely self-glorification. No one recognized the fact that J. Edgar Hoover was the living personification of the FBI more than Hoover himself. If he didn’t discourage the perception, he didn’t take the responsibility lightly.

He also embodied all of the negative qualities that inevitably rear their heads with the investiture of too much power in a single individual. Hoover answered to no one, hoodlum or president. He trusted no one and, in this particular profession, the caution served him well. The wall he built to surround his FBI was impervious to the winds of politics. Even someone as skilled at huffing and puffing as Robert Kennedy came up short of breath when he tried to blow Hoover’s house down. Lyndon Johnson gave him the director’s job for as long as he wanted it, although it was a little like giving Walt Disney a free pass to the Magic Kingdom.

Hoover’s passing in 1972 marked the beginning of an uncertain and even life-threatening period for the Bureau. No subsequent director exerted such a firm grasp on the organization or commanded such respect from its personnel. Hoover wielded the files he meticulously maintained on people — friend and foe — like a crusader’s sword, one that was no less lethal for having been honed on the whetstone of scandal and dirt. His successors were reluctant to use such disreputable tactics. Suddenly, the FBI, our nation’s much heralded first line of defense against evil, foreign and domestic, was more vulnerable than it had been since its fledgling, pre-Hoover period.

In less skilled hands, the sudden absence of so fascinating a star player might create an unbridgeable chasm, but Mr. Weiner never allows his brisk narrative to teeter. Hoover may have departed, but Iran-Contra, Waco, Oklahoma City, and 9/11 loomed like shark fins in his wake. (One of the most tragic aspects of each was the extent of the intelligence that federal agencies had before the catastrophic events.)

The men who followed Hoover were, perhaps, not as colorful, but they were not without their quirks either. Louis Freeh, the FBI’s 5th Director, made it a point never to speak to Bill Clinton unless he absolutely had to. Clinton, in a situation that was reminiscent of Richard Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre debacle, couldn’t fire his insolent and self righteous subordinate because Freeh was investigating the president’s questionable business dealings and the more distasteful aspects of Clinton’s itchy libido.

This is an remarkably accessible account of the history of an institution whose foundation was built on secrecy and even deception. It is a cautionary tale that ultimately offers little reassurance that lessons learned in the past will be retained as we struggle to survive in an ever more dangerous world. The overriding question that  haunts Enemies like a malevolent ghost is what price are we willing to pay as far as restrictions on our personal freedoms and privacies are concerned for security and peace of mind or, at the very least, the comforting illusion of them.

Tim Weiner will be at the Northshire on May 25th to talk about Enemies.

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On Friday, May 11th at 7 pm: The Northshire welcomes Joseph Olshan, award winning author of 10 novels, including Nightswimmer and The  Conversion, as he presents his stunning debut thriller Cloudland.

Some years ago six women were murdered in the Connecticut River Valley of Vermont and New Hampshire in quick succession, some of the crimes committed within only a few months of one another.  The killings were quickly determined to be the work of a single perp: first the women were strangled and then they were stabbed to death.

Because the communities in this rural area are relatively small, many not only knew the victims but considered them almost extended family.  The murders were the major topic of conversation in town meetings, in supermarkets and diners.

It was during this unsettling and uncertain period that I began living in the Connecticut River valley and first rented a large sparsely furnished house perched on the edge of a pasture.   I moved there in one of the coldest, snowiest Decembers on record.  I was trying to write a new novel while commuting to New York City once a week to teach creative writing at New York University.

Shortly thereafter a strange routine started.  At night I would be reading or scribbling at a large table in the dining room, which faced a road only several hundred yards uphill from a covered bridge.   I noticed that cars, after crossing the bridge, would continue along the road then pull directly into my driveway.   The headlights, like two burning eyes, would blister into the house, causing a sharp and strange illumination.  The cars would remain stationery in the driveway; nobody got out. Unnerved, I’d watch them for however long they paused in their journey.  Eventually, the cars would reverse and proceed back down the hill, back toward the covered bridge.  I concluded they were probably searching for a famous Bed and Breakfast located not far from my house. And even though I wasn’t likely to be the next victim of the serial murderer still at large, I was nevertheless agitated by the strange procession of cars whose lights intruded upon my ritual of living and writing in complete solitude.

Six weeks into my stay in mid-January there was a terrible blizzard.  Very early the next day a snowplow driver found a single stranded car packed with snow in a parking lot of a northbound rest area along Route 91.  The car doors had been left wide open, and this irregularity was enough to make the driver climb out and investigate.  In the front seat he found a pair of ski pants and a pocketbook.  The snow that had blown into the car was stained a deep dark red,  the stain of blood.

A nurse who from a local hospital had gone skiing the previous day and never made it home.  Once the blood was matched to the missing woman, it was assumed that she was yet another victim of the serial killer.  The discovery made front page headlines in the area, but searches for her body and investigations into her disappearance led nowhere.

Two months later a woman (who, in years to come, would become a very close friend of mine) went for a walk during an unseasonal thaw.  As she was passing an apple orchard she saw somebody in a pink parka leaning against a tree.  The temperature had climbed to 60 degrees, positively balmy for the end of March, and she assumed that the person had decided to take in some sun.  Until strolling home a half hour later, she noticed that the woman was in exactly the same position, her head tilted back at a slightly odd angle.  It was then that she thought to wade through the deep snow and discovered the missing nurse who’d been dumped into a deep trough of snow and had lain there frozen for two months.

Finding a murdered body took its traumatic toll, and it was a long time before my friend could put the event behind her.   One of the ways she dealt with it was by telling and retelling the story of her walk, of how she saw the pink parka and eventually realized whom exactly she’d found lying against the tree.  After she told me the story a number of times, it began to take on a life of its own, created its own after-image in my imagination much in the same way as did the burning headlamps of the lost cars.  Two powerful images fused together into a narrative about a woman living alone who writes a household hints column.  One day this woman finds a dead body and is slowly drawn into the investigation for a serial killer who might be a local resident, who just might be somebody she already knows.

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Two things I like on a rainy day: a cup of hot chocolate and a good movie (though a good book comes in a very close second).  And one rainy day I came across a movie called Tin Man staring Zooey DeSchanel, Neal McDonough, Alan Cumming and a personal favorite, Callum Keith Rennie. Now, while I am a fan of the original.   Judy Garland and Toto were favorite friends (and many years later, Flying Monkeys were a symbol of a personality quirk of mine) but Tin Man is a great new twist on a classic.

This two disc set staring Deschanel, McDonough, Cumming, Richard Dreyfuss, and Raoul Trujillo (as DG; Tin Man; Glitch, the Wizard and Raw) is the retelling of the Wizard of Oz with more contemporary ideas, language and concept. After the storm takes DG back to Oz (come to find out she’s been there before!) she and her motley crew of loveable (but filled with secrets) band of familiar characters (with their own unique take) must travel to find the sorceress named Azkadellia: A witch with a few secrets of her own. The story plot is intense, beautiful, sad, mesmerizing and hopeful. While made for television, it would equally be at home on the big screen. Every time it ends, you will be hitting the play button again. You can’t get enough of DG and friends! The Yellow Brick road will never be the same! The extras are just the right amount and are perfect additions to the story.

This isn’t the Frank L. Baum story as we’ve all known and loved over the years.  While still keeping with the fantastical and magic of Oz that we’ve all grown to love, it is a more realistic telling.  The characters are more deeply explored and examined.  The story captivates as equally as the scenery is beautiful.  You have found yourself over the rainbow and in a world as dangerous as it is beautiful; treacherous as it is home.  You will surely tell yourself, “We’re not in Kansas anymore!!”

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We have three copies of A Wedding in Haiti to give away! Leave a comment here or on our Facebook page telling us which of her 19 books is your favorite and you are entered to win! We will notify the three lucky winners on Monday, May 14th.

Julia Alvarez has been called “a one-woman cultural collision” by the Los Angeles Times Book Review, and that has never been truer than in this story about three of her most personal relationships—with her parents, with her husband, and with a young Haitian boy known as Piti. A teenager when Julia and her husband, Bill, first met him in 2001, Piti crossed the border into the Dominican Republic to find work. Julia, impressed by his courage, charmed by his smile, has over the years come to think of him as a son, even promising to be at his wedding someday. When Piti calls in 2009, Julia’s promise is tested.

To Alvarez, much admired for her ability to lead readers deep inside her native Dominican culture, “Haiti is like a sister I’ve never gotten to know.” And so we follow her across the border into what was once the richest of all the French colonies and now teeters on the edge of the abyss—first for the celebration of a wedding and a year later to find Piti’s loved ones in the devastation of the earthquake. As in all of Alvarez’s books, a strong message is packed inside an intimate, beguiling story, this time about the nature of poverty and of wealth, of human love and of human frailty, of history and of the way we live now.

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Thinner than I remember (the magazine, not the cover model)

Anyone here at the Northshire will tell you that I am modest to a fault, but I suppose the added responsibility of the magazines — following the unbridled success with changing light bulbs and putting out the event sign — was inevitable after 12 years. I only bring it up as a clever segue into some observations about magazines in general. I guess I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to them for quite some time.

The magazines I once read regularly  seem to be thinner these days. Thinner or non-existent. It isn’t fair, I know, to single them out as being more expensive than they used to be. Everything is more expensive than it used to be. There seems to be a nagging contradiction inherent in thinner and more expensive, however.

There certainly is a magazine for every interest and occasion. If the number of different magazines on a particular subject is any indication, this is a great area for running, decorating, investing, eating, and looking good. Didn’t see anything on mortuary science, legal anachronisms, or Tom Hanks movies. You’d almost think there be some interest in the first two.

My favorite so far has been one called Romantic Prairie Style. I flipped through it quickly expecting to see an article titled “Erotic Things to Do With Tumbleweeds” or “Why Lanterns Instead of Candles.” I did find an article called “173 Ways to Make Old Seem Fresh,” that I assumed must have something to do with either sex or reupholstering.

The word “sex” beckons on the cover of an awful lot of magazines, the literary equivalent of the aroma of fresh bread from a bakery. I’m from an era when sex wasn’t so analyzed. All these articles that focus on different aspects of it seem to place a lot of additional pressure on the participants to comply with printed guidelines. Whatever happened to fumbling?

If I had to apply a word to our selection here at the store it would be “classy.” To be completely honest, however, I suppose I should use a qualifier. Maybe “generally classy” would be more accurate. That’s not to say that we have magazines at the store that feature an inordinate amount of skin. But, we do have a few that seem to exploit the rather pathetic need that some people have to enter the exalted realm of celebrity by splashing their private lives in public like graffiti in a fetid alleyway.

You can’t have magazines with the word “Kardashian” on the cover and claim to have a selection that is above some degree of reproach. But, every once in a while, I have to deal with a bulb that just won’t light, too.

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……………………………………………….. 4/12/2012 above ………..
island update 4/11 ….. ok, we’re coming along now … after working out the construction details with the full size corner mockup in the two photos at the bottom of this post, we started actual construction by building the kick space directly on top of our full size cardboard layout drawing. on this drawing seen below, (a bad image, poorly photoshopped to compensate for low contrast and glare) we laid out our cabinet and corner post lines, the sink, and inverted between the orange lines, our vertical section which shows panel and face frame details .. click the photos to enlarge them ….
from that drawing and the original mockup, we turned our round column bases that the octagon columns sit on. we then drilled the rounds for timberlock lag screws which we used to attach the round bases to the tablesawn octagons. the orange arrows on those indicate the sawn faces which came out ever so slightly smaller than the planed faces … it seems impossible to get them all perfectly the same size but we wanted the face that our face frames attached to to be all the same size. follow that? good for you. we notched the octagons for the face frames and routed L shaped recesses in the round bases for the little bead moldings that allowed us to transition the beveled tops of the turnings to the panels. got that? really good … i think you can see that detail in the mockup too.
i forgot to mention we also had to cut a freehand ‘corner’ out of each round where it intersected the toe space on the bandsaw before attaching the whole deal to the kick with more timberlocks … got that?… i’m trying not to bore you with all the details; but there were certainly a lot of things to think about on this project before we could even begin …
now we’re on to the more straightforward part of the construction where we build the boxes and add the face frames and panels …
one more shot of the base with its curly maple kick faces and all the columns in place.
and we had a moment where we stopped to appreciate mother nature’s veneer work with the naked lady doing a handstand … fun!part of the project was that the owner would supply the wood, but after struggling mightily to make silk purses from not so great material, the owner graciously allowed us to get a bunch of matched curly maple lumber from our friends at irion, and you just can’t believe how much happier we all are … piece after consistent piece …. beautiful panel after beautiful panel, matched drawer face with matched drawer face … it’s a true pleasure to work with their stuff ….
tomorrow we will finish the frame joinery and assemble it all for a test fit before gluing all the panels up …. more as we move it along … we’re liking it …

3/27/12

we have a new kitchen island project getting underway in the shop … all natural curly maple with a stone top. open shelves,drawers, a recess for seating, pretty straightforward except for the octagonal columns on the corners …. finished my full size mockup today and once that is approved, we’ll have at it … click the photos to enlarge them …
here are the cad drawings that we made from the owners graph paper layouts … the plan view shows some of the complications where the octagonal columns meat the panels and cabinetry and open shelves but conceptually at least, i think we have it worked out …. we’re currently working from a full size 4′ x 8′ cardboard plan view which is a great tool for making cut lists and box sizes. we find the full size things can minimize errors and they don’t take too long to create …
since i sent these photos to the client, i thought i might add these examples of other islands we have built in case you are thinking about designing one yourself. the island above is in my home … cherry counters with tile around the stove; the seating on the end is where we live, lunch and dinner, good for up to 5 people seated …
and we built this one in 2007 i think … it even made it into house beautiful … actually, it was one of my very first blog posts in october of 2007
another view of it … the rest of the kitchen and the reclaimed chestnut stools are ours too …
and here’s a nice walnut island for the same client who got the walnut paneled room in 2009…another wash painted island, very similar in detailing to my own kitchen … we did some tin punching on that project … and then there’s ‘the big island’ … almost a continent by some reports … quartered white oak
and here we arrive at the mockups for our new project … the octagons seemed simple until i actually had to add the kick spaces and the turned round pedestals …
the base will be the first piece and it will have a 3/4″ top that the cabinetry will be attached to from above … like a really big puzzle … more photos as we progress ….

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