A Splintered History of Wood: Belt Sander Races, Blind Woodworkers, and Baseball Bats Hardcover - 2008

First line

When we think of wood—and few of us do—most of us picture the stacks of 2x4s in the aisles of our local home center or the stuff we throw into the fireplace on cold winter nights. Wood doesn’t rank much higher on our “things-that-amaze-us” list than water or air. We chop our onions on it, pick our teeth with it, pin our skivvies to the clothesline with it. Most people think of wood as just another “thing”—and they’re correct. But let’s look at life for a minute without this thing. For starters, the book you are now reading wouldn’t exist. If you needed to dab your eyes a bit over that fact, you wouldn’t find a Kleenex or Kleenex box in the house. In fact, you wouldn’t find the house—or the chair you are seated in or the floor it’s standing on—at least not in the form you are accustomed. You wouldn’t have the pencil in your pocket, the rubber heel on your shoe, or the cork you popped from the Pinot Noir last night. There would have been no violins at the concert you attended last week, no baseball bats at the ball game you watched last night, no telephone poles to carry your digital messages earlier today. We use wood for chopsticks, bridges and charcoal. From the cribs we sleep in as infants to the caskets in which we’ll be buried in old age, wood touches us in a real and personal way, everyday. How could we take wood for granted? And now I step off my soapbox—also made of wood.