While googling "Krenov" I came acrossed this story posted here
in 1996. Couldn't find the beginning of this tale but what I
did find seems worth reposting.
========================

(Steve Turadek)
Subject: teaching kids woodworking (long!)
Date: 20 Feb 1996 23:01:56 GMT

deserve some wood to work with now.# *He pointed into the far corner of
the bench room. *All Janna could see there was an old broom. *|Sweep,#
he
said. *|Not everyone needs a tidy shop to do good work, but this dust
drives me nuts.#

o

Janna swept out the shop. *Every day after school she went to the shop.
Every day Krenov told her to sweep. *Sweeping wasn+t hard and it gave
her
time to talk to the people working in the shop, and to watch them work.
For one year, every day after school, she swept and talked and watched.

o

In the third year she sharpened the tools. *She learned how to keep the
waterstones flat. *She learned how to operate the hand grinder. * She
started by sharpening chisels and plane irons, and, after a few months
of
this, she invented a faster way to sharpen these things using a piece of
glass and many different kinds of sandpaper. *The people in the shop
just
laughed at her when she started experimenting with the glass and
sandpaper. *They teased her about some of the tools she had ruined when
she had first learned to sharpen with the waterstones. *But it wasn+t
long
before she was making edges sharper than anything they had seen before.
They liked the tools because they cut better than anything they could
sharpen themselves. *They weren+t laughing at her anymore. *They were
instead feeling a little guilty for not having experimented more during
their third year. *And they were asking Janna to teach them about using
the paper and glass.

Near the end of her third year, she was sharpening saws and files, and
putting special touches on the big power machines as well. *She knew all
the machines and hand tools now, and she knew how to make them all
better
than they were when they were new.

o

In the fourth years she seasoned the wood. *Wood comes from trees with a
lot of water in it, and it+s called |green# wood. *Some kinds of
furniture
can be made with green wood, but at Krenov+s school, dry hardwood was
required. *The wood had to be cut into boards from logs, and then it had
to be carefully watched for years as it dried. *It had to be turned, and
wood that was cracking badly had to be sold off so it wouldn+t take up
room in Krenov+s shop. *Special woods had to be identified early on, so
it
could be prepared for projects that would respect its nature. *This was
heavy, hard work. * The planks were big and heavy and had to be moved
around a lot, both so she could see how the wood was doing, and so that
she could slow down or speed up the drying.

By the end of the year, she could look at a log and decide how it should
be cut, or even if it wasn+t worth the trouble. *And she knew about
places
all over the world where she could buy logs. *She treated all of the
wood
in Krenov+s shop as though it was her baby, borne of her body, and in
many
ways, it was.

This was the only year she ever had a fight with someone in the shop.
*One
of Krenov+s students had stupidly cut a plank in two, destroying a
special
whorl-pattern in the wood that Janna had been fighting all year to keep
intact. *The board wanted to split, but by cleverly slowing down the
drying, Janna had been able to keep the board in one magnificent piece.
This student, this rock, this less-than-senseless thing, had destroyed
the
board by being careless. *Janna was so angry she did not return to the
shop for three days. *She might have never returned if Krenov had not
asked her.

|Sometimes the things we love are taken from us for no good reason,# he
told her. *|This will happen again. *Don+t throw away years of good work
over it.#

o

In the fifth year she made boards, and panels. *She took rough planks
from
the drying room and turned them into smooth boards with even sides. *She
learned to glue narrow boards into wide flat boards. *These were the
same
boards she had been drying the year before. *These were her children.
*She
knew where each board wanted to wind or warp. *She knew just how to cut
such a naughty board so to make it nice. *She knew just how much of a
surface to plane away to get at the secrets of the board inside. *She
knew
that sometimes it was not enough to be able to hear the wood speak.
Sometimes the wood lied, or told stories, or just didn+t know. *To
really
know a piece of wood, she learned, you have to grow up with it a little.
You have to raise it, and teach it things. *You have to be its mother.

Her panels were delicious and flat, and they stayed at way. *When she
gave
a panel to a more senior apprentice to be used in a cabinet door, she
watched how the wood surrounding the panel was selected and worked.
Sometimes it hurt her to watch that. *Sometimes she would see her panel
shining out, disgraced, from a pile of junk. *Sometimes her panels fell
into the hands of an apprentice who could hear the wood speak, and who
could understand the message. *Or sometimes a dumb apprentice would just
get lucky and everything would turn out well. *It made her happy when
that
happened.

o

In the sixth year, she kept the books. *She learned the business of the
school, how much it spent for wood, how much it paid to rent the
buildings, how much the machines and hand tools costed. *She once
traveled
to meet the Merchant of Ashby to buy some old planes. *She could look at
a
one hundred year old plane and tell if it had been used well or poorly,
and she knew just how much it was worth.

She learned about how much a fine, handmade table would cost to make,
and
how much money it would bring the school when it was sold.

She was very confused when she learned the selling prices of the pieces
made at the school. *Most surprising was that much of the stuff didn+t
sell for much more than the machine-made furniture sold in ordinary
stores. *She also learned that the price had more to do with who was
buying the furniture rather than how well it was made. * Only a very few
of the school+s customers and galleries seemed to understand the worth
of
a piece. *A very few indeed. *All the rest, she learned, was just
fashion. *The right color, the right shape, the right maker+s name.
Little else mattered.

o

In the seventh year, she made joints. *She learned mortise and tenons,
dovetails, and many variations of these. *She learned that some joints
took a very long time to make but were no stronger than other joints
that
took only minutes. *And she learned that tools she had sharpened herself
cut straighter and closer than the tools the current third-year
apprentice
worked on.

o

In the eighth year, she waxed and polished. *She knew that most of the
furniture in stores were heavily stained, and coated with layers of
chemicals like plastics, and this year she learned why: simple finishes
on
wood only made less-than-perfect surfaces look even more
less-than-perfect. *Still, the quality of the work done in Krenov+s
school
was high, and, at the beginning of this year, she was more apt to ruin a
nicely done cabinet than enhance an average one. *By the end of the
year,
she could repair a stained antique finish, or protect a pearwood cabinet
from the dry air or winter damp.

o

In the ninth year, she made cabinets and chairs. *Janna know knew every
step, from sawing the logs to carving the door-handles of a showcase
cabinet. *She made six or seven cabinets that year, but only two
survived. *She would finish a piece and step back, and say to herself:
|This cabinet is done at a very high level, but still, it doesn+t quite
breath.# *She would saw out the joints and return some of the boards to
the drying room, keep a few of the boards to be reworked into her next
idea.

After watching this happen several times, Krenov asked her if she had
some
time that evening. *Janna always had time for Krenov, and she missed him
now. *The school had grown and her master was a busy man.

They closed up the shop together and went around the corner for a
beeriJanna was by this time a young woman.

|#I saw you cutting up that cabinet today,# he said. *|Again.#

Janna stared at the bottom of her cup. *She wasn+t sure why she
destroyed
the cabinet. *She just knew that when it was finished, it wasn+t what
she
had intended to make.

|Sometimes,# Krenov said, |our children don+t grow up to be who we
expected them to be, who we wanted them to be. *No. *Most often, they
grow
up to be more than we expected.#

Janna looked at him. She wasn+t sure if she was angry or confused.
*Krenov
said: |When our children grow up, we have to grow up a little too. *We
have to learn not to be disappointed by different. *We don+t control
every
little thing. *Sometimes we have just let things be better than we
planned
for them to be.#

Janna finished her beer. *The next day Krenov and Janna worked together.
They had never done this before. *Actually, over the past nine years,
they
had spoken to each other very little. *This day, they spoke to each
other
even less. *They each just knew what they had to do. *It was not unlike
watching two quiet people in a good marriage.

o

In the tenth year, she had an apprentice of her own. *A horrible eight
year old boy who came around to the shop after school and stole things.
And dawdled with the cart. *And made the customers and the other
apprentices angry. *Somehow Krenov had allowed this little egg of a
craftsman to infect Janna+s life. *But Janna got used to him being
around. *After all, he wasn+t around much, he was usually out with his
cart making deliveries. *And Janna, when seeing this little boy, often
recalled what she was like when she was eight years old. *How she almost
always forgot to flush the toilet and turn off lights and close doors
behind her, how her shoes were always untied. How sometimes she was so
eager to play that she would forget to put on a jacket before going
outside.

And most of all she remembered how an eight year old dreams. *A child
like
that doesn+t know what+s impossible. *A child of eight has fantastic
thoughts.

And something strange happened to her work that year. *A little fantasy
crept into her cabinets. *No, nothing careless or sloppy. *A curve here,
a
thinness there, put there not to show off, but to be playful, to show
that
its possible. *Even if she thought it was impossible to make it that
way.

Her work that year was at a very high level, just as always. *It was
serious work. *It was serious work that never frowned.

o

One day late in that tenth year, she arrived at the shop after school
and
asked Krenov what she should work on. *Krenov took her into the machine
room and showed her the little push cart. *|I need for you to make a
delivery,# he told her.

Janna+s heart sank a bit. *Ten years of work, all of it careful and
thoughtful, and now her master was giving her the work of a first-year
apprentice.

Krenov put a package wrapped in paper and blankets into the cart. *Take
this to Mrs. Formata,# he said. *|I think you know where she lives.#

Janna now felt a sense of dread. *Every year, Mrs. Formata asked Krenov
to
send over the finest cabinet produced at the school that year. *Janna
made
the delivery only once, in the first year of the school. *But she knew
the
story of Mrs. Formata. *Every year, for the past ten, she had rejected
the
cabinet.

Off Janna went to Mrs. Formata+s house, ready to again experience her
rudeness, her rejection, her evil cats. *This time it would be worse,
because instead of rejecting the work of her master, Mrs. Formata would
reject the finest work of a school that Janna had for the past ten years
helped to build. *This would be very personal.

Just like that first time, Mrs. Formata was waiting outside the house
when
Janna turned the last corner. *Again, Mrs. Formata began shouting for
Janna to hurry as she came into sight. *Again Janna was rudely ushered
into the house carrying a heavy package. *And again Janna watched bits
of
paper being scattered around Mrs. Formata+s parlor.

But this time, it was a little different. This time, instead of seeing
the
work of her master revealed, she saw a cabinet of her own, the pearwood
cabinet she had rebuilt three times.

This time, when the package was unwrapped, Mrs.Formata slipped heavily
into a chair, crying. *|It+s beautiful,# she said. *A white fluffy cat
jumped into her lap and she began to stoke it.

In article , charlie b
wrote:

While googling "Krenov" I came acrossed this story posted here
in 1996. Couldn't find the beginning of this tale but what I
did find seems worth reposting.

Here's the beginning, with part 2 added... sorry for the awkward line
breaks. Original post is at
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.w...3a6d2f8bca?&q=
turadek%40cisco.com

---
From: (Steve Turadek)
Subject: teaching kids woodworking (long!)
Date: 20 Feb 1996 23:01:56 GMT
not entirely on subject, but my daughter's been nagging me to teach her
more, and to let her work more in the shop.
personally, at her age, I'm more worried about attitudes and skills, so
I
wrote this for her.
please note I am *not* putting this into the public domain. All rights
reserved, etc. though feel free to brainwash your kids with it.
o, and most important of all, any resemblence to any person living or
dead
is a complete accident ;-)

The Apprentice
by Steve Turadek +1996
There are many ways to earn a living, and many ways to learn to earn
it.
Some go to school for a very long time. Some learn by doing, by making
mistakes and thinking about where they went wrong, and what road
they+ll
take the next time. Others learn nothing at all and spend their lives
working hard and accomplishing little.
The ones that go to school often become advisors of some kind: doctors,
lawyers, scientists, engineers, managers, or politicians. The unlucky
ones who can+t, or won+t go to school dig holes in the ground on hot
rainy
days, or make beds in hotels, or make coffee at Starbuck+s. This is all
honest work, but it is hard and unrewarding. Many of the people who try
it soon find a way to learn more and get better jobs. They go back to
school, or study on their own, so they can use their thoughts or their
feelings to earn a living, instead of their backs or their feet.
Another way to learn to do a job is to become an apprentice. An
apprentice is someone who works for a master. In exchange for their
hard
work, they are taught the master+s skills. Not all jobs can be learned
this way. Apprenticeship is most common in work where things are being
made. Paintings, houses, furniture, pottery, tools, machines. It is
also
possible to learn to do all of these things by going to school. But
even
in a school, one is learning from a master. At least, if the school is
good.
This is story of one girl who decided to become an apprentice. Her name
was Janna, she was eight years old, and she went to school in Folsom,
California.
Janna+s father sometimes made things out of wood in his garage. Janna
liked to watch and help. She liked to watch how the projects developed.
A trip to the lumberyard, a bunch of rough planks, then smooth boards,
then parts with many strange holes and grooves, and then, a bench, a
chair, a table. She liked how almost every piece of wood that came into
the garage could be used for something!almost nothing was thrown away.
The long shavings of wood that came out of the planes could be used for
her pet rat+s cage. Sawdust that came off the machines could be taken
to
the potter, to be used in her raku kiln. Small bits of wood could be
used
to make other tools, or glued together to make small projects like
birdhouses or boxes.
She liked the way the wood smelled as it was being worked. She liked
the
way the wood felt when it was finished smooth as glass. She liked to
see
the many kinds of wood at the lumber yard, each with its own look and
texture and density. Even as a little girl she had a feeling for the
wood. A board could almost talk to her. It could tell her what it
wanted
to be, and she could hear it tell her.
Her father had some books by a man named Krenov, a master cabinet
maker.
There were many pictures of the master+s work in the books. Janna had
never seen cabinets like the ones in those books. Every joint perfect.
The wood shimmering. The cabinet completely alive. Janna knew that
Krenov could hear the wood talking, too. Every piece of wood was just
where it wanted to be. When Krenov brought two boards together, they
were
married, and it was a happy marriage.
Most of the time, when Janna+s father would finish a piece in his
garage
workshop, he would look at it and say something like: |The joints are
okay, but it+s not alive.# Or: |It+s klunky.# Once he made a piano
bench
and said: |Krenov would just laugh.#
Janna was a very kind girl. She liked the bench. She knew Krenov would
not laugh, because she knew he would not discourage an honest attempt.
But Janna also knew her dad was right. It wasn+t alive. She said: |It+s
much better than the last thing you built.# And that was true.
o
When Janna was in the second grade Krenov came to town to give a
lecture.
Janna and her dad went to hear him speak. After the lecture, which was
boring, Janna and her dad stayed around to look at some of the
furniture
Krenov brought with him. Janna liked most of it, but it bothered her.
It
didn+t look much like the stuff in the books. It was all well made. The
wood was good, the joints were perfect, and some of it was alive. But
there was something wrong
Janna found Krenov standing in the center of a group of people. She
waited while he answered all of their questions. The people around
Krenov
cleared slowly until she was the only person standing near him. Then
Janna told him about how she felt about the furniture he brought. She
took him by the hand to a bench. |This bench,# she said, |is wonderful.
The satinwood on the top is expertly veneered. The stretchers are
exactly
the right proportion. These Japanese joints are so well made they don+t
need to be glued.# She stopped, looked thoughtfully at Krenov. |This
piece just tries too hard to be alive. There+s nothing playful about
the
way it+s made.#
Krenov laughed. He explained that all of the furniture was the work of
his students. |I+m too old now to lift the boards in my shop. I might
fall on a saw or break my hip. I don+t make many cabinets anymoreiI
mostly teach .#
Janna smiled and gripped her father+s hand a little tighter. |That+s
why
none of this stuff looks like the pictures in your books.#
Krenov talked to Janna for a while. They talked about the good and the
bad in the furniture and cabinets around them. In talking to her,
Krenov
soon learned that Janna knew little about working with wood. Only those
things her father had shown herialmost nothing of use. He also learned
that she knew what was good and bad. She knew when the wood was treated
badly or used unfairly. He knew she could hear the wood talking.
Janna learned things too. Most important, she found out that Krenov was
opening a school right in Sunnyvale, within walking distance of her
mother+s house. After talking a while, she developed some courage and
asked the big question: |Can I be your apprentice?#
Krenov smiled. He wanted to yes. He knew that only a few people could
hear the wood talk, and these were the best ones to teach, to learn
with.
He knew he could teach her a lot. He knew he could learn some things,
too, from this little girl. When wood talks to people who can
understand
its language, everyone hears something a little different.
|You+re too young to be my apprentice,# he told her. |You could spend
ten
years in my shop only to find out that you really should have studied
to
be a computational geneticist. You could be wasting your whole life
just
by talking to me here right now.#
They both shut up and regarded each other for a while.
|You need to be in school right now,# he said. |You need to learn to
read
and write, so that later you can learn mathematics and physics. I don+t
think a girl with your gifts should grow up to tamp espresso.#
Janna said: |What+s espresso?#
Krenov said: |You can come by my shop anytime after school. As long as
it+s okay with your mom and dad. And as long as your grades don+t
suffer.#
She gripped her father+s hand a little tighter still.
o
The next day after school she went to Krenov+s shop. It was a big place
with a lot of windows in the roof. There was almost no dust and every
tool was neatly in its place. Not like her father+s shop at all. The
shop was divided into two rooms, one with machines and one with long,
heavy wooden benches. There were about ten people working in the shop,
all in the bench room. None of the machines was working, so it was very
quiet. Not much talking. Just a little hammer-tapping, the quiet
grinding
noises of tools being worked against waterstones, the sound of planes
being pushed against the wood. All of the people in the shop were older
than she was, and they were all boys or men.
Krenov walked out to her. |I wonder if you+ll have trouble fitting in
here,# he said. |You+re the only girl.#
|Girl+s can+t do this kind of work?# she asked.
|Girl+s, women, can do this kind of work just fine,# he said. |You+re
small, so you+ll need help moving the big planks and flitches, until
you
get bigger. And you need to stay away from the machines until you learn
to use them safely.#
|I don+t like the noise they make anyway,# said Janna. |And I+m
stronger
than I look.#
Krenov smiled. |I know you are,# he said. |That+s why you are here. But
you ask for help with the heavy stuff anyway. I tell the boys the same
thing. I don+t want anyone getting hurt.#
|Okay,# said Janna.
|No,# said Krenov. |I+m not so worried about your size or your sex.
What
I+m worried about is that you+re my only girl. That means you+re the
different one. You+re the one unusual member of the club. That means
you+re going to have to try harder than everyone else. Your work will
have
to be a little better. Otherwise some of the dumber members of my
school
will say: iSee, I told you she couldn+t do it.+ |
Janna smiled. |Being different is the hardest thing about being an
artist. I+ve known that for a long time.#
Krenov+s face turned white, like he had just seen a dinosaur. |We+re
going to get along,# he told her. Then he walked back to his bench
shaking his head, thinking, |My littlest apprentice is the wisest of
them
all.#
o
After looking around the shop for a while, and watching some of the
work,
Janna went to find Krenov. |What would you like me to do? Which bench
should I work at?# she asked.
|Today I would like you to do something different,# he said. |I need
this
cabinet delivered to Mrs. Formata.# He took her to the machine room and
showed her a little push-cart. It was just her size. It had two large
wheels, bicycle wheels, really, a wooden bottom and sides, two long
sticks
coming out of the front that Janna could hold to pull the cart. Krenov
put a small exquisite cabinet in the cart, and gave Janna directions to
Mrs. Formata+s house.
Mrs. Formata was waiting outside when Janna cut the last corner on the
way
to her house. |Silly girl, will you dawdle all day with that cart?#
Mrs.
Formata shouted to her from a block away. |Come on, faster!# she
shouted
as Janna neared the house. |I don+t have all day!#
It was a warm spring day and after pulling the cart for several blocks,
Janna was hot and thirsty. She was moving as quickly as she dared, for
the cart was old and heavy, and she didn+t want to spill the precious
cabinet that Krenov had given her to deliver.
As Janna approached, Mrs. Formata said, |Hurry, girly. What kind of
help
is Jamie hiring these days?# Janna grimly struggled the last few feet
to
the door.
|Delivery from Master Krenov, Mrs. Formata,# said Janna, trying her
best
to be polite and cheerful.
|Master Krenov indeed,# said Mrs. Formata. |Bring it inside and hurry,
and let+s see what kind of junk Jamie is trying to pass off on me
today.#
Janna cringed a little on hearing this. She knew the cabinet was the
work
of Krenov himself, not one of the student. She knew it was a lovely
piece. She didn+t know the wood had come all the way from Sweden, but
she
did know she had never seen wood so beautiful. The cabinet was small
but
heavy. Janna could barely manage it up the stairs. Mrs. Formata didn+t
offer to help.
|Put it down here,# said Mrs. Formata, gesturing toward a small table
in
her parlor. Mrs. Formata+s home was filled with beautiful furniture.
All
hand made, some of it hundreds of years old. Every stick and surface
was
breathtaking. Janna struggled with the cabinet down the short hallway.
On a table on the porch was a tall pitcher of lemonade, full of ice,
with
water condensing and dripping down the outside. Janna could imagine it
sweet and sour trickling down her dry throat. Mrs. Formata didn+t
offer.
As soon as Janna had set the cabinet down on the table, Mrs. Formata
began
to unwrap it greedily, removing the outer blanket and the inside paper
wrapping. She was muttering to herself unhappily as she tore through
the
packaging. Janna looked around the room. She could see Mrs. Formata
lived alone, except for the company of a few evil cats. Janna had seen
cats like this before. They slept and ate and spent all their waking
time
protecting the cushion of some favored chair. They were too mean to
stroke or play. Janna reached out to touch one of them, a fat white
fluffy
cat with a red collar. |Thissssch,# it said. |You thissch at me,# said
Janna, |and I+ll thissch at you.#
Just then Mrs. Formata, standing in the center of a blizzard of torn
paper
and scattered blankets, said, |No no no. You tell Jamie this won+t do
at
all.# She left the room so quickly the some of the small bits of paper
followed in her breeze. One of the cats jumped down from its chair and
followed her.
o
The next day Janna returned to Krenov+s shop. Again, Krenov gave her
the
little cart. Again Janna made a delivery. This time it was four little
chairs, the work of one of Krenov+s students. This time, the customer
was
pleased. It+s a nice thing, Janna thought, to bring good furniture to
good people.
On this went for weeks. Every day when Janna showed up, she asked
Krenov
for work. Every day he gave her the cart. After about a month, she
screwed up her courage. |I came to learn to make furniture,# she told
Krenov.
|Right now I need someone to deliver it,# he said. |You+re the youngest
and you don+t yet know how to do anything else,# he told her.
o
After a year of deliveries, Janna said to Krenov: |I know how to run
the
push cart. I am a master of the push cart. Can you give me some wood to
work with?# she asked.
Krenov smiled. |You have mastered the push cart,# he said. |You+ve done
it well. You have also seen and handled every piece of furniture
produced
in this school in the past year, and you have seen how every customer
has
reacted to every piece. You have learned much. You have learned to most
important thing, actually.#
Janna was confused. She thought the only thing she learned was the
neighborhood streets. |What thing was that?# she asked.
|You+ve learned that you have to start at the beginning,# her master
told her.
Janna was a little angry, but she settled down. She was a calm girl and
she could take a joke. She could laugh at herself, even if it hurt a
little. What a crazy old man her master was.
|You+ve done so well,# he said, with a twinkle in his eye, |that you
deserve some wood to work with now.# *He pointed into the far corner of

the bench room. *All Janna could see there was an old broom. *|Sweep,#
he
said. *|Not everyone needs a tidy shop to do good work, but this dust
drives me nuts.#

o

Janna swept out the shop. *Every day after school she went to the shop.
Every day Krenov told her to sweep. *Sweeping wasn+t hard and it gave
her
time to talk to the people working in the shop, and to watch them work.
For one year, every day after school, she swept and talked and watched.

o

In the third year she sharpened the tools. *She learned how to keep the
waterstones flat. *She learned how to operate the hand grinder. * She
started by sharpening chisels and plane irons, and, after a few months
of
this, she invented a faster way to sharpen these things using a piece
of
glass and many different kinds of sandpaper. *The people in the shop
just
laughed at her when she started experimenting with the glass and
sandpaper. *They teased her about some of the tools she had ruined when
she had first learned to sharpen with the waterstones. *But it wasn+t
long
before she was making edges sharper than anything they had seen before.
They liked the tools because they cut better than anything they could
sharpen themselves. *They weren+t laughing at her anymore. *They were
instead feeling a little guilty for not having experimented more during
their third year. *And they were asking Janna to teach them about using
the paper and glass.

Near the end of her third year, she was sharpening saws and files, and
putting special touches on the big power machines as well. *She knew
all
the machines and hand tools now, and she knew how to make them all
better
than they were when they were new.

o

In the fourth years she seasoned the wood. *Wood comes from trees with
a
lot of water in it, and it+s called |green# wood. *Some kinds of
furniture
can be made with green wood, but at Krenov+s school, dry hardwood was
required. *The wood had to be cut into boards from logs, and then it
had
to be carefully watched for years as it dried. *It had to be turned,
and
wood that was cracking badly had to be sold off so it wouldn+t take up
room in Krenov+s shop. *Special woods had to be identified early on, so
it
could be prepared for projects that would respect its nature. *This was
heavy, hard work. * The planks were big and heavy and had to be moved
around a lot, both so she could see how the wood was doing, and so that
she could slow down or speed up the drying.

By the end of the year, she could look at a log and decide how it
should
be cut, or even if it wasn+t worth the trouble. *And she knew about
places
all over the world where she could buy logs. *She treated all of the
wood
in Krenov+s shop as though it was her baby, borne of her body, and in
many
ways, it was.

This was the only year she ever had a fight with someone in the shop.
*One
of Krenov+s students had stupidly cut a plank in two, destroying a
special
whorl-pattern in the wood that Janna had been fighting all year to keep
intact. *The board wanted to split, but by cleverly slowing down the
drying, Janna had been able to keep the board in one magnificent piece.
This student, this rock, this less-than-senseless thing, had destroyed
the
board by being careless. *Janna was so angry she did not return to the
shop for three days. *She might have never returned if Krenov had not
asked her.

|Sometimes the things we love are taken from us for no good reason,# he
told her. *|This will happen again. *Don+t throw away years of good
work
over it.#

o

In the fifth year she made boards, and panels. *She took rough planks
from
the drying room and turned them into smooth boards with even sides.
*She
learned to glue narrow boards into wide flat boards. *These were the
same
boards she had been drying the year before. *These were her children.
*She
knew where each board wanted to wind or warp. *She knew just how to cut
such a naughty board so to make it nice. *She knew just how much of a
surface to plane away to get at the secrets of the board inside. *She
knew
that sometimes it was not enough to be able to hear the wood speak.
Sometimes the wood lied, or told stories, or just didn+t know. *To
really
know a piece of wood, she learned, you have to grow up with it a
little.
You have to raise it, and teach it things. *You have to be its mother.

Her panels were delicious and flat, and they stayed at way. *When she
gave
a panel to a more senior apprentice to be used in a cabinet door, she
watched how the wood surrounding the panel was selected and worked.
Sometimes it hurt her to watch that. *Sometimes she would see her panel
shining out, disgraced, from a pile of junk. *Sometimes her panels fell
into the hands of an apprentice who could hear the wood speak, and who
could understand the message. *Or sometimes a dumb apprentice would
just
get lucky and everything would turn out well. *It made her happy when
that
happened.

o

In the sixth year, she kept the books. *She learned the business of the
school, how much it spent for wood, how much it paid to rent the
buildings, how much the machines and hand tools costed. *She once
traveled
to meet the Merchant of Ashby to buy some old planes. *She could look at
a
one hundred year old plane and tell if it had been used well or poorly,
and she knew just how much it was worth.

She learned about how much a fine, handmade table would cost to make,
and
how much money it would bring the school when it was sold.

She was very confused when she learned the selling prices of the pieces
made at the school. *Most surprising was that much of the stuff didn+t
sell for much more than the machine-made furniture sold in ordinary
stores. *She also learned that the price had more to do with who was
buying the furniture rather than how well it was made. * Only a very
few
of the school+s customers and galleries seemed to understand the worth
of
a piece. *A very few indeed. *All the rest, she learned, was just
fashion. *The right color, the right shape, the right maker+s name.
Little else mattered.

o

In the seventh year, she made joints. *She learned mortise and tenons,
dovetails, and many variations of these. *She learned that some joints
took a very long time to make but were no stronger than other joints
that
took only minutes. *And she learned that tools she had sharpened
herself
cut straighter and closer than the tools the current third-year
apprentice
worked on.

o

In the eighth year, she waxed and polished. *She knew that most of the
furniture in stores were heavily stained, and coated with layers of
chemicals like plastics, and this year she learned why: simple finishes
on
wood only made less-than-perfect surfaces look even more
less-than-perfect. *Still, the quality of the work done in Krenov+s
school
was high, and, at the beginning of this year, she was more apt to ruin
a
nicely done cabinet than enhance an average one. *By the end of the
year,
she could repair a stained antique finish, or protect a pearwood
cabinet
from the dry air or winter damp.

o

In the ninth year, she made cabinets and chairs. *Janna know knew every
step, from sawing the logs to carving the door-handles of a showcase
cabinet. *She made six or seven cabinets that year, but only two
survived. *She would finish a piece and step back, and say to herself:
|This cabinet is done at a very high level, but still, it doesn+t quite
breath.# *She would saw out the joints and return some of the boards to
the drying room, keep a few of the boards to be reworked into her next
idea.

After watching this happen several times, Krenov asked her if she had
some
time that evening. *Janna always had time for Krenov, and she missed
him
now. *The school had grown and her master was a busy man.

They closed up the shop together and went around the corner for a
beeriJanna was by this time a young woman.

|#I saw you cutting up that cabinet today,# he said. *|Again.#

Janna stared at the bottom of her cup. *She wasn+t sure why she
destroyed
the cabinet. *She just knew that when it was finished, it wasn+t what
she
had intended to make.

|Sometimes,# Krenov said, |our children don+t grow up to be who we
expected them to be, who we wanted them to be. *No. *Most often, they
grow
up to be more than we expected.#

Janna looked at him. She wasn+t sure if she was angry or confused.
*Krenov
said: |When our children grow up, we have to grow up a little too. *We
have to learn not to be disappointed by different. *We don+t control
every
little thing. *Sometimes we have just let things be better than we
planned
for them to be.#

Janna finished her beer. *The next day Krenov and Janna worked
together.
They had never done this before. *Actually, over the past nine years,
they
had spoken to each other very little. *This day, they spoke to each
other
even less. *They each just knew what they had to do. *It was not unlike
watching two quiet people in a good marriage.

o

In the tenth year, she had an apprentice of her own. *A horrible eight
year old boy who came around to the shop after school and stole things.
And dawdled with the cart. *And made the customers and the other
apprentices angry. *Somehow Krenov had allowed this little egg of a
craftsman to infect Janna+s life. *But Janna got used to him being
around. *After all, he wasn+t around much, he was usually out with his
cart making deliveries. *And Janna, when seeing this little boy, often
recalled what she was like when she was eight years old. *How she
almost
always forgot to flush the toilet and turn off lights and close doors
behind her, how her shoes were always untied. How sometimes she was so
eager to play that she would forget to put on a jacket before going
outside.

And most of all she remembered how an eight year old dreams. *A child
like
that doesn+t know what+s impossible. *A child of eight has fantastic
thoughts.

And something strange happened to her work that year. *A little fantasy
crept into her cabinets. *No, nothing careless or sloppy. *A curve here,
a
thinness there, put there not to show off, but to be playful, to show
that
its possible. *Even if she thought it was impossible to make it that
way.

Her work that year was at a very high level, just as always. *It was
serious work. *It was serious work that never frowned.

o

One day late in that tenth year, she arrived at the shop after school
and
asked Krenov what she should work on. *Krenov took her into the machine
room and showed her the little push cart. *|I need for you to make a
delivery,# he told her.

Janna+s heart sank a bit. *Ten years of work, all of it careful and
thoughtful, and now her master was giving her the work of a first-year
apprentice.

Krenov put a package wrapped in paper and blankets into the cart. *Take
this to Mrs. Formata,# he said. *|I think you know where she lives.#

Janna now felt a sense of dread. *Every year, Mrs. Formata asked Krenov
to
send over the finest cabinet produced at the school that year. *Janna
made
the delivery only once, in the first year of the school. *But she knew
the
story of Mrs. Formata. *Every year, for the past ten, she had rejected
the
cabinet.

Off Janna went to Mrs. Formata+s house, ready to again experience her
rudeness, her rejection, her evil cats. *This time it would be worse,
because instead of rejecting the work of her master, Mrs. Formata would
reject the finest work of a school that Janna had for the past ten
years
helped to build. *This would be very personal.

Just like that first time, Mrs. Formata was waiting outside the house
when
Janna turned the last corner. *Again, Mrs. Formata began shouting for
Janna to hurry as she came into sight. *Again Janna was rudely ushered
into the house carrying a heavy package. *And again Janna watched bits
of
paper being scattered around Mrs. Formata+s parlor.

But this time, it was a little different. This time, instead of seeing
the
work of her master revealed, she saw a cabinet of her own, the pearwood
cabinet she had rebuilt three times.

This time, when the package was unwrapped, Mrs.Formata slipped heavily
into a chair, crying. *|It+s beautiful,# she said. *A white fluffy cat
jumped into her lap and she began to stoke it.

Damn, had I been able to find the first part of his post with
the "Not putting it in public domain" claim I would've
posted a short summary and link to the google page.

It does raise an issue though. Once it's on the net it seems
to be out there forever and accessable to everyone. At what
point does it become public domain - only when it's used
for profit?

But it is a great story.

charlie b

In article , charlie b
wrote:

It does raise an issue though. Once it's on the net it seems
to be out there forever and accessable to everyone. At what
point does it become public domain - only when it's used
for profit?

Not making it public domain means he is explicitly retaining copyright.
Considering it was posted in a public, archived medium to begin with I
am not terribly concerned about the implications of reposting.

djb

Beautiful story :~)