Editor’s note: This chair chat is a work in progress, and we need your help to finish it. We have a beautiful chair but only had two minutes to talk because Chris had to go to the bathroom (number two).
We ask you readers to finish this Chair Chat in the comments. Please keep it civil but also don’t hesitate to post something funny, we all like to laugh.
You don’t see a disclaimer here that salty language will follow – because we didn’t get around to any yet. Feel free to add some.
Chris: Hi guys, let’s do one last very short chat as I have to make a poo.
Rudy: No worries, how about this beauty:
Klaus: Wow, look at that chair. Such a nice stance!
Rudy: I agree, it is very beautiful!
Chris: It is so beautiful that I want to sleep with it.
As someone who was raised in the American South, it grates on me that we can’t open our storefront for visitors. We’re a hospitable people (even if Megan and I are natural hermits).
During the first few years we had the storefront, we welcomed visitors, and things got out of hand. Some visitors came to spend an entire day (or two days…). Others were dropped off by loved ones for the day, and we were expected to babysit them. Still others tried to schedule their days here for a visit – one even asked if he could park his RV outside and use our utilities and facilities.
All this while Megan, Brendan and I were trying to make a living making furniture, tools and books.
So you can see the problem. We would like to welcome people here, but we can’t be a visitor’s bureau, daycare center or ersatz training facility.
For 2022, we’d like to try an experiment. If you are passing through Northern Kentucky and would like to stop by, please do. If we are here, we’d be happy to let you in, give you the dime tour of the storefront and sign any books. And if we have a book or tool in stock that you are interested in we’d be happy to sell it to you.
But here are the “buts….”
We can’t make appointments for a visit – no exceptions. We hustle here every day. And sometimes we need to get to the lumberyard or hardware store at the drop of a hat. So if you swing through and we’re here, great. If we’re not, sorry.
We are 100 percent closed on Sunday.
The best time to catch us is between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday-Saturday. We sometimes step out for lunch for a bit.
You must be vaccinated against COVID. This is my home and my business, and that’s the rule.
We ask that you keep your visit fairly brief. We like to talk to customers, but we are a busy (sometimes frantically busy) small business.
If the virus gets wildly out of control, we reserve the right to suspend visits.
So that’s it. Please, please, please don’t bug Megan or Meghan about bending or breaking the above rules. They are firm.
Wow. I know this sounds a bit inhospitable. I wish we had employees who could handle constant visitors and tours and the like. But we don’t. So let’s give this a try.
— Christopher Schwarz
Our storefront is located at 837 Willard St., Covington, KY 41011.
Cache after a deep snowfall, March 1990. (Photo by Dick Proenneke, courtesy of the National Park Service)
Today may you find the love Dick Proenneke did, alone but not, 39 years ago today. A journal entry, written by Dick, excerpted from “The Handcrafted Life of Dick Proenneke.”
December 25, 1982:
Partly Cloudy, Calm & 21°
A real nice morning for that special day. A few nights ago I was reminded of Christmas. It was -6° calm and very frosty. By lantern light every busy and spruce sparkled – a million tiny candles winking on and off as I went to the woodshed … On the stump out front I had nailed a big strip of gut fat. I hollered for the birds and it was some minutes before they arrived … Boy oh boy! what a Christmas present. They would work like beavers – get tired and rest for a while and then back at it again. If I called them, they would quit and come to the door for hotcakes.
Everything in order I started to open parcels. Nine in all – excuse me – one in the cache makes it ten. Ten plus small gifts from Glen and Patty, Laddy & Glenda which turned out to be candy and cookies.
Before I got involved I remembered my little turkey bird in the cache. It would be frozen solid and I had better get it thawing …
What a batch of stuff – everything from soup to nuts. Two packages of Beef stick that is very good and will keep well into spring. Two gallons of chopped dried onions. I had ordered one and please write the price on the can so I could pay. Two came and as a gift. Any more I wanted I could pay for. Fruitcake, candy, nuts, a new Taylor thermometer which is a nice one – a tube case with a clip so one can pack it to the mt. top. Dish towels and some material to cover my aluminum foil of the fireplace cover. I find the foil is of benefit in keeping the cabin warm. Heat is reflected back into the living area from it. The excess that I cut off stands against the wall behind my stool next to the stove. Sit there and I can feel the heat reflected from the foil. Items too numerous to mention. Even genuine imported Millet Spray bird feed for caged birds and wild birds. Be interested to learn if I have any birds that will sample it.
Cinnamon drops and lemon drops, dish towels and pot holders and on and on. Nectarines a batch, semisweet chocolate, lentils and white beans and a note “Is there anything we can do for you?” And I suppose the next plane in will have more. I should hang out a sign “Twin Lakes general store.” With the flag flying my cabin has already been mistaken for a Post Office. I do appreciate everything and wish there was some way I could repay everyone for everything for I feel in debt. If only they had all gotten together and sent in a 25 lb. sack of rolled oats from “Nature Kitchen” I would have been “happy as a clam”. It would be evening before I pawed through the boxes again and find Christmas wrapped gifts that I missed first time around. I hate to disturb the contents because I often end up with more than the box will hold when I try to put it back.
Everything neatly stacked in a corner, I did more work on my ice creepers. An uncommon amount of creeper ice this winter. Straps wear and heel claws need replacing.
“It was only a matter of time before Lost Art Press found itself publishing a beautiful book that is not about woodworking,” he wrote.
“I have long admired Nancy Hiller as a craftsperson and a writer” – the admiration is mutual – “so I am thrilled to the marrow at this examination of her life through the lens of relationships with animals she has known. Here you hold the richly penned, fantastic memoir of a plucky and clever woodworker, kitchen designer and writer, who honestly describes her ascension on the path of wisdom, with a special focus on the stumbles. Among the signposts and guides she has been lucky enough to encounter, she counts a parade of charismatic creatures and the charming directions they lent to her life’s decisions.”
Joey really is a reader.
While I personally make no claim to wisdom, I have learned a lot from the animals who have shared my household at different times, as well as from wildlife, stray domestic animals (including a goat) and a select few (among them, buffalo) raised on farms. These and more fill the tales in this volume, the entirety of which is true.*
But while the book honors animals who have been my companions, teachers, entertainers and occasional bêtes noirs, it is at heart, as with all books published by Lost Art Press, about learning and teaching. In this case, the learning isn’t about how to sharpen tools or build a chest, but about finding ways to survive devastating loss, or realizing that most of us are capable of facing far scarier slang for fecal matter turns of events than we might otherwise imagine. In the same vein, the teaching is not about how to build a chair or harvest hickory bark, but about the reality that bad things don’t just happen to “other people,” and few, if any of us, live the kind of picture-perfect life that sells everything from refrigerators to potato chips. It also seeks to raise awareness of at least one dangerous common practice and a challenging-to-diagnose cause of canine paralysis.
My bête noir par excellence (and made so by yours truly), “Wilhelm von Wundt,” reading the comics.Another canine reader!
If there is any wisdom in this book, it’s consistent with many exhortations from Mr. Offerman himself, as those who have attended his performances in person will know: Be kind. Think of others, as well as yourself. Open your eyes; don’t let the years slide by while you wait for just the right moment to live. This earth is a place of wonders; savor them in ways that will leave them in good shape – ideally, better shape – for those who come after us. And it’s OK to have the occasional belch or fart among friends.
Big thanks to Nick Offerman for even cracking the cover of “Shop Tails,” let alone reading, and for sending this supportive fistbump.
The sliding bevel factory has been cranking out these tools as fast as possible. We got two more batches in this week. You can purchase one here. If they sell out, don’t worry. We will have more next week.
