Wednesday Writing Bits: Woodworking

The following was actually part of a letter I wrote to a friend of mine.  We were discussing the natural disasters events that occur in our lives on a daily basis.  I would like to think that the following sort of story is normal for everyone.  I am sure things like this happen to you too...right?

I have been spending some of my extra “unemployed” hours on learning some woodworking skills (a task that is very foreign to me…which is why I thought I would give it a try).  Today my very proud Self drilled pilot holes successful only to go too far with the countersink bit jabbing a horrendous hole into my wood. Phooey.   Good thing it was on the backside of my project and hip hip hooray for wood-putty (never used it but I know it’s out there).  I applied the wood glue and began screwing in the screws…twist…twist...creak….the boards began to lift apart! Well, silly me didn’t know until later that such a thing was not an emergency and is really quite normal and only requires me to (practically) prostrate myself on the two boards while I screw them together to prevent them from separating.  Smile.  Later (of course after such exertion I had to take a break), I attempted to glue and nail another little board to the front of the project. Well the glue, glued fine but after driving one of the finishing nails into the wood (and after consulting Dad) I realized I should have driven pilot holes in for the nails to make them easier to drive in and prevent splitting. No problem.  Somehow even my pilot hole practice-run  in a piece of scrap board didn’t prevent me from encountering difficultly while working ON my project.  The difficultly was none other than getting the drill bit stuck in the wood.  Smile.  With some intervention from Dad we got it out and I learned that in the future I need to really crank down on the drill chuck in order to ensure a tight union betwixt drill and bit. 

Fortunately nothing else eventful occurred during the project…unless you call bending three nails in the process of punching the finishing nails below the surface of the wood an event.  I certainly wouldn’t count that, would you?  

 

What is Worth While

“This is the great danger……We must love our mothers more than Greek dialects.  If the instinct of daughter, sister, wife, or mother dies our of a college-bound woman, even in the course of a most brilliant career otherwise, the world will forget to lover her; it will scorn her, and justly.  If she does not make her surroundings homelike, wherever she is , whether she be a teacher, artist, musician, doctors, writer, daughter at home, or a mother in her household;  and if she herself is not cheerful and loving, dainty dress, gentle in manner, and beautiful in soul as every true woman ought to be, the work will feel that the one thing needful is lacking,--vivid, tender womanliness,--for which no knowledge of asymptotes or linguistics can ever compensate.  It is better for a woman to fill a simple human part lovingly, better for her to be sympathetic in troubles and to whisper a comforting message into but one grieving ear, than that she should make a path to Egypt and lecture to thousands on ancient Thebes.”

~An extract from What is Worth While written by Mrs. Samuel Linsay  (as quoted in the 1897 edition of the  Three Minute Readings for College Girls.