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Bourgeois Furniture, 12411 Wi******er Avenue, Bunker Hill, WV (2026)

02/26/2026

Satisfaction

Unless you’ve already guessed that I’m an old cracker, you might be surprised that my late teen years were filled with the driving beat and words of “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” It wasn’t that I particularly liked the song or the group, but the strains could be heard everywhere I went. The whole Western world seemed to feel entitled to, but lacking in, satisfaction.

As I wormed my way through my life, I can’t say I encountered much satisfaction except when I got to work with wood. I have found fulfillment in later years also in woodworking. Through wood and the people I’ve encountered working with it, I also learned that satisfaction is paradoxically not a filling, but an emptying process.

I don’t mean to discount creating beauty. I can admit that over the years some of my work has risen to the level of beauty, but this in itself is not satisfying. No matter how beautiful something is, it is never perfect nor enough. In most of my work there are mistakes. Where these do not occur, beauty gives me a place to stand from which I can see a better way. It’s as though I were traversing a series of mountain ranges only in each case to find grander vistas.

Likewise, I am occasionally gifted with approval. This also does not bring satisfaction. It is never uniform. Someone always disapproves. Also, life does not stop at the completion of a job. If I am approved for what I have done today, what about tomorrow?

The basic disconnect with satisfaction is that both creating beauty and receiving approval are trying to fill a need which keeps expanding. Through them, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.”

Satisfaction comes from subtraction not addition; emptying, not filling. It comes from giving it all to the process. Meeting each challenge as it appears and leaving it all in the shop is the source of fulfillment. Avoiding the hard part and thus protecting some inner reserve is not the road to satisfaction.

Also, fulfillment comes from identifying a cause which is good. I attended a fund raising seminar where the leader began by saying, “People want to give to a good cause.” In other words, it’s not about getting them to let go of their money; it’s about defining and sharing a cause which benefits others. Pouring myself out for a good thing is very satisfying.

In woodworking, this means gathering and exercising the skills which will help people articulate the need for good they (or others they know) have. Expending the physical and mental effort to reach these goals leaves me satisfied at the end of the day.

Come and see Bourgeois Furniture at Berkeley Art Works in Martinsburg, WV, the ShenArtsGallery in Wi******er, VA, and Bent River Trading Post in Capon Springs, WV.

See you there.

Joe

02/10/2026

A Reason to Live

Woodworking offers many reasons to live. A person can pursue proficiency and seek to be known as an accomplished woodworker. Another life goal is profitability. Still another is productivity where one seeks to multiply his or her works by which to be remembered.

These goals can be reached, though, without touching life in its deepest or highest aspect. This is true because none of them is sufficient to constitute a reason to die. I might make preliminary sacrifices—work long hours, study and practice had, deny the company of those I love—but not the ultimate one. None of them establishes a satisfying and peace-giving feeling on my death bed.

Only a moral reason reaches into my spirit and lifts it—or the opposite. I am a fan of the series of books written by C.J. Box and centered around the Wyoming game warden named Joe Picket. The books follow the history of Joe’s family, his relationship with his wife, Marybeth, and his inability to stay out of complicated situations there and in his work. The interesting aspect in all this is the reason for the complications: his moral code. These are deeply personal. His co-workers, superiors, friends and neighbors alternatively ridicule and respect him for his stands. He also suffers many losses through them.

My life finds its foundation for Joe Picket in art in two movie performances: Marshal Will Kane in High Noon and Detective Virgil Tibbs in In the Heat of the Night. Both call upon their moral strength to meet the challenges they face. Either man could avoid these challenges without any one thinking less of them, but both manage to go higher by facing up to their own inner person.

Woodworking offers such challenges in our interaction with wood, partners and customers. Wood is a resource whose reliability and resilience asks for respect and not just use. We are all familiar with the Shel Silverstein book, The Giving Tree, where the protagonist is supported by a tree throughout his whole and sometimes selfish life.

In woodworking there are likewise partners, people whose support is constant and caring. Sometimes, in my case, this comes through a cooperative group with like-minded goals. Always my partners are friends and family whose support seems tireless.

Customers provide the impetus many times for the work itself. These people must be met fairly and honestly through my endeavors.

Each of these settings of challenges calls for moral choices. Many times these choices are unnoticed by anyone else. Leaving them out, though, denies me my reason to live.

Come and see Bourgeois Furniture at Berkeley Art Works in Martinsburg, WV, the ShenArtsGallery in Wi******er, VA, and Bent River Trading Post in Capon Springs, WV.

See you there.

Joe

02/03/2026

Life in a Hay Baler

I saw a Bugs Bunny cartoon when I was a boy where the rabbit was moving Elmer Fudd from one bad point to a worse one by calling a square dance. When he got Fudd to enter a hay baler, he started calling, “Whirl, whirl, twist and twirl, fly around like a flying squirrel.” That, believe it or not, is how I got to understand the meaning of the word, “maelstrom.”

We live in a maelstrom today. Forces beyond our control are allowing people to be killed, discounted, and uprooted. The word and guide of the day is “revenge.” People on both sides of our national and international divides are so incensed and radicalized that the only answer seems to be to eradicate the other side. We’ve lost the difference between resistance and revenge. This was brought home to me as I watched the national championship college football game. Miami was on defense and an Indiana player had gotten knocked into the middle of next week. When the play was over, the Miami player reached out and helped him up. They smiled at each other and patted one another on the shoulder. They realized that they were not enemies, but (as Bud Wilkerson, legendary Oklahoma football coach used to say) each other’s potential in a different colored jersey. They were actually helping each other to do their best.

Any medium—for me it’s wood—challenges us this way. We strive within it and against it to be our best. What is the key, though, that unlocks the iron door of revenge and releases us into the sunshine and growth which is ours?

The answer is forgiveness—of others and ourselves. In an article this week, David Brooks quoted Reinhold Niebuhr as saying, “No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.”

Putting it another way, I was riding with a really fine pastor who was younger than me. He said, “Joe, you’re an older father, and my wife and I are getting ready to adopt a two-year-old boy. Can you give me any advice?”

After a little thought, I said, “Sure, when he gets to 13 or 14, kill him.”

He was shocked and said, “Why would I do that?”

I said, “You’ll have all those great Christmases and won’t have to put up with puberty or a new car.”

He said (actually, I think, wishing he’d asked someone else his question), “I could never hurt this child.”

I said, “Well, then, you’ll just have to learn to forgive, won’t you?”

Raising a child, creating beauty, reaching for justice, each involves us in a maelstrom. There are ideals which must be upheld. There are challenges to those ideals. This is a never-ending clash. Forgiveness says, “I see you are a person like I am. We are not going to agree (or agree to disagree). One of us may emerge victorious, but we will both come out better.”

Come and see Bourgeois Furniture at Berkeley Art Works in Martinsburg, WV, the ShenArtsGallery in Wi******er, VA, and Bent River Trading Post in Capon Springs, WV.

See you there.

Joe

01/20/2026

Let Loose

I recently stumbled across this portion of Yeats’ Second Coming, “Turning and turning in the widening gyre/The falcon cannot hear the falconer;/Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;/More anarchy is loosed upon the world,/The blood dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned;/The best lack all conviction; while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.”

Many of us would agree that things are falling apart. They see government agents roaming the streets doing their best to imitate a gang of thugs with lethal power. For some of us, the link between morality, civility and government has been destroyed. Others of us are wondering what will happen to the poorest and the weakest. The falcon has moved beyond the voice of the falconer.

If woodworking has taught me anything, it has helped me to understand that the utmost value in which I participate is within my hands and heart. I cannot speak for the falcon riding the thermals, but I know the one within my heart. I know my color and intensity of my intension for right or wrong, accuracy or inaccuracy, truth or falsehood. The wood tutors me daily as it enters my heart.

It tells me that sacrifice and giving are the way to life no matter what the ‘big boys’ say. It helps me to understand that it is my medium of speech and growth. My life is opened here and it happens on a day-to-day basis. There is no final word spoken by people or wood. There is just today with the best we can do.

It would be a welcome thing sometimes to blame the situation of the falcon in the air, but that can’t be. I am united with a falcon that must hold on and stay its course. What is really let loose is not the blood dimmed tide, but the opportunity to act lovingly, justly and kindly, and that work is never done.

Come and see Bourgeois Furniture at Berkeley Art Works in Martinsburg, WV, the ShenArtsGallery in Wi******er, VA, and Bent River Trading Post in Capon Springs, WV.

See you there.

Joe

12/24/2025

The Gift

We have entered the cultural season of gift giving. Retailers around the country count on this time of swollen sales to get them over the hump of the year’s business goals and needs. As a woodworker and a retailer, this applies to me. What scares me, though, is that I’ve lost the meaning of gift in this process. It has become a manipulation to achieve other and unseen goals in the person receiving. This loss is doubly destructive because it blinds me to the gifts I receive everyday, gifts which enrich me and not necessarily the giver.

Everyday I live with my wife and family is truly a gift to me. Sometimes, I think I’ve got to do something to earn the love and trust they lavish on me only to find out that, when I do, I only end up looking foolish. Wood is a great benefactor to me. This gift is somewhat different from the one from people. It does not single me out as someone special. Still, it is a gift that results in a better me. I gain skills and knowledge. My life expands as I am part of the production of more beauty. Even when I fail to find beauty, the exercise has been good. Overall, my family and wood have helped me to see myself as someone valuable.

The spirit of giving has always been under attack. I only have to think about my own life. Threatened destruction and actual abuse have opened the door for me into empty endeavors and attitudes. Still, gifts have rained down on me to pull me back and up day by day. Now that is a gift.

11/17/2025

What Time Is It?

As time passes for myself and the people I love, the dual nature of the answer to the question in the title of this newsletter becomes more and more important to me. The question might simply be asking the ordinal time (2:02 vs. 3:15, etc.). It might also be calling for a prediction in physical time.

I learned about physical time (my name for it) from reading various physicists. Because I was trapped in a sense of ordinal time, I couldn’t understand what they were describing. Time seemed to me like a river which stretched out infinitely in both directions (past and future). It moved on its own. For physicists, time is a series of events. No events: no time. This gets amazingly complex and convoluted. Something happening 6 light years from here doesn’t happen here for six years, likewise for 126,000 light years away (126,000 years apart). Many events can happen at once or spread out all over the universe.

I jump into this as a woodworker. The events in which I participate have to do with the unique joining of the social, economic, natural and physical world of which I am a part. As I produce wooden objects, the effect splays out like a ripple from the edge of a pond. The person who commissioned the piece uses it to their satisfaction or otherwise. Hopefully, they pass it on to another person, and so on, and so on.

It is here that my sense of ordinal time takes its place. The reason we have such a thing is to order our days. We order our days because there are only a finite number of them. The events in which I’ve participated will go on, but I won’t.

This explains the level of anxiety I feel around the people I’ve been privileged to love and touch. What time is it—what is the next event we shall face? Will it be a positive or negative life-changing event? My wife and I recently received some good medical news. I was worried how things might turn out, and I don’t have the words to express how relieved I felt when we were told there was nothing for concern.

That question—what time is it?—has a grip on us all. That’s why it must be understood in its proper meaning and placed in its proper context. It is a question that has to do with the duration and contents of life. It does not control life’s source or power. These are gifts to us. In fact, life itself is a gift. Each moment has a life enhancing possibility. We must remember that using our powers for good is always the most important thing no matter how much ordinal time we might have or what event we might be facing. Finally, this is in our hands.

Come and see Bourgeois Furniture at Berkeley Art Works in Martinsburg, WV, the ShenArtsGallery in Wi******er, VA, and Bent River Trading Post in Capon Springs, WV.

10/30/2025

What Now?

A man once told me that running a business was the exact opposite of smooth sailing. He told me I should be ready for a never-ending series of bottlenecks. There are always challenges that must be resolved. The realistic dichotomy is not between challenge and peaceful growth, but between growing and being driven in meeting the tests ahead.

I realized this pairing right away since I had been part of a team raising teenagers. The multitude of issues and mind-boggling solutions tested our mettle. We could go with the flow or adopt a “growing” paradigm.

Going with the flow is waiting until the night before a school project must be done to ask about it and then trying (by working all night) and failing to complete it. That’s what I called the sale barn approach.

We lived in an area where cattle were raised and brought to the sale barn. A cow is a big animal you can’t lead with a halter or push. What happens at a sale barn is that a space is opened up in front of a bull, cow or steer and the animal steps into it. That works for the cow until the next open space is into the slaughter house. If a person tells you that their teenage children won’t sell them down the river and even blame it on the parent, that person is delusional.

Growing is knowing about that project ahead of time. Put succinctly, it’s doing everything you can to know your child. I don’t say you won’t be surprised—and occasionally aghast—at what turns up. I’m only indicating that this approach gives you an opportunity to assess the situation and the strengths and weaknesses that come to bear.

Many times in my business, I have encountered a “what now.” When I’ve been cruising along, resting on my laurels, I’ve been overwhelmed for a bit. If I’ve been struggling to strengthen myself in skills and knowledge, I can meet “what now” on my own terms – or, at least, terms in which I can do my best.

Come and see Bourgeois Furniture at Berkeley Art Works in Martinsburg, WV, the ShenArtsGallery in Wi******er, VA, and Bent River Trading Post in Capon Springs, WV.

10/20/2025

The Lead Dog

For a lot of my life I’ve been familiar with this saying: “Unless you’re the lead dog, the scenery never changes.” In fact, Ayn Rand wrote a book, Atlas Shrugged, saying that only the lead dog has an authentic life. We must seize our lives from the influences of others and life in general in order to determine our destiny. We must seize our own authority and banish humility and meekness from our lives.

The issue here is that we and our work have the same destiny: either a slow drop or a quick plunge into mortality. Even a preliminary evaluation of the lead dog reveals that it too is under authority. The scenery it views is influenced by another.

Woodworkers know this instinctively. We are under authority, ranging from the wood to the people for whom we work, indeed who work alongside us. None of us originates our own ideas or designs. The words we use to frame them were given to us gradually throughout our lives.

This is why humility and meekness must be calculated into a well-lived life. To be humble is to live under authority. To be meek is to accept the life which comes when we are faithful to the authority over us. This life is one of courage, facing up to the forces that try to place an alien authority over us. Humility and meekness are also lives of searching and discernment as we fully commit to the authority which authentically rules our lives.

That’s really what the lead dog is all about. Eskimos’ lead dogs had to survive trial by combat with the other dogs. The one that emerged victorious was the leader. Also, however, their lead dog had to obey the person running the sled. The lead dog had to be humble and meek—fully committed to the authority over it.

Come and see Bourgeois Furniture at Berkeley Art Works in Martinsburg, WV, the ShenArtsGallery in Wi******er, VA, and Bent River Trading Post in Capon Springs, WV.
See you there.
Joe

09/30/2025

So What

As a woodworker, my day to day concerns include materials, design and ex*****on. What does this matter in a world where our environment, political structure and economies are facing rapid and radical changes? My friends and family members share their fears for our future and that of our children and grandchildren. From where I live and work, there seems to be no way to impact these more widespread concerns.

This assessment, though, is mistaken because I am wearing the blinders of unforgiveness for failings. Remove these and I can realize my opportunity for a meaningful and good “so what.” Take them away, and my true place in this world, my why for operating, becomes clearer. Leave them on and my only choice is selfishness.

With the blinders on, my family and my work seem only to connect at my assets. The overriding concern is whether I can amass and sustain enough money and other resources to support myself and my family now and to some degree after I’m gone. Take away the blinders, and all sorts of interrelationships appear. It is important that my family and community see me as someone who does his best technically and is honest and just with them and others. Can they authentically live with me?

Forgiving in the face of failures is my road to realizing these interrelationships. I have a choice: forgiveness or punishing myself, my family, friends and larger community for the failures around us. Avoiding failures is not an option either in my work or that of others. My realistic course of action going forward is to rise and try again. Likewise, I can help others to carry on.

After all, what is it to impact my world in a positive way (to establish a “so what”) but to try to grow from where I really am. To do this, I must meet failure with forgiveness and keep coming off the mat when I can. This is my road to my “so what.”

Come and see Bourgeois Furniture at Berkeley Art Works in Martinsburg, WV, the ShenArtsGallery in Wi******er, VA, and Bent River Trading Post in Capon Springs, WV.
See you there.
Joe

08/11/2025

The Path of Art

My woodworking journey has been to find my way as an artist and a craftsperson. For me, the latter identity involves the technical “how to” while the former provides design and direction. At first, my concern as a wannabe artist was to try to find an identity for art. At every corner I turned, my ideas were slashed. For instance, I discovered that in 1917 Marcel Duchamp submitted a urinal titled Fountain and explained the purpose thusly, “…everyday objects raised to the dignity of a work of art by the artist’s act of choice.”

I began to realize that what I was doing and intending amounted to art as I know it. It provides me with a platform from which I can dialogue with others walking an artistic path. Admittedly, I may not have much to contribute, but that hopefully changes from day to day.

The secret for me to walk the artistic path is to acknowledge that life is bigger than me, and that celebrating it and contributing to the ongoing walks of others is the key. I do get lost often. There are things in the arts and crafts which take my breath away. I feel very small in their presence, and sometimes that’s the purpose of the person presenting the works. If, however, I let them contribute to me, I can give to others. In this way I can be on the path of art

Come and see Bourgeois Furniture at Berkeley Art Works in Martinsburg, WV, the ShenArtsGallery in Wi******er, VA, and Bent River Trading Post in Capon Springs, WV.

See you there.
Joe

07/24/2025

The Appearance of the Wood

In order to properly handle wood, I must take my place with all the other partners in its appearance. I stand in a long line of events that come to bear upon the wood I touch. As far as my mind is concerned, the beginning and end of this line cannot be precisely known. From the big bang to now to whatever, the wood has been and is being formed and changed.

My first encounter is in the lumber yard. Most of the wood I encounter there is rough, sometimes slightly cupped and/or warped, has a varying heart/pith wood surface and a thickness of slightly over one, two or three inches (I don’t usually handle anything beyond this). Although I can find plain and quarter sawn wood (for my purposes, wood that is respectively an amorphous or a straight line pattern). I usually go for the former because it is most often requested and is cheaper.

My process is to select, load and purchase the wood, get it into my shop, and let it adjust. The lumber yard I use sometimes has wood in the open and always has it vulnerable to the outside humidity. I stack the wood as flat as I can on sticks in order to keep it off the concrete (which can communicate humidity to it). Standing wood on end can produce warp. After four weeks or so, I begin to plane the wood. This is where I begin to see how much is usable, and I start getting an idea for how I want to deploy it.

Next comes shaping, joining, sanding, finishing and assembly (I do this after finishing, if I can, because it eliminates any glue mistakes I might make). During all this, the wood has some aspects of life despite having been removed from the stump. One of these—expansion and contraction—is crucial to consider in building furniture or objets d’art. Depending upon the humidity content of its environment, wood will expand or contract most importantly across the grain. It must be allowed to do so using various strategies.

Through all this, the wood and the furniture I am constructing appears to me. The person who purchases or receives this piece then takes their place in the long line. It continues to appear for them as it takes its proper place in their life and home. Thus, we who participate in the appearance of wood are partners with it.

Come and see Bourgeois Furniture at Berkeley Art Works in Martinsburg, WV and Bent River Trading Post in
Capon Springs, WV.See youthere.
Joe

07/08/2025

The Good and the Bad

I don’t like my mistakes. When I make one in woodworking or any other way, I go into a kind of shock. For awhile, I’m not at my best. A nasty ink has stained my pristine cloth. Until I can find a way to overcome it—sometimes by actually remaking a piece of project entirely—I am off kilter and can scarcely think of anything else.

Over the years, I have developed a way to absorb and short-circuit this debilitation. First, I remember that I don’t want things to get worse. Throwing your hands up is a bad place to be. Many years ago, a musical group came to the church I attended. There was a lead singer and guitar player, a woman who sang harmony and a drummer. The lead singer and the harmonist were married. Sometime around when they played at our church, the woman left her husband and went away with the drummer. We found the lead singer in his car in the middle of a muddy field gunning his engine. He said he’d given up on life and decided to let God drive. To me, he’d exchanged a lost wife for a lost wife and a car stuck in the mud. This was going down, not up.

The next thing I do is try to remember that bad doesn’t preclude good. A good thing can happen even in the presence of a bad one. How many times in correcting a mistake have I learned a better, more secure and artistic way of doing something?

These insights probably sound pretty run-of-the-mill to most of us. However, they offered me a leg up when I was beginning woodworking, and I still use them when I start a new process today. They help me to remember the good and the bad exist in the same world and don’t totally cross each other out.

Come and see Bourgeois Furniture at Berkeley Art Works in Martinsburg, WV and Bent River Trading Post in Capon Springs, WV.

See you there.
Joe

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