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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.

Bourgeois Furniture

02/26/2026

02/10/2026

02/03/2026

01/20/2026

12/24/2025

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