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Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
– – WH Auden
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
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The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
BY GARY SNYDER
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
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That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
– – W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
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It’s not the local lumber yards or the timber growers that are making a killing off the lumber. It’s Weyerhauser, Georgia Pacific and a couple of other major lumber companies. Part of it is because of covid-19 and the fact that a lot of sawmills were shut down because of it. And because they can.
Look at how lumber prices fluctuate when ever there is a major hurricane expected to hit. Nine months ago, you could buy a sheet of 3/4″ A/C plywood for about 35 bucks. Now it’s 75 bucks a sheet. A 2x12x16 foot timber that cost less then 20 bucks a year ago is now 75 bucks. Even ratty 1/4″ utility OSB is 30 bucks. It’s outrageous.
Lowes, Suffolk VA
2x4x8’ $7.09
Black. Market. Everything.
There are a whole lot of factors involved. A contractor in Phoenix area was able to get 2X4s for a lot less than the Home Depot/Lowes price because he talks to people and knows independent lumber yards all over. They are not smooth sawn, like the big box lumber, but they work just fine.
The house I lived in in Minneapolis went up in price seven percent in 30 days. That’s crazy. But crazy can persist longer than your own common sense, so one is foolish to bet against it. At this point the underlying rot in Minneapolis is obvious to me, but others only see the $$$ as the market rockets upward.
Lowes, Columbus, IN
2x4x8′ $7.58
More than double a year ago.
Here in Fairbanks, Alaska
8 foot 2×4, surfaced, imported from the lower forty eight $7.54
8 foot 2×4, rough cut, locally harvested, oddly enough $8.30
The longer it sits the more valuable it is becoming. But the increases aren’t all due to increased demand as shortage of shipping also acts to lower the supply. I work in manufactured housing and my sister plant and I buy as much lumber as shown in the picture every week. Our production is currently sold out for the next year and no matter how much lumber, OSB, and other building supplies go up we are contracted to produce those homes at an agreed upon price so we have to keep buying. What should have been a great year is now a matter of hanging on until prices drop thanks to our extended backlog and lead times. Interesting times.
Several several years ago, my boss had contracted to build a couple of semi custom homes. At the time the bids were made, OSB sheathing was priced at 5 bucks a sheet. But then Hurricane Andrew happened and prices went through the roof, so to speak. OSB went up to 12 bucks a sheet overnight, but Lowe’s and Home Depot just happened to be selling it at ten bucks a sheet. They also had a price match guarantee plus ten percent discount. I made a couple of phone calls around and ended up getting it from Lowe’s for eight bucks a sheet. I ordered 12 units @ 64 sheets per unit and saved the company a bunch of money. Lowe’s didn’t like it, but they were stuck because of the wording. ( They learned from their mistake.)
For your Biden first year bingo cards: fuel shortages up next. I’m not making predictions for what’ll happen under Biden because the actual answer to what bad will come from Biden is: everything you can imagine!
BTW, I am trying to read up on the wood prices and I am befuddled. I do know one thing: the logger gets screwed, again.
Okay, on Biden, I just realized this one: he’s in line to become the greatest democrat president ever. How do I predict this? Because he will pass into law more spending than probably any single dem president, and probably most of them put together! He will make the New Deal and the Great Society look like a bean dish.
Learn It. Live it. Love it.
“I stumbled on this yesterday”. You have never been there before? You were unaware if its existence until yesterday? How can you conclude that the amount of lumber present is more or less than at any other time? How can you make any reasonable assessment of the rate that lumber is currently entering or leaving the yard, or how that rate compares to any other time?
Given the amount of bare ground visible it is possible to stack much more lumber while retaining room for passage. It is as likely that the volume present today is less than average as it is that it is above average.
Yes, lumber and all wood products (and steel and plastics and glass and roofing and insulation) have increased dramatically in price and vary in price and availability from day to day at these higher prices. Many other things have as well (food, fuel, appliances), though maybe not in the same degree. (We have not seen the extent of the inflation to come.) Mills report reopening and full production and the final products are being bought and used. I haven’t heard of anyone hoarding building materials, it all appears to be used. Lumber futures remain up though are now fluctuating a little up and down at these higher rates.
The rate of building will slow as the current need (and perceived need) is satisfied, and probably to a point below seasonal or yearly averages. No one knows when or for how long. I’m guessing we won’t see an autumn surge this year. Prices and volume will respond accordingly.