Log to boards to boxes is the path of almost all work with wood. Lumberjacks fell trees and cut them into logs. Sawyers cut the logs into boards of various shapes and sizes to suit many purposes. From there the boards are generally formed into boxes of some sort. Carpenters usually build big boxes that we store things in and live in, sometimes called cabins. Once they built carriages or cars and hence their name 'car - penters'. Joiners build smaller boxes or ‘cabinets’. I have had the pleasure and frustrations of attempting the full gamut of things made from wood in my life.  

At one time it was considered the defining feature of human beings that we had hands with opposable thumbs that allowed us to make things that other creatures could not. Now we seem mostly to use those hands on keyboards – our thumbs simply another digit for entering data. Some of us dream of implants that will allow us to enter the data directly from our brains allowing us to completely avoid the use of our hands. Personally, I prefer to use mine. 

Soon with artificial intelligence we won’t even have to think about things. Machines will do that for us, and we can lie back in our virtual reality goggles and pretend we are doing something exciting. Perhaps you think that will all be grand, but I fail to see the virtue in it and actually like to use my hands and my own mind so herein are some thoughts of a joiner, an archaic human being.