Welcome, Welcome, Scrapbooking Dystopian Fans to Panem District #7 Lumber,
First, you simply MUST watch this silly song about Lumberjacks from Monty Python:
This will get you in the appropriately silly mood to record some lumberjack and lumber related memories just like we did during our stop in District 10 Livestock. So watch the song and then sit down at your computer or with a pen and paper and record at least 10 random memories, which may or may not be funny, about lumberjacks, lumber, the forrest, and/or trees. You have to come up with at least 10. My bet is that you could probably come up with 100, but stop at 10 ok? And then come back for more District 10 Lumber Scrapbooking on the Kiss and Tell Scrapbooking Blog.
Here's my layout with three pages of 11 stories about lumber, trees and lumberjacks:
Ok, so you've got your 10 lumberjack memories in hand right? If you don't, do that now. Really. Do it now. And THEN you can read the rest of the blog entry for today. Trust me, just do it right now if you haven't already, it does not have to be full sentences, it does not have to make sense to anyone except you, but you do have to go through an remember and write down 10 memories about lumber to get the improvisational comedy concept of "piling it on" or the improv game "the minister's cat".
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P.S. Here are my 11 stories about lumberjacks:
Eleven Real Life Lumberjack Remember When Stories:
1. I went to high school in Bangor Maine where Paul Bunyan, legendary giant woodsman, stands as a symbol of a great era, the 1800s when Bangor, Maine was acclaimed "THE LUMBER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD!" I remember the Paul Bunyan statue from when I was about 5 and went to Bangor to the circus; I remember the Paul Bunyan statue from when I was about 15 and used to climb up and sit on the feet with my friend Lizzy Dean; I remember the Paul Bunyan statue from when I was about 25 when I took Charlie to see Maine and we had our picture taken in front of the statue; I remember the Paul Bunyan statue from when I was about 35 (or technically 41) when I brought the entire family to Maine and showed my kids this statue. I have a wooden Paul Bunyan that its in my kitchen as a reminder of my hometown.
2. I not only can sing the Monty Python version of the Lumberjack Song, I also remember a song about Lumberjacks from summer camp - the one about My name is Jan Janson, I come from Wisconsin... and it goes again and again and again, when I sang it for the kids they both begged me to stop - maybe we should start using that one in the morning to get them out of bed! I used to watch Monty Python on Bangor’s PBS station late at night with my BFF Missy Woodbury and I’m pretty sure we used to sing the Lumberjack song and laugh our heads off until we fell asleep.
3. My Grandpi had 600 acres of mostly woods in Calais on River Road and we used to walk through the forrest when I was a kid and there was one tree that had a nail in it with a metal bucket hanging from the nail this was the tree near a natural well and I think maybe there was some sort of old fashioned pump that you could pump and fill the bucket up with water and get a drink, just in case you were a thirsty lumberjack I’m guessing.
4. My Dad had about 1000 acres of woodland just outside of Bangor and he won all sorts of Tree Forestry awards for being a very environmentally sound tree farmer, I have the plaques in my law office now. Sometimes I make a lame joke to clients that we waste a lot of paper because my law school professor J.J. Brown always used to say "paper’s cheap and time is short" - I think he was trying to convince us L1s of the brilliance of only writing on one side of the paper because it would be easier to read later on; so my story to clients is that even through our law office has been paperless since 2002, we still have and use a lot of paper - but karma wise I’m OK since my dad was an environmentally sound tree farmer. I don’t really think anyone gets this story, but my mind always goes there when the client comments about how gigantic their files have gotten - we are paperless in that everything gets scanned in and we have a fantastic client profiles software management system that I completely love and allows me to work from anywhere including from home and vacation and even my iphone!; but we still keep paper files and I usually have the staff put the physical files on my desk for client meetings and generally they are huge, like at least a foot or two tall of paper. Seriously, so it just kind of seems funny that we consider ourselves to be paperless with all that paper.
5. When we lived in Calais, Maine when I was little, the town next to ours had a paper mill and the whole town smelled really, really bad and I was always so happy that we didn’t live there and I only had to hold my breath for about 2 minutes while we drove through that town on the old Airline road on our trips to Bangor.
6. When I was a teenager and living with my Dad and he owned all that land, he insisted we go out to the land to cut down our Christmas tree; we always ended up with a very Charlie Brown tree and we didn’t axe it down as you might imagine, he’d bring a hand saw. Once, when I was about 16 and was dating David Q, he said he could solve my Christmas tree problem and we drove out into the woods and found a giant tree - just like the Griswolds did in Christmas vacation and we chopped it down with an axe and then realized it was about 4 or 5 times longer than his little Subaru so we chopped off the top of it and tied it to the roof and hauled it home. My first Christmas in our house with Charlie, we had a real live tree and I decorated it with spray painted and glittered sea shells and pine cones, it was also when our black lab was a puppy and he kept trying to eat and/or hump the tree and it was a mess and at about 2 pm on Christmas Day that year, I hauled the tree, ornaments and lights and all, out to the curb in front of our house and vowed to never, ever have a real live tree again. We’ve had a fake tree ever since and I’m totally OK with that; someone usually sends us a Maine wreath as a Christmas present so I still get the smell of home without the giant mess or driving out to the woods.
7. My family came to America in 1706 from Scotland; Wallace Finlayson was in shipping and he landed in Portsmouth, NH on my birthday, June 6th in the year 1706 and he quickly moved up to Maine but continued in shipping, he or maybe his son is rumored to have been captured by Pirates and never seen again. His son or grandson, William Penn Fenderson and/or Nathanial Fenderson had a farm in Maine and one of them went into town one year with the harvest and was never to be seen again, it is rumored that he sold his crop, left his wife and kids high and dry, and he went out to California for the Gold Rush and that his descendants got into the wine business and now have some connection with Reunite and Mad Dog or Thunder something rott-gutt wine. Even though our family has been in Maine for over 300 years and it was once the lumber capital of the world, I don’t think any of my ancestors were lumberjacks, but the men in the Fenderson family always wore plaid shirts on the weekends - which maybe a lumberjack thing but could also have been a Scottish thing, anyway, they looked like lumberjacks and spent lots of time in the woods.
8. When I was a teenager and lived with my Dad and he was single, he used to date a lot of different women. His favorite kind of date would be to take the lady to dinner - one time he brought a lady to 7 or 8 McDonalds around the Bangor Area to get a free Chicken McNugget when the nuggets finally came to Maine, and afterwards, he brought her out to the land which he was very proud of; I remember distinctly him telling me about this date afterwards and telling me that he couldn’t figure out why she would never take his calls afterwards. And then he’d add the bit about how he "clubbed 7 porcupines to death with a stick" while he was on this woodland date; and then he’d add how it was environmentally sound to kill the cute little porcupines because they liked to eat a ring around the bark of the trees which would kill the trees and he was trying to grow the trees. I’m sure whoever that lucky lady was still tells this story about that weird guy who brought her on a date to McDonalds and topped it off with killing porcupines. Weird.
9. When I was dating Charlie and his parents had a house in Georgia, they used to have to cut down the Georgia pines since they’d blow over easily in a storm so my husband and father in law know their way around a chain saw. Charlie also has a song that has something to do with lumberjacks and is played on chainsaws, he relayed that song to the kids this morning but I’m guessing he’ll play it for them tonight so they get the full effect.
10. I grew up with Pine Trees and since I moved to Florida its been Palm Trees. I get nostalgic when I walk through a forest with lots of pine trees, it reminds me of my Dad and childhood and funny stories about trees and lumberjacks and home.- Katie 2/29/12 (leap day)
IMPROV CONCEPT OF EMBRACING YOUR MISTAKES: I forgot to include an 11th story on the computer journaling so I wrote the 11th story on the layout.
Here's the text from #11 which is included on the front of the page as though spoken by that nervous little skunk - hoping my dad wouldn't mistake him for a porcupine:
#11. Hey Psst. If you see Bob Fenderson "tromping around" in the woods up there in Heaven, make sure NOT to point out the porcupines, better to ask him about the SECOND LARGEST BAROQUE TREE IN MAINE, that will get him going for at least 2 hours; just ask my Tom K., the dad of my highschool sweetheart who remembered the STORY about the BAAARRROOKE tree when I paid a surprise visit to Jefferson St. while I was in Bangor, Maine for my 20th High School Reunion - it was so funny to me that he remembered. K 2/29/12
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