Usage

Passage II — Learning the Grain

[1] The canoe had spent eleven years upside down in my uncle’s barn before I dragged it into the daylight. Its cedar strips had turned gray, and the varnish had cracked into a pattern like dried mud. Covered in dust and pigeon feathers, my uncle had clearly forgotten the boat. (11)

[2] Restoring it would require three things; patience, (12) a heat gun, and a great deal of sandpaper. I already owned the last two. Patience, as my uncle kept reminding me, I would have to learn off of (13) the wood itself.

[3] I have always enjoyed working outdoors. (14) For the first week, I sanded in quick circles, the way I had seen people do in online videos. The wood came up fuzzy and scarred. Then my uncle ran his thumb along one strip and pointed out the faint lines inside it. The fibers in every strip, he explained, leans (15) the same way, like the hair on a dog’s back. Sanding with the grain leaves the surface smooth; to sand against it lifts (16) tiny splinters.

[4] After that, the work went faster. Over the next two months, I stripped the old varnish, patched a long split with a thin piece of new cedar, and brushed on three coats of marine varnish. The patch was a shade lighter than the rest of the hull at first, but after a few weeks in the sun it blended (17) into the surrounding wood.

[5] Last August, I finally carried the canoe down to the lake. It floated level and dry, its hull glowing amber in the late sun, (18) and my uncle, standing on the dock, declared it more smoother (19) than it had been on the day he bought it.

Passage II — Stripes on the Shore

[1] At night, a lighthouse identifies itself with light. Each one flashes in its own pattern—two quick flashes every ten seconds, say, or one long glow every six, so (11) a sailor who counts the flashes can tell which light is which. By day, however, the lamp is no help, and many lighthouses along the same stretch of coast look nearly alike: tall, round, and white.

[2] In addition, (12) lighthouse builders turned to paint. They gave many towers a daymark, a pattern of colors that makes each one recognizable from the sea. Some towers wear horizontal bands. Others wear a spiral stripe that wraps around them like the stripe on a candy cane in a circling manner, (13) and still others are painted in a checkerboard of black and white. A sailor who knows the local daymarks doesn’t need (14) a chart to tell one tower from the next.

[3] The colors are chosen to contrast with the landscape behind each tower. A white tower stands out against a dark forest, but against a pale sand dune or a cloudy sky, it can nearly disappear. (15) Keeping a daymark bright takes constant work, salt spray (16) and wind strip the paint within a few years. In the past, each towers keeper (17) repainted the stripes by hand. Today, with most lighthouses automated and running by themselves without people, (18) the job usually falls to volunteer groups or government crews.

[4] Daymarks matter less than they once did, since satellite navigation now tells most ships exactly where they are. Still, many sailors say they trust what they can see with their own eyes. (19) Paint technology has improved greatly in recent decades. (20)

Passage IV — Celery and Cornstarch

[1] In a quiet studio, a woman stands on a tray of gravel and watches a film projected on the wall. On the screen, an actor is hiking up a mountain trail. Watching the actor closely, the gravel crunches under her feet (31) in time with each of his steps, and a microphone a few feet away records every sound.

[2] This work is called Foley, after Jack Foley, a sound editor who (32) developed many of its techniques at Universal Studios in the late 1920s. Films record dialogue on set, but most of the other sounds an audience hears is (33) added later. Microphones on a set are aimed at the actors’ mouths. They pick up speech clearly but miss quieter sounds, such as footsteps, rustling clothes, and the clink of a cup set down on the surface of a tabletop. (34) Foley artists recreate these sounds in a studio, one scene at a time.

[3] Foley studios are usually lined with soundproof panels. (35) A bundle of celery snapped in two can stand in for a breaking bone. Cornstarch squeezed inside a leather pouch sounds remarkably like footsteps in snow. A pair of leather gloves, flapped quickly, makes a convincing sound. (36)

[4] The goal is not to copy reality exactly. Audiences, it turns out, are totally down with (37) sounds that match what they expect to hear, even when those sounds are not what a real event would produce. A real punch, recorded up close, sounds like a dull thud, Foley artists therefore (38) often slap a raw steak or punch a head of cabbage to make a movie fight sound more dramatic. (39)

[5] The next time a film makes you wince at the sound of a breaking bone, listen closely. You might be hearing a vegetable.