Formative woodworking jobs were apprenticeships in antique furniture restoration and a union cabinet shop and a stint as the Copley Plaza Hotel's staff furniture repairman. During the last 5 years or so I struck out on my own.

I hung out a shingle in Charlestown in 1977. In 1979 I started Sequoia Woodworking with Peter Marsh and Phil Wolfson. Sequoia was a worker-owned millwork shop modeled (as far as we could manage it) after the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain. Our first shop was at 115 Halleck Street in Roxbury. When Wentworth Institute bought the building and kicked us out, we moved to Green Street in Jamaica Plain. With a small startup loan and patient business advice from the Paul Morrison and the Industrial Cooperative Association, we ran ourselves into the ground in only five years. I worked for my friends at Contemporary Cabinets for a year or two while I figured out what to do next.

I didn't make much of a living at it, but I did enjoy the friendship of many generous and interesting people. Miraculously, I kept all my fingers, and I built a few things that, while not exactly landmarks, remained publicly visible in the Boston area for quite a few years after I left the trade.

The biggest mistake I made was trying to do everything, because of course in the end I did few of them well. Antique furniture restoration might have been the best choice for the long term, but I had the lust for big machines. Doors and windows were fun - Sequoia might have survived if we had specialized in a high-end niche like that.