Two disparate items to highlight this month. 

First, I saw a notice in SAPFM's Pins and Tales that the John Brown House Museum in Providence opened an exhibition based on the book Mahogany: The Cost of Luxury in Early America by Jennifer Anderson, a history prof at SUNY Stony Brook. (The Brown of the house is the Brown of Brown University.) I haven't visited the house yet but it sounds great if you like house museums with period furniture and the associated history. I have read the book, which describes the historical and cultural context around the explosion in the use of mahogany in the 18th century as wealthy American colonists became enamored with the beauty of the wood and woodworkers with its workability. It is quite a sobering read, especially for a woodworker who has used mahogany in a number of builds. The 18th century surge in demand for mahogany led to extensive logging in the Caribbean, with slave labor in doing much of the work in brutal conditions. Moreover, because the trees were difficult to cultivate on a plantation and were scattered throughout tropical forests, the trees were "hunted," felled, dragged out, and shipped to high-end markets. That process devastated forest environments  and painfully disrupted the lives of the indigenous people who were there before. The damage persists to this day, with new world mahoganies threatened with extinction, with logging regulations and bans on mahoganies, and, accordingly, with ongoing concerns about the provenance of any board and what damage was done to obtain it. The story is disturbing enough that this furniture maker plans to stick to other hardwoods (though, admittedly, after finishing a current period piece of furniture -- bought the wood before reading the book).

Second, and something completely different, I came across a Ben Strano Fine Woodworking video on climb cutting with a router (routing in the direction in which the spinning bit is pulling the router often thought of as very dangerous). It's one of the best descriptions of how to use a handheld router that I've seen -- although I've done plenty of work with a router, still learned a new trick from the video. Despite the title, the video doesn't say a lot about how to climb cut safely. But, it does link to a very good Fine Woodworking article from July/August 2011 by Chris Gochnour that describes how/when that can be done safely.