Wood

He went away and hewed to the line. He came back and carved a life. That's what happened when Gardena celery farmer Heishiro Otani was shipped off to an American internment camp during World War II. To while away the time, Otani whittled. A half-century later, he's still at it. But don't think for an instant that the 84-year-old is some old codger rocking on the porch, lazily putting knife to stick. He works on a grander scale. And his works have a look of grandeur.

In all the fights over harvesting Pacific Northwest timber, it is a curious footnote how the Japanese hold a deeper appreciation of the region's fine-quality wood than do Americans, and will pay more to get it. Across the Atlantic Ocean it is the same story: Italians revere and will pay five and six times as much as Americans for old-growth Douglas fir. Here in the United States, though, wood is pretty much wood. It is fiber.

Cremation fires crackle all day long on the chipped concrete steps of this riverside holy city, the blazes spewing ash and flakes over the mourners who crowd its famous piers. Sweating, bare-chested men stoke the funeral pyres, squinting against the sting of smoke as they lug and stack the bundles of logs needed to burn the procession of Hindu dead. And when the bodies are incinerated and the families have taken away the ashes of their loved ones, the men sweep the residue into the Ganges River.

The parade that is Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice is in full swing on a Sunday afternoon. Parents wrestle Bugaboos through the crowded street. Shoppers use iPhones to snap photos of sales displays. At Intelligentsia, hipsters linger over $5 cups of sourced coffee. You make your way through it all on the way to a quiet courtyard near California Street. There, behind a clothing shop and a hair salon, seated beneath a towering tree, is Yo Takimoto, master Japanese woodcarver, ready to teach.

A fungus is sprouting up around Orange County, snaking around stucco and brick to get to its daily meal--the wood in and around your home. When the feast is over, once-solid walls and floors are left mushy enough to put a pinky finger through, and once-secure property owners are left scrambling to come up with the thousands of dollars needed to repair the damage. "I feel like the guys from 'X-Files' are going to come check in.

Scientists say they have moved a step closer to unraveling the mystery behind the distinct sound of Stradivarius violins. Subjecting wood chips from a centuries-old violin to laboratory analysis, a team led by Texas A&M University chemist Joseph Nagyvary discovered evidence that the wood had been chemically treated. The team reported in the journal Nature this week that lignin and hemicellulose -- substances naturally found in wood -- were degraded in the violin sample.

Judd Apatow and his wife, Leslie Mann , have sold their Pacific Palisades home for $5.26 million, the Multiple Listing Service shows. The traditional house sits behind gates on nearly an acre at the end of a cul-de-sac. Built in 1997, the stately 6,000-square-foot home evokes an older era with a wood-paneled library that has a secret room ? just the place to write a murder-mystery but perhaps not an irreverent comedy? Regardless, a new owner will have five bedrooms, 51/2 bathrooms, a playroom and a butler's pantry with a temperature-controlled wine room.

Don't let minor damage diminish furniture. Follow these tips from Better Homes and Gardens magazine on repairing and revitalizing varnish, lacquer and shellac finishes. Small, shallow scratches in most wood finishes can easily be removed by rubbing beeswax across the damage. When there are a lot of small scratches, buff them out with pumice and rottenstone and then polish with a coat of paste wax.

Look out the window at the nearest wooden fence, deck, picnic table or playground set. Chances are, it's made from pressure-treated wood, the distinctive, pale green lumber that's a familiar sight in home improvement stores nationwide. The green tint comes from a mixture of chemicals embedded in the wood to ward off termites, rot and fungus. You've probably been exposed to this kind of wood many times without encountering any problems.