“It was 40 years ago today,
Sgt Pepper taught…” oops! — wrong decade, wrong band.
40 years ago, in the summer of 1973, my friend Bob Easton, along with his wife Jeanine and baby daughter, moved to Bolinas, and we spent three months putting together the book Shelter. I did the writing on an Adler portable typewriter in the tower loft (up a ladder) and Bob did the layout in the attached shake-covered geodesic dome. Our typist was Joe Bacon, from New Orleans, “fastest typist in the west.”
In photo, l.-r,: me, Joe, Bob with baby Chandra, Jeanine at lunch in my dome one day during production of Shelter in 1973. For the rest of the above, see my latest GIMME SHELTER newsletter at: https://www.shelterpub.com/_gimme/_2013-05-07/gimme_shelter-2013-05-07.html
About Lloyd Kahn
Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the
Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include
Shelter,
Shelter II (1978),
Home Work (2004),
Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008),
Tiny Homes (2012), and
Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:
“It was 40 years ago today,
Happy Birthday Shelter
xxx
Happy Birthday, Shelter! May the great ideas continue!
Great Milestone Lloyd. Your one of the World's 'Sharers' and we're very lucky that you still share such a wide range of things. It's fascinating what technology is allowing us to do… and share.
The happiest of anniversaries! I still have my original copy. I still tell people about it. Thanks!
Leafing through Shelter this morning while contemplating my next primitive building project here in Santa Cruz, I came upon the Pit River story of Silver Fox and Coyote. Read out loud to my 3 month old daughter, this is one nugget of wisdom amongst many in Shelter. As important for our new generation as for the back to the landers, Shelter remains timeless. Thank You, Lloyd
Happy Birthday Shelter. I'm leafing through the copy I bought all those years ago. Happy days!
Happy Birthday to Shelter. As relevant today (if not more so) than it was then. You captured an essence of the human soul which will live through technological changes, brief explorations into fantastic displays of consumption and the insanity produced by greed and exponential growth. Shelter will always be essential and an important piece of work.
One of my favourite books. Hugely inspirational.
Congratulations (((((((( Lloyd )))))))) < — manly/hippie hug!
Keep On Keepin' On!
Happy Anniversary! 40 years of inspiring others to build their own shelters and improve their own lives…much to celebrate. Be proud, woohooooo!
Thank you, Lloyd!
You changed my life, I can never thank You enough
Many of the fact were plainly visible (even in my town, "Polish Manchester"-Lodz, larded throughout with the truly satanic mills of the textile industry, going thud-thud around the clock in clouds of faintly radioactive coal-ash – or, perhaps, especially there), many of the ideas could be – dimly – sensed, but I felt so alone!! – well, not after "Shelter" found me, in a tiny used book shop in East Village N.Y., in the summer of ´76.
Like the Whole Earth Catalog, this publication CHANGED MY LIFE. Thank you!