Hummingbirds get into the office or studio from time to time, and I trap them in my hands, then go outside and open my hands. They sit there for a second, then realize they’re free, and take off like a miniature helicopter. This one must have got into the studio when no one was around, and we found it dead. They are so small that they mummify, with no smell.
Good things come in small packages. Lacy Williams, an architecture student, and her boyfriend, Patrick Beseda, built a WikiHouse to live in during a field project in Utah
From: Jon Kalish
Subject: DIY Houses In The Internet Age: Some Assembly Required: NPR
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2014
To: lloyd kahn
Click here.
Go read the comments. There’s a ton of ’em, mostly skeptical. My fave is “I approve of this article. The Big Bad Wolf.” 🙂
jk
When I lived in Big Sur, I found that coyotes shat where the view was great. Check out the hair (mice, gophers, etc.) and bits of deer bones here.
I was poke poling for eel (nada) in the lagoon yesterday and this little Horned Grebe would dive down for maybe a minute, then pop back up energetically, didn’t seem concerned by my proximity.
Thanks to HighFidelityRob for identifying the bird.
This was on 20th or 21st Street, up from Valencia.
At left: crab snare; you toss it out with a fishing rod, wait 15 minutes and reel it in. It snags crabs in the loops.
Yesterday I went on a 3-hour tour with Kirk Lombard on the shores of San Francisco Bay. He demonstrated catching crabs with crab snares, how to throw a net to catch herring, and how to catch eels. Kirk is passionate about the ocean, sustainability, and getting your own food. He leads tours of various types, takes people clamming or herring-catching, and has a seafood subscription service. He says there are numerous small fish in this area — smelt, sand dabs, herring, sardines — that are overlooked by commercial interests and perfect for the get-it-yourselfer.
I’ve poked around on the local coast all my life and come from a family of fishermen — all sport fishermen except for my grandfather, who had a bait and tackle shop in SF around the turn of the century — but I learned a ton of things. There’s a 300-foot deep channel under the Golden Gate Bridge carved out in old times by the Sacramento River. You can make a pudding from a type of seaweed. Fish that is touted as “local” often comes from boats that spend over a month at sea, with 65-mile long longlines.
There were two 12-year-old boys in the group and he was the perfect teacher. He got them reeling in crabs, throwing a herring net correctly, and poke-poling for eels. If you’ve got kids in the Bay Area,this is a wonderful learning experience. If you’re a city-dweller interested in bringing in some of your own fresh seafood, check him out. 6-star.
This unique building is weathering the years beautifully. It’s a masterpiece of building with natural materials. It’s documented on pages 66-69 of Builders of the Pacific Coast.
I did an an interview last night with Kevin Kelly on the Google+ “hang out” feature. I used my MacAir laptop with the camera and was a little nervous, but it went OK. Kevin, whose latest book is the sensational Cool Tools, guided the conversation. We talked about tiny homes, owner building, gardening, chickens, the myth of self-sufficiency, what you can do in cities, the Whole Earth Catalog, what I would do if I were building a new house now, the fact that I don’t like shipping containers or Earth Ships or domes or A-frames as homes, and the virtues of self-publishing. The video of it is here…Next week I’m flying to Charlotte, NC, to talk about tiny homes at the Southern Spring Home & Garden Show. Deek Diedrickson from Relaxshacks will be there as well, and we’ll talk to people about the subject out in front of a tiny home he designed; if you’re in the neighborhood, stop by and say hello. I’ll be handing out mini Tiny Homes books (2″ by 2″, 64 pages) and have proofs of our latest book, Tiny Homes on the Move…In praise of real books and bookstores: I’ve read a few books on my IPad, and it’s fine for reading on airplanes or trips, but in my reading for an hour or so every night before going to sleep, I don’t want the electrons; I spend enough time at a computer screen as it is. The publishing business is obviously in turmoil, but books like our building books, although we’ve done digital editions, work best as hold-in-your-hands physical objects. And there’s nothing like a physical bookstore. Sure, Amazon is cheaper, but money ain’t everything. One of my very favorites is Bookshop Santa Cruz; it makes me happy to be there…Tiny Homes On The Move: Just about there. Yesterday Rick, Lew and I sewed up a lot of loose ends. About 3 knotty problems in design worked out. Often we’ll start working on something with no idea how to fix it, and as we go along, things fall into place. Like I told this guy in the interview yesterday about building house: just START. You’ll never get anywhere if you wait for everything to be perfect. Get going, and things will work out as momentum carries you along. When I was about to start building my first house in 1961, I asked my friend Bob what to do, and he said “This,” and picked up a shovel and started digging the foundation trench…Spectacular sunsets of late, this shot with iPhone last night; tonight’s the full moon, ow-wooo!
