I just ran across this. About 10 years ago, I got a call from Sailor Jerry Rum, asking if I would do a short video. I didn’t know what the rum was, so I asked them to send me a bottle. Which they did, I liked it, so we went ahead with the photo shoot, which was a lot of fun. Good guys.
We’re scrambling to get ready to do our first festival appearance in four years.
Evan and I are in the process of packing up our trucks with all our festival gear: 10′ × 10′ booth with white canvas roof, our Shelter banner, boxes of books, tables, chairs, and lath walls that we will affix to the sides of the booth and upon which we will mount blowups from our various books.
This is for the Tiny Home Festival at the Alameda Fairgrounds in Pleasanton, California this weekend, September 10-11. Details and tickets at:
www.tinyfest.events/tinyfest-pleasanton-california-2022.
We will be selling our books at a discount and I will be doing a presentation and slideshow on Rolling Homes on the main stage at 1 PM on Saturday, September 10 (calendar file).
In the past we have appeared at green festivals, solar energy festivals, and what was the best of all: the Maker Faires, but the Maker Faires unfortunately went out of business, and then Covid came along.
The big news right now is that Rolling Homes is finally in the stores, as well as available from us via mail order.
Below are some spreads from Rolling Homes (available at
Quotes from article in The Guardian (10/30)
What I think about more often than anything else these days is the death of California. The death of its iconic landscapes. I wrote a piece in the Nation on why these changes are irreversible. How much of the beauty of the state might disappear forever. No more Joshua Trees. No more sequoias.
I’ve exalted in the beauty of California my entire life. Hiking, mountain running, traveling all over the state. There’s so much I wish my kids could see, could have seen, that they’ll not see. And that, of course, is happening everywhere in the world.…”
“What do you think Americans should be doing right now?”
“Organize as massively as possible: nonviolent civil disobedience. Instead of just fighting over environmental legislation in Congress, ending up in a bill that’s as much a subsidy to the auto industry and to fossil fuel as anything else: start sitting-in the board rooms and offices of the big polluters, all these meetings where the Kochs and other oil producers sit down with Republican politicians.…”
“Republicans are doing a splendid job of combining protest movements with electoral politics. It’s not only that Republicans have mastered low-intensity street-fighting, it’s that they’ve also been able to sustain a dialectic between the outside and the inside in a way that progressive Democrats haven’t been able to do.…”
“There is so much unmobilized love out there. It’s really moving to see how much.”
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/30/mike-davis-california-writer-interview-activism
From Maui Surfer
From The Guardian / The Observer
Kim Willsher
Sat 20 Aug 2022
At Guédelon Castle, the year is 1253 and the minor nobleman, Gilbert Courtenay, has ridden off to fight in the Crusades, leaving his wife in charge of workers building the family’s new home: a modest chateau that befits his social position as a humble knight in the service of King Louis IX.
Here, in a forest clearing in northern Burgundy, history is being remade to the sound of chisel against stone and axe against wood, as 21st-century artisans re-learn and perfect long-forgotten medieval skills.
The Guédelon project was dreamed up as an exercise in “experimental archaeology” 25 years ago. Instead of digging down it has been built upward, using only the tools and methods available in the Middle Ages and, wherever possible, locally sourced materials. Now, in an unforeseen twist of fate, Guédelon is playing a vital role in restoring the structure and soul of Notre Dame cathedral.
Paris’s imposing 13th-century cathedral, a world heritage site, was consumed by fire in April 2019, destroying its complex roof structure, known as La Forêt because of the large number of trees used in its construction. The widespread view was that it would be impossible to rebuild it as it was.
“The roof frame was extremely sophisticated, using techniques that were advanced for the 12th and 13th centuries,” Frédéric Épaud, a medieval wood specialist, tells the Observer.
“After the fire, there were a lot of people saying it would take thousands of trees, and we didn’t have enough of the right ones, and the wood would have to be dried for years, and nobody even knew anything about how to produce beams like they did in the Middle Ages. They said it was impossible.
A number of the companies bidding for the Notre Dame work have already engaged carpenters trained at Guédelon, and more are expected to beat a path to the Burgundy clearing 200km down the autoroute du Soleil from Paris.
It might be quicker and cheaper to turn wooden beams out of a sawmill — especially with French president Emmanuel Macron’s pledge to reopen the ravaged cathedral in 2024 — but you will not find anyone at Guédelon who believes it should be done that way.
Read More …
If we are going to tackle humanity’s biggest challenges, we will need to use our unrivaled ability to think long-term. Understanding how we developed this ability can help us use it to its full potential.
by Roman Krznaric
Human beings are quite capable of dealing with immediate crises. A devastating flood takes place and we send in the emergency relief. A pandemic occurs and we shut the borders and develop the vaccines. A war erupts and the refugees are found homes. More or less.
But when it comes to long-term crises, humanity’s record is less exemplary. Our response to the climate emergency — which is already here but whose greatest impacts are yet to come — has been painstakingly slow. We freely create technologies, from AI to bioweapons, that could pose devastating risks for our descendants. We fail to tackle deep problems like wealth inequality and racial injustice, which get passed on from generation to generation.
This temporal imbalance raises a question: is it even in the nature of our species to take the long view? Looking at the record so far, you would be right to be skeptical.
But there’s some unexpectedly good news: we are wired for long-term thinking like almost no other animals on the planet. As I argue in my recent book The Good Ancestor, grasping this scientific truth requires understanding the crucial difference between what I call the Marshmallow Brain and the Acorn Brain.
The Marshmallow Brain is an ancient part of our neuroanatomy, around 80 million years old, that focuses our minds on instant rewards and immediate gratification. This is the part exploited by social media platforms that give us dopamine hits by getting us to constantly click, scroll and swipe, as so brilliantly depicted in the film The Social Dilemma. It is named after the famous Marshmallow Test psychology experiment of the 01960s, where children who resisted eating a marshmallow for 15 minutes were rewarded with a second one: the majority failed.
There are well-known critiques of the test, for instance the fact that the ability to delay gratification is highly dependent on socioeconomic position: those from wealthier backgrounds find it easier to resist the treat, while a lack of trust and fear of scarcity can push kids towards gobbling it up.
A more fundamental critique, however, is that we are not simply driven by immediate rewards. Alongside the Marshmallow Brain we also possess a long-term Acorn Brain located in the frontal lobe just above our eyes, especially in an area known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. This is a relatively new part of our neuroanatomy — a mere two million years old — giving us a rare ability to think, plan and strategize over long timeframes.
But don’t other creatures think and plan ahead? Sure, animals such as chimpanzees make plans, like when they strip leaves off a branch to make a tool to poke in a termite hole. But they will never make a dozen of these tools and set them aside for next week.
Read More …
Hi Lloyd!
I love your website and look forward to each new posting.
Here is an interesting “trailer” I saw a while back, parked on a residential street in Santa Barbara, that I thought would make you smile!
–Louis (Andaloro)
I’ve never been busier in my life. Along with a personal situation that’s taking a lot of time, I’m working on publicizing our just‑finished book Rolling Homes: Shelter on Wheels (our best book in years!), running Shelter Publications, and starting an autobiography of my first 38 years (1935–1973), which includes my take on the ’60s, provisionally titled Live From California: The ’60s, Before, During, and After — 1935–1973.
For these reasons, I hardly have time to post here, However, I’ll be putting up pages from the book-in-progress from time to time.
My parents on their honeymoon at Weaver Lake in the Sierras.
My mom and dad were married in San Francisco in April, 1934. It was in the middle of the Great Depression. In August of that year, they took the Suntan Special, a train that ran from San Francisco to Santa Cruz, for a vacation. According to my mom, I was conceived on that trip, and born in San Francisco in April, 1935.
My folks rented an apartment across from the Palace of Fine Arts in the Marina District and then, when I was two, bought a house on Ulloa Street, near the Forest Hill District.
I was the first-born in the family, and my parents didn’t quite know how to cope with me. I wasn’t so much rebellious as curious and energetic. Plus at an early age I didn’t believe in following rules just because they were rules. I wanted to have fun.
At one point they took me to a psychiatrist and I remember having a great time hammering wooden pegs into different shaped holes and answering his questions about ink blots. I suspect he told my folks that I wasn’t psychotic, just high-energy. Years later, when my mom was in her 90s (she lived to be 103, so apparently I didn’t do any lasting damage), she would laugh and reminisce about my stunts. “You remember when you…”
She told me that one day, when I was 2 or 3, she tied a rope around my overalls, and to the garage door handle so I couldn’t get out into the street while she did the dishes. A few minutes later, standing at the kitchen sink (on the second floor), she looked out the window and saw me walking down the street naked. (It was a long leash, not as bad as it may sound in this day of Precious Parenting.)
Mom, with my brother Bobby (in later life, Bob) on left, me on right
I had a happy childhood. My parents loved each other. Our family was a happy one. We always had food and shelter. I’ve often thought how lucky we were, especially when I hear about traumatic childhoods. In many ways, it was the best of times.
I’m writing all this stuff about early years to give you a picture of my background, attitudes and outlook on life, which all led me to finally breaking out of the prescribed plan for my generation: high school/college/military service/successful business career.
I also have to admit that I’m having fun looking back at our lives in the ’40s and ’50s and sorting through the family photos, scrapbooks, and documents — some of which go way back.
154 Ulloa Street
There were 26 kids on our block (the 100 block of Ulloa Street). On any given day, there would be at least a dozen of us playing in the street. Kick‑the-can, hide-and-seek, bike riding, rollerskating, riding Flexi racers, playing football or baseball. No parental supervision at all, ever. No little league, no lacrosse, no automobile transportation to distant soccer fields. We were on our own.
There was a cave about half a mile away; we never went very deeply into it. In wet years, there was a shallow lake across from our house and we had a raft.
There was a Catholic church across the street and everyone on the block was Catholic except for us. My Mom was a Christian Scientist. (We never went to doctors.)
Kindergarten, West Portal Grammar School. I am third from left on bottom row.
There was a pony rental place a mile or so from our house, where we’d go during birthday parties. Speaking of which, at one of Bill Floyd’s birthdays, we went to see The Phantom of the Opera with Claude Rains at the Empire theater. I was so terrified by the scene at the end when the Phantom’s mask is pulled off (to reveal his face disfigured by acid) that I had to sleep in my parents’ bed that night.
During World War II, there was a large community vegetable garden on a quarter-acre lot next to our house, and we raised a ton of vegetables. My dad, being a hunter, was the official gopher trapper.
The whole city was our playground. We went all over it on foot, bikes, roller skates, streetcars, and buses. We walked to school, about one mile to West Portal Grammar School, 1½ miles to Aptos Jr. High. We’d ride four miles on our bikes to Golden Gate Park.
Some city kids made their first skateboards in the ’40s by taking apart metal roller skates and mounting the wheels on a piece of wood. On our block, the Guzman brothers built a funky flat-roofed little house on roller skate wheels and rode it down the hill. A bunch of us then did the same — maybe the first RVs!
We’d stay outside until our mother would call us for dinner: “Low-eed, Bob-ee.”
The “L,” “M,” and “K” streetcars ran through the tunnel (my initials), which was about a mile walk from our house. They had cowcatchers on both ends, which were lowered at the front end. When the direction of the car was reversed at the end of the line, the cowcatcher would be cranked up on the back end via a cable through a round fitting in the center.
We would creep up behind a slowly moving car (crouching so the conductor, who was in the back, wouldn’t see us), then run up and jump on the cowcatcher.
We rode all over the city. The big deal was to ride through the two-mile-long dark tunnel from West Portal Avenue to Castro Street — sparks flying overhead from the electric trolleys — whoo! There are lots of recessed alcoves where someone on foot in the tunnel could jump when trains came by. The trains probably went 20–30 mph, rocking through the darkness, to emerge into the dazzling daylight at Market and Castro.
There was a lady we called “The Crab,” who would spray us with a hose when we rode by her house on bikes; one Halloween we put the traditional flaming paper bag full of dog shit on her porch. During World War II, everyone saved bacon grease in cans to donate to the Army (to be used for manufacturing explosives); we also flattened tin cans and recycled them.
The Tower Market was a few blocks away; we learned how to get on the roof. Down the block was another market where we got whipped-cream-filled chocolate eclairs for 15 cents.
Until the ’60s, the city, surrounded on three sides by water, was a shipping center. The waterfront was a deepwater port, dating back to the clipper ships, with a series of piers. It was (is) called The Embarcadero, and when we were kids, it was a city within the city, with its own hotels, bars, and restaurants. Loading and unloading of ships was controlled by the Longshoreman’s Union.
Fisherman’s Wharf, now a tourist mecca, was at one time the fishing center of the west coast, with its 16-foot Monterey Clipper fishing boats modeled on the felluca sailing fishing boats of Genoa.
I mention this because this was the city of our childhood and one would never guess this by looking at the tourist-oriented, sanitized, palm-tree-lined waterfront of today.
Around the turn of the century, my grandfather had a bait and tackle shop at the foot of Polk Street (in later years, it became Muni Bait), and that’s how my dad got started fishing. He and his friends went fishing in the ocean and they also fished for trout in lakes in the Sierras.
My grandfather used to import hexagonal bamboo rods from Asia and tie on the casting guides with red and gold silk thread. It’s a craft he taught my dad, and that he taught me.
My brother and I had our city version of fishing, which didn’t require any parental transportation or guidance. We would walk down to the streetcar tunnel, carrying fishing rods and a crab trap, and take a streetcar to Van Ness, where we’d catch a bus down to the Hyde Street pier.
We’d catch crabs and use the orange part of the innards as bait to catch perch. We’d go back home on public transit and our mom would cook a fish dinner.
We’d ride bikes out to one of the two huge abandoned windmills at the beach, sneak in the boarded-up door, and climb the ladder to the top, which was 75 feet above the ground.
We’d ride to Golden Gate Park to a large pond that had a concrete bottom, and we could ride (about pedal-deep) all around the pond. We roller-skated around the city, using skates with metal wheels that you clamped onto your shoes.
We roamed in the eucalyptus groves of Mt. Davidson and Twin Peaks (had a big rope swing up there).
Sal was rescued when Playland was demolished (in 1972) and today is at the Santa Cruz boardwalk.
This was an amusement park out at Ocean Beach, with a fun house that all kids loved. There was a spinning disc that you hopped on; as it speeded up, riders were ejected. There was a revolving barrel, in which you tried to stay upright as it spun around. (Think of the lawsuits nowadays!) There were long, curvy slides and mirrors that made you look taller or shorter or distorted.
The Hot House, serving Mexican food, was open for 40 years and reportedly served 12,000 tamales a day, Unusual for a Mexican restaurant, they always brought you a basket of hard sourdough French bread with lots of butter. The Pie Shop sold 14 types of pies (they were good!). The It’s-It ice cream sandwich (a disk of vanilla ice cream between two oatmeal cookies dipped in chocolate) was invented at Playland.
There was also a roller coaster and other carny type rides and games, plus Laffing Sal, a gap-toothed, red-haired, freckle-faced, 7-foot-tall automated figure in front of the Fun House that waved her arms and cackled raucously. (A bit scary for little kids.)
Nearby was the magnificent Sutro Baths, a huge oceanside glass palace with six swimming pools filled with salt water. (Next to the Cliff House.) It seems kind of unbelievable now, but we took everything in the city for granted. There were pools of different temperatures, a diving pool, a cold pool. People wore old-fashioned, wool bathing suits. You can still see the foundation just north of The Cliff House.)
It was never a commercially successful operation and burned to the ground in 1966.
(To be continued)
Hi Lloyd,
Here’s another amazing wooden Gothic style church built in nine months by seven carpenters and a manager in 1866. Old St. Paul’s Wellington. The ceiling timbers are Kauri, a native New Zealand hardwood.
Kind regards,
Bill Choquette
Wellington
P.S.: Been posting infrequently lately due to overwhelming busyness, both personal and professional. Also now deeply into my next book, provisionally titled Live From California, a sort of autobiography, which includes a native Californian’s view of what went on in the ’60s.
Having always been attracted to compact living spaces on wheels and having been stranded several times in VW Westfalias, I decided to start off with a basic solid vehicle with reliability, safety and small size in mind. The challenge of fitting as many desirable features in a limited space attracted me greatly. Found this 2017 Ford Transit Connect passenger van with 16K miles for 20K dollars here in the Bay Area.
Essential for me was being able to stand up and a sense of spaciousness. Hence the rear-hinged pop-top, purchased from England. Cutting it to size was a bit of a pain, a local welding shop made the strengthening frame, the rest was pretty straight forward. A single flex solar panel and a ceiling fan just fit on the 6″ top. The bed slides forwards and backwards to max 6′3″, while still allowing standing space to cook and stretch. A 200ah battery and 1K watt inverter is sufficient for blender, 150-watt space heater, movie screen etc. Slightly larger size tires and a yet to be installed 1″ lift kit gives it a bit more clearance. The van took 8 months to complete, gets 32 mpg at 65 mph on level road. Inadvertently the additional weight gives it a smooth ride while retaining enough power. The six speakers and good seats makes this a perfect rig for my travel needs and stealth camping. My pup Bella agrees!
Rolf Pot
Santa Cruz
Note: Rolf’s bus “Old Red” is featured in our new book Rolling Homes on pp. 204–205.
