By Matt Taibbi, January 4, 2013, Rolling Stone
“It has been four long winters since the federal government, in the hulking, shaven-skulled, Alien Nation-esque form of then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, committed $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue Wall Street from its own chicanery and greed. To listen to the bankers and their allies in Washington tell it, you’d think the bailout was the best thing to hit the American economy since the invention of the assembly line. Not only did it prevent another Great Depression, we’ve been told, but the money has all been paid back, and the government even made a profit. No harm, no foul – right?
Wrong.
Read More …
Tony is one of my oldest friends (60 years). We both lived in the Fiji house at Stanford. A fraternity, yes, but a highly unusual one. A lot of unique, non-traditional, and/or eccentric boys. Tony was into philosophy — Socrates, Plato, Hume, Spinoza, etc. — partying, and howling at every full moon. He at first had a football scholarship, and later worked his way through college.
Upon graduation (’56), he and his wife Judy took a 4-month Vespa trip all over Europe, and he wrote me a bunch of letters. The one that got me was about taking a boat from Barcelona to Ibiza, and the dolphins swimming in front of the boat in the moonlight.
I graduated in ’57, and, along with my wife Sarah, took a boat from NYC to France, hitch-hiked to Milano, bought a new Lambretta, and toured Europe youth-hostel-style for 3 months, California kids out of their country (and state) for the first time, an experience with life-long memories. All because of Tony’s influence.
In the early 60s he had his law degree and was working for the Alameda county DAs office. I was an insurance broker in San Francisco. We took a trip to Baja, went camping in Mendocino, and would go out to hear music in SF.
Read More …
This is a nice site on the tiny homes. I’ve found some interesting posts there lately. https://tinyhousetalk.com
This has got to be a joke, right? https://shltr.net/oilhome
Can you imagine anything more creepy? Oil? Oil?
Riding bike down my road tonight,and here was treeman extraordinaire Jack Oakander giving this grownup Cypress tree a nice graceful shape. Jack’s company, Pacific Slope Tree Co., does tree work in the San Francisco area, especially Marin County. Sun just starting to set, can see it shining through bottom of tree.
Sunny Friday morning, after 3 hours of emails on all sorts of biz matters (sigh!), Ray Charles came on, doing “Come Back Baby.” The day was lookin better!
Got me thinking about Ray and his recording of “Am I Blue,” live in Japan (in ’76 I think). Dialed it up on Grooveshark (here) and once again got chills (running from my ears down arms). A rare performance, with John Coles killing it on the trumpet, the crowd obviously tuned in.
The second time Ray sings “blue,” he makes it into a 6-note word. He starts bending all the held notes. At the very end, he makes “Am I gay…,” go “Am I gay-ay-ay…” Just a stunning vocal.
Greetings Lloyd and Team,
My name is Heath Redding and I work with…Tiny Texas Houses. I wanted to inform you of our Kickstarter that we have just launched! We are taking our houses to the road and building the first Tiny Texas Roadhouse. The kickstarter we have set up is to help fund the tutorial video series that we want to release explaining the whole construction process. Our plan is to post these videos online so everyone can have access to them and do-it-themselves.
I wanted to kindly ask if you might post the information on your blog to help spread the word and get this project viral. We have some really cool ideas for this whole endeavor so please check out our kickstarter page!
God Bless and all the best!
Heath Redding
Here is a link to the kickstarter page:
https://shltr.net/tinyairstream
(Tiny Texas Houses was featured in Tiny Homes; the cover photo of the book was one of their projects.)
Hi Lloyd,
…I wanted to share with you and your readers some photos of the hand-built house I recently finished. (Prior to this I had only built some crummy plywood furniture and a couple of sheds.) As with so many of us who read your blog, the design of this house was definitely inspired by Shelter books. When making design decisions I often looked in Builders of the Pacific Coast and asked myself which choice would result in something that felt like it could be in your book – I love the feel of those homes.
A few things that are unique about my house:
– It’s solar-powered
– The vertical redwood on the outside (and interior wainscoting) is from a really lucky find: I was able to buy a few hundred square feet of redwood T+G from a friend’s landlord that had been sitting unused in a barn in Fort Bragg for 30 years!
– The tiny wood stove is called “The Hobbit” and it’s from England and it’s awesome.
– The house is insulated with discarded sheep’s wool.
– I’m 6’6″ and the house is big enough for me! (I can stand under the loft and sit up tall in the loft)
Read More …
