I love hitting the road in my go-anywhere 8 year old Toyota Tacoma (4×4, stick shift, 5 speed, 4-cylinder) truck, armed with cameras. This time I forgot my Panasonic Lumix G1 serious camera, just had the little Canon PowerShot G95. I breathe a sigh of relief when I get to farm land and I start scanning for pix. After splitting enough oak to fill my truck at my brother’s, I headed up to Middleton and Harbin Hot Springs. There’s something strangely relaxing about the funkiness and occasional white trash homesteads in lower-income counties.
I was reflecting on finding a balance between computer work and the physical world. I love all the email and blogging I’ve been doing lately. It’s an exciting time, what with the popularity of this new book, and sometimes I get so involved here at the Mac that I forget about two necessary antidotes:
1. Working out (including hiking, anything outdoors and physical) for the body. Getting circulation going, stressing muscles, and stretching. I always feel better.
2. Doing something with my hands. Making a table, turning the compost pile, splitting shakes. Deep-down satisfaction to make something with hands.
Thomas Dolby‘s recording “…studio on a solar and wind powered lifeboat moored in Dolby’s garden in Suffolk, England.…Dolby named the boat Nutmeg of Consolation, after a book from Patrick O’Brian’s naval fiction series and transformed it into a sustainable recording studio, powered by a 450-watt wind turbine and two solar panels on the mast and renovated with interior with reclaimed wood.”
`jonaven moore says this about the photo:”…photo of the treehosue that I got by hanging from a rope, walking out on a branch 30 ft up an adjacent spruce tree. I only just this fall got connected to the power grid, so i built everything there off grid, and the powerstation in the caboose sustained a lot of it.”`
GIMME SHELTER is an email newsletter I send out to about 600 people every few months. It used to be my main form of communication with people in the book trade and friends until I started blogging. We also post them on the Shelter website. Here’s the latest, from mid-January: https://www.shelterpub.com/_gimme/_2012-01-19/gimme_shelter-2012-01-19.html
Things are popping around here. Tiny Homesis selling like mad. It’s been reviewed on about 20 blogs and/or websites. It’s coming up in two of the biggest newspapers in the country (my lips are sealed until articles appear) next week. We’re scheduling a tour for me with slide show and book signings in Feb-Mar-April-May June. Gadzooks! I’ve never had a book get this kind of attention.
The other day, it occurred to me that this book directly addresses the overblown wasteful indulgent home building industry. I’ve been saying to people, “No, you don’t have to live in such a small space, but it’s the direction that counts. How can we do things better? How can we use materials that do the least damage to the planet? How can we heat water and living space most efficiently?” That’s in addition to all the poetry of building in the book.
I took off from the madness yesterday and went up to my brother’s farm in the Napa Valley to split (oak) firewood. A chance to do something physical. Exciting to get on the road with camera (yesterday only the Canon Powershot G-95). Afterwards I went over to Harbin Hot Springs to take a look at SunRay Kelley’s temple (pp. 65-71, Builders of the Pacific Coast), and it looked in great shape, cob and all. It’s a beautiful building, and it should have a little brass plaque on it saying : “Designed and built by SunRay Kelley,” but the Harbin management is a weird bunch, and they give no credit to SR. There were about a dozen people inside doing yoga, and it was a lovely atmosphere, the wood and the cob and the lighting all in a soft glow.
“‘House Arc’ is a modular, prefab housing system developed by Palo Alto, California-based Bellomo Architects. Designed to be 100% off the grid, the 150-square-foot unit can be flat-packed and shipped in a box that is 4x10x3 feet in size.
Considered a model for compact living, the structure’s curvaceous shape is formed from a lightweight frame made of steel tubes – when complete it weighs only 3000 pounds. The intention of ‘house arc’ is to aid people located in areas devastated by natural disasters and other unforeseen events, as a means of replacing residences that were not built to withstand certain forces of nature. Hence, it has been constructed to withstand tropical winds and weather.
The capsule-like dwelling features a solar energy generating roof. large windows allow natural light to flood through the space, while also funneling air through the interior, creating a cross-breeze, while a shading trellis limits heat infiltration. The raised structure permits air to flow beneath the framework for cooling, while maintaining permeability of the site.
‘We designed it to be a kit of parts that the average person can assemble quickly–like an IKEA house, only easier to put together.’
I love hitting the road in my go-anywhere 8 year old Toyota Tacoma (4×4, stick shift, 5 speed, 4-cylinder) truck, armed with cameras. This time I forgot my Panasonic Lumix G1 serious camera, just had the little Canon PowerShot G95. I breathe a sigh of relief when I get to farm land and I start scanning for pix. After splitting enough oak to fill my truck at my brother’s, I headed up to Middleton and Harbin Hot Springs. There’s something strangely relaxing about the funkiness and occasional white trash homesteads in lower-income counties.
Funky lightweight farm building looks like it’s floating.
I When I see old farm buildings like this, I think of converting them into places to live. In Big Sur in the ’60s, I lived happily in a converted chicken coop for a year. 
Nice steel sculpture at a place with a sign “Art Forms” on Hwy 121, south of Sonoma
