I just ran across this post (below), done in 2006. What a difference 14 years can make! Our books were selling way better in those days, so I had the time to do blog posts.

These days — right now — I’m swamped with the business side of publishing: reprints, marketing, sales, publicity, foreign translations, interviews, podcasts, metadata as well as social media, and I’m getting very little time to work on new books.

My plan is to get as much of this stuff done as possible right now and, as well, farm out as much of it as I can in the future, and free up time to get going on the next book (which I’m really excited about): Rolling Homes.

I ran across the below post while doing a search on my blog for Godfrey and Bruno — this post came up first. If you’re interested further in these two amazing guys, scroll on down.

Note: When Godfrey first told me about Bruno (who I hadn’t met), he said: “He’s the ultimate guy.”

www.lloydkahn.com/?s=godfrey+bruno

Note: If you want to get on my GIMME SHELTER email newsletter list (goes out every month or two to about 4000 people), go to: shltr.net/gimme-signup

From Lew Lewandowski, former Shelter editor, who moved to a small town in central Oregon:

Snowing today, had a chance to plow the driveway with a plow I built and attached to my old lawn tractor. I cut snow chains to fit, added weights to the rear, and use pulleys to lift and lower the blade. Muy buenos!! My back is getting too old to shovel that large area by hand.

• Photo by Kevin Kelly, from his book Asia Grace, a stunning book of 600 photos (with no text whatsoever)
• As reprinted, along with 11 other photos of Kevin’s, in Home Work

I’m delving around in the photo files from our book Home Work, published in 2004. This is the so-called round barn, built by cattleman Peter French and what is now the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in southeast Oregon. In 1872, French set out for Oregon from Sacramento, California with 1200 head of select shorthorn cattle, six Mexican vaqueros, and a Chinese cook. He drove the cattle across the Sacramento River and then then northward up into Eastern Oregon, where he settled on the west side of Steens Mountain. Over the years, his ranching Empire grew to encompass 200,000 acres and 45,000 head of cattle, one of the largest cattle empires west of the Rockies.

In the late ’70s or early ’80s, French built three round barns for breaking horses in the winter months. This one is 100 feet in diameter, the conical roof framed with a 35-foot center pole of Juniper (about 40 inches at the bottom, tapering to maybe 28 inches at the top), 14 surrounding Juniper posts and then a third wall of posts at the perimeter about 8 feet high. It’s a breathtaking building; I spent a couple of hours there in Spring, 2003, shooting photos.

It’s a great story, with 7 more photos, told on pages 206 to 207 of Home Work.

Don’t ask me. I should have stopped and tried to find out its background. It was parked by the side of the road on Hwy 101 on Northern California next to the Peg House (store), across the street from Standish Hickey State Park near Leggett.

Hey, I’m having fun going through my photos as I begin to build back my blog.