Sun, 27 Feb 2011

Lloyd,

I found your newest book at a small bookstore up on Denman Island, B.C. last weekend.

It was the last one left. (Builders of the Pacific Coast!) so inspiring since I love Home Work!

I’ve been collecting your books and telling others about them too on our film’s Facebook page.

Lesley has made a bunch of these from bird seed and chicken feed bags. Handles are strips cut off bottoms of bags. The bags are so nice she can’t bear to throw them away.

We lucked out, getting the slab poured before the storm hit. This time around, I’m getting Billy to build a rat-proof chicken coop, complete with concrete floor. The chickens will have a pretty big yard, so they’re only inside at night. It’s going to have a living roof, inspired by SunRay Kelley’s latest designs.

From l-r: Billy, driver from Rich Readimix, and Delfino

This is the chicken coop it’s replacing. I’ve probably built 5-6 chicken coops over the years. No plans, just grabbing what’s around. Soulful, but also hole-ful. The woodrats get in at will and consume the chicken mash, so this time we’re going to button it up. We’ve got a lovely little flock of mostly Silver Seabright bantams, getting 8-9 eggs a day now. Bantams make a lot of sense in a small area.

The wonderful cultural revolution that was centered in San Francisco was over by the “Summer of Love.” I grew up in SF and watched it all unfold and in fact quit my job as an insurance broker n 1965, because I found I had more in common with the people 10 years younger than me than with my own generation.

Almost everything I’ve read that was written about those few years is inaccurate. The Diggers, despite what transplanted New Yorker Peter Coyote writes, were hard-edged east coast entrepreneurs, the “hipper than thou” guys, who proclaimed themselves leaders of the pack and got the ears of the press. Totally different from the spirit that created the short-lived peaceful and gentle community in that neighborhood.

Here’s what I wrote in a note in the appendix of Homework: Handbuilt Shelter, in 2004:

Magical cultural revolution that changed world going on. Mostly misunderstood these days.

Artistic underground in San Francisco, early ’60s.

Beats: fading artists of old world

Hippies: joyous, open, sharing/entirely different mindset.

Wonderful few years (before “Summer of Love”).

Non-conformity, dropping out, experimenting, searching, expanding awareness, looking for better ways to do things. Loving, exciting community on Haight Street, San Francisco, world headquarters for a few years.

All these things not so much new as being discovered for first time by millions of young Americans:

Astronomy * astrology * meditation * Gurdjieff * Ouspensky * Zen Buddhism * the Tarot * the Kabbala * the Koran * the I Ching * dolphin consciousness * Dune * Strangers in a Strange Land * building your own house * The Owner-Built Home * organic gardening and; farming * self-sufficiency * Native American culture * ecological awareness * political activism * poetry * rock and roll * the blues * Ali Akbar Khan * Beatles/Stones/Dylan * domes * LSD/marijuana/mescaline * Monterey Pop Festival * Rolling Stone * Whole Earth Catalog * The Tassajara Bread Book * viewing earth from space * Edmund Scientific catalog * L. L. Bean catalog * chickens by mail from Murray McMurray/and on and on…