Thursday afternoon, the river at Louie’s, went skinny-dipping, lay in sun. It’s about 7 ft. deep at far side. Day was hot, water co-o-old.
Lew has designed and redesigned our book-selling booth over the years, and he and Evan put it up Friday afternoon. There were two problems: first, was the hottest weather of the year. Secondly, previous SolFests were at the Real Goods headquarters in Hopland, with its green grass and ponds and general pleasant ambience, but the Ukiah Fairgrounds were way different. Hot and glaring. Hopefully they’ll figure a way to move it back to Hopland next year.
We sold books and talked to a lot of like-minded people. One guy came up, pointed to the Shelter book, and said: “I’m a high-rise engineer in San Francisco, and I got my start with this book.”
I gave a talk on “The Half-acre Homestead in the 21st Century,” what I’ve learned in about 50 years of home-made shelter and garden experience. I made a list of about 25 tools we use — coffee roaster, cheese grater, table saw, garden shredder, grain grinders, etc. Not a complete list, but sampling of stuff we’ve found useful over the long haul. Posted at: https://www.shelterpub.com/_homestead/tools.html. I didn’t take time to write reviews, just linked to further information for each item.
My laptop got trojan-horsed while I was on the road, so I couldn’t post any photos for three days. Frustrating! I’m used to being able to get info out, and I love posting while traveling. now that I’m back in business, I’ll put up photos from the trip.
This was Wednesday night, when I went to get something out of my truck. The moon, Jupiter below, and the green glint is the moonlight shining on the crystal at the top of Louie’s shop (it’s on the mast of the circular roof shown just above my truck in my posting of Sept 24, below).
Lew and I spent the weekend in Ukiah, manning our booth at SolFest, the solar energy festival. Ukiah is kind of a relief from the preciousness of Marin County. It’s a real town, with real working people.
The Sun House, a redwood Craftsman bungalow home built in 1911 by John and Grace Hudson is adjacent to the Grace Hudson Museum in Ukiah.
Typical shit-kickin truck of the area…
This is a great blog. Full disclosure dept.: Claire’s links to this blog led me to discover Loobylu.
“Loobylu is the personal web site of Claire Robertson.… I am a writer, illustrator, mama, crafter and procrastinator living and dreaming with my raggle-taggle family in a forest on small island in Canada’s Pacific Northwest. We have been here since August 2010. Before that we were suburb dwelling people who lived in Melbourne, Australia. We decided to make our lives a bit more of an adventure – you can read about that here.”
https://loobylu.com/
Here’s my hangout at Louie’s.
These days I shoot pix continually with my Canon Powershot S-90, which is always on me in fanny pack. When I want to get serious, I use my Panasonic Lumix G1; the latter replaced my 5-lb trusty Canon 20D. It’s half the weight. Much the way that the Olympus OM-1 replaced Nikons back in the ’70s. The Lumix G1 is a wonderful camera.
It’s Friday, we had a great breakfast at the Trink cafe here in Pt. Arena. Local eggs, hickory-smoked rough-cut bacon. Last night we had dinner at Bones, a “blues and brews” pub in Gualala. The place was packed. Huge menu. Smoked everything, every dish was good, a restaurant in its own “sweet spot in time” at this very moment. Dark ale from the nearby Eel River brewery, tasted like chocolate.
Read More …
I got off at 3 this afternoon, sunny, windy day, brilliant blue sky, on the road to Louie’s. Country music on radio. Tomales Bay murky, with windcaps.
I love getting out on the road. Best of all is going down a never-before travelled road. In a small riverside village in Laos a couple of years ago, I met a young Serbian guy who said he never goes back to the same place, it’s always new roads, new places.
Driving along, I was thinking of the beauty of the physical world, like the bleached-out whale vertebrae on the beach last night, the windswept tree on the hillside (above), the seashells I’ve been collecting. I put one days’ haul of shells in a flat bamboo basket and just looked at the patterns and the iridescence of the irregular-surfaced rock oysters. Lesley has made a lot of abalone necklaces — the beautiful colors, the way abalone catches the light, prettier to me than diamonds.
Thinking about the tiny houses book that is unfolding. Different than I imagined. I knew the subject was hot, but oh, the material we’ve got! Everyone’s with us on this — photographers, builders, architects some), dwellers, road travellers — the book’s already alive.
When I got to Timber Cove, the reggae got good. Eek-A-Mouse, Yellowman. Reggae goes with Mendocino/Humboldt-land. I like the pop-out window on the house at left.
Met Louie down at the cove, shot below panorama at sunset. Had Lost Coast dark ale, clam chowder, now out in Louie’s shop on the river, in an exquisite little round bedroom looking out on a meadow and redwoods. Will try to post this mañana…
The cove in Pt. Arena at sunset last night.
Got up at 6, came into city early (thru foggy coastal dawn) to hang out at Caffe `Roma before going to a 9:30 Rolfing appointment (am in dire need some structural integration). And here, folks, at this moment, is the essence of nerd-dom, I’m wi-fi’g it with a MacBook Pro (13″) laptop and listening to first bluegrass, now blues via Sirius satellite radio playing on an iPad with earphones. A long time comin’ but it’s all working now.
The above pic is a combo of two panoramas shot with a Sony Cybershot in my favorite North Beach cafe.
I tell you, this is so much fun, to explore the world, shoot photos and broadcast them like this. Baby, I’ve come a long way since I caught the essence of journalism from Captain Jack Patterson, our Lowell High School journalism teacher. Get the 5 “w’s” in the first paragraph,etc. The bug bit.
Two things:
1. The tiny houses book is already way more than I anticipated. The material is more diverse than a book of just my photos, and it’s opening up new layout avenues. Got maybe 44 pages more or less ready. Putting pages together totally randomly. The book shapes itself.
2. The iPad is just a marvel. With 3G I can get on anywhere there’s cell phone reception. The battery is 8-10 hours. 24-hour non-commercial music alone is worth the price of admission. As I am ready to hit “Publish Post,” Junior Wells is singing his tribute to Sonny Boy Williamson,”Help Me,” a beautiful song!
Greetings from San Francisco…
Thursday afternoon, the river at Louie’s, went skinny-dipping, lay in sun. It’s about 7 ft. deep at far side. Day was hot, water co-o-old.
