This from environmentalgraffiti.com, which is a great website. This photo, by Gerry Thomasen, caught my eye because it’s almost identical with a photo of mine of a cob/driftwood house in British Columbia that appeared in our Builders of the Pacific Coast. Two photographers with the same eye. A lot of eclectic interesting stuff on this website. Some great shots of earthen domiciles at:
A wood-stove cobworks kitchen pays homage to pioneer days, with a modern flare.
I’ve owned maybe 3 pair of Uggs Australian sheepskin boots, all of them the soft ones favored by surfers. Each pair lasted me through maybe 3 winters. (Our office has very little heat, so we dress warmly, and warm feet are half the equation.) One problem was that in walking through wet grass, the sheepskin would soak up water. This time I got their Beacon model, which has leather on the lower part, and they are terrific, as well as good looking. About $200, and I couldn’t find any discounted (other than for size 12-13), so I got them direct from Ugg:
Question: where is this little house? Costa Rica? Hawaii? Mexico? Nope. It’s on 5th Street in Berkeley, near our distributor’s (Publishers Group West) office on 4th Street. It’s a nice little unassuming neighborhood of modest small houses, adjacent to an industrial area and the train tracks. Of course as you head up toward the University of California campus, the neighborhoods and houses get more elegant and expensive.
In the cars-you-gotta-love department, this 1955 Oldsmobile 98 parked in San Rafael yesterday afternoon. I was 20 years old when this rolled off the assembly line. Check out the twin tear-drop spotlights; I had a pair on my ’46 Chevy sedan. Oh, don’t get me started talking about ’40s & ’50s cars!
Then around 6PM I was driving to meet my running friends, it was pitch black and cold. I was coming along the creek in Frank’s Valley and here smack in the middle of the road were two big buck mule deer, squared off with horns locked, duking it out. They were oblivious to me and my headlights. They were pushing against each other, antlers clacking. Finally one pushed the other across the road and the loser ran up the bank. What a vision! I pictured a demure doe, brown eyed with long eyelashes awaiting the outcome, and about to take off with the Big Guy and perpetuate the species with good genes.
I’m running alone these days, until I get up to speed to run with the boys, so I took off along the coast, climbing up on the coastal trail with my strap-on headlight. It was raining lightly: I love running in the rain—once you get warmed up, it’s glorious. The air was fresh and the ocean sweet-smelling. When I got to the lookout point, about 1000 feet above the ocean, I could see the lights of 8 crab boats; the season has just opened, and it looks like a good one, and the bigger boats pull their crab pots at night.
Our booth was mobbed for a couple of hours on Saturday and then Sunday.I took this shot during a lull. We sold tons of books, and probably more importantly, gave out 400 Builders of the Pacific Coastt posters as well as about 1200 of our (small, 4-color) catalogs. Personal word-of-mouth publicity with ink on paper (posters, catalogs) in the electronic age.
Dozens of people came up and thanked me for the books over the years. Wow! The 60-year-olds invariably picked up Shelter, said they had a beat-up old copy, and reminisced about the ’60s; the 40-year-olds said, “My Dad had this book, and I used to look through it…” The 20-30-year olds had just discovered either Home Work or Shelter, and were excited to see such things going on in the world. It seems like we’re rapidly rebuilding a network of builders, gardeners, and homemakers. (We had such a network in the Whole Earth Catalog days, but it dissipated.) The feedback is wonderful. These people understand the books.
This little guy was checking out the booth next to ours yesterday. (On lower left are the free Builders of the Pacific Coast posters we were giving out.)
This is a link to a blog posting about a house in Gojo, Japan designed by architects Eastern Design Office for an artist, described on the blog as “…a traditional craftsman who puts the crest on Japanese traditional clothes.” There are a bunch of photos of the concrete house, with its repeating circular motifs, and this display of some of the artist’s crests (applied by hand to each garment).
Went to a wonderful Leonard Cohen concert last night. It was the last stop on his current tour and had a feeling of finality, like maybe his last tour. Packed arena, and as the evening went on, there was a glow between LC and audience. They LOVED him, and it showed, and he responded. He has such a powerful suite of songs, a cooking 6-piece band of virtuosos, and a dream team trio of backup singers. Unique.
I’m writing this from a cool little cafe, with barista latte and free wi-fi, the Cafe Bean, 800 Sutter, checking my mail, getting ready to go over to the Green Festival. This fortune teller painting is just down the block.
Lew and I are getting pretty fast at setting up. This was the day before the event opened, and we hadn’t put our tablecloths on or our books out.
In an alley around 14th and Valencia this morning on my way to the Green festival
