Yesterday I was in the hills heading for my mushroom patch and a very large coyote crossed the fire road about 200 feet from me. He was as big as a wolf, with a bushy tail. He trotted along, glancing back at me every so often. About an hour later, just after the sun had set, I was coming back down the hill and I heard this amazing woo–ooo-ooo. It stopped me in my tracks. I’ve heard coyotes singing before but never this close. There were two voices, and let me tell you, this was singing. Yip-yip-yip, woo-ooo-ooo, ah-woooo — words can’t describe this sound, the musicality of it. It made my hair stand on end. Electrifying. I stood still and listened, thrilled. After a minute, I heard, from maybe a mile across the valley, a faint reply, woo-ah-woo-woo. As I went along, I saw them, two of them, and they were 2-300 yards away. As soon as they saw me they stopped singing.

Three books of note: Landsman, by Peter Charles Mellman, a novel that reminds me of All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. Powerful writing, a first novel; Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources, by M. Kat Anderson, a meticulously researched and documented book about mostly unknown land management practices of the California Indians; and Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) by David Cay Johnston, about which Ralph Nader says: “With clarity, conciseness, and cool, fact-saturated analysis, Mr. Johnston, the premier investigative reporter on how industry and commerce shift risks and costs to taxpayers, sends the ultimate message to all Americans—either we demand to have a say or we will continue to pay, pay, and pay.” Eye-opening is the way Walmart (and Cabela’s) get huge subsidies from communities that want their big box stores, even keeping the sales taxes they collect. They’re unfairly (and criminally) subsidizing the cutthroat big guys and running the littler guys out of business.

HBO’s The Wire, about drug dealers, murders, and cops in Baltimore, is back on and as good as ever. Every actor is strong and believable. Musician Steve Earle sings Tom Waits’ song “Down in the Hole” in this season’s series and has a role as the leader of a 12-step drug program.

And that’s it for this early Monday morning as the Bay Area dries out after a killer storm. We were without power for 6 days, and running a publishing operation without electricity these days is difficult to say the least.

We’re in our 6th day without electricity. We’ve been running the office on a Honda generator, careful to have only essential appliances running. All 5 of us in the office dress warmly. We run little (860 watts) radiant heaters with ceramic panels once in a while. I’ve gotten into layers, up to 8 of them now, to keep warm.

There were almost a million people with power knocked out in this storm. We have a propane stove and propane water heater in the house, with wood heat, so it’s not too bad. It’s really hard on people with electric heat, hot water, and stoves; they’re suffering.

I went down to the beach yesterday and the level of sand is about 8′ lower than normal.

Local beach. On the right is the “Jefferson Airplane House” (so-called because Grace Slick and Paul Kanter lived there in the early ’70s). There’s been a huge movement of sand, maybe 6-8′ has been washed out. You can see the normal sand line just below the graffiti on the sea wall in front of the house. All those rocks below the ramp down to the beach are usually covered with sand. I’ve never seen it this low before.

I also went out yesterday to shoot pix of woodrat nests. They are called Dusky Footed Woodrats and they build these twig lodges in inaccessible spots in the woods. Inside the nests are chambers and often frogs or mice may move in to share the shelter. Some of them are very nicely designed and constructed, perfectly symmetrical cones.

They are similar in shape to some of the California Indian structures.

The last day of 2007 I went out on a crab boat with local fishermen Josh Churchman and Rob Knowles. I’m writing an article for the local paper, The West Marin Citizen, on the state of local fishing and pending regulations that may well put them out of business. I shot photos of them taking in about 750 pounds of crab on this sunny day and am starting to work on the article now. Local fishing is an environmentally sound, sustainable form of food production and bureaucrats and regulators seem to be moving in the opposite direction. I hope this article will show the wisdom and desirability of keeping small-scale local fishermen at work along the California coast. The real problems are with king size boats that drag nets along the bottom or otherwise practice a rape-the-ocean form of fishing. Go after these guys, not the little guys.

Rob works like a dervish, rebaiting each pot and grabbing the crabs and tossing them into boxes while Josh maneuvers the boat to make Rob’s job easier.

At the end of the 4-hour day they had about 750 pounds of fresh healthy crab, which they unloaded onto Rob’s truck. Crabbing is a wonderful local, sustainable resource

They’re ripoff artists. They appropriated the works of others without due credit. In a new book, The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell’s Secret, author Seth Shulman says that Bell bribed a patent examiner to get a look at the work of rival Elisha Gray and was erroneously credited with filing first. (This from an article in the S.F. Chronicle on Dec. 31. 2007.) Buckminster Fuller, who patented the geodesic dome in 1955, was preceded some 30 years by the world’s first geodesic dome in Jena, Germany in 1922. The true inventor was Dr. Walter Bauersfeld. I did some investigative reporting in 1973 and wrote about this in our book Shelter in the same year: https://www.telacommunications.com/geodome.htm and am happy to see (when doing a Google search for “jena/bauersfeld/geodesic,” Bauersfled is now credited with his invention.

And of course Bill Gates and Microsoft have repeatedly lifted ideas from the best and brightest, usually without credit or recompense, to patch together the Windows operating system and reap the rewards of other people’s work.

A book could be written on the subject, something like “Credit Where Due.” An intriguing example of this is the work of Francesco di Giorgio Martini, born 13 years before Leonardo da Vinci. Di Martini was a painter, sculptor, military architect and engineer in Siena who designed an amazing number of gizmos, including weight-moving and -lifting machines; water-raising devices; mills; and carriages with complex transmission systems. The similarity of much of da Vinci’s work to that of Francesco is striking. “In 1490, summoned by the Duke of Milan to give an opinion on architectural matters, Francesco met the young Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo, struck by the competence of his senior colleague, carefully studied Francesco’s Treatise on Architecture, in which he made some manuscript annotations.” Click here for a ton of drawings and models of Francesco’s work at the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence, Italy.

Treadmill-powered grinding mill

People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

-Chinese Proverb

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.

-Sir Winston Churchill