For those interested in these subjects, see Kelly Hart’s excellent website and blog:

https://www.greenhomebuilding.com/

https://www.greenhomebuilding.com/weblog/

We have produced less than 30 books in 37 years of publishing. It was never intended to be this way. It just turned out that it took (takes) forever for us to get a book ready for press. Unlike grown-up publishers, who turn over an edited and completed manuscript to a designer, who then designs the pages and prepares the files, we always end up composing, editing, designing, writing, and gathering new graphics while we’re in production. The point of this all being that each book takes us a year or two, from start to off-the-press copy. During this time, the book will evolve. The book changes during this process, hopefully evolving for the better.

Well! The Barefoot Architect, in its evolution, came out a stunner.

Hot off the press

Not only in looks, but also in both usefulness and practicality in today’s world. We didn’t anticipate the timing, but the green movement matured as this book was being produced and it’s a perfect intersection. At a glance, the book may appear to be about building a house out of adobe and bamboo or other natural materials. Which it is. But it’s also about design, planning, integration with the natural environment, using the wind, sun, and water to ventilate and produce energy, and a host of other subjects for people interested in providing their own shelter, or setting up a small community.

In the ’60s, I started remodeling my house, and then adding on to it (with some ambitious first-time architect plans), so I had to learn to build as I went along. In those days I had a bunch of books on carpentry and building, but my favorite was Ken Kern’s The Owner-Built Home, which became the underground building bible. Not “architecture,” but building, and doing it yourself. Simple pen and ink drawings, easy to follow.

Johan van Lengen’s book is for builders today what The Owner-Built Home was for builders of the ’60s. 1000 wonderful simple drawings, easy to follow. A different way of looking at shelter. Earth conscious. Local climate. Local materials. Bio-architecture. (And using intuition and the right brain.)

Interestingly, Johan has found a keen interest in his methods recently by people who are bailing out of high-stress jobs and seeking simpler lives, creating “eco-villages.”

For a Free Copy of This Book

If you want a review copy of this book (sent to you or someone else), contact Lew at lew@shelterpub.com. Word-of-mouth works on books like this, so we are willing to send review copies to anyone in a position to tell others about it. If you like the book, help us get the word out

Note, these blog postings show what happens when I’m floating around out on the road. Time on my hands. I’m in Frankfurt at the International Book Fair.

The Sad State of United Airlines

United is a fossil of a company, still operating on an old tired model. The way JetBlue operates show how out of it United is. The United employees have to grapple with a dumb and inefficient setup. The 747’s are old. The leg room is criminal. I’m short and when the lady in front of me leaned her chair back, it hit my knees. (For $119 I could have bought 5″ more leg room, thanks a lot!) Food is atrocious. Beef stroganoff or chicken a la king, brown glop and yellow glop, take your pick. I was feeling pretty smug with my food from home: chicken breast sandwich on roll with mustard and garden tomatoes, cottage cheese and pineapple, and homemade cookies. Airlines should quit serving food, like JetBlue. It would save a ton of money.

The International Terminal at SFO is great. Good food, shops, and always a great art exhibit. Today it was on Warner Brothers cartoons and there were sketches and little figurines of Bugs Bonny, Wily E. Coyote, the Roadrunner, and Daffy Duck. Eh, what’s up, doc? Beep-beep. Th-th-that’s all folks. The conceptual drawings of these caracters, especially by Chuck Jones, are a treat to see. On the plane I watched Surf’s Up, a Pixar-type computerized cartoon feature and, charming as it was, it didn’t have the pizzazz or wit or life of these hand-drawn critters from the ’40s.

The Frankfurt Book Fair

I’ve been going to this for about 15 years. It’s the super bowl of book fairs. I meet with agents and publishers from other countries; foreign translations of our books have grown over the years. Stretching is in 23 languages. Homework, already in Japanese and French, is now being translated into Korean (as is Shelter). I stay in a small hotel in the elegant spa town Bad Homburg, about 20 miles north of Frankfurt, and take a train straight to the fair grounds.

Semi-sabbatical 2009

I’m going to take some time off in 2009, something I’ve never really done. 3-4 months to travel, not deal with the daily business grind, do some fishing, coastal exploring, surfing, get refreshed in order to come back to work with new zeal. My wife Lesley is English and we’ll go to England and Ireland. It may mean winding down our business somewhat that year. Right now I don’t know how the details will work out but I’m committing to this now since it’s all too easy to put it off forever. Giving voice to it makes it more of a reality. PLUS and I know this sounds radical, but I’ve decided to quit checking and sending email, for maybe a month at a time spaced over that year. I mean I’m a fucking captive to email. My generation never figured on this. We thought we’d go the rest of our lives with letters and phone calls — surprise! And of course I jumped into it, especially with some 400 people on my monthly or so GIMME SHELTER email newsletter list. I’ll see if I can pull this off.

Sleepless in Bad Homburg

I got into Bad Homburg around noon on Sunday wasted as usual from the 10 hour flight. I have never been able to sleep for 5 minutes on any airplane.

It’s the being there that’s great.

It’s the getting there that sucks.

Survival on flights

I wear a “chi ionizer” around my neck, running for the entire flight. Supposed to create negative ions and, true believer that I am, I think it helps. I also always carry a little bottle of tea tree oil, a natural disinfectant that I rub in my nostrils occasionally to discourage entry of viruses from the shared air of airplane cabins. I bring my own food, get up and down at least 10 times, stretch often. It all helps, but the inhumanity and indignity of United’s cattle car 747 setup takes its toll.

I went out for a run as soon as I checked in. Running for an hour or so and staying awake until night time at the destination gets me into local time. No jet lag. Bad Homburg has a magnificent centuries-old park and it was gorgeous in the sharp autumn light. Pretty soon I was feeling human again.

Jaywalkers nicht in Deutschland

German pedestrians don’t jaywalk, cross against red lights, or walk off paths in parks. Being a barbarian from the west, I routinely accomplish all these transgressions. Running through the grassy meadows in the park is like being in the country. I’m staying at a small hotel and my landlady, Frau Birkendorf, is a jolly sort who’s amused by me and worries that I’m not eating enough.

Brothers on Wheels

Yesterday a 6-year-old came whipping down the sidewalk on a skateboard. Yeah man!

Hessenpark Museum of Half-Timber Buildings

Took the (electric) train through the farm fields yesterday to this wonderful collection of ancient half-timbered buildings, lovingly reconstructed. It’s a timber framer’s dream. The art of diagonal bracing. Shot 200 photos, some of which are, ahem, stunning. I got better shots of half-timber framing than are in either SHELTER or HOME WORK. What am I gonna do with all this material? Or should I say content…

Field of Dreams

From the window of the train yesterday around sunset, suddenly there was a field of maybe 30 ponies, all different colors, all healthy, with shiny coats. It was like a dream, these beautiful little horses in a verdant green pasture backlit by the setting sun.

Trains, the Civilized Way to Travel (And this does not include high-speed trains)

The Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof is superb, as are train stations in general in the great cities of the civilized world (this does not include the U.S. of A). Train stations got soul, unlike airports, with the bustle, the food, shops, excitement of coming and going, the multi-nationalities and languages and the high arching ceilings and fresh air. It’s the right technology for much of travel. Amtrak ought to be subsidized for chrissake!

Speed bumps on a street in Bad Homburg at night

Mass Murderers at Stanford

Worthy of note: The Hoover Institute at Stanford, replete in its right-wing cluelessness, is hosting war criminal Donald Rumsfeld as a visiting lecturer. Maybe Rummy will explain to students how he led this country into the disaster in Iraq. Then when the Bush administration completes its chilling years of usurped power, Stanford will see the return of the forked-tongue Condy Rice. Gurus for the training of Captains of Industry.

The Gutenberg Press

My friend Bill Newlin, also here for the Fair, and I went to see the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz today. The invention of movable type in the 1400s. Previous to this, books were produced one at a time, lettered by hand. Gutenberg adapted the wine press and olive press to printing, since pressure had to be applied to have the type make a clean impression on the paper. A printing press — I never got the meaning of the word before.

Cafe Da Pino

I found a microcosm of Italy, a cafe here in Bad Homburg, that makes real espresso drinks. No women. Bunch of older guys playing cards and yelling and emoting and waving hands in the air, hey, it’s a romance language, che bella! Contrast to the hard-edged sounds of German.

If You Say So Dude…

Young tough looking guy, arms covered with tattoos, on the street yesterday with a T-shirt saying “100% Asshole.”

Time Travel to the 50s

I graduated from Lowell High School in San Francisco in 1952, which was in those years, in the Haight Ashbury district. We’re having our 55th – ulp! – reunion this year and I’m somehow on the reunion committee. I’m the only person in a class of maybe 300 who dropped out in the ’60s. Smoked pot, rock and roll, homesteading in Big Sur – changing course on the high seas of life at age 28, giving up a well-paying job as insurance broker, oh yes! All my friends from high school and college, with the exception of maybe two I can think of, became extremely wealthy. I’m the only guy with long hair and an earring, etc., but what’s cool is we all still have those 4 years in common, we’re all San Francisco kids, and I enjoy their company. This year I’m in charge of music so I’ve been going back to the ’50s. Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra. In retrospect it’s great music. Opus One & Once in a While, by Tommy Dorsey. Moonlight Seranade by Glenn Miller brings tears almost to my eyes. Romance was a strong emotion in those days, Saturday night outdoor dances at the Fairfax Town & Country Club, with music like this playing. I’m also going to throw in some Ray Charles, Fats Domino, Aretha, Otis, Al Green, rhythm and blues…I’ve hired Zorro, a young reggae DJ from my town, to control the music and I’m giving him lists.

Speaking of Lowell: Jack Patterson was the journalism teacher then, and I realized years later how he influenced my life. I learned the who-what-when-where-how-why of the opening paragraph (then it was supposed to be in the first sentence), and that a reporter’s job was to report it as it is and save opinions for the editorial page. Patterson was a decorated ex-Marine captain and we called him Captain Jack. He had a mischievous twinkle in his eye. He was gay, but made no moves on us.

One day a few years back, three of us on the reunion committee (Lord, have I written this up before? – my memory is shot…) discovered that each of us were in in our present jobs because of Capt. Jack: English teacher, advertising, publisher. Well, Jack eventually got fired, and ended up robbing a bank, going to jail, and ended up his life doing gardening work at Stanford. Dude! Is this not the wild west? I wish I’d sought him out to thank him.

And yes, I realize I’m prone to repeating myself, not only in conversation, but in print. I think I’ve written about this before. C’est la vie…

Lew and I have been here at the big Northern California solar energy festival for two days now. We get wonderful feedback. Yesterday, Gary Kleimia, owner of the Bookbeat bookstore in Fairfax, picked up a copy of Home Work and said, “This book changed my life.” After reading it, he bought a piece of land near Mt. Shasta and is building a tree house. Today a young California girl picked up the same book and said, “This is the best book ever.” Just an hour ago, Sasha Rabin, a practitioner and teacher of cob and natural building methods stopped in to tell us she had been at one of the Natural Building 3-week courses at Yestermorrow, the school of building in Vermont, and one of the students was a 30-something-year old guy who had dropped out of a high-paying job in the business world. He said he had seen a copy of Home Work and it had inspired him to quit his job and change his life. It’s great to connect. People get ideas by seeing what builders are doing in various parts of the world. It’s a network of inspiration.

Yesterday I took my bike, hot afternoon, and went a few miles in the countryside through, ahem, private property — vineyards and pear orchards, and made my way down to a sandbar on the Russian River. Swam in the cool water, a refreshing interlude. No one in sight. These days (especially hot summer days) I jump in just about every body of water I come across. — instant way to tune in to the local environment.

SolFest continues to be a great event. Good spirit. Each year the alternative energy field has new improvements. A lot of things are working now that weren’t 10 years ago. Real Goods, the hosts, have got it together. There’s a guy here with a diesel truck that is rigged up so he drives up to a KFC or MacDonalds, puts a suction hose into their discarded french fry oil. His truck converts it to fuel on the road. My friend Paul Wingate said yesterday with a big grin, “He pays zero for fuel, and he drives 50,000 miles a year. It’s free!”

Today a builder stopped by. He said he’s now building houses for millionaires and he hates it. “I used to build maximum 1200 sq. ft. houses. Now the mud rooms are that size.” It’s true, just about all the builders I’ve known, if they’ve wanted to stay in the trade, have had to work for big-bucks clients. A lot of people stop in our booth to talk about their houses, or their dreams.

Last night Lew and I went to the Ukiah Brewing Company in, yes, Ukiah, and heard a great band from Oakland, The Delta Wires. There were less than 30 people there, and these guys were blowing out the rafters. They’re like a blues quartet, but augmented by a horn section playing tightly-orchestrated back-up. I was ready to head for bed after we had dinner, but they woke me right up. The Ukiah Brewery, by the way, makes organic beer that is not only organic, but great. All their food is organic as well, it’s the only 100% organic restaurant I’ve seen.

The music at Sol Fest is always good. Yesterday, a bluegrass band from Colorado. Today Buce Cockburn, who I’d never heard of, a wonderful Canadian musician AND the last act — Sambadá, the Brazilian dance band from Santa Cruz, of which my son Will is both drummer and booking agent. The band seems to be on a roll. They just got back from performing at ESPN’s party for personnel in Connecticut and they were picked by the Santa Cruz Metro newspaper as Santa Cruz’s favorite band.

Last in the music dept.: Stones fans, Love You Live is an album I just got, recorded in ’77 and it’s a killer. The band at full power. Mick’s kickin’ ass. He does a great version of Mannish Boy, copying Muddy Waters’ phrasing and orchestration just about note-by-note, not something for the faint of heart, and he brings it off totally. The band is crude and funky and perfect. The song Cracking Up is a rocker, never heard it before.