I get into NYC yesterday around 3 PM. A drop-dead gorgeous day, temp in the 70s, leafy lacy shadow patterns in the green grass of the park along 5th Ave. My hotel, the Marakech, a Moroccan-themed hotel at Broadway and 103rd turns out to be, shall we say, quirky. Finally I hit the streets, looking for food. I end up by Carnegie Hall and wander over to see who’s playing. At this point I’m pretty tired and haven’t connected with the city yet. An elegantly dressed Russian lady comes up and asks in a thick accent if I have tickets to sell. It’s Anna Netrebco and Dmitry Chvonostovsky, soprano and baritone, she says, sold out. I see that the Emnerson String Quartet is playig the next night. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. Oh boy! The energy of the city kicks in and I’m off. When it’s good it’s very very good. Who might want to go the next night, I think to myself, well, I know my friend Elise from California is in NYC, maybe I’ll contact her. 20 minutes later I run into Elise on a corner on 7th Avenue, I mean, what are the chances of that happening in a city of 8.2 million people? Cosmic stuff. I’m on a roll the rest of the night. I end up having a fabulous meal at Trattoria Dell’Arte on 7th and 56th. When I walk in a little Jewish lady is saying to a friend, “I haven’t been heah in yiz.” Food, ambiance, decor, and staff are tres cool. As in many NY restaurants, people are tightly packed and there’s a lot of back-and-forth discussion. You hear nearby couple’s conversations clearly. It’s intimate, a feature of eating out in Manhattan. I end up having an great discussion with a TV producer from LA sitting next to me at the bar, a smart and savvy guy, and talking to all the waiters since I’m sitting at the bar where they pick up drinks. It’s a warm night and after a magic glass of grappa, I wander the streets, reveling in the city, shooting pix. Kansas this ain’t.

I liked what I had read about Jet Blue, so booked my flight with them. I was heading for the big annual (BEA) book expo convention in NYC, with a 3-day stop-off in the Alleghanies to see my friends Bill and Barb Castle at their eco resort in the woods. The flight, from SFO to JFK to Buffalo, then Buffalo to NYC and back to San Francisco was $450. Well, this airline is great. The seats are leather and there is way more leg room than on any other airliners’ economy class. No food served except for snacks, which is fine with me and I brought a chicken sandwich and crackers. A couple of bananas would have been good too. You print out your own boarding pass within 24 hours of the flight, along with your baggage check-in ticket and I was in line for about 3 minutes before I was checked in and my bag on its way. Each seat has its own screen and Direct TV with 36 channels and you can pay an extra $5 for 3 movies. Plenty of water and soft drinks available and they make trash runs every half hour or so and take your newspapers, bottles, etc. Very cool, it’s the way airlines should be run.

I’m posting this from the Alleghanies where I’ve been for 2 days, photographing Bill’s amazing building and welding projects, sleeping in an Adirondack shelter looking out on a frog-filled pond, and swimming in 2 different wonderful ponds. I get into NYC tomorrow and will post some photos. You can check out Pollywogg Holler at: Pollywogg Holler

I love this country. I love the land and I love the people. I say this from having been in 45 states, from 6 round-trip cross country coast-to-coast car trips, from hanging out with cowboys in Nevada, surfers in California, publishers in NYC, and farmers in Kansas. I love the canyons of the southwest and the woods of New England and the shores of Cape Cod and the beaches and arroyos of the west coast from Canada to Baja. My mother’s family has been here since the 1700s and fought in the American revolution. So I feel I can criticize what my own country has become. A pervasive sickness has crept into America and is manifested in all its ugly and greedy and homicidal horrors by the Bush Administration. My heart is sick with what this corrupt bunch of corporate thugs is doing in the name of America, and it’s become so serious and pervasive that I feel compelled to mention this bummer aspect of today’s reality. The American flag, as it’s being flown by individuals these days, represents support for the destruction of Iraq. This administration should be brought before the international war crimes tribunal, especially Rumsfeld and Cheney, the Himmler and Goering of the 21st century. God, how can we get rid of these criminals and shift this country’s perspective and behavior? Before they invade Iran.

Vagabonding — Slow Travel

The other day on the radio, Rick Steves interviewed a guy named Rolf Potts, who’s written a book about slow travel, called Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel. The concept is to stay around long enough — wherever you travel — to tune into the people and the land. One great thing Rolf said was that when you end up in a town and have no fixed idea about what to do: “Walk until your day gets interesting.” Also: “Time is your most valuable asset…”

Summer of Love Horseshit

It was over by the “Summer of Love.” Anyone who was actually in the Haight/Ashbury neighborhood in say 1963-66 knows that the SOL wasn’t the death knell…the unique love and energy was already long gone (departed, not dead). The San Francisco Chronicle just did an article on the 40th anniversary and they trotted out the usual ’60s experts. Wavy Gravy, Peter Berg, Peter Coyote (can you imagine someone naming himself after a sacred animal?) I always thought the Diggers sucked, with their hipper-than-thou concepts. They brought hard East Village NYC vibes to gentle California. Their “everything is free” hype drew losers to San Francisco.

Canine-powered Skateboarding

The other day I saw a guy on a skateboard in San Francisco being pulled along at a pretty good clip by 3 dogs on leashes. He looked pretty happy.

Natural Building Materials, Green Building Materials

The difference between “natural building materials” and “green building materials” is, I believe, that natural means that it is used as it comes from the earth. Wood, adobe, straw, bamboo. Green materials include “natural materials,” but can also include processed materials, such as roof shakes made from recycled plastic bottles and wood fiber. Green in the sense of minimum impact on the earth and its systems…

Builders of the Pacific Coast/Book Expo America

I’ve done rough layouts of 160 or so pages, maybe 2/3 of the book. It’s starting to assume its own form. I saved meisterbuilder Lloyd House for last, because I have such a mountain of material on his work. The day I started was sunny and no one was in the office and I alternated between the computer (printing out pix for layout), the layout table, and playing my fiddle and then the jug, along with ’30s Texas swing music by Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies. Fun! The book is looking good, but it’s taking me a lot longer than I anticipated — (what else is new?). We are in the midst of preparing about 14 mock-up pages for me to take to Book Expo America in New York in early June.

My father bought these Filipino fishing lures in the ’30s or so. They’re made out of bones and scrap metal and sinew and are beautiful. I just got them out of an old storage box and mounted them — they’re stunning (and sharp!). This is a kind of funky 2-shot collage.)

Note wooden goggle frames