Music du Jour: I have an old scratchy vinyl record of Salty Dog by Procul Harum that I’ve played off and on for 30 years. It strikes me as one of the great rock operas (and I don’t include anything by The Who in that category). It’s a trip on the high seas in an English vessel with the elegance of the British musicians of the ’70s. Then yesterday I listened to “Tweeter and the Monkey Man,” Bob Dylan’s song with The Traveling Wilburys, and it still sounds powerful. I always thought this record, with Dylan, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, George Harrison, and Jeff Lynne, released in 1988, was a masterpiece that got largely overlooked. Finally, today on local KPIG I heard a country song on religious right righteousness:

Jesus loves me,

But he cain’t stand you…

Wednesday night I took off, headed south on Hwy. One, to go to the Timber Framers Guild conference at Asilomar in the town of Monterey. I slept in my truck that night (in a residential neighborhood) in Santa Cruz, checked out the dawn patrol surfers at Steamer Lane at sunrise. Pretty good swell, brrrr! — cold. I drove out to Pleasure Point and walked out to the 38th Avenue steps and here was a photo in the morning sunshine, with flowers, of Dave Devine, who died in the first week of April, 2007. Dave was one of the surfers I hung out with in Santa Cruz in the mid-50s. Before there were rubber suits, and boards were balsa. There were maybe 10 surfers living in Santa Cruz in those days, and I’d come over from Stanford every Thursday at noon and stay until Sunday night. Santa Cruz was a sleepy town in the winters and we had the place to ourselves. I remember one foggy morning, the Lane was a glassy 8 feet, and there were just 4 of us out (today there’d be 60). Or the time my roommate George Kovalenko and I were the only ones out on a sunny glassy 6′ day at Pleasure Point and we surfed nude (I mean there was not one other surfer from Outside Pleasure down to the Wild Hook!). Or Chubby Mitchell, 5’6, 285 pounds gracefully walking to the nose one day at the Rivermouth. Rod Lundquist’s $10-a-month cottage on Plateau Ave., with blooming century plant and stacks of surfboards outside and Beethoven symphonies blaring inside. Hey, the good old days really were good! The pic of Dave brought back memories. Here’s Dave’s photo, posted at Dave’s lifetime surfing spot, Inside Pleasure and The Wild Hook. Good on ya Dave!

Dave Devine, 1929-2007

I met Paul Maheu at the San Francisco Green Festival last November. He told me he was milling eucalyptus and pine logs otherwise destined for landfill. About 4 months later I was heading toward Richmond, gave him a call, and headed out to his yard, New Life Millworks, and was stunned by the sheer size of the operation. It’s a huge yard with enormous stacks of logs.

Just one of many piles of logs

These guys are diverting logs from landfill and turning them into useful building materials. Euc flooring looks just like oak. They have huge saws, one of them salvaged from a big lumber mill. They have a monster planer, with bins full of different shaped teeth. I mean, this is no “dimensional saw mill” operation. This is big time lumber making, and out of scrap. Small stuff is ground up and loaded in a special trailer on an 18-wheeler and transported to a wood-burning electricity-generation plant. A soup-to-nuts operation. Paul’s office has a Mac computer on a desk looking out into a bird-filled marsh.

Paul Maheu

Attention timber framers: They have a big pile of oak and hemlock beams salvaged from barns in mid-west Ohio.

This is a 40′ long (!) hand-hewn (!) 8×8 beam.

If you’re a builder in Northern California, you might want to check them out. They have pine, cedar, redwood, cypress, eucalyptus, walnut, and whatever comes along.

Paul Maheu

New Life Millworks

510-233-7785

www.NewLifeMillworks.com

For the past 14 years, a solitary albatross has flown into the small bay in Point Arena, Calif. (about 3 hours north of San Francisco) to spend the winter. An albatross is a king-sized version of a seagull, with a 6-7 foot wingspan. This one is a Laysan Albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis) and it has made friends with the surfers of Point Arena. If a surfer splashes a little, the albatross will swim over and touch him with his beak, and allow his chest feathers to be stroked. Townspeople have put up a plaque on the pier designating him Al B. Tross. Paul McHugh, the San Francisco Chronicle’s outdoor adventurer/writer, wrote a column on the albatross in February: Vagrant Albatross Returns

When my friend Michael Jeneid read the story, he went up to Pt. Arena and shot this photo with a 500 mm lens:

Al B. Tross chats it up with surfer Noah Moutan in Point Arena. Photo (c) 2007 Michael Jeneid

Bankruptcy Settled

I feel like Rip Van Winkle, just waking up from 1-1/2 months of not knowing what our future would be, due to the bankruptcy of our distributors, Publishers Group West. Stressful in the extreme, sleepless nights. Over 150 independent publishers were in the same boat, and there’s been a hair-raising roller coaster of a soap opera going on regarding our future. I won’t go into details here, but it’s been the hottest publishing thing to happen in ages. And as of Friday (Feb. 16), it got resolved, and actually the way I had hoped. Our distribution will be taken over by Perseus Book Group, and we’re back in biz, and a whole bunch of independent publishers are still afloat.

I haven’t been able to do much since the end of last year. In my “Bankruptcy” mailbox, there are now 346 emails since Jan 1. I needed a change from legal and contractual complexities, so I took off Thursday morning about 4AM, heading up the coast on Highway One to hang out with my friend Louie, who lives on a beautiful river in the redwoods. I love going north on the coast, the farther north you go, the more trees and animals there are.

Mom Is 100!

She’s never gone to a doctor. She raised 6 kids, three adopted. I was the oldest and by far the most troublesome and these days she’s vastly amused by recollections of my childhood antics. She’s alive and in such good shape today because of an angel from Mexico: Clara Morales, herself a mother, has been my mother’s caregiver and companion and loving friend for over 10 years. My mother, Virginia Essie Jones, was born in Salt Lake City, the oldest of 4 kids. She and her family moved to the San Francisco when they were in their 20s, and my mom met my dad. Here she is at 100!

Back On the Trails, Roads, and in the Water

My knee is pretty well healed and I’m up to running 6 miles or more, and also once again able to ride my skateboard. I skated about an hour on Friday on a smoothly-paved road going out the the Point Arena lighthouse. I also went surfing today, the first time in months, and I was rusty. Slow in getting up, slow paddling. I’ve got to work back into it. It’s so easy to just give up when you get to be 70 or so, but I’m determined to regain these skills.

Sherm and Merle Haggard

Sherman Welpton is a friend of mine from Stanford, a former athlete and energetic person who is now in a wheelchair. A few years ago i wrote something about him and his spirit and courage: Sherm and the Three-Legged Dog

Sherm and I went out last week and I wrote the following to update Sherm’s college friends:

****

Sherm hasn’t been able to move his lower body for years, and now he can barely move his arms and head. He shakes off and on – not always. It usually takes him a long time to get out a sentence, but other times, when he’s relaxed, he can carry on a conversation. He lives in a small town house in Oakland, just off Piedmont Avenue, and is looked after by three caregivers and his wife Ruthie (he got married last October). He needs 24-hour care. There’s a wonderful atmosphere at his place. They all get along and they all love Sherm.

On Friday I took him to see Merle Haggard at the Paramount Theater in Oakland. I got to his place a little early and we were sitting around talking with Sharon, one of the ladies that looks after him. It turns out that for his honeymoon he took Ruthie, Sharon, and Beverly to New York. “We stayed at the Helmsley Palace,” said Sharon. “He took us out to dinner to three different restaurants·and then we went on a cruise ship.” They took a five-day cruise up the Atlantic, stopping in Boston, New England, and then Halifax. Sharon was thrilled with the trip. I said, “Sherm, you took a trip with three women and they were all looking after you!” He smirked.

So off we went in his specially-equipped van. Working all the controls (door opens automatically and ramp slides out, etc.) and getting him in and his wheelchair locked in place, and then getting him out takes some doing. We got to the Paramount (a gorgeous art-deco theater) and got to our seats. There were a couple of young women in seats in front of us and one was bouncing around to the music. At one point I left to go get us some bottled water and when I came back, the bouncy woman had reached back and taken Sherm’s hand and was swinging their arms together in time to the music, which she did for several minutes. Jeez, you leave the guy alone for five minutes and he’s flirting. Sherm is bad!

The music was great. The vibes in the old theater were great.

Sherm loved it. He’s just an extraordinary guy. He doesn’t feel sorry for himself and he’s game to try anything.