My First Music Gig

(Well, the first in 50 years*)

My mom is 99 and is living in a rest home. She lives in a wing with ladies in their 80s and 90s, maybe 15 of them. As are many people of this age, they have varying degrees of forgetfulness or confusion. Yesterday I took over my ukulele and sang songs with them. My repertoire of uke songs consists mostly of old tunes from the ’20s and ’30s’ like of the flapper era. When I played the uke in high school, these were the type songs that had ukulele arrangements.

The ladies had been playing Bingo and were all sitting around a table, looking bored. Boredom is a big problem for people in retirement homes. I was a bit nervous, but Clara, one of the caregivers, urged me on. She said they’d love it. I took the uke out of the case – none of them knew what I was going to do – tuned it, then played and sang Five Foot Two.

Five foot two

Eyes of blue

But oh what those five feet can do,

Has anybody seen my gal

By god, they all sat up. Sparkles came into eyes.

Turned up nose,

Turned down hose,

Never had no other beaus,

Has anybody seen my gal

It was a hit! Some of them were bouncing to the music. Big smiles. One lady, sitting next to my mom, was singing along, as were maybe 6-7 of them, and she had a clear, lovely voice. I focused on her and we sang together. Her eyes were bright and shining. She could really sing. Another lady, who I’d seen before, and always looked pretty out of it, never smiling, was transformed. Her face lit up, and she sang along. One of the caregiver girls was dancing in the background.

Bye Bye Blackbird/Ja-Da/When You Wore a Tulip/Over the Rainbow/Toot Toot Tootsie/My Little Grass Shack/Coney Island Baby/Singin’ in the Rain/Ain’t Gonna Study War No More/Peg O’ My Heart. We must have sung 30 songs. I was sweating. It was fun!

They liked the peppy ones like Ain’t She Sweet, but they also seemed to love the sentimental ones, which I ended up singing to them, like I’m In the Mood For Love, or I’ll See You in My Dreams. They clapped after each song. It was a very forgiving audience

Music can transform people. It cuts through everything, direct to the heart. I realized that these were the songs that these ladies had danced to and listened to with their beaus in the 30’s, and they (the songs) are mostly forgotten now. They want a return engagement this Sunday. I’m starting to practice at night. A few of them wanted to pay me and one said she was going to give me $750. I told her cash, check or money order.

*In high school (Lowell High, San Francisco, class of ’52), we had a quartet called “The Uncalled Four” and sang at rallies and parties. I had a Martin ukulele and one guy played the washtub bass. (One of our members was Bill Bixby, who went on to fame and fortune (The Incredible Hulk, My Favorite Martian, etc.)

The Invisibility of Old Guys

Grey hair has meant I can walk down the street virtually unnoticed. There’s none of the former sparring around with alpha males. I’m not considered a threat. And women? I saw an old friend recently, a guy who was a dashing figure in his earlier days; girls always noticed him. He said, “I walk down the street now and women don’t even see me.” When I’m in my reporter’s mode it’s great to go unnoticed. At times I wish I could be invisible, so I could observe “purely,” as it were, without my presence (and camera) altering the people I’m observing. Maybe by the time I’m 80 I’ll be totally invisible.

Back from Canada

I got back about 10 days ago from a trip shooting photos of carpenters and their work in and around Vancouver island, B. C. It takes me about this long to decompress, to get back into home mode. I’m pretty whacked out when I travel. On the road I operate at about 50% of my normal energy. A different bed every night, long periods driving. But at the same time I love it. Going down a road I’ve never been down before. It’s hunting, except with a camera instead of gun. I love the Pacific Northwest and the people up there. It was a great trip in terms of gathering material and hanging out with new-found sympático friends. The worst thing was not working out for a month. Hard on the body. When I get back and start running or paddling again, I get such a rush of energy and good-feeling. It’s a very real addiction,

Working Out

Bob Anderson, the author of Stretching, says “You never hear anyone say, ‘I’m sorry I worked out.'” Often I’m just too lazy or comfortable to get out and run or surf, but every single time I do I feel great. It never fails. If I make myself jump in a cold creek, I end up feeling incredible. Gotta do stuff like that more often. Talking to myself here.

I’m off on a month-long trip shooting photos for our next major book, Builders of the Northwest Coast. I’ve been on the road 5 days now and it’s been magical — sorry, no other word to describe what’s been happening. Driving over to a somewhat remote mountain hot springs center to talk to Sun Ray Kelley, things started getting good as I got into snow. When I got to the resort I found, to my complete surprise, an unbelievable masterpiece of a building. I spent 2 days photographing it and talking to Sun Ray, a most remarkable man.

Then I drove over to the Mendocino coast to hang out with my friend Louie for a few days. I lucked into some great music Saturday night at Bones Bar-B-Q & Blues club in Gualala. Four young locals from Ft. Bragg, blue grass and blues and it was one of those nights. Pretty soon every single person in the room (20-25 people maybe), including waitresses and burly bouncer, was dancing. Total band/audience rapport.

I took off yesterday, Monday, drove over to Clearlake where 1000s of seagulls were spectacularly present in the blue waters, then got on Highway 5 north. I went into the town of Mt. Shasta and lucked out in the body department. I took a sauna and then had some extraordinary bodywork done by Michael Bueno at the newly-opened Sacred Mountain Retreat. He unlocked all kinds of tensions and helped with my sports injuries. I’ve had tons of body work, and this was extraordinary. Is this guy good for athletes!

Sacred Mountain Spa, Mt. Shasta City, CA

Had a hamburger and vanilla malt at an all-night diner in Medford, Oregon around midnight. Good! Classic burger. Malt made with real ice cream, and a lot left in the stainless shake container placed on the counter. Good burger and shake: American masterpiece.

I slept in my truck (20 degrees), warm down bag, for 3-4 hours last night. Had great breakfast in Eugene at Zenon cafe. Fresh-made chicken-apple sausage.

I’m sitting in a very cool coffee shop, the Stumptown Roastery, in Portland. Is this a great town! I decided I’d try to drive into town and scope it out cold and it worked. Found a good street with bunch of cafes, asked someone and got directed to this very homey part of town. The neighborhood with cute charming frame houses, with big back yards, not all gussied up like in San Francisco. Nice people everywhere. I’m going to talk to a bunch of art students from Reed college tomorrow, then head up to Victoria.

From:

Marin Independent Journal

02/19/2006

https://www.marinij.com/fastsearchresults/ci_3526323

The House That Kahn Built:

Back-to-the-land believer promotes doing it yourself

Rick Polito

LLOYD KAHN sits downstairs from the octagonal tower sheathed in the redwood shingles he harvested at low tide from the nearby Bolinas beaches, and he slaps a well-calloused palm on the polished wood table.

“This is built from old floor joists,” he declares, giving the table another solid knock.

In Kahn’s world, do-it-yourself is almost beside the point. For the 70-year-old publisher and unapologetic old hippie, the idea is really to do it for yourself. Thirty-three years after he published “Shelter,” a textbook and tour of hand-built architecture that crested a counterculture back-to-the-land movement, Kahn is back on subject.

Lloyd Kahn built his house in Bolinas. He says he worked with carpenters and taught himself the trade.

(IJ photo/Frankie Frost)

He’d spent decades publishing fitness books, including a best seller on stretching, but his newest book, “Home Work: Handbuilt Shelter,” is clearly a sequel to “Shelter.” It reads like an autobiography. Kahn has seen a lot and likes to talk about all of it. “It all came out of my own life,” he says. “You can ride shotgun with me.”

But mostly he wants people to think about where and how they live, and why shaping it, building it and making it theirs is so important. “It’s going to be a really difficult thing to do,” Kahn says of building a home. “Harder than anything else you’ll ever do.” And then he adds, “but it’s a wonderful process.”

“Shelter” wasn’t just a guide to that process; it was a guide to an era. Kahn is quick to defend 1960s – “You don’t hear the success stories of the ’60s,” he’ll say -“and many of the buildings in “Shelter,” and “Home Work” could be zoned as hippie houses. These are homes for people who wanted to “create their own life,” and alternative building in the ’60s and early ’70s was an expression of that.

“Building your own house was just part of everything else,” he says.

It certainly was for Kahn. A native San Franciscan, Kahn was older than the baby boomers who launched those multiple revolutions, but he recognized the movement when it happened and left a job in insurance in 1965 for a “one of those ‘On the Road’ trips,” hitchhiking across the country.

“I decided there were other things I could do with my life than making a lot of money.”

When he got back, he started building. He worked with carpenters, taught himself the trade and started thinking about different ways of building, erecting a home in Marin from recycled lumber. “I was using used railroad ties things like that.”

He took a detour into geodesic domes “after hearing Bucky (Buckminster) Fuller talk” and became a “counterculture spokesman for dome building.” “I was Mr. Dome in those years,” he says. But when he grew disillusioned with domes – they leak and the floor plans are hard to define – he came back to simple homes. They were buildings anybody could build, and they did, lots of them.

“It was this little blip of history,” Kahn says.

The little where “Shelter” came from.

In the ’60s and early ’70s, a back-to-the-land ethic made living simply, and escaping the materialistic mainstream, a definable social statement. Back-to-the-landers fled to areas where building codes did not penetrate. “People were jumping suburbia,” recalls Peter Warshall, a former editor of the Whole Earth Magazine, and a contributor to “Shelter.” In the country, people were free to define their own lives and the structures in which they lived those lives. “No one was out there looking at building codes,” Warshall recalls.

When Kahn bought his Bolinas lot, “a building permit was $200 and you could draw your own plans.”

It was happening in lots of places. People used local materials and sometimes whimsical shapes. Ilka Hartmann, another Bolinas dweller who contributed photographs to “Shelter,” recalls it as an era of “voluntary simplicity.”

“People were very consciously rejecting the ’50s and the sterility of the ’50s,” Hartmann says.

There was a pride in living and building outside the commercial whirl. Hartmann remembers salvaging lumber from a decommissioned Fort Baker in Sausalito. “I spent a whole day just pulling nails for the floor,” she says. “Shelter” captured that.

“It’s an expression of that time.”

But times change.

Warshall would say that the homesteaders were too successful for their own good. The appeal of rural life became popular. Second homes drove up prices. Suburbia caught up.

And speculation crept in. Warshall believes homes stopped being statements — “We all thought of our houses as living organisms at that time” — and started being investments.

Homes became grander. The counters went granite and the spa tub was trimmed in marble for the master bath, not planked together out of redwood next to the organic garden.

“People got into thinking of houses as turnover houses,” Warshall says.

Whatever happened, Kahn isn’t happy about it. People are living in houses that are too big, too expensive and ill-tuned to their surroundings.

“Things got more expensive, and building something got much, much more expensive,” he says.

All that deprives people of an essential experience.

Kahn is still living in a house that will “never” be finished. He attributes a favorite proverb to Arab origin; “When a man finishes building his house, he’s dead.” Kahn says he works on his house “one day a week” and assumes many of the readers who wore through multiple copies of Shelter are doing the same.

Louie Frazier is one of them.

Frazier lives on the Garcia River in Mendocino County near Point Arena, weaving furniture from willow branches and living in the house he built with inspiration from “Shelter.”

Frazier met Kahn when the Bolinas publisher was working on “Home Work” and was able to show him how the book became a house. He took Kahn on a tour, pointing out features he’d borrowed from “Shelter.”

“I held up the book and I said, ‘See this?'”

Frazier was part of Kahn’s “little blip of history.” He got to his land before the building codes caught up.

“It’s pretty natural to build a nest,” Fraizier says. “It’s only the building codes that make you think you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Kahn would say everybody can know what they are doing. “If you don’t know how to do something,” he says. “Start doing it and you’ll figure it out as you go along.”

He senses that more people are ready to do just that. The free form expression of “Shelter” has given away to a green building environmental ethic with do-it-yourselfers experimenting with straw bale homes, “papercrete,” “rasta” blocks made out of recycling plastic and other energy efficient building styles.

“I was at a solar energy conference in Hopland and it was just like the ’60s,” he says, beaming.

What he hopes is that people learn that rethinking their homes doesn’t begin and end at Home Depot. It starts somewhere inside. By building their own home, or just changing it, people might better understand what they really need and not just what they saw in a magazine, or in their neighbor’s kitchen.

It’s just not do-it-yourself, he would say.

It’s do-it-for-yourself.

For about 12 years (1989-2001) I’d go to Baja California every chance I got. 3-4 times a year, for stays of 4 days to 3 weeks. I fell in love with the place as soon as I got out into the blue Sea of Cortez on a ferry headed for La Paz one fine Spring day. Desert, beach, waves, plants, birds, stars at night, warm water, blue blue skies. I drove from La Paz through Todos Santos, Cabo San Lucas, and to San José del Cabo, old Spanish-style town on the southern tip of Baja.

One day I walked into a small gift shop and met 26-year old Isidro (Chílón) Amora, a native of Mexico City. We hit it off immediately. He was another explorer, he searched out fossil sites, cave paintings, remote beaches, waterfalls in magic canyons, and knew the history of the Los Cabos area, its discovery by the Spanish in the 1500s, the English pirate ships terrorizing Spanish galleons, the original inhabitants — the strong and beautiful Pericua tribe.

Over the years Chílón and I criss-crossed Baja, either in my desert converted VW Baja bug, or his rail (dune buggy). We camped on beaches and in arroyos, visited remote ranchos, old missions, found hot springs, ate in a hundred taco stands. We’d go to places where I was the only gringo. I loved that! I got inside the culture. Chílón knew the cool local restaurants, bars, taco stands, nightclubs, art galleries – places I’d never have found on my own.

It also helped that he was a local celebrity due to his 2-hour children’s talk/music show on Sundays. He played “Periquín,” a parrot with a kind of high, birdlike voice and talked to the kids. His trademark was a trill, like when you flutter your tongue against the rood of your mouth, Rrrrrrrrr. All Los Cabos kids listened to him. He played rock and roll and reggae, told the kids to respect their parents, kids got to talk on the air. As we’d walk down the streets, people would go Rrrrrrrrrr in passing. There was a wave of good will wherever he went, and I coasted along in his wake. I got to see Baja from a Mexican point of view, far different from the standard gringo/Baja wavelength — at their most receptive and revealing.

We launched a newspaper, El Correcaminos, that turned out great, but never got past its first issue Always in the back of my mind was a book on Baja. I shot thousands of pictures over the years, made notes, accumulated over 50 books on Baja. I was into it!

My love affair with Baja didn’t end, but the exigencies of my publishing business and the need to get some books (including Homework) done, intervened, and I quit going down there about 4 years ago.

Last week I went down for 5 days, to hang out with Chílón, to witness the profound developmental changes in Los Cabos, to take another look. In my next posting I’ll add a few photos and comments. On this trip I realized that, with the unique perspective I’ve had through Chílón, as well as my other Mexican friends Fino (local surfer dude), and Yuca (“pocho” hotelier, deal-maker), I had (have) a ton of unique material for a book. Suddenly, the Baja book, which had been on the back burner has taken on a reality. Maybe 2007. This project now makes sense, especially with the large numbers of people going to the region, there’s an audience not only among North Americans, but with travelers from other countries. I’m working on my Builders of the Northwest Coast now, but this looks like the next major book. Hey it’s so great to get excited about something, to have a book hove into view like this. This just clicked.

La Paz is a great town right now. It’s a lot more real than Cabo San Lucas or San José del Cabo (or Todos Santos.) Sure gringos are there in force, but it’s still a Mexican town.

German motorcyclist on the Baja tour on his BMW in the courtyard of El Azul Angel, great little hotel in La Paz.

Chilón

Mexican wit and ingenuity. Hamburgers cooking on pickup truck converted-to-grill on the Malecón in La Paz.

Old adobe building in El Triunfo, former copper mining town 30 miles south of La Paz

Chilón and I stayed up all Saturday night, then went out to Coyote Beach at dawn on Sunday (east of Tecolote) to watch the sunrise, which was pink due to cloud cover. I jumped in the 70-degree water for a sunrise swim. On the way back to town we came upon these turkey buzzards drying their wings on cardon cacti.

Chair made of palm frond stems by Chilón’s friend Alfredo. These stems are actually scrap from palm leaf palapa roofs.

Sale y vale,*

Lloyd

*Mexican slang for “goodbye,” pronounced sah-lay vah-lay. Try it next time you’re saying goodbye to a Mexican, instead of “adios.” It always gets a great reaction.

Tuesday night at 6 I met my running friends at Muir Beach. It was pitch black, windy, spiting bits of rain. I knew where I wanted to go, so slipped away from the boyz and headed out to the beach. I ran down the creekside road and it was totally flooded in spots. I jumped right in. (Once you get your feet and legs wet, you’re relaxed and not struggling to keep dry.) I splashed through the puddles with a kind of glee — away from the grown-ups. I ran to the beach/pounding waves/not a soul/then up along cliffs on trails and road to my destination, a finger of land 2 miles down the coast that juts out into the ocean, maybe 500′ above the water. I walked down the narrow trail to the farthest-out point, turned my light off and faced the ocean. El Pacífico!

Wind howling

breathing deeply

pumping chi.

It must have been 50-60 mph. When there was a gust I’d lean into it and it would hold me up for a minute. It would have ripped an umbrella out of yr. hands. We’re talkin power! Every cell in my body felt alive.

On the way back to the pub I jumped in the creek, tights, shoes and all, with my headlight hanging from a bush, illuminating the water. O what a night! Charged up for days…