It’s happening on August 21st. I’m heading up to Oregon, with stop-offs at Stewart Mineral Springs near Lake Shasta (also, looking forward to seeing Shasta full for the 1st time in years), then to see legendary bodybuilder and good friend Bill Pearl and his wife Judy in Medford/Ashland area, then to Umpqua hot springs, then somewhere in totality zone for the big event.

Here’s link to where it will be visible in the US:

https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/total-eclipse-of-sun-august-21-2017

I witnessed a total eclipse in Baja in July, 1991, and it was (sorry for the hackneyed phrase, but…) awesome. Never to be forgotten.

My friend Chilón alerted me to it a year before, and I reserved a hotel room in San José del Cabo ($25 pr night). The morning of the eclipse I got up at 6AM, caught the 1st bus into Cabo San Lucas, rented a Honda motorcycle, and drove up the Pacific side towards Todos Santos, took a dirt road out to Playa Margarita, which turned out to be a spectacular miles-long sandy beach. As it was early, I went bodysurfing; there was abundant fool’s gold on the sand and as I swam (no goggles, but water was clear), flecks of gold swirled around me. What a planet!

It turned out there were 6 other people on the beach:

From left: two hair dressers from Denver, Craig and Frank; and 4 young Mexicans from Monterrey: Enrique (in foreground), Marta, Arturo and Juan. Craig and Frank had weed, the kids had a bottle of tequila, and it coalesced into a party.

The boys had eclipse glasses so we took turns watching the moon gradually blot out the sun. The sky turned blue-dark and everything was bathed in a light I’d never seen before. Incrediblé!

We finished the bottle, and then, after 2-3 hours together, our eclipse family took off in different directions, never to see each other again. I swam some more, then returned the motorcycle, went back to San José and had dinner at Le Baguette, a lovely French restaurant in this desert town. I’d call that a perfect day.

I don’t spend nearly as much time on this blog as I used to, because:

-I need to devote time to books

-I’m doing Instagram, which I like a lot, and each Instagram post gets put on the blog (and Twitter) automatically. The trouble is they look a bit weird, with hash tags, and too-large type. For which I apologize.

-I wish I had the time to do blog posts like I did a few years ago, but I need to focus on projects that bring in income. I told Stewart Brand a few months ago that I’d done over 5,000 posts, with no corresponding income and he said, what took you so long to figure that out?

Guess what just came on the radio (playing at this moment)? “I’m so tired, Lord, of bein broke all the time,” by Canned Heat. 

  Cosmic timing, eh?

My “Tour” I’m writing this from Courtenay, a (real) town I like a lot on Vancouver Island. I’m in the early stages of a tour of bookstore appearances with my new book. I just did the Community Hall on Hornby Island; the place was packed — young and old kindred spirits. Before I left, I did Mollusk Surf Shop in San Francisco and started by showing a few old scratchy B&W photos from surfing in Santa Cruz in the’50s, before wet suits and polyurethane foam, it was so much fun! Beer, cider, great music. Standing room only, some people couldn’t get in. A couple of angels made it possible.

Dates:

-Thursday (tomorrow): Russell Books, 734 Fort St, Victoria, 7 PM

-Tuesday, May 23, 7PM, Vancouver Public Library, Main Branch, 350 West Georgia St, Vancouver

-Thursday, May 25, 7:30 PM, McNally Robinson Books, 1120 Grant Ave, Winnipeg

-Saturday, May 27, Toronto: 11 AM, the Public Library at Parkdale; 2 PM, The Public Library, Danforth/Coxwell

-Thursday,June 1, Spoonbill and Sugartown in Brooklyn, 7PM

I’ve booked 6 flights for this sojourn. Sheesh! Booked into AirBnB places in Vancouver and Toronto to avoid high hotel bills.

New book: I’m working on a book on the ’60s. Someone told me a few weeks ago that it’s been 50 years since the “Summer of Love,” and there are a bunch of exhibits, articles, a lot of attention on the era, and most all that I read or see about it doesn’t correlate with what I saw happen. So I’m writing about  it from my own perspective, with my own photos. I grew up in San Francisco, went to high school in the Haight Ashbury district, and was 10 years older than the group (baby boomers) that caused it all to happen. I dropped out of the insurance business in 1965, partly because I felt I had more in common with young people than I did with my own generation. I’m not sure if it will come together as a book, but I’m following my modus operandi of: If you don’t know what to do — start. We’ll see.

Other books “The Half Acre Homestead,” a scrapbook on barns, a book on Baja, possibly a wild book on building by a French friend of mine…

Print-on-demand or short run books  A lot of things that don’t require a major book. The first one will be a 48-page book: Driftwood Shacks: Anonymous Architecture of the California Coast. In past years I  put together a bunch of handmade, hand-lettered sort of scrapbooks on trips: roaming through the southwest deserts, LA, NYC (both visually rich), Southeast Asia, the Greek island Lesbos (on a motor scooter)…I’ll see if it makes sense to do limited editions.

I feel like’ I’m just getting rolling.

I love it here in Canada. So many wonderful people + a bunch of true and lifelong friends. I told Michael the other day it feels like a “separated at birth” situation, it’s all so familiar and friendly and tuned into my sensibilities.

In which the Pericúes, the tribe of southern Baja California, offed Padre Tamaral of the San José del Cabo mission. What’s extraordinary is that it’s depicted in this tile plaque on the church here. Their revolt lasted for 3 years.

Anyone who fishes (or clams or collects anything from the California coast) will love this book. In fact, anyone on the west coast of the USA, from Baja California up to BC, will learn how to catch, gather, clean, and cook fish, clams, mussels, eels, crabs, and seaweed from this witty and complete fishing compendium. Kirk Lombard worked for 7 years as an observer for The Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission before becoming “The Sea Forager” in the San Francisco Bay Area. He conducts fishing classes, does demonstrations, and sells sustainable seafood. IYou can get info on all his coastal activities and buy the book at: https://www.seaforager.com/

Full disclosure: I’ve been to one of Kirk’s fishing demos, attended a seminar on making pickled herring, and went fishing with him for night smelt (caught 15 lbs. that night, netting them in the surf).) I’ve gotten a ton of useful info from him, including tonight, when I used his technique for getting the skin off horseneck clam siphons (slit lengthwise, soak in warm water for 10 min.) before making clam fritters (below, left).

He tells you how to catch salmon, halibut, rockfish, striped bass, and 8-10 other kinds of fish, how to gather 15 different types of shellfish, how to pickle seaweed (I’ve got a jar of pickled kelp in the frig right now, and I put ground-up dried seaweed on omelets, potatoes, anything hot). He’s big on the small fish in the area — herring, anchovies, smelt, grunion, and mackerel — because they’re low on the food chain, super healthy, and take pressure off the popular fish.

He’s got a sense of humor, plays in a band (his oldest kid is named Django), and has fun with his work and teaching.

The book is very nicely illustrated by Leighton Kelly.

These days I’m doing less posts on this blog and more on The Shelter Blog. I realized that I had a lot of build-garden-homestead-forage experience (and assemblage) to communicate and liked the idea of putting it all in one place.

I’ll cross-reference some of my posts on the new blog with this one, such as this:

1983 Toyota 4×4 Pickup Truck Used on Baja Beaches and Desert

I bought it used from a builder friend. It didn’t have the “Xtra cab,” so the bed was 8′ long.

Tarp for Shade:  I had a Yakima Rocket Box on racks on the camper roof, with a flea market tarp (12’×14′) folded up inside. The frame was 1″ electrical conduit, with special connectors tightenable with wingscrews. The tarp was aluminized fabric. It was weighted down with canvas bags filled with sand and hung from each corner (ingenious!). Took maybe 45 minutes to set up. I’d place it butting up to the truck bed.
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