On the road again
Heard about a 2-story driftwood shack at Navarro beach, road to beach closed because Navarro River has not broken thru to ocean, making big flooded Estero. Tried to walk thru yesterday afternoon, but water soon up over knees, so had to settle for this long shot. I’m heading south today to another long sandy beach with a bunch of shacks. Glad I got this iPhone 8 plus, way improved camera. BUT am so pissed off I forgot to bring my grown-up camera (Olympus OM-D) with telephoto lens. Damn! Still, you get the idea. Watch for my new book, Driftwood Shacks: Anonymous Architecture Along the California Coast. As a result of this trip, the book has grown by at least a dozen pages. This is the first in a field of small print-on-demand books we’re going to try. I have a ton of things that I’d like to make small books out of. Barns, motorcycles, New York City, L.A., Baja California Sur…
Meanwhile, finishing 2nd draft of my book on the ’60s, present working title: “Something’s Happening…
Haven’t got subtitle, maybe “My Life and the ’60s”
I took off from home about noon yesterday, on my way north on Hwy One to Pt. Arena to hang out with with my pal Louie in Pt. Arena and environs.
I’m in midst of publishing 64-pg. book, “Driftwood Shacks,” and about halfway up the coast, spotted a nicely symmetrical tipi-shaped beach shack from a cliff. Whoa! Totally timely. I climbed down the cliff and discovered a strung-out village of maybe 15 beach shacks over a mile and a half, perfect day after rains, good surf, jogging along beach, gulls, turkey buzzards soaring, beach vibes rich in chi.
I think my book just grew another dozen pages. Will be out before year’s end. Digital printing by Ingram’s Lightning Source. Color, 8 by 8”, probably $20. This is a shot of my computer screen this morning.
Photo by our friend, French carpenter yogan, of The Church of Colònia Güell, an unfinished work by Antoni Gaudí. It was built as a place of worship for the people in a manufacturing suburb in Santa Coloma de Cervelló, near Barcelona.
See yogan’s blog for many more photos of Gaudi’s work, as well as of other unique buildings in different parts of the world:
https://yogan.over-blog.com/
Note: Check out the comments for more on Gaudi
I went to the 65th (!) reunion of my class of 1952, Lowell High School, San Francisco, on Friday. About 80 people out of a class of 250 attended. Even though I’ve taken a different direction (wealth, politics) than most of them, I still love seeing these friends of 70+ years.
It was held at the Basque Cultural Center in South San Francisco, and this wagon was parked out in front. The curved roof, with bed at one end is, I believe, an excellent configuration for a tiny home, far better than the poster boy for tiny homes, the steep gable roof with ladder to loft for sleeping — a bad design, in my opinion, for many reasons. Here you can have drawers under the bed, and the curved roof gives you a feeling of spaciousness, as opposed to the claustrophobia of many tiny home designs.
This is also the basic design for the vardo of the Roma people in Europe.
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I’m heading up to Oregon (a state I love in its entirety) on Friday. I’ll be doing these events:
Saturday, Aug. 5, 10 AM, SMALL HOMES at The Mother Earth News Faire in Albany (70 miles south of Portland on I-5)
Sunday, Aug. 6, 2 PM, 50 YEARS OF NATURAL BUILDING at TMEN Faire
Schedule: https://www.motherearthnewsfair.com/oregon/schedule/
I heartily recommend the TMEN fairs, They’re genuine country fairs, with chickens, goats, dimensional lumber mills, a ton of workshops, great food, good country vibes. There are 2 more coming up, September in Pennsylvania, October in Kansas
Monday Aug. 7, 7:30 PM SMALL HOMES at Powell’s on Hawthorne in Portland: https://www.powells.com/locations/powells-books-on-hawthorne/
On Tuesday I’m gonna go hang out with Foster Huntington, surfer, skater, filmmaker, Instagram master at his treehouse/skate bowl complex just over the border in Washington. Back home Wednesday. Then back to Oregon in a week (driving this trip) for the solar eclipse.
Jim Morrison said once that when they (The Doors) finished a record, only then were they released to start thinking about the next one. When I finished Small Homes, I couldn’t think what to do next. I’d sort of run the gamut of 9″x12′ building books, each with about color 1000 photos, from Home Work to Small Homes. Retire? No way! I’m just getting warmed up.
About the same time there was an explosion of articles, TV specials, museum exhibits, and conferences rehashing “The Summer of Love.” (Yes, I know I’ve written this before, but I’m further into it all now.)
Since my take on the years was so different from everything being written or presented, I decided to write my own version of the ’60s. (I was there.) The project seemed to gather momentum as I proceeded. I started having fun. I hadn’t looked back at those times in any sort of organized way, and I found myself not only marveling at what happened, but having new insights with the perspective of 5 decades.
Plus, the 60s weren’t an abstraction for me. The concepts, the spirit, the new knowledge profoundly changed my life. (I just realized this now.)
Stop, children, what’s that sound,
Everybody look—what’s going down.
-Buffalo Springfield
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Tags: alternative energy, architecture, art, builders, building, carpentry, fun, green building, homesteading, natural building, nature, small homes, tiny homes, treehouses, vehicles
