Friday I did a slide show on Tiny Homes on the Move at the Napa Bookmine bookstore. A great bookstore, a wonderful crowd, all of us on the same page. Made me think of Sam Cooke saying to the audience on his “Live at Harlem Square” album, “I can see you’re with me tonight.”

Rapport has been wonderful lately. 45 years of doing these building books; there’s a thread through these books and people who’ve read them. A tribe of us interested in a certain kind of shelter, warm, inviting, full of life, the antithesis of the Dwell magazine aesthetic.

“…all rooms ought to look as if they were lived in, and to have, so to say, a friendly welcome for the incomer.”

-William Morris

And working with our own hands.

Shot a lot of photos of mostly small homes in Napa. After dinner, store owners Naomi and Eric and I and a bunch of their friends headed up into the hills and had a marvelous meal prepared by master chef (and carpenter and musician) Steve Hutchinson. Wine flowed, 2 of the guys worked for wineries, it was a real treat. After everyone left, Steve and I got in the hot tub, yes, with glasses of wine, yes a hot tub in Napa, snark away, Californians in their hot tubs, etc. It started to rain — hard — and here we were at 2200 feet on a mountain, in hot water in the pouring-down rain.

Blogs I’m putting most of my posts on building on TheShelterBlog now. I’m starting to link to those from this blog. TheShelterBlog focusses on building, homesteading, gardening, and the home arts, whereas this blog tracks my eclectic path through life. Note: if you go to the “Categories” button on the right and select a subject, like, say, “Natural Materials,” you’ll get all the posts on that subject. The info available this way is growing each day. This is getting to be a body of work.

Dwell Magazine I can’t help myself from continuing to knock this soulless, sterile publication. Who are the people that live this way? Certainly different from our tribe.

Stretching—The Pocketbook Edition Rick Gordon is about halfway through building a 5″ x 8″ pocketbook edition of our best-selling book (3-1/2 million copies, 23 languages). Pocketbook editions of Stretching have been very popular in Spain and Germany and we feel it’s time to introduce it in English. Out in 2015.

Small Homes Our next building book is under way. Contributors are beginning to send us photos, descriptions. Note: Contact us if you know of (or have built) an imaginative, artistic, practical, and/or economical home in the 400-1200 sq. ft. range: lew@shelterpub.com

Mini-Skeleton I was looking through Cool Tools for Christmas present ideas and one of the items led me to this unique little (9″ high) skeleton, available from Amazon. One of the comments from a nursing student said that both the leg bones (tibia and fibula) were switched; same with the arm bones (radius and ulna) This is true, but I was able to switch all 4 of them into the right positions. This is a fine little skeleton, ingeniously produced, for a very low price. BTW, there is a great children’s book on anatomy that’s selling on Amazon or $.01 these days: The Human Body by Ruth Dowling Brunn and Bertel Braun.

My Life Since I quit competitive running, I’ve been taking long walks in the woods, looking for mushrooms, wild foods such such as yerba buena tea, cattail pollen, watercress, miners lettuce, etc. Been getting clams, fishing for eels. Picking up oak trees knocked down by storms on the roads for firewood. Skateboarding when I can.

–Yoga started again after a year’s absence, it’s so good for stiff, banged-up bodies like mine.

-Kauai Going there the last 2 weeks of January, to get in the warm water, do some hiking, shoot photos of small homes.

Comedian David Dean on the radio last week:

“Honk if you love Jesus.

Text and drive if you want to meet him.”

“’Pamir’ was originally launched in Hamburg in 1905, she had a steel hull, a tonnage of 3020 gross, an overall length of 375 feet, a beam of 46 feet and a loaded draught of 24 feet. Her three masts stood 168 feet above the deck and the main yard was 92 feet wide. She carried a total of 50,000 square feet of sails and could reach a top speed of 16 knots, while her speed on passage was often better than 10 knots.

Pamir, a four-masted barque, was one of the famous Flying P-Liner sailing ships of the German shipping company F. Laeisz. She was the last commercial sailing ship to round Cape Horn, in 1949. By 1957 she had been outmoded by modern bulk carriers and could not operate at a profit. Her shipping consortium’s inability to finance much-needed repairs or to recruit sufficient sail-trained officers caused severe technical difficulties. On 21 September 1957 she was caught in Hurricane Carrie and sank off the Azores, with only six survivors rescued after an extensive search.…”

Photo: https://i.imgur.com/GYNzpLS.jpg

Text: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamir_(ship)

This little girl came up to me at my Vancouver book presentation and started jumping up and down: “I’m getting a bunk bed, I’m getting a bunk bed !” Her folks were fixing up a trailer for all of them to live in. I gave her a mini book, which she’s holding up here. Thanks to her mom, Dee McLaughlin, for the photo.

Got up at 5:45 this morning, caught cab to CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corp.) Newsroom for my 10 minutes of early morning fame. Host was Rick Cluff who, among other things, was vastly amused by the mini-version of Tiny Homes On the Move. The newsroom was exciting. Big Time.

I said to him before we went on air that the internet sure hasn’t destroyed radio and he heartily agreed.

Good vibes everywhere I go in Canada. A lot of Canadian builders know me from Builders of the Pacific Coast. I point out to people it’s a book by an American about Canadians. How often does that happen?