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An Unheralded Sicilian Artisan

October 18, 2021 at 1:20 am
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One of the moments that makes all the stress of travel worthwhile.

Waiting for the ferry to Sicily, this guy in a kind of beat up car in front of me was repacking his stuff, and pulled this out.

I went over and we were able to converse in Spanish. I told him how great they were and gave him one of our mini books.

He had driven to Barcelona with a bunch of these little constructions to sell, but hadn’t sold any. Price, about 50 Euros (cheap!).

Native Siciliano, Marco Paderni, from Catania.

Then he took out a 2nd smaller one (second pic), pointed to it and said “Regalo” — gift. I thanked him, but demurred, referring to air travel.

What generosity! Isn’t it strange how people with the least resources are the most generous?

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Wynken, Blynken and Nod

June 17, 2021 at 3:30 am
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Three side-by-side houses in SFO’s Sunset district last week.

One person commented that he had lived in one of these and that it had a 5′ by 5′ outdoor patio in the center of the house. Come to think if it, I remember such an inner patio in my friend Rod Lundquist’s mother’s house out in the avenues, it was like a light well with windows looking into it on all 4 sides. A pretty nice feature for houses that are built wall-to-wall.

The title popped into my mind and I just looked it up, nothing to do with houses, but a pretty nice opening stanza in this poem by Eugene Field, 1850-1895:

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
    Sailed off in a wooden shoe,
Sailed into a river of crystal light
    Into a sea of dew.

“Where are you going, and what do you wish?”
    The old moon asked the three.
“We have come to fish for the herring fish
    That live in this beautiful sea;
    Nets of silver and gold have we,”
Said Wynken, Blynken, and Nod

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66-Year-Old UK Woman Told to Tear Down Self-Built House

April 24, 2021 at 3:30 am

This just came in from Anon:

Woman, 66, is ordered to demolish her £59k log cabin eco-home where she has lived for seven years after council ruled it was too big and breached planning permission.

The mother-of-three spent £59,000 of her life savings constructing the cabin from natural materials and applied for planning permission at the time in order to do so.

She was told she did not require permission as there was already a mobile home on the site in the quaint hamlet.

‘I was given this formal legal document dated January 23, 2014 that said ‘application not required’. ‘I built it exactly the same as it looks in the plans I submitted in 2013. It is absolutely identical.’

“But Herefordshire County Council has since performed a U-turn and told her the wooden structure is unauthorized and in breach of planning regulations.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9504475/Woman-66-ordered-demolish-59k-log-cabin-eco-home-lived-seven-years.html

If you run up against a firewall here, use Chrome Incognito Window (under “File” pull down window).

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A Home in Sooke, British Columbia

April 9, 2021 at 3:30 am

Shot on a trip in 2017, hanging out with Godfrey Stephens and Bruno Atkey…

I like a lot of things about this design, like the way the shingles flair out over the lower windows.

Too bad more people having homes built don’t just go with the thousands of well-worked-out designs like this, rather than hiring an architect, who will usually be trying to make a “statement.”

There are lots of of home-sweet-homes designs out there, worked out over centuries.

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Postcard from a Prisoner

March 12, 2021 at 12:22 pm

It’s great to connect with people in prison. These books give them something to hope for, ideas for things they can do for themselves once they get out.

We sent the two requested books yesterday.

(I whited out the prisoner’s full name here.)

Note: We continue to send books free of charge to any prisoner who so requests.

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House Built of Bridge Timbers in Big Sur

February 11, 2021 at 3:30 am

In 1968, I moved from Mill Valley to Big Sur and worked as foreman on a job building this house out of bridge timbers. The architect was George Brook-Kothlow. George had purchased all the bridge timbers from the town of Duncan’s Mills on the Russian River; they tore down the redwood bridge to build one of concrete, and George had hand-hewn 12 × 12 posts, 16-foot-long 6-by-16s and 16-foot-long 8-by-22s.

Carpenters Paul and Seth Wingate went down with me and we lived on the site, Rancho Rico, a 400-acre ranch with two private beaches. We remodeled some chicken coops for living quarters.

I spent about a year on the project. It was a struggle. We had to splice together two 8-by-22s for the 32-foot-long rafters, and lift them into place with a boom on the back of the ranch backhoe. There were 11 concrete pours for the foundation, each one coming 40 miles down the winding coast from Monterey. I quit after we got the building framed.

About 10 years ago, I went down for a visit. The family had moved into the chicken coops and they were renting the house for $13,000 a month.

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