I’m still amazed and amused that our simple handbuilt home got on the CBS Sunday morning show in May. It’s being rerun this Sunday (Aug. 21), 9 AM East Coast time, 6 AM (ulp!) West Coast time.

Link to show: https://is.gd/gCPiw

I met Bill Castle in Costa Rica about 20 years ago. He and his wife Barb were running a B&B just south of Puerto Limón on the Caribbean. Bill was a real builder, had built bridges before dropping out and creating a village in the woods of downstate New York called Pollywogg Holler. He ended up being one of the 3 featured builders in HomeWork: Handbuilt Shelter.

He’s an extraordinary builder. Chris McvClellan wrote an article for The Mother Earth News last year on his $10,000 house, anf I got reminded of it by Lew on his Shelterpub Facebook page. Article here: https://www.motherearthnews.com/Green-Homes/Timber-Frame-Homes.aspx

Outdoor classroom at Sustainability Centre in South Downs National Park, U.KOn 5/13/10, I got this email:

Dear Lloyd,

My name is Jack I’m 28 and a carpenter, I live in a town called Bridport in the south west coast of England. I’ve been a fan of your building books ever since a friend showed me a copy of Shelter in Spain when I was helping him build a cob house. I had never seen or heard of such structures before I went to help in 2003, He was using your book as a guide to build his house (which has been extremely successful); since then your other books have been and still are a true inspiration to my love of natural earth born structures. I have been working for a conservation building company for the last 5 years and want a change, something that will lead me to constructing unique and innovative buildings.

Read More …

In this mornings email:

Hi.

It’s Devin from Durban, South Africa here….

Just a note to say thanks:

About a week ago I took a drive up the coast to check out a small town I hadn’t been to in years… shockingly the place had been completely taken over by shopping malls and mile after mile of upmarket housing estates…. major bummer. Bad mood settling in, I stopped for a coffee and checked out a local bookshop. Only to discover….. The Barefoot Architect! Instant transformative power! A complete antidote to the crap that had ruined a town/whole stretch of coastline. A good mood ensued and it was only after getting home that I realised it was a shelter book (I’ve got Shelter, Homework, and my dad’s old copy of Shelter 2).

Keep up the great work!

Thanks,

Devin.

I’ve had a couple of those lightbulb-on moments of late:

1. In preparing for my tiny house book, I started looking over my photo archives. Wow! I’ve got a lot of good stuff. I’d forgotten. All the creative building going on out there.

2. I was planning to go to the Frankfurt book fair in October, then take 10 days to Istanbul and the coast of Turkey. Yesterday — flash — I need to stay here and get this book done. A two-week trip actually knocks me off schedule by about a month, since I can’t help shooting pictures and reporting wherever I go, and then must unload it upon return. Plus take care of all the brilliant ideas I’ve made note of while traveling (most of which don’t get carried out).

3. I’m starting to get more feedback on this blog, some of it critical. We like your blog Lloyd, but:

-a) Stay out of politics. You’re wrong in calling it Arizona’s hate law.

-b) Growing pot indoors hydroponically is fine.

-c) Stop knocking Dwell magazine

-d) Shame on you for printing color books in China

Criticism is welcome, no kiddin..Keeps me on my toes, but much as I’d like to respond, I need to focus on forward movement.

Today we started out socked in with fog from the sea. Started to clear around 10, now the sky is blue, with floating patches of low wispy fog, perfect temperature, Gregory Isaacs singing “Willow Tree” as I write this, a lovely song.

Wow! I’d forgotten this little Green Mountains beauty.

I just happened to run across photos I shot in the Green Mountains of Vermont in 2005, when I visited architects Dave Sellers and John Connell, the Yestermorrow school of building, and environs. I’ll post a bunch of these. Dave and his pals are in a vortex of creative architecture.

Hound Dog Taylor doing Give Me Back My Wig. I can’t hold still…