The Red Rockers’ 60-foot dome in Colorado, built from math in Domebook One. Jack Fulton and I dropped in on them unannounced on a snowy Saturday night in 1972 when we were on a trip shooting photos for Shelter (published in 1973). We lucked into a venison dinner and then a rock-and-roll band in a small nearby town.
The Rockers had moved to Colorado from LA and built the communal dome.
But as time passed, couples wanted more privacy and began building little outlying sheds.
If you ask me for my go-to favorite musical genre, it’s gonna be blues.
But once in a while, I get hit by the power of rock & roll. Like this album. a song of which was played by Neil Dickman on his great “Bring It On Home” (Friday, 7PM) program on our world-class local radio station, KWMR.
I just ordered this appropriately named CD.
I say this after some 50 years of smoking pot. I kidded myself through all those years: sure tobacco is deadly, but not pot.
I could feel it in my lungs about 5 years ago, and I switched to vaping, ending up with an ice-filled water pipe bong, with herb activated by a German heat gun (no flames). But even that started to feel not so good.
A couple of things I realized after I made the break:
I’ll bet these oils people are smoking are full of tar.
I got my lungs checked and they seem to be OK, but I think I’ve done a little damage. (Although a doctor once told me that if I quit smoking for 2 years, my lungs would clear.)
I know one thing: my lungs are telling me to back off on all heat-produced cannabis vapors.
Edibles. Sprayables.
Just sayin
Practice Architecture’s house is built from the plant growing in the fields around it.
…
Flat House, as the home on Margent Farm is called, is the conversion of a steel-framed agricultural shed, within which a new structure has been made of prefabricated timber-framed cassettes that were filled with a mulch of hemp, lime and water known as hempcrete. Once the mulch was dry they were erected into thick, highly insulating walls that also hold the building up. The exterior is covered in corrugated panels, which at first glance looks like the cement cladding typical of farm sheds. It is actually made of fibres from the outer coating of hemp stalks combined with resin taken from agricultural waste. It has a livelier texture and a more translucent quality than cement.
From Maui Surfer
This is a great book. I found it so fascinating, I read it cover-to-cover. I’ve known growers for years, but never realized the full extent of what it takes (took) to grow out in the woods. It’s not only a book about farming, but about gardening, wildlife, plants and trees, and about treating the earth with respect.
Also, the drawings are great (see link below). Andrew told me it was about a year in creation.
Up until now, guerrilla growers in Mendocino and Humboldt counties produced organic, high-strength cannabis, grown without chemicals or electricity. Now things have changed. Yes, it’s become legal, but there are a host of downsides to the recent legislation. The 30 or so years of guerrilla growers hand-growing and homegrowing a clean product have just about ended, as Big Business has moved in. A lot of pot is testing positive for pesticides. People buy their organic produce at Whole Foods, yet don’t know if what they are smoking is laced with insecticides. How much are your lungs worth? Advice to pot smokers: Know thy grower.
Andrew’s book encapsulates the romance and righteousness of working with nature, and documents an era of wholesome cannabis production.
To get it (and to see some of the pages), go to: mollywestranch.com
In Kinokuniya, a great bookstore, 1071 Ave of the Americas…
Reefer madness
A bunch of the You Tube songs I’ve posted in the last week or so are from Godfrey Stephens.
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.
Years ago I reasoned that some commercial pot growers would resort to insecticides if they were faced with losing an entire crop due, say, to spider mites. I thought of people buying organic produce at Whole Foods, then smoking marijuana that had been sprayed with toxic chemicals. A friend of mine said, “They’re smoking paraquat.”
Pot smokers, beware. Here is a Google search I did today on the subject:
The big commercial operators have a way different modus operandi than people who grow outdoors, with untreated water, compost, organic supplements, and sunshine. No electricity for light or fans, no chemical fertilizers or insecticides, no soil-less, hydroponic wizardry.
AND — I’ve had conversations with people about vaporizers, costing between $200-600. “Oh, way too expensive.” Well, how much are your lungs worth?