My friend Michael McNamara, who lives on Hornby Island, sent me this and said that he and Sally didn’t know I’d moved to Hornby and would I like to come over for dinner. Joking.

   I think the confusion might be that I covered my favorite builder, Lloyd House, in the Tiny Homes book. Lloyd lives in a converted van on Hornby.

   I mean, if I did move somewhere, Hornby would be at the top of the list, but I’m still here in NorCal, living in a house I built 40 years ago.

Article here.

I’ve had interviews and photos appear in several Japanese magazines lately, all on the subject of our building books and in-middle-of-garden production studio. Wish I could read what they’re saying about us.

I got a Google Alert about a video on our homestead and office that had been posted on https://www.rootsimple.com/. The blog is by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen, authors of the very fine book (which I originally discovered on Boing Boing), The Urban Homestead, about raising food in a big city (in this case, LA). I enjoyed scrolling down the blog, seeing the eclectic mix. These guys are all over the place, like me.

   Check out the swarm of bees on the Harley, and the swimming pool in the bed of a Chevy S10 pickup truck on a hot night (in LA, of course). The vintage photo at left is titled: “A member of the Woodmen of the World with his ceremonial axe…” 

I’m just heartsick to hear of the death of Hollywood producer Dick Zanuck, who was my college roommate and best friend for several years at Stanford in the mid-’50s. We decorated our room at the Fiji house with African masks and spears and South Seas artifacts from the set lot at 20th Century Fox. We went to movies almost every night. We took a surfing trip in a Fox jeep to Baja California in 1954, and then a Fox Ford convertible on a surfing trip to Mazatlan in Spring of 1955. We partied hard, chased girls, surfed, cultivated sun tans, and weren’t too serious about academic excellence.

   We both loved the beach, surfed, played volleyball, were the same size (not, um, tall) — and competitive (we actually got in a few fistfights). We’d go to a party, get semi-drunk, and take off for LA, arriving around sunrise. His family had a large house on the beach in Santa Monica, and my first experience surfing was riding a 12-foot redwood/balsa board owned by his brother-in-law Bobby Jacks at the Malibu colony. His family had a beautiful Spanish-style home in Palm Springs, built around a pool, where we’d go frequently, and John the butler would wake us up each morning with glasses of fresh orange juice from trees around the pool.

   One of our rituals was started by him when we were teenagers (60 years ago—gad!). He sent me a postcard from Hawaii showing a surfer, with the message “Ho!” (he was there and I was not). I started sending him “Ho!” postcards when I would be somewhere or doing something that would make him jealous, and he’d eventually reciprocate. In recent years I’d send him “Ho!” postcards of me skateboarding or doing well in races, and he’d call me right up.

   In recent years we’d talk about how all our friends were retired and we’d both say how we loved our work and were never going to retire. He never did. I’m so sorry to hear that he’s gone.

Extensive review of Tiny Homes by Robin Tierney in this online magazine. There’s even a short video (that I’ve never seen before) of our featured builder Mike Basich jumping out of a helicopter at 100 feet on his snowboard. https://www.theurbn.com/2012/07/tiny-homes-part-2/