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Up the Coast Yesterday/Blog Changes Coming/Secluded Driftwood Beach

The drive to Pt. Arena is about 3 hours. Usually takes me about 4. This time, leaving in the afternoon, instead of (as usual) early morning, it took me 8 hours to get to Louie’s. Did I have fun! I must have stopped, usually to shoot photos, 50 times…I’m thinking of changing the nature of this blog once we get THESHELTERBLOG up and running, maybe tie it in with Instagram, a photo+ caption a day. More like getting you to ride shotgun with me. For example:

Anywhere on this Pacific Coast, there are creek beds, rivers, canyons running perpendicular to the ocean. Water-carved arroyos. As you drive, you can look down and see if there is a trail down to the beach, and there often is. Just before sunset last night, I spotted the trail here. it was like going through a jungle. A pristine white (dirty white color — the best — sand beach, mountains of driftwood.

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Poppa’s Gonna Have A Brand New Bag

Full moon Friday night

Jim Morrison said that it wasn’t until The Doors released a record that he was free to get on with creating something new. Now that Tiny Homes On The Move is finished, I’m looking out on the horizon for what’s next. Right now, it looks like this:

Blogs Rick has almost got The Shelter Blog up and running (with a Word Press template). My son Evan is going to manage it. Lew, Evan and I will post stuff on it. All shelter-related, unlike my eclectic blog. The idea is to do online what our book Shelter did in 1973: showcase owner-builders and the lifestyle that a bunch of us share. Providing as much of our own food and shelter as possible (you can’t be totally self-sufficient; self-sufficiency is a direction). As opposed to Dwell magazine, homes rich in color, utility, and good vibes. We intend this to be station central for people of the owner-builder persuasion.

   We’ll post all the stuff we are now getting from people who have been inspired by our books to build something. In this sense it’ll be different from other blogs in that much of the material will be original and unique, not a pastiche of what’s floating out in the web-o-sphere.

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Publisher Floored by New Book!

This is the 29th book I’ve done in 44 years of publishing, and something different has happened here.

   Our output is slow because we put books together 2 pages at a time. Grown-up publishers get a book totally prepared — text and graphics — before starting production.

   I collected materials, for about a year, stored both on the computer and in old-school 5th-cut file folders. Once it got to a tipping point, we started production. I’d pull out the best stuff, do layout with a cheap color copy machine and scotch tape. Our artist-sometimes-in-residence, David Wills, would tune up the designs, whenceforth they went to Rick Gordon for InDesign/Photoshop preparation for printers. Lew Lewandowski unearthed a lot of this material, and designed a bunch of pages. Evan Kahn contributed in various ways. The book assumed its form, with categories, 2/3 of the way through its production.

   Bob Easton and I developed this seat-of-pants method of production out of necessity with Shelter in 1973: we only had maybe half of the materials ready, so we just started. I continued to shoot photos, write, and edit the book while it was in production. Photos kept coming in from contributors. Still our M.O.

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Out Into North Carolina Countryside

Once again, content way exceeds output here. Deek and I had a great time, building his tiny house, talking to hundreds of people. We did 2 presentations together that went over well. It was a total seat-of-pants operation, both in an unexpected building project (borrowed Skilsaw from hall maintenance guy, ladder from ladder display guy, tape measure & combination square from polypropylene panel guy) and dual slideshow/talks. Fun! We agreed that it was actually good the building wasn’t finished. It gave us something to do. Better than just sitting around all day.

   I ended up liking Charlotte a lot. Good vibes everywhere. Good people. They’re relaxed. It’s what I expected. There’s a big part of America out there in between the Almighty Coasts. And you know what, I don’t wave the flag, and am appalled by a ton of things America and Americans do and have done, but underneath I love this country and Americans for the good stuff (did you see Gracie Gold skating in the Olympics — wow!). A lot of kindness and simpatico here in North Carolina. I have a ton of stuff to report from the Home & Garden Show, but it’ll have to wait. Actually, I just got the idea to do a YouTube slide show with vocal description of this trip. “These two little buildings, abandoned, neglected, behind an abandoned house, both perfect in proportion…architects should study country buildings…”

 

 Once this new book is launched, I plan con making a bunch of videos, boy am I excited about this. Suddenly I realize that a lot of my compulsion to communicate can be done via vids.

   It’s Monday morning, am at a Starbucks. In the land of fast-food and characterless and interminable malls, a Starbucks can be a haven. (Had to come back to mall-land to get a motel last night.)

   After this song finishes, I’m heading out on some back roads. I took an extra 1-1/2 days to hunt and shoot (Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1, mighty fine little camera).

Blues and Rock 'n' Roll by Sean Chambers on Grooveshark

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Southern Spring Home & Garden Show, Episode #1

Deek Diedrickson and I are here in Charlotte, North Carolina to talk to people about tiny homes. Deek is the affable host of Relaxshacks, also the maker of over 100 YouTube videos, and author of Humble Homes,  Simple Shacks, Cozy Cottages…Deek desiged a tiny home for the show and it was supposed to he ready when we got here. Surprise! It wasn’t, and we’ve been working on it the last few days. Had to scrounge up tools, fasteners, polypropylene sheets. Borrowed a ladder from the Little Giant Ladder Company (fantastic ladders — see here — and have been running back and forth to the service room to cut plywood.

  Here we are this morning. More posts to follow. This is great town and this is a great show.

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Tiny Home Village For Homeless in Olympia, Washington

I’m on an airplane on my way to the Southern Spring and Garden Show in Charlotte, NC ($10 for one hour of Wi-fi — harumph!) — and just read this large article in today’s NY Times, where our book Tiny Homes is called “…a dream book…the scale is humble, but the architectural detail is rich…” by writer Michael Tortorello.

Looks like you cannot access this unless you are subsribedto the NY Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/20/garden/small-world-big-idea.html 

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Friday Fish Fry

I did an an interview last night with Kevin Kelly on the Google+ “hang out” feature. I used my MacAir laptop with the camera and was a little nervous, but it went OK. Kevin, whose latest book is the sensational Cool Tools, guided the conversation. We talked about tiny homes, owner building, gardening, chickens, the myth of self-sufficiency, what you can do in cities, the Whole Earth Catalog, what I would do if I were building a new house now, the fact that I don’t like shipping containers or Earth Ships or domes or A-frames as homes, and the virtues of self-publishing. The video of it is here…Next week I’m flying to Charlotte, NC, to talk about tiny homes at the Southern Spring Home & Garden Show. Deek Diedrickson from Relaxshacks will be there as well, and we’ll talk to people about the subject out in front of a tiny home he designed; if you’re in the neighborhood, stop by and say hello. I’ll be handing out mini Tiny Homes books (2″ by 2″, 64 pages) and have proofs of our latest book, Tiny Homes on the MoveIn praise of real books and bookstores: I’ve read a few books on my IPad, and it’s fine for reading on airplanes or trips, but in my reading for an hour or so every night before going to sleep, I don’t want the electrons; I spend enough time at a computer screen as it is. The publishing business is obviously in turmoil, but books like our building books, although we’ve done digital editions, work best as hold-in-your-hands physical objects. And there’s nothing like a physical bookstore. Sure, Amazon is cheaper, but money ain’t everything. One of my very favorites is Bookshop Santa Cruz; it makes me happy to be there…Tiny Homes On The Move: Just about there. Yesterday Rick, Lew and I sewed up a lot of loose ends. About 3 knotty problems in design worked out. Often we’ll start working on something with no idea how to fix it, and as we go along, things fall into place. Like I told this guy in the interview yesterday about building house: just START. You’ll never get anywhere if you wait for everything to be perfect. Get going, and things will work out as momentum carries you along. When I was about to start building my first house in 1961, I asked my friend Bob what to do, and he said “This,” and picked up a shovel and started digging the foundation trench…Spectacular sunsets of late, this shot with iPhone last night; tonight’s the full moon, ow-wooo!

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“Hi Lloyd,

Seth here from Nelson Tiny Houses. I wanted to let you know we’ve started a building blog on our website. We are using it to keep people up to date on our builds, as well as share any information and tips we come across.

If you have a chance, please share it with your audience. Thanks Lloyd,

Kind regards,

Seth”

Click here.

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“Constraint inspires creativity.”

Article in New Yorker (here), 10/21/2013, about Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter:

“…He is a techno aesthete in the manner of Steve Jobs: Dorsey, too, is a college dropout, a taker of long walks, and a guy whose father liked to tinker. And, just as Jobs, with his Issey Miyake turtlenecks, tried to embody Apple’s sleek functionalism, Dorsey’s tastes are self-consciously in synch with the design of Twitter. “Constraint inspires creativity” is one of his credos.;”

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