“The Morisons exhibited their self-sufficient wooden house-truck, customized from a decommissioned fire engine and containing, next to a stove and pot plants, a library of apocalypse-themed fiction. Tales of Space and Time, as it was called, embodied a jauntily over-optimistic attitude to surviving the end of the world, …”

https://www.morison.info/talesofspaceandt.html

Last night the moon rose over the ridge. It’s a miracle, what with all the harm humans are doing to the planet, that the full moon still rises, is still in orbit. I went down to the beach and got in the ocean a few days after getting back. Got under water long enough to feel the chill get to my bones, and voila! I was tuned back into home turf (surf).

Rain clouds this morning, it was blue grass music driving in along the ocean, program called “A Banjo Friday,” Flat & Scruggs: Your Love is Like a Flower / Ned Lubernick: Owed to Earl, great banjo…

the waves are slow and full coming into the beaches, sort of luscious, a hearty n/w swell…

Doyle Lawson, white gospel, I’m finding Joy in My Saviour, beautiful singing / Ralph Stanley, The Girl From Greenbriar Shore — I don’t know what it is he has, but he has it. On one level it’s a pretty thin voice, but he does something with the notes and it comes out unique…

Then John Hammond doing Nadine, a great song (one of the highlights of the Stones Get Yer Ya-Yas album) Nadine, honey, it that you?

Next time you cross this magnificent bridge, check out the corbled designs of each cross-strut. There’s a great book called The Gate by John van der Zee, which describes the true lead designer of the bridge mathematician and Greek scholar Charles Ellis, not Joseph Strauss, as it was formerly thought.

Heard a great new Bonnie Raitt song with a cooking band as I got into North Beach…

Just noodling around here at the Hong Kong airport. I got here 5 hours early, can you believe it? The supposed (free) wi-fi connection isn’t working, of course. Jeez, such a drag that wi-fi can be so sketchy. At the last hotel, it only worked in the lobby; in the previous hotel it was like $18 per day. So I’ll send this off whenever. Having a pint of Murphy’s Irish stout and an excellent corned beef sandwich. This airport is really nice. The building is nicely designed and beautifully put together and there are a ton of restaurants.

…There’s a juice stand in one of the busiest parts of the city that is 24 sq. ft. The rent? $30,000 per month…The night after I stayed at the printers’ plant, I couldn’t find a hotel room on the internet to save my soul, other than ones for $400, $600 a night. Trevor, a HK native, has a group of about 100 friends that are connected by an app called Whatsapp, so he put out a message. He got about 10 replies and I found a room…Sign on a bus: “No matter how far you go, remember where you are from.” This could refer not only to geographical, but occupational…Hong Kong is vertical; they have just filled in a big section of the bay down by the convention center for more high-rises…The 3 most expensive cities in the world for real estate and rentals are London, Tokyo, and HK; a 1000 sq. ft. condo here is like $800,000…Food is actually cheap if you eat at local restaurants; just had excellent sushi meal for $15.00; dinner last night (slices of smoked duck in broth with rice noodles for breakfast, was $7…weather in summer here is hot and humid, but unlike Rome (“Dog Days”), the city stays as crowded as ever…Streets are actually pretty clean, although there are sewer smells; the city is growing too fast…There are tons of shoe stores; been wearing my Sanuk surfer shoes the entire trip…What they call “hot coffee,” or HK coffee is strong dark coffee with canned milk, v. good…Yesterday I had soup with noodles and slices of abalone…I’ve got the subway figured out; you buy a card that you swipe upon entering — when you exit, you swipe again and it knows how far you’ve gone and deducts appropriate amount; subway system is brilliant: clean, trains run frequently (every minute at rush hours), are clean, air conditioned. I got so I felt pretty clever making my way around…Had glass of iced coconut juice yesterday while roaming…

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The dumdassedness of America the formerly bountiful In a comment to my last post (below), John X wrote: “…I wish everyone could see Europe and get a picture in their heads of what a civilized society looks like. It all may tumble down when / if the Euro implodes or the EU breaks up or whatever, but for a few short years there was a place on this planet where the good of the people came before the good of the military-industrial complex and the goddamned billionaires.” So true. Hadn’t thought of it that way. In Europe, everything is more efficient, more people-centric. Cars, railroads, clean energy —to mention a few. Think of what the USA could have accomplished if $$ that went into the military had been used constructively. What if funds for our 2 present wars had gone into clean energy projects and health care and public works projects. Be still, my beating heart. I am so embarrassed, so mortified by the greed and short-sightedness and stupidity of our “leaders.” Shooting ourselves in the foot so many times there’s hardly any foot left. The religious right and Tea Party morons try to steer things ever further into the abyss of intolerance and cruelty. The Rapture. Yeah, right.

I’m sitting at a table in a silent and clean electric-powered train, having just left Frankfurt, crossed the Rhein, going about 80-90 mph, heading for Mainz to visit a young American expatriate living in a small trailer she put together for about 1000 Euros. It’s my one free day before the book fair starts.

QR bar codes

We just discovered these. They are about to become ubiquitous. You install a (free) app (I use Qrafter) on your smartphone, then use the camera to scan it (off of paper or on-screen). It then will give the choice of going to whichever URL you have designated, emailing it, or posting on Twitter or Facebook. We have just put these in our Tiny Homes book, our tiny Tiny Homes book, and on my biz card.

The dumbassedness of moi and the kindness of strangers Well, wouldn’t you know it, I overshot Mainz by an hour. Having so much fun on my computer, watching the countryside flash by, with my espresso and sugared doughnut, ahem, ahem. A lady on the train told me to get off at the next major station to catch a train back to Mainz and then a lady at the semi-deserted train station — after deciding the guy with the long white hair wasn’t going to rob her, let me use her phone to tell Nikki I’d be about 3 hours late. I do seem to stumble my way through a lot of life, but there are serendipitous discoveries along the path of unexpectedness.

Shot from train window in rocky wine-growing region today