I love hitting the road in my go-anywhere 8 year old Toyota Tacoma (4×4, stick shift, 5 speed, 4-cylinder) truck, armed with cameras. This time I forgot my Panasonic Lumix G1 serious camera, just had the little Canon PowerShot G95. I breathe a sigh of relief when I get to farm land and I start scanning for pix. After splitting enough oak to fill my truck at my brother’s, I headed up to Middleton and Harbin Hot Springs. There’s something strangely relaxing about the funkiness and occasional white trash homesteads in lower-income counties.
I was reflecting on finding a balance between computer work and the physical world. I love all the email and blogging I’ve been doing lately. It’s an exciting time, what with the popularity of this new book, and sometimes I get so involved here at the Mac that I forget about two necessary antidotes:
1. Working out (including hiking, anything outdoors and physical) for the body. Getting circulation going, stressing muscles, and stretching. I always feel better.
2. Doing something with my hands. Making a table, turning the compost pile, splitting shakes. Deep-down satisfaction to make something with hands.
Funky lightweight farm building looks like it’s floating.
I When I see old farm buildings like this, I think of converting them into places to live. In Big Sur in the ’60s, I lived happily in a converted chicken coop for a year.
Nice steel sculpture at a place with a sign “Art Forms” on Hwy 121, south of Sonoma
Things are popping around here. Tiny Homes is selling like mad. It’s been reviewed on about 20 blogs and/or websites. It’s coming up in two of the biggest newspapers in the country (my lips are sealed until articles appear) next week. We’re scheduling a tour for me with slide show and book signings in Feb-Mar-April-May June. Gadzooks! I’ve never had a book get this kind of attention.
The other day, it occurred to me that this book directly addresses the overblown wasteful indulgent home building industry. I’ve been saying to people, “No, you don’t have to live in such a small space, but it’s the direction that counts. How can we do things better? How can we use materials that do the least damage to the planet? How can we heat water and living space most efficiently?” That’s in addition to all the poetry of building in the book.
I took off from the madness yesterday and went up to my brother’s farm in the Napa Valley to split (oak) firewood. A chance to do something physical. Exciting to get on the road with camera (yesterday only the Canon Powershot G-95). Afterwards I went over to Harbin Hot Springs to take a look at SunRay Kelley’s temple (pp. 65-71, Builders of the Pacific Coast), and it looked in great shape, cob and all. It’s a beautiful building, and it should have a little brass plaque on it saying : “Designed and built by SunRay Kelley,” but the Harbin management is a weird bunch, and they give no credit to SR. There were about a dozen people inside doing yoga, and it was a lovely atmosphere, the wood and the cob and the lighting all in a soft glow.
We had such a great day Wednesday. Country hicks in Big City. We started out at Trouble Coffee, out at the beach, my favorite caffeine cafe on the planet, went over to Mollusk Surf Shop, my fave surf shop (which has a wonderful collection of art books for sale along with surfboards and wetsuits), then down to the unique Gravel & Gold in the Mission, where Lesley’s been selling hand woven shawls (and I’m going to do a Tiny Homes slide show February 24th), Lesley went to fabric and clothing stores, I roamed and shot photos. In the normal course of my day I may see a dozen people. In the city I see 1000s. I stalk with my camera, hunting. So much going on, the city is culturally vibrant, exciting these days. Having grown up there gives my visits special meaning.
Above and below: Mollusk Surf Shop
It kills me to do such dumb layout as the above, but I don’t know my HTML (and don’t think I’d want to spend all the time necessary to craft it the way I want it to appear). What I need is a drag-and-drop setup so I can do a paper-type layout. Any suggestions? I need quick and dirty, because I want to minimize computer time.
Pintarest is an “online billboard.” Somehow it’s got all (most?) of my blog photos from the last few years, organized like a scrolling poster. I don’t remember if I signed up for this, but I think it’s great. (Many photos are posted numerous times, probably because I went back and corrected certain posts.)
https://pinterest.com/source/lloydkahn-ongoing.blogspot.com/
Also check out the “architecture” category: https://pinterest.com/all/?category=architecture.
It’s a drippy grey Sunday morning and I’m looking over my photos, I love doing this — it’s like hunting, but with cameras not guns. So goldarned much going on everywhere I go in the world. It’s just a matter of seeing it.
When I first took acid (1964), I could see flowers breathing; it wasn’t an hallucination. Flowers do breathe, we just usually don’t see it. So I’m looking around in this absolutely interesting inspiring fascinating world. (You’ll have to pardon me if I’m not incapacitated by all the evil, greed, and shitty politics afoot.)
I wish I could do a decent layout of my trips upon return. My HTML skills are not up to doing it right now, so will just keep throwing photos out in this limited format. “I’m Jimmy Reed” playing now. You Got me Dizzy. Cup of espresso sweetened with agave nectar, whole wheat toast with marmalade, vapor by Volcano, stylin’…
I’m going to throw a bunch of photos out from the last 3 days, not necessarily in order:
Rivers in NorCal low right now. Gimme some rain!
Last night (thanks to neighbors Patty and Nick), we watched this documentary. 83-year-old fashion photographer Bill Cunningham rides a bike all over Manhattan and sometimes runs like a kid when stalking camera subjects. “We all get dressed for Bill”, says Vogue editor Anna Wintour (Wikipedia). He has a joy in life and is irresistibly good-humored. Toward the end of the movie he says: “He who seeks beauty shall find it.”
Bill Cunningham New York Trailer from Gavin McWait on Vimeo.
(Click on “Vimeo,” lower right, for larger size video.)
https://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/billcunninghamnewyork/
Which reminded me of a unique fashion photographer, Scott Schuman, who documents homemade fashion all over the world:
Website: https://www.thesartorialist.com/Scott’s bio: https://www.thesartorialist.com/biography/
On the way to a publishing conference last week:
I love hitting the road in my go-anywhere 8 year old Toyota Tacoma (4×4, stick shift, 5 speed, 4-cylinder) truck, armed with cameras. This time I forgot my Panasonic Lumix G1 serious camera, just had the little Canon PowerShot G95. I breathe a sigh of relief when I get to farm land and I start scanning for pix. After splitting enough oak to fill my truck at my brother’s, I headed up to Middleton and Harbin Hot Springs. There’s something strangely relaxing about the funkiness and occasional white trash homesteads in lower-income counties.
Funky lightweight farm building looks like it’s floating.
I When I see old farm buildings like this, I think of converting them into places to live. In Big Sur in the ’60s, I lived happily in a converted chicken coop for a year. 
Nice steel sculpture at a place with a sign “Art Forms” on Hwy 121, south of Sonoma
