Dan Price’s Hobbit House was featured in our book Home Work in 2004.

“He’s got no wife, no money, but he’s happy in his ‘hobbit hole.’

Dan Price left behind a stressful life as a photo-journalist after his marriage fell apart, and he wound up in a meadow outside Joseph, Ore. He now lives in an underground hutch burrowed into the hillside. ‘I like being able to do what I want to do,’ Price told NBC. ‘I don’t believe in houses or mortgages. Who in their right mind would spend their lifetime paying for a building they never get to spend time in because they are always working?’”

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Photo: NBC News

$800/month. From Tiny House Listings here.

(So titled after San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen’s Friday columns, called “Friday Fish Fry;” Herb was master of 3-dot stories. I started reading him at the bkfst table at age 15. In the ’70s, he answered a couple of my letters with his Underwood upright typewriter. Wonderful man…

Sunny Monday Morning We’ve had 3 days of real hot weather, now cooling. Blue skies, glassy ocean. Swam last night… Once in a while I try to throw together fragments revolving in my mind, a la Herb C…

Tom Clancy on Writing  “I tell them you learn to write the same way you learn to play golf,” he said. “You do it, and keep doing it until you get it right. A lot of people think something mystical happens to you, that maybe the muse kisses you on the ear. But writing isn’t divinely inspired—it’s hard work.”

That’s why I’m so slow at posting stuff…

Now listening to The Abyssinians Super reggae vocal harmonies. Gimme that old time reggae! “Jason White” here. (I only like about half the songs I hear on “The Joint,” Sirius Radio’s reggae station. A lot of insipid or preachy stuff or songs you’ve heard 100 times.…

Great Music on KWMR Our local station has really good music programs around 7-9 PM (West Coast time). Blues, bluegrass, reggae, cajun, R&R, eclectic mix of DJs. I listen to it on radio while doing dishes (and sneakily dance when no one’s around), but think it can be streamed…

Free Books to Prisons We have always sent free books to any prisoner who writes us. Letter received a few days ago:

“Shelter Publications,

I wish to thank you for your gift of books. they have been a blessing, not only for…me, but to the many I have loaned them to who are trying to dream and create a future as they leave prison…Thank you for your gift and the many hours of studying, dreaming and contemplation these books provide.

   -J.M., Palmer Correctional Center, Palmer Alaska”

   Thrilling feedback.

   I wish there were some way to get our (fitness and building) books into prison libraries (if there are such). Any researchers out there who can find a list? Or if you know someone in prison, let them know they can write for free books.…

Tidelog Tide Tables I have this posted over the sink and look at it every day. A lot of surfers and fishermen do the same. A graphic view of tides, with art by M.C. Escher. For east and west coasts, including BC. Here

Blues on the Canal Rich Jones sent this link to houseboat moving along an English canal with blues band playing:

Tiny Homes On The Move We’re gettin there! About 90% complete. This has been the most complex book ever, the most people ever to deal with, in many parts of the world. USA, Canada, UK, France, Australia, China, + sailboats cruising the high seas. Two main categories:

Wheels: vans, trucks-with-camper-shells, housetrucks, house buses, and trailers

Water: sailboats, houseboats, and tugboats

There are some 90 of these units in the book, either rolling on the road or floating on the water. They are used as either permanent residences or for trips of varying lengths upon life’s highways and waterways. Book should be out in May 2014…

I love the life I live,

And I live the life I love.

   -Muddy Waters

“…Maxime Qavtaradze is literally close to the heavens. The 59-year-old monk lives atop a stone pillar in Georgia, scaling a 131-foot ladder in order to leave and enter his lofty home, reports CNN. Photographer Amos Chapple ascended the cliff to photograph his life there.

   The Katskhi Pillar has long been venerated by locals in the area, though it’s been uninhabited since around the 1400s.      When climbers ascended for the first time in centuries in 1944, they found the ruins of a church and the 600-year-old bones of the last stylite who lived there.

  The stylite tradition is believed to have begun in 423 when St. Simeon the Elder climbed a pillar in Syria in order to avoid worldly temptations, but the practice has since fallen out of favor. However, Qavtaradze is a modern devotee.

   Though isolated, he is not a total hermit, coming down once or twice a week to counsel the troubled young men who come to the monastery at the bottom for his help. After all, he was once one of them. Though he now lives at the top of the world, Qavtaradze found his vocation when he was the lowest he’s ever been, doing prison time after he ‘drank, sold drugs, everything’ as a young man.…”

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From Evan Kahn

“A lesson in blowing Dwell magazine’s mind, courtesy of the Madrid-based firm Ábaton Arquitectura: design a house that’s about 290 square feet (micro home!) that’s made from recyclable materials (green!) and can be transported by truck and assembled in a day (mobile!). Oh, and let’s not forget about material makeup (the exterior is clad in cement-board panels) and prefab potential: ÁPH80 can be manufactured in as few as four weeks. Dwell has officially spontaneously combusted.

With gabled ceilings reaching more than 11 feet, walls of glass, and a combined living room and kitchen, the feel of this place is light and airy; ‘the different spaces are recognisable [sic] and the feeling indoors is one of fullness,’ the architects say.

Another look, below:”

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