“We are a French-American family with two little ones, building our eco-home in the Dordogne countryside. Kevin is French, a carpenter and green builder (as well as a translator), Elizabeth is American and a full-time mama and formerly a psychotherapist in California. We have a delightful 3 year old boy and baby girl. We are very interested in sustainable living and growing, permaculture, meditation and community. And you!
*please note: We would love to host volunteers with building skills, especially skills in carpentry, wood-working and roofing!”
“LULING – Although Brad Kittel runs a construction company, he’s really in the deconstruction business.
As owner of Tiny Texas Houses, located on hilltop that overlooks Interstate 10, he builds homes that are a fraction of the size of the modern McMansion. His basic sales pitch: sometimes a little is more than enough.
“Keith purchased his 1977 Bedford Bus back in 2007 with the idea of living in it off-the-grid full-time. Living off the grid is nothing new to Keith. He has been at it for the last 21 years, living mostly on boats and finally making it to land with the purchase of his bus named “The Flying Tortoise.”
The Flying Tortoise has a slew of unique features to help make living on his 131 square feet bus more comfortable and certainly more interesting. After looking at some of the images of Keith’s bus, it’s apparent that alot of thought and creativity have gone into his tiny home.…”
I just talked to Jay, who’s in Nantucket. He said they’re going to take it (model shown here) into the East Village tomorrow, He said hooking up with the Occupy folks turned out to be too complicated. “It’ll be a tiny house protest…” — against McMansions, heavy mortgages, high rents, overconsumption, energy and material wastage in housing as it’s been practiced in America in the last 20 years.
Presenting an Affordable Solution to the Housing Crisis
Since the bank bailout, over 5,000,000 US homes have been foreclosed. Can you imagine what our economy would look like today if we built smaller, more affordable homes 10 years ago? The housing crisis is at the crux of our failing economy. The bottom line is that bank lending policies created a housing market fixated on larger and larger homes while ignoring the long term impact to our economy and environment. Unfortunately, we don’t see any indications that change is coming.
We understand that Occupy Wall Street is divisive and many in the Small House Movement disagree. We also believe that Occupy Wall Street provides the world’s largest stage to bring awareness to a real alternative. Our message is too important to ignore – which is why we continually embrace the opportunity to spread the word wherever we can; from Fox Business News to Al Jazeera TV, and now Occupy Wall Street. On December 13th, 2011, Tumbleweed Founder and Small House Advocate Jay Shafer will go to Occupy Wall Street with a tiny house in tow to suggest a true alternative.
Jay is kicking it up a notch. He’s on his way to NYC. Brilliant!
‘When I found out that living in a tiny house is illegal, I just had to get myself into one. This is the coziest form of civil disobedience I’ve found. It’s the tiny Trojan horse with curb appeal’.…Jay Shafer is headed towards Wall Street, fully cognizant of the pepper spray and billy clubs that have increasingly intimidated those who have chosen to freely assemble. He knows that when a society puts consumption over safety, it not only depletes bank accounts, causes citizens to face possible disclosure, but risks residences with enhanced dangers of earthquakes, floods and fires, one of the unfortunate by-products over larger houses. It is the time for him to speak out. The Small House is coming, Wall Street. Viva la tiny revolution!…”
(There are 6 pages on Jay’s Tumbleweed houses in our Tiny Homes book. He’s been on Oprah, the Today show, was the subject of a New Yorker article last month.)
It’s early morning and I’m in San Francisco, with my 11″ MacBook Air (the single most beautiful tool I’ve ever owned), with a latte at Caffé Roma. Ex-mayor and uber-politico Willie Brown is being filmed here, at another table. Talking about something or other. Willie dresses impeccably.
At noon I’m meeting friends from Lowell High School, Class of ’52, for lunch at Schroeder’s 100-year old German restaurant. San Francisco natives, an endangered species… Next year will be our 60th reunion, ulp!
Deek Diedrickson, the guy who puts the fun into the tiny homes movement, is working on a sequel to his charming book of tiny homes, Humble Homes, Simple Shacks, Cozy Cottages, Ramshackle Retreats, Funky Forts: And Whatever the Heck Else We Could Squeeze in Here — a funny, inspiring, informative and friendly scrapbook of plans. He plans to draw up 60 cabins, shacks, etc. in the next 60 days (and worries that doing so is a death wish).
It’s true. I started out with hot lead. Editor of the Sembach Jet Gazette at Sembach Air Force Base in Germany, 1958-60. a twice-monthly paper, it was printed in Kaiserslautern using linotype machines, hot lead made into slugs, then stacked by hand in trays for the presses. I loved going in for press checks. It was medeival.
Next came the IBM Composer (have I gone through this before? Well, if you insist…) It was a $10,000 “selectric” typewriter with those ball fonts. To go from Roman to Italic, you manually replaced one font with another. It had a 3000-bit memory. It was used by newspapers for maybe 10 years (as well as by the Whole Earth Catalog and our first 20 or so books). Pages assembled (pasted up) by hand for printers.
Then along came the Mac. And cut to…
eBooks. I was listening to some very sharp people discussing the new eWorld, 300% growth for eBooks, looking like another 300% growth this year — whew!
Well, what can a poor boy do? (Except to sing for a rock ‘n roll band…)
I’m listening to all the dire news for physical books, and the rosy future of eBooks, and thinking about the book we just finished, after 2 years’ work. We keep looking at the few advance copies we have here, and it looks SO good. A lot of this due to Paramount Printers. The paper is high quality (and FSC etc.), it’s got a sparkle. The builders come alive.
It’s a journey you hold in your hand, a physical presence, a work of art. It’s a a real …book!
“We are a French-American family with two little ones, building our eco-home in the Dordogne countryside. Kevin is French, a carpenter and green builder (as well as a translator), Elizabeth is American and a full-time mama and formerly a psychotherapist in California. We have a delightful 3 year old boy and baby girl. We are very interested in sustainable living and growing, permaculture, meditation and community. And you!
