Well, I was nervous. I was, ulp, the featured speaker of a 3-day symposium on sustainability and to tell the truth, I’m more comfortable with a lower profile. Plus this was a bunch of competent people. By the time the room filled up, there were 100 people, and I’d say that just about every one of them could build and/or grow and/or create wonderful objects with their very own hands.
Plus the the MacAir, as it is mysteriously wont to do, was not speaking to the Epson projector (in a language the Epson could understand). I was sweating it. Helpless with the complexities of the digital world. (Doing slide shows with a Carousel projector back in the day was way less risky. Slides in slots. I could see them, etc.)
We finally got rolling, with some tech advice from the crowd. “Hit option-command-escape.” Well OK.
It was the 12th slideshow I’ve done now, and people all over the country seem to be interested in tiny homes. I told them something that has occurred to me lately,that it’s not necessary for everyone to live in a tiny home. The message here is to go in the direction of smaller. Rather than larger.
I’m doing a talk at noon today on communication, how I get pics and info into regular books, e-books, newsletters, and blog posts. Methods, materials, techniques. Photography and interviews and email communication. Then back to Duluth and home sweet home Monday. What a great trip this has been!
Yesterday Peter Henrikson, the timber framing master at the North House Folk School, took me out in a (40 lb. Kevlar) canoe into this water wonderland. I’d heard about it, but it sort of defies description. Now I know why they stay Minnesota has 10,000 lakes. We were out for about 6 hours, going from lake to lake, (Peter) portaging twice. We saw 5 bald eagles, two loons, beaver lodges galore, it was a great day. We had lunch sitting on a big rock. The silence is intense; not even airplanes flying over. We got sweaty after hiking a mile and jumped in a lake (momentarily). Bill, the outfitter, told us to check out a rock that looked like it could a dolmen, and here’s Peter checking out its underside. Glacier, or primitive humans?
I am having lot of fun! I did my seminar on the small homestead today and am the, ahem, featured
speaker of this 3-day conference on sustainability. I’m doing my Tiny Homes slide show and answering questions tomorrow night at 7:30 (brick oven pizza being served). I got interviewed on the local radio station today and it sounds like a local web TV outfit is going to film it tomorrow night.
This is a 5-min. video by Kirsten Dirksen of me talking about the Tiny Homes book, books of the ’60s like the Whole Earth Catalog, and showing bits of our half acre homestead including production studio. It was shot while we were in production. Kirsten and her partner Nicolás Boullosa run faircompanies.com, (in Barcelona), which has an “embarrassment of riches” in tiny homes videos.
Though our apartment suffers a bit from old building syndrome (poor water pressure, only a few electrical outlets, and a random pipe in the bathroom that gets burning hot from 5-7 PM every night), an overwhelming sense of ‘homey-ness’ is felt in every corner of our studio thanks to the craftsmanship and details that are rarely seen in modern apartments.…”
The rain didn’t hold back the people. Biggest crowd ever. By the time I started, the aisles were full. About 250 people. I signed books for maybe half an hour. These are my brothers and sisters up here. People kept coming up and telling me how they’d built things, inspired by our books. I was given photos of little homes and house trucks, a rare Bob Marley CD, and a little jar of cayenne pepper. Maybe a dozen people told me they were either building something right now, or about to start. I told them it’s not that everyone has to live in tiny houses, what’s important is going in the direction of smaller. Everyone likes the idea of no mortgage, no exorbitant rents. A definite measure of freedom in these trying times.
Well, I was nervous. I was, ulp, the featured speaker of a 3-day symposium on sustainability and to tell the truth, I’m more comfortable with a lower profile. Plus this was a bunch of competent people. By the time the room filled up, there were 100 people, and I’d say that just about every one of them could build and/or grow and/or create wonderful objects with their very own hands.
