Galloway's Book on Running - 9th Printing

Our book Galloway's Book on Running will soon be in its ninth printing.

Septic System Owner's Manual - 8th printing

Our Septic System Owner's Manual will soon be in its eighth printing.

Quail Sentry in Garden

California's state bird. The males (with topknots) are almost always the sentries. This guy was sitting on a beanpole in the garden yesterday, watching over a brood of chicks scratching around on the ground. Quail colonies have been steadily increasing here over the years. They are all over the place now. They're members of the pheasant family (Phasianidae), as are chickens.

Make Sparkling Water At Home

We got a Sodastream Home Soda Maker a few months ago and it works beautifully. Brad Zebal, who reviewed it for CoolTools, wrote: "Aside from reducing our plastic/aluminum waste, we don't have to lug heavy bottles back from the store. I also like to think about all the energy we will save annually by not buying water that's been shipped from one part of the country to another."
This a glass with a small amount of pomegranate juice added.
http://bit.ly/1ptYo5

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Frightening Info on Global Warming

Article in June 29 New Yorker by Elizabeth Kolbert on scientist James Hansen's conclusion that the threat of global warming is far greater than expected. Quotes from the New Yorker abstract:
• What is now happening, Hansen said, is carbon dioxide is being pumped into the air some ten thousand times faster than natural weathering processes can remove it.
• Hansen argues that the only way we can constrain the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is to drastically decrease the use of coal.
• In order to stabilize carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, annual emissions around the globe would have to be cut by something on the order of three-quarters. So far, there’s no evidence that anyone is willing to take the necessary steps.
http://bit.ly/8z2Ow

New Free (Pdf) Book: New Liberal Arts

Parts of this book are very good, like below.
"In this age we are surrounded by stimuli, messages in our environment clamoring for a little piece of our awareness. Advertisements are designed and sold with the simple premise of stealing one small mote of your attention. Your technological devices, designed to assist you in your life and work, beep incessantly with updates, alerts, and alarms. Cars become more and more like the cockpits of fighter planes with their heads-up displays and data readouts. Even our relationships take more maintenance; lovers separated by such a small obstacle as a day at the office stay in constant contact through email, instant messaging, and social networks. In our new digital world we’ve finally started to run out of one of our most precious resources: Our own attention In the distant past, educated people worked for decades to train their brains to retain information. Greek bards had to be able to recall the story and rhythm of, if not the exact words of, either of Homer’s epics at the drop of an Athenian dime. Monastery-confined monks would construct vast “memory palaces” in their minds to store and recall data in photographic detail. Starting with paper and pen, technological advances began to make that sort of rigorous mental dexterity obsolete. But in our rush to modernity, have we gone too far? Have we given over too much of our brain power to the devices built to boost our productivity? Are our brains now just tasty mush for our zombie progeny??"
Free download from: http://www.snarkmarket.com/nla/
See Kevin Kelly's take on this: http://kk.org/ct2/2009/07/innovative-publishing-model.php

Shelter Inspires Tattooer Matt

We just got an online order for Shelter, HomeWork, and Builders of the Pacific Coast* from Tattooer Matt (aka brassknucklebreakdancer) in Oregon, who wrote:
"Shelter from the 70s was a gift this past winter and after reading it, i have since moved my 2 kids out to a yurt i built on 20 acres 40 minutes outside of portland, maine.....its the best book i have ever read."
Boy, does it make me feel good to hear that the builders in our books motivate people.
*Shameless Commerce Dept. You can get 40% off if you get all 3 books together: http://bit.ly/StHl3:

How to Build With Grid Beam Book

"Think of it as a giant Erector Set. Grid Beam is a great way to make working prototypes of furniture, experimental vehicles and even small buildings. If your idea doesn't work, you can change it until it does. If you don’t need it anymore, Grid Beams are easily demountable and ready to use for the next project. I find the ability to try ideas quickly in analog form to be a huge advantage. With nothing simulated, you know for sure it works, not merely that it should work. A drawing can lie to your client or worse, to you. Grid Beams never lie. The book illustrates a remarkable array of projects, all real, and many actually at work. Inspiring!"
-- J. Baldwin
From CoolTools:

Is it Wood or Is It Lumber?

Feedback from David Naas in Santa Cruz :

(Line from movie The Mosquito Coast:) 

"Kid's out in the woods and hollers I found a pile of wood... Harrison (Ford) hollers back is it wood or is it lumber?" Point being that in Builders of the Pacific Coast that line begins to blur... I wonder if guys like Sunray Kelley even notice the difference sometimes…."

Yoga studio by SunRay Kelley

Spectacular Hot Springs in Pamukkale, Turkey

"For thousands of years a deep underground spring has been pouring out streams of hot, mineral-saturated water. As it has flowed down the mountainside the steaming water has hollowed enormous circular basins in the earth, and the water's rich mineral content has coated them in a smooth layer of dazzlingly-white calcareous rock. To the ancients such beauty could only mean that the place was sacred to the gods…." http://bit.ly/ouJaS

Family Living in Santa Cruz (California) Mountains

This is a great all-photo blog by Doug Lawson. "I'm a writer and tech consultant who's living with my family in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California."

Doug's blog: http://houseonbearmountain.blogspot.com/

Doug on Twitter: http://twitter.com/douglawson

At left: Snail car

Great Stuff in Latest Issue Mother Earth News

Amazing how The Mother Earth News has transformed itself in the last decade to a relevant, interesting, timely publication with all sorts of useful info. The June/July issue includes adobe brick homes a la Hassan Fathy, fiber-cement house siding, raising chickens for meat, building a clothesline (avoiding hi-energy costs of dryer)…http://www.motherearthnews.com/

Mother Earth photo by Clarke Snell 

Strawbale Building in Snowy Ontario

Ross Elliott, from McDonalds Corners, Ontario, runs a rural building consulting company, and sent us this winter photo of a "…strawbale place, curved to fit around some 100 year old maples."

Reclaimed Wood Furniture From Vancouver island

"We salvage trees brought down by storms or left behind by forest companies. Our favourite is the Western Bigleaf Maple (acer macrophyllum), sought after by luthiers, wood turners and carvers for its exceptional colour and figure.

Tree growth takes place just beneath the bark. The rich contours of this  ‘live edge’ give a sculptural quality to our furniture.

On its journey to become your custom made furniture the tree is milled into massive slabs, innovatively dried, exquisitely designed, expertly crafted and finely finished all at our studio on Vancouver Island." http://www.liveedge.com/

Flock of Band-tailed Pigeons in Garden

This big flock of beautiful wild pigeons inhabits a few square miles in my neighborhood. They, along with blue herons, are the most wary of local birds. When they come in like this, the slightest bit of motion, even when we're inside looking through windows, will set them off in a flurry of wings and noise. (Also, I'm convinced animals feel it when you look at them.) We were having tea this morning when they helicoptored in. I crept over to the window with my Canon 20D. Look at the bird coming in for a landing on the right. — poetry of motion.

The Coolest Apartment Block on Earth

"Viennese artist, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, has designed what has become one of the more unique and visually stimulating buildings in the world. With over 1000 unique windows, individualized handles on windows and doors, a living roof, café, parking garage, restaurant, bar, playground, and a running stream, the Waldspirale in Darmstadt, Germany is an architectural wonder. Upon first glance, second and third, one is simply enchanted and astonished." http://bit.ly/WyCvj

Amazon Taps Its Inner Apple

In a long article about the possibility that Apple will come up with a beautifully designed and crafted, wow-inspiring device that'll knock somewhat-dowdy Kindle for a loop:

"Nonetheless, this is how Steve Jobs could perform a jujitsu move on Jeff Bezos. After Amazon went through the trouble and expense of seeding the landscape, implanting the concept of the e-book in people's minds, creating a market where there wasn't one before, and moving to control the distribution system, Apple could muscle its way in with a full-color multitouch-screen media tablet that not only reads books but also offers video, music, Web surfing, email, and the combined power of the iTunes and Apple App Store. The device might even load into a desktop dock that accommodates a full-size keyboard. Books would only be a small part of what it offers, making it appeal to a vastly larger audience than the Kindle's…."

Hmm…

From "Amazon Taps Its Inner Apple" by Adam L. Penenberg; fastcompany.com, Wed Jul 1, 2009

Mud Bath Au Local/Fresh Halibut

Friday I worked on my (irregular) email newsletter GIMME SHELTER most of the day (slow writer) and around 6 took my paddleboard down to the lagoon. Incoming tide, headed into one of the secret side channels, maybe 25' wide' winding thru mudflats and pickleweeed. No soul in sight. Gliding along prone, @water level, get v. close to birds. Elegant egrets, wary blue herons, cloud of red-wing blackbirds at one point. Water warm from day's sunshine, headed into small side channel, gliding thru cordgrass. Pulled board up on mudflats, stripped and coated every part of my body I could reach with gooey black mud that was pungent with ocean & sea minerals. Dried a bit in wind, then jumped in deeper channel to wash mud off. paddled back to dock and here was fisherman Andrew, pulling in with 4 fresh halibut. I bought a 7-pounder, brought home and filleted. Great evening at seashore.

California Sea Otters Engangered

An article in the SF Chronicle yesterday stated that "Sea otters along the California coast are dying off faster than at any time since the late 1990s, a disturbing trend that experts say is partially due to human-caused water pollution, the U.S. Geological Survey reported Tuesday." 

Vital Stats: Average 4 feet long; males weigh about 65 pounds, females 45 pounds. They have webbed hind feet, strong canine teeth, retractable forepaw claws, closable ears and nostrils for swimming, and dense, waterproof fur.

Habitat: Found near shore in shallow waters, generally 115 feet deep or less. Kelp beds are the ideal environment.

Diet: Carnivorous. They eat 20-25 percent of their body weight each day of invertebrates such as abalone, clams, sea urchins, crabs, barnacles, snails, squid, chitons, worms and sea stars.

Photo by Eliya on Flicker

Discovering Timber-framed Buildings by Richard Harris

This is a gem of a little book, by Richard Harris, with handsome drawings of timber-framed buildings in England. It's of interest not only to lovers of these structures, but valuable for architects who may be designing a new building, or restoring an old one. There's a Google preview of the entire book here: http://bit.ly/bSR1Y