
God's Gym, Oakland Early Morning Downtown Broadway

Oakland is a great city (in spite of its crime problems). It gets no respect, having as elder sisters the dazzling San Francisco and the v. cool Berkeley. Oakland ain't precious, it's got guts. I came in early this morning to shoot this building, which I've passed and admired several times. Then on my way to my favorite Berkeley latte/internet cafe, I kept stopping the truck to shoot yet another photo. Oakland is graphically rich, a lot of ingenuity and down-to-the-bone design. I'll follow this with more pix when I get time.
Straw Bale Building by Bill and Athena Steen

Notice of Intent to Get Irresponsible and Go Surfing
Last year I set 2009 as a year to take some time off, and therefore I'm taking off next week on a flight to Costa Rica, where I'll meet my good friend from Mexico Chilón, and we'll journey out the the southern Pacific Coast of CR and stay in a beachside house of friends that is west of Puerto Jimínez and close to the Panamanian border. There is surf right out in front of this house and the nearby tropical jungle has howler monkeys, exotic birds, snakes and crocodiles. Chilón has to go back to Baja in 2 weeks, at which time I plan to head south on a bus to Panama City, and make my way to Peru. I'm lugging along my MacBook laptop plus my new little Canon Powershot G-10 (15 MP!) and will post blogs whenever possible. I'm taking along watercolors and sketchbooks as I've long wanted to take the time to draw and try out watercoloring. It's really easy to keep putting off something like this, with all the complexities of running a business in these very difficult times, so I planned for it and got a ticket. My email will be taken care of by people in the office and I'll try to respond to anything that utterly needs my attention from the road. I'll be gone for 6 weeks. If you check back here by say Feb 12-14th, there ought to be some postings from a gringo in the jungle.
Roof-top Tents for Car Camping

Great Book On Solar Hot Water Heating
Solar Hot Water Systems: Lessons Learned 1977 to Today, by Tom Lane.
210 pp., spiral bound, © 2004. $43 from Energy Conservation Services, Gainesville, Florida
http://www.ecs-solar.com/lessons_learned.htm
My friend Michael Gaspers turned me on to this book. Michael is a carpenter, contractor, and engineer and has for over 30 years been building energy-efficient structures whenever and wherever possible. He really likes this book. Author Tom Lane is a heavily-experienced solar hot water person and this is a book dense with information about state-of-the-art solar hot water devices for homes and pools. Lane points out that while photovoltaic solar electricity-generating systems have recently caught the public's attention, solar hot water systems save way more kilowatt hours for each dollar invested: "…for every $20-30 spent on a PV system, you can save the same amount (of KW hours) for $1 spent on a solar water system." This is a serious book, ideal for contractors, but also for owner-builders seeking the latest information on the subject.
210 pp., spiral bound, © 2004. $43 from Energy Conservation Services, Gainesville, Florida
http://www.ecs-solar.com/lessons_learned.htm

Making It All Worthwhile Department
I got up at 6 this cold, dark, frosty, sunny morning, checked my email and found this comment on one of my recent blogs (wherein I'd said that what a lot of us did in the '60s didn't catch on with the mainstream until now).
Some background for this comment: In 1967 I was foreman on a job building a big-timber house on a ranch in Big Sur. We were living in a chicken coop on the ranch, and would often pick up hitchhikers on our way back and forth into Monterey for supplies. This guy wrote:
"'But it just didn't make it out to the mainstream...'
"I judge that it made it out into the mainstream more than you think. You picked me up hitchhiking in 1967, let me stay in your renovated chicken coop in Big Sur and sent me off the next day with homemade cookies. I saw what you were doing and listened to what you were saying and never forgot it as I made my way through mainstream society for the next however many years as a newspaper editor, state government official, etc. Your influence and vision was always with me. Thank you!"
I thought of it all morning as I drove through the Olema Valley for a 7:30 yoga class. It made the morning glow.
Some background for this comment: In 1967 I was foreman on a job building a big-timber house on a ranch in Big Sur. We were living in a chicken coop on the ranch, and would often pick up hitchhikers on our way back and forth into Monterey for supplies. This guy wrote:
"'But it just didn't make it out to the mainstream...'
"I judge that it made it out into the mainstream more than you think. You picked me up hitchhiking in 1967, let me stay in your renovated chicken coop in Big Sur and sent me off the next day with homemade cookies. I saw what you were doing and listened to what you were saying and never forgot it as I made my way through mainstream society for the next however many years as a newspaper editor, state government official, etc. Your influence and vision was always with me. Thank you!"
I thought of it all morning as I drove through the Olema Valley for a 7:30 yoga class. It made the morning glow.
Mushroom Hunting In a Dry Year
Other than for a 30-second downpour yesterday, this central part of California continues a dry spell that is getting scary. In my main mushroom grove yesterday (Oaks, Bays, Hazelnuts, Redwoods), the leaves were damp. but when you scratched down to the soil, it was dry. Mushrooms are deep down, in hiding. On 2 of my recent forays I was lucky to find one lonely Chantrelle each time. There aren't even the usual amanita phalloides (death caps) sprouting mernacingly in the Oak leaves. But even if there are no mushrooms, I love being in the woods. I've learned to follow faint animal trails. Sometimes when there's no obvious route, I put myself in the mind of a coyote, or deer, and the way appears. I'm becoming a mushroom hunter, and it is sharpening my awareness of rain and wind and moisture content of soil.
A Change Is Gonna Come, Yes It Is
Around 1967, my friend Bob Easton and I talked about the ending of the "old consciousness." It truly did seem like the dawning of a new age, and we thought the world with soon catch up with our countercultural concepts. Well, a lot of us did go off and build houses, or start organic farms, or get politically or ecologically active, etc., but it just didn't make it out to the mainstream. Many of the baby boomer movers and shakers of the age dropped their worship of the planet for the worship of wealth. Greed replaced Green, and we ended up 30+ years later with a murderous, anti-ecological, wrong-in-every-possible-way government. Did you see Cheney's black hat at the inauguration? Puh-leeze! Someone said his arm is about to fly up, like Dr. Strangelove's. It was an emotional day for me, I have to admit. I've been waiting so long for this. To see this beautiful man, and his beautiful and strong and smart wife, and beautiful little girls, with his cool and intelligent demeanor, and to have played that music on Sunday, I mean: Stevie Wonder, Usher and Shakira; Herbie Hancock, Sheryl Crow and Will. I. Am; Mellincamp backed by a kick-ass choir; the ecstatic look on Pete Seeger's face as Bruce Springsteen played backup. Ooo-weee!
To see that moment, with the reign of darkness ending, was just a bit overwhelming. It is a goddamned different consciousness, yes it is! I know I'm naive. I tend to fall in love — with people, places, animals — and am not daunted by past disappointments and failures, and so I'm overboard optimistic about the future. Just to be moving in the right direction. We got a prince for president.
Jon Carrol, the very fine and often funny San Francisco Chronicle columnist wrote something about Al Green's version of A Change is Gonna Come, and I looked it up on YouTube and here is just an amazing performance, from 1995. Somebody say Oh Yeah!
To see that moment, with the reign of darkness ending, was just a bit overwhelming. It is a goddamned different consciousness, yes it is! I know I'm naive. I tend to fall in love — with people, places, animals — and am not daunted by past disappointments and failures, and so I'm overboard optimistic about the future. Just to be moving in the right direction. We got a prince for president.
Jon Carrol, the very fine and often funny San Francisco Chronicle columnist wrote something about Al Green's version of A Change is Gonna Come, and I looked it up on YouTube and here is just an amazing performance, from 1995. Somebody say Oh Yeah!
Tears of Joy
I didn't know about the Sunday concert (We Are One-The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial) on HBO, I just happened to walk by the TV at the precise moment that Bettye LaVette walked onstage and started singing. "I was born by the river…" of Sam Cooke's A Change is Gonna Come. I was riveted. And then what happens? Out strolls Jon Bon Jovi, who I've never seen before, and what a voice! The duet was gorgeous. "A change is gonna come, yes it will…" It made me cry. All these years of darkness and greed, can it be true that the sun is going to shine on this country again?
You Can Take the Boy Out of California, But You Can't Take California…
I love getting out of California, but I love getting back. From a Southwest Airlines flight, here is a view of the Rockies as we head west. Then, later, some only-in-America gorgeous canyon lands.
As we pass lake Tahoe and get to Sacramento, my heart skips a beat as I see the gentle green hills of California: with all her faults I love her still.


As we pass lake Tahoe and get to Sacramento, my heart skips a beat as I see the gentle green hills of California: with all her faults I love her still.
Powder Snow and Mountain Lion Tracks at 9000' Elevation



Snowshoeing With Bob Anderson in Rocky Mountains


Off-the-Grid Two-Story Montana Cabin

The cabin is powered by two fifty-watt photovoltaic panels that provide twelve volt direct current power to outlets, lights, and the well pump. That power lets the client have a stereo, a TV/VCR, running water in the sink, and water to fill a wood-fired hot tub. A composting toilet… provides sanitation."
http://www.prairiewindarch.com/
Container Housing in London

From www.environmentalgraffiti.com
All Whole Earth publications online
From http://boingboing.net/:
Kevin Kelly reports the exciting news that all the Whole Earth-related publications from the last 40 year are scanned and online at wholeearth.com.
"One could read back issues if you could find them. I had the privilege of producing many of the issues of CoEvolution Quarterly and some of the Catalogs, so I had my own personal library of them. (Therefore you should also discount my enthusiasm for them.) I can't tell you how many wonderful evenings I have spent sitting in my reading chair re-exploring the fantastic worlds captured in these back issues. It is impossible to pick one up and not be mesmerized, thrilled, amazed, and informed by at least two stories or reviews. There is a timeless nature to this work that is due to their anti-fashionable status. The Whole Earth Catalogs and CoEvolutions were idea-based journalism, rather than event-based. Instead of reporting on top of things, they liked to get to the bottom of things. These issues zagged while the rest of the culture zigged, only to zag later.
The good news is that all this goodness is now online. Danica Remy and the last holdouts of the old Point Foundation, publishers of the Catalogs and magazine until its last issue in 2002, have given a second life to this gold mine of material by arranging them to be scanned and posted online. The entire 35-year archive of Whole Earth Catalogs, Supplements, Reviews and CoEvolutions are all up and ready to be studied. You can read them for free, or download them for a fee."

"One could read back issues if you could find them. I had the privilege of producing many of the issues of CoEvolution Quarterly and some of the Catalogs, so I had my own personal library of them. (Therefore you should also discount my enthusiasm for them.) I can't tell you how many wonderful evenings I have spent sitting in my reading chair re-exploring the fantastic worlds captured in these back issues. It is impossible to pick one up and not be mesmerized, thrilled, amazed, and informed by at least two stories or reviews. There is a timeless nature to this work that is due to their anti-fashionable status. The Whole Earth Catalogs and CoEvolutions were idea-based journalism, rather than event-based. Instead of reporting on top of things, they liked to get to the bottom of things. These issues zagged while the rest of the culture zigged, only to zag later.
The good news is that all this goodness is now online. Danica Remy and the last holdouts of the old Point Foundation, publishers of the Catalogs and magazine until its last issue in 2002, have given a second life to this gold mine of material by arranging them to be scanned and posted online. The entire 35-year archive of Whole Earth Catalogs, Supplements, Reviews and CoEvolutions are all up and ready to be studied. You can read them for free, or download them for a fee."
-Kevin Kelly
The Mind, After All, Resides in the Body
A message for you guys: at age 70, it's a different ball game. Harder to stay in shape. Excuses more finely honed. Too cold to get in the water. Too late to take a run. Not enough time to work out. There's also the fascination with my work right now, and the long hours at a keyboard/monitor necessary in putting together books and running a business. I've never been more excited with my work and consequently never had such a hard time breaking away to work the body.
Over the last year I lost a lot of ground. My last book was so time-consuming I got to a low in the physical activity department. My running dropped way off; less surfing and paddling meant loss of upper body strength. When the book was done I got a wake-up call. Use it or lose it. So true.
I'm pushing myself to get out there. Even if it's just running a mile or two. Or like earlier today I decided to go for a paddle and the lazy guy on my one shoulder said, the water is so cold, you can work at the Mac a while longer, then go in and sit by the fire. But the healthy guy on my other shoulder said get in the water dude, you know it'll make you feel better. Sure enough it did.
I find this again and again. Trying to push myself to do something physical, whatever form it takes. Maybe just walking around the block. Jumping in the creek. A run way scaled back from my serious training days. Don't neglect the body. As stretching guru Bob Anderson says, "You never hear anyone say, "I'm sorry I worked out.'" I guess I'm writing about it because at my age it's so easy to give up and every time I grab hold of myself and propel myself out into the physical world, my body and my mind feel infinitely better.
Over the last year I lost a lot of ground. My last book was so time-consuming I got to a low in the physical activity department. My running dropped way off; less surfing and paddling meant loss of upper body strength. When the book was done I got a wake-up call. Use it or lose it. So true.
I'm pushing myself to get out there. Even if it's just running a mile or two. Or like earlier today I decided to go for a paddle and the lazy guy on my one shoulder said, the water is so cold, you can work at the Mac a while longer, then go in and sit by the fire. But the healthy guy on my other shoulder said get in the water dude, you know it'll make you feel better. Sure enough it did.
I find this again and again. Trying to push myself to do something physical, whatever form it takes. Maybe just walking around the block. Jumping in the creek. A run way scaled back from my serious training days. Don't neglect the body. As stretching guru Bob Anderson says, "You never hear anyone say, "I'm sorry I worked out.'" I guess I'm writing about it because at my age it's so easy to give up and every time I grab hold of myself and propel myself out into the physical world, my body and my mind feel infinitely better.
Treehouses in UK, Europe, and Africa

http://www.blueforest.com/
Jon Brooks' Sculptural House

http://www.jonbrooks.org/g-house.html
Dedie aux Animaux - Animal Photos of Arturo Medina
I am not sure who sent these to us, and I can't track down anything in English about the photographer, but these are a joy.
Timber Cove Inn Reborn

The Majesty of Redwood Trees

"Tree hugging" is kind of a lame phrase, right? Well I recommend you hug a redwood some time (old growth if possible). Face it and spread your arms out on its trunk and lay your face against it. If your mind is still you can feel the life, the presence, the power of this living creature. I found this in a grove in Mendocino County on Saturday.
Lloyd on Oprah's New Network?
Over the weekend I got an email from some independent film producers in L.A. "We are looking for interesting people, artists, activists, professors, etc. to interview about 'living your best life.'" They were producing a segment for Oprah's new network show, OWN, and the director was Jesse Dylan. I met the crew at Muir Woods and they did about a 10-minute interview with me standing under the redwoods, with Jesse doing the interviewing, and me blabbing as usual. When it was over we walked back to the production trailer through the light rain. I told Jesse I'd grown up in San Francisco, and he asked if I liked the Grateful Dead. By way of answering, I said, "Know what a Deadhead says when he runs out of pot? — This music sucks!" I went on to say that in those days I listened to the Stones, Beatles and Bob Dylan. "That's my dad." he said. I didn't know. When I got back I looked up his work, which happens to be very cool:
JESSEDYLAN.pdf
JESSEDYLAN.pdf
Coco's in L.A.

2427 Riverside Drive
Los Angeles, California 90039
Coco's Variety sells flyswatters, glass 5 gallon water bottles, headache remedies, oil cloth by the yard, used bicycles, California souvenir tablecloths, Kit-Cat Klocks, gum ball machines, Mexican Cokes in glass bottles, squirt guns, tote bags adorned with hula girls, Lodge cast iron frying pans, old American-made tools, baskets for your bicycle, wood matches, reverse osmosis purified drinking water by the gallon and fancy Jadeite cake plates for fancy cakes on fancy occasions.
We sell everything but parakeets.
http://www.cocosvariety.com/
SunRay Kelley's Natural Materials Temple

The Band & Muddy Waters - Mannish Boy(Live)
The real Muddy Waters, late in his life, performing with The Band in their Last Waltz concert in San Francisco in the '70s.
The International House of Cards is Collapsing
Our production-meister Rick Gordon sent me this on the recent financial collapse, his email was titled: (Happy New Year [anyhow] from Rick Gordon):
The bottom of this SF Chronicle article —
Market meltdown: Where did all the money go?
— has an interesting analysis of the the market crash. I've also quoted the pertinent portion below (my emphasis added):
Charles Biderman, chief executive of TrimTabs Investment Research in Sausalito, has a different explanation. He says that from the market's bottom in 2003 until its peak in 2007, the market value of all publicly traded stocks worldwide grew from about $20 trillion to $45 trillion.
During this period, only about $1.5 trillion in cash went into the market. Debt accounted for some of the remaining increase in market capitalization, but most of it existed only on paper. "Market capitalization and money aren't necessarily related," he says.
Suppose a company has 1 million shares of stock priced at $100 each, giving it a market value of $100 million. Over the next few days, someone buys $5 million worth of stock. Speculation drives the share price to $140, and suddenly, the company has a market value of $140 million. In this case, a $5 million investment has created a $40 million increase in market value.
Is the company really worth $140 million? Not if everyone tried to sell their stock at once. The first person might get $140, but everyone else would get less, probably much less. "It's not any different than a Ponzi scheme, a legal one," Biderman says.
The same thing happens in real estate. Suppose the house next door sells for $700,000. Suddenly, every family on the block thinks their house is worth $700,000. But if everyone on the block put their house on the market, everyone could not get $700,000.
Multiply that by just about every asset class in the world, and you'll get a sense of what happened last year. "The perceived value evaporated," says Ken Winans, president of Winans International, a research and money management firm in Novato. "Are there trillions of dollars that have simply evaporated? The answer is yes."
-----
An enlightening and entertaining analysis of how deep this process is — and why even if the stocks were only valued at their actual cash investment, it would only be a drop in the bucket — can be found in this 47-minute video:
Money As Debt
(Don't get discouraged by the 16 seconds of blank video at the beginning.) Check it out.
Happy New Year!
Rick
The bottom of this SF Chronicle article —
Market meltdown: Where did all the money go?
— has an interesting analysis of the the market crash. I've also quoted the pertinent portion below (my emphasis added):
Charles Biderman, chief executive of TrimTabs Investment Research in Sausalito, has a different explanation. He says that from the market's bottom in 2003 until its peak in 2007, the market value of all publicly traded stocks worldwide grew from about $20 trillion to $45 trillion.
During this period, only about $1.5 trillion in cash went into the market. Debt accounted for some of the remaining increase in market capitalization, but most of it existed only on paper. "Market capitalization and money aren't necessarily related," he says.
Suppose a company has 1 million shares of stock priced at $100 each, giving it a market value of $100 million. Over the next few days, someone buys $5 million worth of stock. Speculation drives the share price to $140, and suddenly, the company has a market value of $140 million. In this case, a $5 million investment has created a $40 million increase in market value.
Is the company really worth $140 million? Not if everyone tried to sell their stock at once. The first person might get $140, but everyone else would get less, probably much less. "It's not any different than a Ponzi scheme, a legal one," Biderman says.
The same thing happens in real estate. Suppose the house next door sells for $700,000. Suddenly, every family on the block thinks their house is worth $700,000. But if everyone on the block put their house on the market, everyone could not get $700,000.
Multiply that by just about every asset class in the world, and you'll get a sense of what happened last year. "The perceived value evaporated," says Ken Winans, president of Winans International, a research and money management firm in Novato. "Are there trillions of dollars that have simply evaporated? The answer is yes."
-----
An enlightening and entertaining analysis of how deep this process is — and why even if the stocks were only valued at their actual cash investment, it would only be a drop in the bucket — can be found in this 47-minute video:
Money As Debt
(Don't get discouraged by the 16 seconds of blank video at the beginning.) Check it out.
Happy New Year!
Rick
Shingled 2-Story Home in Berkeley

An Observer in Present-day Palestine

I got into blogging with mixed feelings a few years ago. I didn't want yet another electronic obligation, but I keep running across wonderful and/or interesting stuff in the world and want to pass it along. I started out doing long blogs, once or twice a month, and have evolved into every few days. I'm into it. So if you check me out once a week, you'll see what I'm running across in this new and changing year. In February I'm heading to Costa Rica to live in a surfer's shack on a beach near the Pacific Ocean border with Panama. for a few weeks, then to Panama City on a bus and then get a flight to Brazil, in part to visit Johan van Lengen and see his wonderful school for ecological building in the Atlantic rainforest, where he says there are "…no lack of birds and butterflies, not to mention monkeys and all kinds of snakes…" I'll be blogging when I can.
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