Lew came into the office one day (this was 26 years ago) and said he and Krystal had been to the top of the Golden Gate Bridge. What?

It turns out that Krystal did photo framing work for Bob David, the official bridge photographer and staff architect, and he had taken them up. And it had been fantastic. I beg. Please, if there’s ever a chance . . . I love the bridge and would do anything to get up there.

A few months later Krystal called on a Wednesday (in September): “It looks like we’re set for 6 tomorrow night . . . we’ll meet in the parking lot by the toll booths.”

I meet Krystal and Bob at 6 PM. It’s a warm, balmy fall night. We check in at the headquarters, get hard hats, and then hop into one of the little Cushman bridge scooters and drive out to the south tower.

There’s a brass plaque mounted on the tower, with the names of the bridge builders, mayor, etc, dated in the ’30s. Bob opens a hatch-like door and we step inside the tower.The three of us jam into a tiny antique-looking elevator (the bridge was built in the mid–’30s) — not a place for the claustrophobic — and start the ascent. I am excited out of my mind, it’s a dream come true.

The elevator (below) has steel mesh sides, so you see the interior structure of the towers as you ascend.

I was born in San Francisco, and the bridge has always been part of my life. I’ve been crossing it weekly or more in the last 55 years I’ve lived in Marin county, and it looks refreshingly beautiful each time I see it. There’s also a sort of family connection: my Dad walked out to the south tower in the ’30s when it was being built, on a wooden catwalk, before the road bed was installed. The story was in one of columnist Herb Caen’s columns in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Every time I drive across it, I admire the design. I love the fluting on the towers, the way it’s all designed to reflect light and create shadows, and the color. Often when I come into the city, I cut through the Presidio and go down to Fort Baker, under the bridge, check the surf, and look up at the bridge. I’m a fan!

* * * *

Finally we get to the end of the line, the lower surface of the top beam. Here we disembark and there’s a steel ladder with round and worn rungs about 20 feet long going up to the top, where there’s a hatch cover. Bob tells me I can go first.

I climb through the hatch cover, and step into the warm night, the sun getting ready to set, and I’m 700’ above the water, it has to be one of the greatest thrills in my life. I’m surprised to feel perfectly safe; there’s a railing. I’m not crazy about heights, but this feels OK. It’s a unique vantage point.

Above. looking south. The Presidio (white buildings) above the toll gates on the left, Pacific Heights in background; the ocean, Baker Beach on the right.

Above: Marin County to the north, Horseshoe Bay yacht harbor, Robin Williams Tunnel left of bridge tower, Belvedere island top right

You can watch the cars going north and south, and see boats sailing or motoring and occasionally crossing under the bridge with white wakes.

You look around at the construction, the heavy steel plates, the bolts, it’s amazing how good it looks after 65 years.

Inching out here did get my heart pounding...

When I say something about Krystal’s hard hat, she starts singing,
”Y-M-C-A . . . “

It’s a nice night, a comfortable temperature. The three of us stay up there about an hour, talking, admiring the view. It’s pleasant, we’re just hangin’. Bob loves the structure and he likes seeing people appreciate the magnificence of it all. The sun starts to set and orange light filters through the air. The bridge turns a deeper shade of orange. It’s one of those moments that’s etched in my memory forever.

We go back down the elevator. In the parking lot Bob shows us the snack bar, which he designed. It’s a beautiful little building, in harmony with the bridge and the Round House, and the lettering is the same art deco style as on the brass plaque at the tower.

I say to Bob, “You’ve changed my life.”

And it has, because now every time I see the bridge, from above (as you often do from an airplane leaving SFO), or driving across, or from below, or from the hills, I’ll always remember what it’s like on top.

A few months later I paddled a kayak from Bolinas into San Francisco and went under the bridge.

* * * *

Note: if you’re interested in the bridge, see John Van der Zee’s book, The Gate, which describes, among other things, how the real designer of the bridge was not Joseph Strauss, as is commonly attributed, but an artistic (and unheralded) engineer named Charles Ellis.

****

(These were the first shots I took with a digital camera, a little Fuji Finepix 4700.)

Addendum: The Golden Gate Before the Bridge

My Dad bought this print for $1 from the photographer (name unknown) during the depression, about 1930. it’s printed on textured paper, hence the pattern.

It shows the Golden Gate before the bridge. Note Fort Point on the left.

• I’m behind in posting; I try to do one per week.

• My life is both rich and chaotic these days. I’ve never been so busy, and this, along with the aging factor makes for a wild ride.

So here are random photos. Like a lot of things I do, I’m just gonna start and see how it works. Right now, I’ll work backwards through my photos,

In putting up the pages of my handmade book Pop’s Diner (in the four recent Substack posts), I rediscovered the art of shooting photos with the approximate looks of a 50 mm lens, and collaging them to form a panorama.

What jumps out at me here is the reality of the scene, as opposed to the distortions of wide-angle lenses. It’s exciting to discover this technique I was utilizing 30-40 years ago — except now Photoshop is is piecing them together (in Photomerge).

The kitchen was built by Lew Lewandowski about 30 years ago. (At the time, Lew was a traveling carpenter; carrying all his tools, including a small table saw and joiner in a Volkswagen van [along with his two dogs]),

I got the stainless steel sink for $100 at Caldwell Wreckers in San Francisco. It drains from both sides into the sink, unlike most sinks with a lip around the counter (that eventually rots). I wash dishes in the Rubbermaid dishpan, rinse, and stack in the slotted wooden shelf on the right.

(Actually, the counter isn’t usually this cluttered.)

Somewhat to Lesley’s chagrin (and amusement), I did this video a few years ago:

My neighbor, artist Dieter Tremp showed up a few weeks ago with this (12” by 14”) drawing. He’d done a bunch of drawings based on photographer Imogene Cunningham’s book After Ninety, and realized he had a nonagenarian down the road. To tell the truth, I’m kinda thrilled with it.

Anna Magnani, the Italian actress is said to have said to a makeup artist who wanted to smooth out her face, something like "No, no, I earned all these lines in my face."

10,000 Trips Around the Lagoon

Coming home on an afternoon last week. The water, sky, birds, view of the ridge, are always different, and how about this? — I’ve been along the edge of lagoon, returning home, well over 10,000 times — on foot, bike and car. (Say four times a week for 55 years.)

Two Nonagenarians, one Octogenarian

Impromptu old guys club last week.

Tony Serra (red shirt) and me, both 91, and Jasper, our young friend in his early ‘80s at Tony’s house — all of us native San Franciscans. Tony’s daughter Wonder and granddaughter Page had just left, and the three of us talked for about an hour. Tony and I have been friends for over 70 years.

I don’t get the chance to talk to people my age much, and it was like we were speaking a different language — based on what we’ve seen in a pretty good span of years.

One of those “sweet spots in time,”* when everything comes together. We covered a lot of ground, Tony reciting the odd poem in his passionate stentorian style.

Writing this while listening to album “She’s So Fine: The Rise of the Girl Groups,” some of the mighty fine (and mostly unknown) fabulous girl singers of the ‘50s

* If you follow me, you’ll find I use this phrase pretty often.

Farm Fresh Rainbows

Free-range multi-color beauties engineered by Sirima and Walter

Coleus Colors

Three coleus plants and a mask at Berkeley Horticultural Nursery Friday. I bought the gaudy one at top left to liven up our burgeoning garden.

I’m working my way backwards through my iPhone (17) shots here.

A Mexican Bakery

Bakery in the Los Montañas Mercado in San Pablo, the closest thing we have to a real Mexican mercado in the Bay Area. Fantastic store, huge. Real made-in-a-vat chicharones. All the foods of Mexico. And the bakery — well, I appreciate this on an artistic, if not gustatory level.

Freeway Design

Once in a while, freeways exhibit good design. (I love the brick red color; all my doors and windows are painted brick red.) This is near the Presidio Pet Cemetery in San Francisco (667 McDowell Avenue), which is, in itself, worth a visit. (There’s one tombstone for a beloved deceased pet goldfish,)

Surfers on Bikes

Spotted these guys downtown one day. Mitch and Lee got on a train in Truckee (near Lake Tahoe) with their bikes and surfboards, got off in Emeryville, rode the ferry into San Francisco, then pedaled out to Bolinas where they went surfing. Back to Truckee the same day. Truckee to SF: 195 miles.

Tangential Visit

Chris Ryan stopped by for a visit a few weeks ago on a cross-West road trip. Here he is standing in his Sprinter van.

Chris is a fascinating guy and his Tangentially Speaking is my most listened-to Substack. He’s also a heavy duty podcaster, with over 500 episodes, plus, he and his his equally fascinating partner Anya coordinate from time to time and I end up taking notes.

Stinson Beach Lifeguards circa 1960

1960 on a day off, we were heading out to to North Beach on the Point Reyes Peninsula to go surfing in my 1937 Chevy pickup truck (which had had square-cut gears, so you had to double-clutch both up and down through the gears.

66 years ago.

L-r: me, Jim Sylvia, my brother Bob, John Wiskovich, Jim Mc Gowan

One last panorama, the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, thanks to Rick, who walked me through the (to moi) complex steps of saving the panorama so it can be loaded into Substack. I’m intrigued to rediscover this technique. It feels like I’m stepping into the photo.

Poppa’s got a brand new bag.

Or, just click on any photo, and the entire post will open in your browser.

I’m loving the (Tri-x) black and white film in revisiting this book. I understand why a bunch of my friends have gone back to shooting film. These ain’t no iPhone shots…

Architects and builders: look at how this building is constructed. It’s a beauty!

The gracefulness and symmetry of the two hip roofs, the placement of the building in the landscape (with the boulder), and the delight of the light-filled upper story with a 360 view. Architecture.

I loved just about every part of America back then — as I went south, east, north, west. Good people all over in the ‘60s-’70s. I had the best vibes everywhere, and that in spite of the fact that I was a bit, um, hippie-ish looking. Good good good vibrations…

I’m looking at these shots, and interestingly, they look alive in spite of the fact they’re 4th generation:

1. Prints from Tri-X film

2. Pages of book copied on Canon Lasercolor Copier

3. PDFs made of pages

4. Pages loaded into Substack

Even on this electronic screen, I see an element of soul in the photos that’s missing in digital shots.

Guess what — intrepid reader who’s still with me — I’m gonna get back to doing the occasional one-off book; print run of one. (Actually, no print run.)

Plus I’m starting, for to do fliers, pamphlets to hand out for the first time since the ‘70s.

It’s so refreshing to put stuff together sans computer.

Finding cracks in the fabric of communication…

Or, just click on any photo, and the entire post will open in your browser.

This little building, viewed 37 years later, still stuns me. It’s an exquisitely elegant little hand-made home — everything perfect about it. Savvy masonry. And talk about architecture!

Putting these pages up, I took the trip all over again. Part of what I’m trying to do these days is to take people along with me, riding shotgun. I shoot pics and make notes as I roll, try stuff out, and explore, and get back and put it — words and pics — into various forms of media..

I (ahem! ahem!) really like this book. It seems so right in these times. It’s made by hand! The hand-written text is friendly. It makes me want to do some non-keyboard types of publications now.

This is the second portion of my handmade book from 1989. In several instances, as just below, when there are crossovers (landscapes that stretch across the full length of the book when it’s open), I’m first printing the entire spread, and then the individual pages full-sized.

Note to photographers: many of the images here are pasted-together 50 mm shots, rather than photographic panoramas or wide-angle shots, which distort reality. A 50 mm lens is the way I see the world, and pasting them together gets the proportions right. (And I mean pasting them together on a sheet of paper, not a computer.)

Part of this influence as I mentioned before, came from Robert Frank, and also, a tip of the (Hatlo) hat to David Hockney, whose book David Hockney Cameraworks (one of my favorite all time books) showed me how to paste prints together to get breathtaking images — and not worry about having things line up perfectly.

Funny thing,: as I’ve been putting this together for Substack, I’ve been reliving the trip — the canyons, the hot springs, the barns, the incredible Southwest USA all over again. I’m riding shotgun, as I hope you are, on this two week trip.

To be continued…

In 1988 I bought my first Toyota Tacoma 4X4 and started taking 2-3-week trips each spring in search of hot springs, wide open spaces, and adventure — getting out of precious Marin County into the comparatively wild west and shooting photos along the way. On two of these trips I put together hand-made books. I shot photos (here with an Olympus OM-1 and a Minox GT-E pocket camera) and had 4” by 6” prints made of selected shots.

I’ve done a bunch of one-off books, of no commercial value — each with the idea of taking you, dear reader, along riding shotgun with me.

With this one, working mostly at night, I then put together 11” by 17” pages, gluing down selected photos and hand-written text. I did panoramas of pasted-together (50 mm lens) shots (inspired by a black-and-white panorama I saw on the wall of Robert Frank’s house in Nova Scotia in the ‘70s).

I painted on some of the photos with water color pens.

I think hand lettering is more friendly than type, more conversational.

When I finished (took a few months of spare time work), I had two copies of each page printed on a Canon Lasercolor copier at Krishna Copy in San Francisco. (This was the first good quality 11” by 17” color copy machine, 37 years ago, which sold for about $70,000.)

Bookbinder Sandy Good glued the pages back-to-back and bound them together into two books — all-time small print run! I would send the book to friends in a plywood box and they’d return it after a while. Like a lot of my varied forms of communication, no commercial viability.

We did a digital short-run of about 25 copies (8-1/2” by 14”), which I gave to friends, but I can’t charge enough to sell them. Plus I don’t want to go back into the mail-order book business, so figure the best form is Substack.

This is the first of three posts on the book. Does displaying a book like this on Substack work for you? (-Communicator in search of appropriate venue)

To be continued…

“…it was a total delight. No violence, murder, torture or evil, but a slyly funny British romantic comedy with a cast of adeptly funny characters, starring Grant in his breakout role. It’s witty and poignant (the funeral eulogy brought tears to my eyes — maybe partially because the recently departed guy reminded me of my late friend Doug in his joy of life). With all that’s going on in the world right now, especially in the USA, this comic masterpiece is a welcome relief.

The music is great too and in the closing credits, which ties everything together, the song ‘Chapel of Love’ is a playful cover by Elton John of the ‘60s hit by The Dixie Cups.”

The post had 29,000 views. I asked for recommendations and got 119 comments, most with recommended feel-good films.

What I like about this list is that it’s from people like you and me, not professional reviewers. Come to think of it, in the same way the Whole Earth Catalog reviews were by like-minded people, rather than commercial or professional interests. This was maybe the key feature of the WEC, it was so refreshing and unique to have hands-on, non-professional book and tool reviews in the ‘60s.

I like this list better than all the lists I see in the NYT of recent movies and TV series. It’s just right for me at this time in my life.

Late flash: last night I watched my first on the list, Moonstruck (hadn’t seen it before — in fact, haven’t seen most of these) and was struck by not only the acting (Cher and Nicolas Cage), but the kindnesses, the actors’ interactions that were comical and sly and lovable. Made me smile and feel good.

Note: Wikipedia does very complete film reviews. I always type in the name of the film plus “wiki” in my browser to check them out. I make a point of reading the “reception” section to see what Rotten Tomatoes and film reviewers (especially Roger Ebert) have to say.

List of Feel-Good Movies

• 10 Things I Hate About You
• 40-Year-Old Virgin
• About a Boy
• About Time
• Ball of Fire 1941, (written by Billy Wilder, starring Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck)

• Ballad of Wallace Island. The
• Being There
• Big Chill, The
• Big Lebowski, The

Boat That Rocked, The
Booksmart
Bridesmaids
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

• Chef
• Citizen Vigilante
• Cold Comfort Farm
• Crossing Delancey
• Dan in Real Life
• Daytrippers, The
• Death at a Funeral (British Version)
• Defending Your Life
• Delicatessen
• Dustin
• Father of the Bride (Steve Martin Version)

• Four Weddings and a Funeral

• Foul Play
• Four Lions
• French Kiss
• Good Morning
• Greenfingers
• Groundhog Day
• Hamish Macbeth
• Hopscotch
• I Love You, Man

• Idiocracy
• Intolerable Cruelty
• Julie & Julia
• Little Miss Sunshine
• Little Women
• Local Hero
• Moonstruck

• Muriel’s Wedding
• My Cousin Vinny
• Nine to Five

• Northern Exposure
• Notting Hill
• Nuts in May
• O Brother, Where Art Thou?

• On Golden Pond
• Peggy Sue Got Married
• Pee-wee’s Big Adventure

• Postcards from the Edge
• Raising Arizona

• Rango
• Room with a View, A
• Sheep Detective, The
• So I Married an Axe Murderer
• Steel Magnolias
• Strictly Ballroom
• Tootsie

• Toy Story
• Trading Places
• Waking Ned Devine
• When Harry Met Sally

• Withnail and I
• Worst Person in the World, The
• You’ve Got Mail
• Young Frankenstein

I added Young Frankenstein to the list. It’s the funniest move I’ve ever seen, and the black and white photography is stunning. Much of the lab equipment used as props was from the 1931 film Frankenstein. The lighting! — the actors are luminous.

The dialogue is brilliant. there are a slew of famous one-liners: “It’s pronounced Fronkensteen..” / “He vass my boyfriend!” */ “Tell me darling, just exactly what is it that you do do?” / “Put…the candle…back!.” / “What knockers! — Sank you Doctor.” / "Would you like to have a roll in za hay?" / “What hump?”

A masterpiece.

*Each time Cloris Leachman did this line, Gene Wilder would collapse laughing, and she had to do it over and over.

What are your favorites? Add to the list.

Movies Grouped According to Mood

I used Perplexity AI (which, in researching, has changed my life! ) to alphabetize the list, and it asked if I wanted categorization by mood (rather than by genre):

Light & Comforting

Easy watches, warm tone, low stakes

• About a Boy

• About Time

• Chef

• Dan in Real Life

• Father of the Bride (Steve Martin Version)

• French Kiss

• Good Morning

• Greenfingers

• Julie & Julia

• Little Women

• Moonstruck

• My Cousin Vinny

• Notting Hill

• On Golden Pond

• Peggy Sue Got Married

• Room with a View, A

• You’ve Got Mail

Laugh-Out-Loud Comedy

Jokes first, often absurd or high-energy

• 40-Year-Old Virgin

• Booksmart

• Bridesmaids

• Foul Play

• Four Lions

• I Love You, Man

• Idiocracy

• Intolerable Cruelty

• Pee-wee’s Big Adventure

• Raising Arizona

• So I Married an Axe Murderer

• Tootsie

• Trading Places

• Young Frankenstein

Quirky & Offbeat

Eccentric characters, odd rhythms, cult vibe

• Being There

• Big Lebowski, The

• Delicatessen

• Hopscotch

• Local Hero

• Muriel’s Wedding

• Nuts in May

• O Brother, Where Art Thou?

• Postcards from the Edge

• Strictly Ballroom

• Withnail and I

Romantic & Heartfelt

Love-driven stories, emotional payoff

• 10 Things I Hate About You

• Crossing Delancey

• Death at a Funeral (British Version)

• Little Miss Sunshine

• Notting Hill

• When Harry Met Sally

• You’ve Got Mail

Smart & Wry

Dry humor, dialogue-driven, often satirical

• Ball of Fire

• Big Chill, The

• Citizen Vigilante

• Defending Your Life

• Dustin

• Daytrippers, The

• Intolerable Cruelty

• Metropolitan-style tone not present but similar vibe cluster here

• Sheep Detective, The

• Worst Person in the World, The

Cozy Ensemble / Community Feel

Group dynamics, small communities, shared lives

• Big Chill, The

• Daytrippers, The

• Hamish Macbeth

• Northern Exposure

• Steel Magnolias

Slightly Dark or Bittersweet Comedy

Humor mixed with melancholy or edge

• Four Lions

• Muriel’s Wedding

• Postcards from the Edge

• Withnail and I

• Worst Person in the World, The

Adventure / Playful Energy

Movement, escapism, or stylized fun

• Boat That Rocked, The

• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

• Rango

• Toy Story

• Waking Ned Devine

They are built for functional reasons, with economy, and attention to siting, the weather, the barn’s purpose, and past experience. They have to work!

Architecture without architects — the architecture of practicality.

When I run across a barn like this, I’m both stunned and ecstatic. I sit down inside and absorb the beauty. Barns are my cathedrals.

I just ran across this shot and wanted to share it, and so, threw in other photos from Oregon.

I’m planning to do a book on barns before long.

Barn with Curved Roof in Willamette Valley

BTW, Williamette — as natives will point out — is pronounced “Will-lam-it.”

Above: Exterior of above barn. What a surprise to walk inside!

Framing

The unique feature here is that the roof’s curve is achieved by building the rafters out of 1″ material. 1 × 12s laminated together (I believe 4 of them) to achieve the simplest of laminated trusses. After laminating, the top edge is sawn to a curve. The barn is 24′ wide, 32′ long, 26′ to the ridge. Thanks to Mackenzie Strawn for measuring it; he also wrote: “I have a carpentry manual from the 1930’s with a short section on the Gothic arch barns, they suggest making the roof radius ¾ of the width.”

This is similar to the construction of the Nepenthe restaurant in Big Sur: framed entirely with laminated 1″ lumber.

Barnes With Gambrel Roofs

A gambrel roof is a two-sided roof with two slopes on each side: a shallow upper slope and a steeper lower slope — as compared to a gable roof, which has just one continuous plane on each side meeting at a ridge, making a simple triangular profile from the end view.

A gambrel roof provides more usable space in the upper story or attic because the steeper lower slopes open up headroom. A gable roof, however — one of the most common roof shapes – is simpler to frame. (The gambrel shape is a great design for a home, with bedrooms upstairs.)

Above: carpenters, note the way the dormer roofs are on the same plane as the top of the gambrel roof — nice touch.

Above: By side of road near Carlton on Hwy 47, southwest of Portland. Notice how straight the eave line is, meaning the barn’s foundation is sound — no sag. I always look for straight-across eaves.

Below three photos are of a round barn in Oregon.

Imagine driving down a country road and coming upon this beauty. Of interest to builders: note the cables (or maybe rods), which evidently provide structural (shear) support, tying plate and sill together with triangulation.

Trusses (much stronger than rafters) are nailed together 2 by 6’s. Here they span from perimeter walls to silo at center

In a way, this framing is like a giant yurt.

Shop talk: it looks like the break in the roof line (look back at exterior shot) occurs at the peaks of the trusses.

Above: fisheye shot

Above: 18-sided Bill Baker Round Barn, near Flora, Oregon

For the granddaddy of all round barns (in Oregon), see my post:

I ran across this water tower when heading to Prineville to visit my friends Lew and Krystal. Lower sections of water towers are typically canted like this to provide added strength for the weight of water, which is inside the (usually wooden) tank in the upper section.

Post and Beam Masterwork

The afternoon that I was photographing the curved-roof barn shown at the top of this post, I met Mackenzie Strawn, a carpenter who had a shop next to the barn. When he learned of my interest in barns, he asked if I’d like to see a unique timber framed horse barn in the neighborhood. Well, yeah-uh!

I shot these photos in 2014, when the barn was still under construction. The owners were publicity-shy, and I agreed not to use their names, or give the location.

Notice the curved rafters, put together in classic timber-frame style, with mortise and tenon connections made with wooden pegs.

All I gotta say is wow!

My (Some Year in the Future) Book on Barns

I have over 50 books on barns, some of them rare, that I’ll refer to when putting together my book.

I was a fan for years. I believed what he said about geodesic domes and in fact, spent five years building them and published the seminal book on the subject, Domebook 2 (which sold 160,000 copies). After 5 years of dome building, I realized they didn’t work as homes and took Domebook 2 out of print.

See my post:

Bucky took out a patent for what he called “geodesic domes” in 1955. The domes were based on a subdivided icosahedron, the most complex of the five Platonic solids.

I did some investigative journalism in 1972 in writing the lead article for what we called Domebook 3, a subdivision of our 1973 book Shelter.

It turned out that a German dome, hailed as “The Wonder of Jena,” was built in 1922 on the roof of the Carl Zeiss optical works in Jena, Germany. It was of icosahedral design.

Zeiss had invented a planetarium projector with an icosahedral pattern of 31 lenses, meant to project the stars and planets on the interior of a dome. The dome was built with the same icosahedral geometry as the projector.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/planetarium-history

It’s a long story, which you can see on pp. 110-119 of Shelter. It includes my correspondence with scientists at the Zeiss Works, who wrote ”…at that time it was the principle of our firm, that such basic findings should be made available to the whole scientific world, so it may well be that nothing was patented in Germany.”

Dome nuts (as I once was): See Refried Domes, my reassessment of polyhedral home design. Just sayin…

Once I learned of this scam of Fuller’s, I started re-assessing his more well-known designs. A few are listed below.

The Dymaxion Car, 1933

A poorly-desighed rip-off of the 1913 Alfa Romeo Castagna Aerodinamica, below.

Note: See the Zoox, Amazon’s new self-driving vehicles (which are now operating in San Francisco) for similarities to the above, 113 years later!

On October 27, 1933, one of the Dymaxion cars rolled over, killing the driver and seriously injuring two passengers. A year or so later, Fuller crashed one of these with his daughter Alexandra aboard.

The Tensegrity Mast

Fuller did not invent the tensegrity sphere nor the tensegrity mast, both of which he claimed credit for. They were invented by a student of his at Black Mountain College, artist Kenneth Snelson.”

I visited Snelson in his New York studio in the early 70s and he confirmed that Fuller had misrepresented his designs as his own.

What Fuller did do here was clever though, coining the term “tensegrity” from “tension” and “structural integrity.”

The Montreal Expo Dome, 1967

I was driving across Canada in 1967, delivering a school bus (that had a governor allowing it to go only 55 mph) from Toronto to Nova Scotia, where I was heading to help Stewart Brand build the foundation for a new home.

I had my son Peter, 12 years old, with me and we stopped in at the Expo. I’d seen pictures of the dome, and it looked spectacular.

Surprise! It was a pretty total disaster. The shades never worked and the only reason it wasn’t boiling hot inside was a 650 hp diesel generator in the basement providing air conditioning — the irony of a building hailed as “environmental” burning huge quantities of oil to compensate for faulty design.

It leaked. I took pictures of algae growing around the base.

And about the final fire that destroyed it in 1976:

“…one of architecture’s most dramatic disasters — and it exposed a critical design flaw baked into the structure from the start."

“The original dome was sheathed in a geometric tessellation of clear acrylic panels fitted over the steel trusses, giving it the appearance of a giant glittering jewel. Acrylic (polymethyl methacrylate) is notoriously flammable — it ignites readily, burns hot, and spreads flame rapidly across connected surfaces. On a structure the size of a 20-story sphere, a single ignition point from a welding torch essentially became a fuse for the entire skin. The interconnected panel geometry, while visually spectacular, meant there was no firebreak anywhere across the vast surface.”

“…acrylic is a petroleum-derived plastic whose combustion released considerable toxic smoke over Île Sainte-Hélène.”

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/give-me-any-info-on-fire-destr-3IPsUosgR3.fhATiaqwgTQ

Lastly, Fuller’s idea for a dome over NYC. Are you kidding? Keeping in all the smog and exhaust, keeping out rain and snow and wind?

“Spaceship earth?” Don’t get me started!

So there you have it. I just felt these flaws had to be pointed out in view of Fuller’s canonization.

I screwed up in multiple ways this year. Didn’t run (well, walk) the steps as I’d said I would before the race, didn’t run the course 3 times before the race (as was my usual training practice), didn’t suss out shortcuts, carried phone (dumb!), had to stop a bunch of times to retie slipping-down shorts, plus my planets were just not aligned.

But the glass half-full: fans cut me a lot of slack. Vibes on the grass were great.

My son Evan (running it first time since age 11) slowed down to finish with me.

When I got down to the finishing stretch, I had a small cheering section.

Video by Chelsea Maissen-Kahn

I quickly forgot the agony (anaerobic distress) with all the good vibes after finishing. People were kind. It seems all I have to do is finish to get accolades. Here’s a post-race article by Sophia Grace Carter in the Point Reyes Light:: https://www.ptreyeslight.com/news/how-to-run-the-dipsea-at-91/

The town of Mill Valley is electric on the morning of the race, quite different from the usual mellow laid-back (you might say elitist) vibes. 1500 lean, athletic runners, pacing, stretching, chatting, drinking coffee, along with the excitement of each group charging down the street each minute.

Bulletproof

I get cut a lot of slack due to age; it’s one of the few advantages of reaching ancient age. People don’t expect much.

Gay Talese famously said: “You figure, what can they do to me now? At 82, you can do anything or say anything you want — you’re bulletproof.…”

Here’s a post I did a few years ago (my most popular of all 140+ posts):

Aftermath

For some reason, the exhaustion didn’t kick in for several days. But in San Francisco last Thursday, I felt drained, depleted, sore. I slept a lot over the weekend and am now dealing with a sore knee — which I plan to get checked out.

The reason I quit running 17 years ago was that an orthopedic surgeon told me that I had about 30% of the meniscus remaining in my left knee.

Since I wanted to keep walking until I was 100, I gave up the Dipsea.

If I had understood that the meniscus is a shock absorber between the two major bones of the knee — the femur and tibia – and that jarring from downhill running can damage it, I would’ve saved my fast downhill running for races.

As it was, once I learned a couple of secrets for fast downhills, I gleefully charged every downhill in practice as well as in races. And truth be told for a second time here, I was a show-off downhill runner; every time there was someone watching, I’d gun it. (As Lee Marvin said in The Wild One , (“…the shame of it all.”)

But like an old racehorse missing the track, as well as encouragement from my Pelican Inn Track Club running pals, I decided to run again last year, and it worked out OK.

But now I’m curious. Is the reason there are so few 80-year-olds, and no 90-year-olds except for Jack Kirk (the “Dipsea Demon”) and me to run the race? Maybe I’ve used up my nine lives of running and need to hang it up. I hope not, but we’ll see.

The Greatest Race

If you want to know more (well, just about everything) regarding the race, this is the bible:

https://bit.ly/dipsearace

I built this house in 1967–’68 at Burns Creek in Big Sur, California (about two miles north of Esalen). It was on a 40 acre piece of land owned by Boris and Filipa Veren (whose home was at top left where you see the trees). We signed an agreement (drawn up by my friend, lawyer Tony Serra) whereby I could build a house on their land in exchange for my wife Sarah running Boris’ Craft and Hobby Book Service, a mail order operation, when the Verens traveled.

Details for Builders The 14 posts were 12-foot-long 6″ by 12″ double-track railroad ties on 8′ centers. The girders, as well as the rafters were 30-foot-long, 2-by-14’s that had been salvaged by Cleveland Wreckers from an old horse stable built in gold rush days in San Francisco.

The foundation was a grade beam with concrete delivered (40 miles down the coast) from Pacific Grove,. At 14 spots on the foundation, I enlarged the footing and left 4 pieces of steel rebar sticking up.

After it cured, I placed Sonotubes over each pad, mixed and poured the cylindrical columns (wheel-barrowing wet concrete I made with the family concrete mixer). Steel brackets embedded in the columns secured the posts and girders as shown below.

Exterior sheathing was lumber from a farm labor camp I tore down in Salinas, and the shakes (on top of the sheathing) were split (with a froe) from deadfall trees I found in Palo Colorado Canyon. I used studs in between the posts.

Roof decking and flooring were 2-by-6 Monterey Pine T&G from Carmel Valley.

For shear panels (diagonal bracing) on one 8-foot-wide section of each of the 4 walls, I used ⅝″ plywood nailed 2″ on centers around the edges and 6″ o.c. on the interior studs. I used annular grooved nails, way stronger than smooth nails.

It took me about a year. I did all the carpentry, plumbing, and wiring. It was a very simple house, a big shed really, and the carpentry was — ahem, less than exquisite — but it got a roof over our heads.

Total materials costs were $8,000 (about $80,000 in 2026 dollars). Talk about affordable housing!

I developed a water supply by building a little dam in a spring above the house, and running 600′ of plastic pipe down the hillside. I started some small-scale farming and we had a big garden. I would pick up fish guts in a 50-gallon drum on the Monterey wharf (in our 1960 VW van) on our weekly shopping trips into town.

There were a few things about it that didn’t exactly fit the building codes, so once when the building inspector came, I put on a Jimi Hendrix record loud when I saw him pull up:

You know you’re a cute little heartbreaker …foxey lady…

…and he was so rattled that he didn’t notice the non-compliances.

When I decided to leave Big Sur (and embarked on a 5-year period of building geodesic domes), I sold the house to the owners of the land for $11,000.

Item of interest: Barbara Spring, an artist who bought the house from the land owners in the early ’70s, was a friend of the architect Phillip Johnson (post-modern architect known for his Glass House, and co-designer — with Mies van der Rohe — of the Seagram Building in NYC, etc.). Johnson and his partner David Whitney were looking for a house to buy in Big Sur and when they came to visit Barbara on a rainy day (with the Ashley Automatic wood stove warming the house), Phillip told her this was the kind of place he would love to find.

Post note: Philip and David eventually bought a beautiful light-filled cottage overlooking the ocean, but it was heartening that he dug the soul, if not the fine carpentry of my house.

Barbara told me a number of times that she loved the house.

The present owners (Barbara’s daughter and husband) also cherish the house. I visit once in a while, camp out next to a studio on the land, and use the pool. (And sneak into Esalen Hot Springs at night — heh heh — under cover of darkness.)

This pool was in the creek below the property,. No chlorine, kept clean with running creek water. Every night after work I’d walk down to the pool, bow (Japanese oiji style, but with hands in prayer position under chin) to the family of redwoods behind the pool, then in the four directions, and dive in. What a way to end the day — hey, it was the ‘60s!

I posted the first one here — made in 1965 — on April 14, 2026, and this is the 2nd one, done maybe a year later, consisting of six pages.

On a weekend, Sarah and I and our son Peter, age 5, had gone to spend the weekend with some friends at their country shack in Mariposa County (in Yosemite territory). We also took along Heidi, one of Peter’s friends.

One morning I went out in a field with my camera. I was sitting on a rock when Heidi came across the field and engaged me in a game of hide and seek.

Heidi, where are you now? (She would be about 60 years old.)

I’m gonna start posting excerpts from some of these books here. All the subsequent ones are larger; below are a bunch of them. Many of them were from my road trips.

Upon the advice of local birdmeister Keith Hansen, I put it back in the nest, and it eventually snuggled down alongside its sibling. The mother didn’t seem to come back, so I brought the nest, with the two babies, into the house — under light for warmth at night. I started feeding them sugar water — started with brown sugar, switched to white (per Keith’s advice) with an eye dropper.

By this time Foster and Lillian had arrived from Up North for a big wedding we were going to that weekend, and we all focused on keeping the birds alive. I read that baby hummingbirds need protein as well as sugar, and Lillian discovered aphids on fava beans in the garden. We mashed up the aphids and also flies and mosquitoes to feed them. (Imagine being glad to find aphids!)

Pretty soon, the hummingbird shown above at the left died, but the other one was very much alive and alert. Hummingbirds need to eat every half hour, and also, I’d get up every couple of hours at night to feed her. Each time I’d come into the room, she’d be sitting on the edge of the nest, bright-eyed and mouth open. Tiny heart beating.

Periodically, she’d try to fly and would take some buzzing flaps before landing on the table. A fierce desire to not only survive, but to thrive.

I was getting attached to this little creature —my tiny roommate, but one that needed constant attention to survive. After five days, I was exhausted, and took her over to Wildcare in San Rafael, a wonderful outfit that specializes in keeping abandoned or distressed wild creatures alive.

About 2 weeks later, the hummingbird lady (who nurtures hummingbirds in her home) called to say that not only was she (an Anna hummingbird) alive, but she was flying around in the aviary. The practice was to release hummingbirds in the area where they were found, so Saturday morning she showed up with the hummingbird in a little box, took the lid off, and zoom! — up she accelerated into the sky. I was so excited! (Proud.)

Above, look at how she is flying in this tiny space.

Up up and way away!

Here are a few fascinating hummingbird factoids from Perspetive AI:

“HUMMINGBIRD FAST FACTS

At about 2.25 inches (5 centimeters) long and weighing 0.07 ounces (2 grams), the Bee Hummingbird (Mellisuga helenae) is the smallest living bird in the world.

A hummingbird’s heart beats up to 1,260 beats per minute (a resting human heart beats 60-100 beats per minute!). When sleeping, a hummingbird can enter a state of torpor where its heart rate drops to as low as 50 beats per minute in order to slow its metabolism and conserve energy.

Hummingbirds flap their wings around 20-80 times per second, allowing them to hover in midair and making them the only bird that can fly backwards.

Hummingbirds lap up nectar with their tongues rather than use their beak as a straw and can lick 10-15 times per second while feeding.”

-Audubon

Then I asked Perspective if the Bee Hummingbird was smaller than an Anna’s:

“Yes! The Bee Hummingbird is significantly smaller than an Anna’s Hummingbird. Here’s how they compare:

Bee Hummingbird Anna’s Hummingbird

Length ~2.2 inches (5.5 cm) ~4 inches (10 cm)

Weight ~1.5–2 grams 3–6 grams (0.1–0.2 oz)

Where found Cuba only Pacific Coast of North America

The Bee Hummingbird is not just smaller than an Anna’s — it’s the smallest bird in the entire world. At barely over 2 inches long, it weighs less than a dime, while the Anna’s Hummingbirds you see in Bolinas are roughly the size of a ping-pong ball and weigh about as much as a nickel.

The Bee Hummingbird is so tiny it’s often mistaken for an actual bee. Its eggs are about the size of a coffee bean, and the female builds a nest barely an inch across. Since it’s endemic to Cuba, you won’t spot one at your feeder in West Marin! “

-Audubon

I posted this on my blog a few years ago, and still can’t believe it. Here’s an article published in The Mirror (UK) by Chiara Fiorillo, News Reporter:

“A hermit may have lived in a precarious house perched on the side of a cliff in California for the past 10 years — but nobody seems to know who the man actually is.

A dilapidated three-storey structure, made of driftwood, was first spotted at Devil’s Slide in the San Francisco Bay Area in December 2022, when it was filmed by a drone. Stunned onlookers said the intriguing home was partially destroyed during the rainstorms that hit the Bay Area earlier this year but has since been rebuilt.

(Above: turn off the intrusive soundtrack.)

Drone operator @ParallaxEffect, who posted footage of the driftwood shack on YouTube, said he was hiking along the California coast with some friends when they noticed the property, which he described as ‘one of the most incredible human structures I’ve ever seen’.

The shack appears to have several rooms and is located on a steep San Mateo County rock face. The video shows wood and ropes in the structure as well as a boxing punching bag, several buoys, some old signs, and what appears to be a fully enclosed room.

On Google Earth, the shack appears to have a rope rising from it, which is linked to the Devil’s Slide trail above — and it may possibly be used as a means of entry and exit. A Google Maps satellite image also seems to show the structure intact as waves crash onto the rocks beneath it.”

If you look at the left, there appears to be a cave or tunnel. When blown up, there appears to be a pathway of rocks leading into it.???

(This was below Highway One, driving from San Francisco to Santa Cruz, in the vicinity of the Devil’s Slide tunnel.)

In my years of photographing driftwood shacks for the book: Driftwood Shacks: Anonymous Architecture Along the California Coast, I never saw anything faintly resembling this.

Wow!!

Thanks to Jeff Sinder and Ruth Kneass

www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/mystery-hermit-living-cliffside-shack-30955761

A couple of years ago, I was driving down the Baja California peninsula to Los Cabos. After the spectacular Cataviña desert, I spotted a lone figure in the distance. Holy shit! I’m whining about driving and here’s a cyclist braving the traffic and loneliness and inhospitable elements out in the middle of nowhere.

I pulled over and so did he and we bonded immediately. He was full of good humor.

Fujimoto Tatsuhiko had recently ridden the full length of Alaska, then from New York to LA on Highway 66 (yah!), and was on his way to Los Cabos, thence ferry to Mazatlan, south to Argentina.

So far about 10,000 miles.

The doll was his “girlfriend,” a Japanese cycling effigy.

The bike is a 7-year-old steel Surly Long Haul Tracker, which he loves. How about that, all you guys with $10K carbon fiber state-of-art bikes and hi-tech camping gear?

He has no sponsors, saves money from his job as a nurse, and then takes off.

He is from Amora, Japan.

Kinda reminded me of Armand Basset, road wanderer/buddha I encountered in the Nevada outback, shown on the last page of our book Shelter. Out alone on his own power, in good spirits, in a hostile landscape.

(In this case, it’s getting Substacked before we send out the full email.)

Going It Solo

I haven’t been single since I was 12 years old.

(When Gloria asked me to hold her hand as we walked back from the beach on the Russian River.)

Girlfriend after girlfriend, 3 of them serious, then 18 years the first marriage, almost 50 years the second.

As I’m shifting to being a soloista, I’ve at the same time — journalist at heart— been observing the process,

It’s way different, let me tell you.

I have a ton of solo friends, and they all seem to be doing fine. They’re not bitching about living alone — and they know stuff that I don’t.

Sure, I miss Lesley, but focusing on that gets me nowhere. And she appears unexpectedly now and then. One day I was walking along the brick path and came across a red flower, and got a jolt — there she was! Or a picture of her Shari handed me that I hadn’t seen before. She’s still here.

“Our tears were tears of joy.”

-Procul Harum, A Salty Dog

Plus:

“The busy bee has no time for sorrow.”

-William Blake

What’s different about the solo life?

Day-to-Day Busyness

• Doing all the shopping, cooking, dishes; washing and drying clothes (in the fresh air or by the fireplace); sweeping, composting, recyclable and non-recyclable garbage

• Getting firewood, kindling, splitting, stacking

• Gardening, which is huge around here. Tomatoes, cucumbers, KALE, chard, potatoes, zucchini (for first time ever, I kept ahead of the zucchini’s prolific production last season, picking a zuke every day or two — went on until December), hot peppers, artichokes, asparagus (20-year-old bed), strawberries raspberries, apples, plums, parsley, chives. Plus my friend/chef/neighbor Kate and I are planting a robust garden…

• Ongoing homestead maintenance: pests like termites, ants, skunks; leaky valves; roof leaks (7 roofs); septic system maintenance, weeding, grass cutting, pruning (4 apple trees, 1 plum, raspberries, red currants), watering (most of the year from shallow (15’ deep well). Everywhere I walk on this 100x100’ piece of land, I see things to do, to maintain, to fix.

• No one to curb my enthusiasm

• More time for introspection

I feel like — at 4 years — I’m still testing, learning, groping, adapting, but things are finally starting to sail smoother on this ship of a homestead. It’s taking years to reconfigure the garden to something I can manage. I can’t picture what it would be like to live in a city apartment — life on a piece of land is so different.

Planetary impact: I’ve got rooftop solar panels, generating more electricity than I use. Most of my heating is from scrounged eucalyptus firewood. I dress in (sometimes 5) layers, merino wool, once in a while use a low-wattage electric heater. Dishwater gets dumped in the garden, virtually no grease goes into the septic tank. Every scrap of leftover food (banana skins, coffee grounds, chicken bones, spoiled food), has gone into the garden for over 50 years now. When I stay in a city, I have a hard time putting food in the garbage can.

Living a solo life makes me realize how efficient it is for two people to live together. Two people to pay the rent, two people to divide up the chores, two people to amuse each other.…

The nuclear family, subject to much disparagement since the ‘60s, is nevertheless an efficient setup, especially if you’re doing something like building a homestead.

Soaking up the soloism: around mid-March, I bottomed out with people. Day after day, lots of people to deal with. All good people, friends, interesting, fun — but I started craving alone-ness. The first night solo in a while, I cooked a wild duck, played Shorty’s Bunkhouse on our local (world-class) radio station KWMR, and danced around the room, using Indian clubs, dumbbells, and kettle bells to do various exercises to the beat. Fun!

That night, being alone was sweet.

I’m up and down. Lesley was very balanced (a Libra), but I swing from depression to ecstaticness. Just her calm presence would provide me a measure of balance, but now I’m on my innate solo roller coaster of emotional ups and downs. So be it.

When I’m having an extraordinary day at the beach, or running on one of the beautiful Mt. Tam trails, driving home on Highway One with kick-ass music! — well, sure! Worth it.

But when I’m in the dregs of depression? Galumph! I’m having to learn toleration and patience — wait it out, not worsen things by bitching. Sloopy hangin’ on.

And furthermore, heh-heh, there’s this:

Aging

The Substack posts I do on aging are by far the most popular. Probably the boomers — closing in on their ‘70s, ‘80s — are curious about what’s coming.

I Lost a Day

The latest gorilla in my life of getting older:

The other day— Sunday, I thought — I went down to a barbecue at our boat club at noon. Funny, building crews were at work on a big downtown project, and there were plenty of parking spaces. Odd for a weekend.

Ulp! It was Monday, not Sunday. It gave me pause. Jesus! Like some sort of time machine, I’d lost a day! Discombobulating.

The Experiences in Getting Old Are New Experiences.

We’ve never been this old before, and the various decreasing abilities inherent with aging are happening for the first time.

• Forgetting names

• Malfunctioning of various physical parts

• Health issues

• Getting out of the car

• Losing strength, agility, flexibility

• Loss of manual dexterity, like buttoning shirts, threading needle

• Worsening depth perception

• Being out of touch with the stunningly fast-changing world

• Doing increasingly stupid stuff

What Did I Come In Here For?

It’s now happening a couple of times a day: I get into the house, cannot for the life of me think what I came in for, and walk back out to the studio, then remember and hurry back before I forget again.

Misplacing Phone and Car Keys

Happens all the time. Thank heavens for Apple’s “Find My.” Even so, sometimes it takes a lot of searching.

Missing calls, texts, DMs, WhatsApp’s

I can’t keep up with all the different forms of incoming messages. Often, I’ll recall a message, like someone asking for something and I check my texts or phone messages but can’t find it. So if I don’t respond, that’s what’s happening. The best way to contact me is by old fashioned email: lloyd@shelterpub.com.

Also, I don’t have my phone with me even half the time — hey, I’m 91 — I don’t have to be connected 24/7.

Forgetting Your Name

This happens daily. I remember faces but not names associated with those faces (or context of what this particular person does or how we met). When we meet, tell me your name, fill me in.

Here are my previous Substack posts on aging:

A Night on the Beach

The other night I grabbed my backpack and headed for the beach. Normally I’ll walk about 2 miles to a somewhat distant long sandy beach but this time, the pack felt really heavy, so I set up my tent and built a fire closer by, where a creek flows into the ocean.

Been years since I’ve done this, so it was a bit awkward setting up, erecting (Nemo) tent, inflating (Nemo) (v. comfortable) air mattress. Cooked some venison on the coals plus potato and onion in foil. I’d left on an unseasonably warm afternoon, and didn’t take enough warm clothing or my warmer sleeping bag, so was pretty cold. But getting away from electricity and phone/computer/TV screens left me refreshed. This is what life used to be like!

Compulsion To Communicate

I’m a curious person, and I love telling people about extraordinary things I see going on in this world.

Now that I’ve sold my publishing company, my main forms of communication are Substack, which I love, and Instagram, which unfortunately Zuckerberg has kidnapped and downgraded in pursuit of profit.

I do about one post a week on Substack. Take a look (subscriptions are free):

Live From California with Lloyd Kahn

Building, gardening, adventures, travel, people, surfing, skateboarding, fitness, aging, art, architecture, Baja, music, books, tiny homes, rolling homes, the natural world. Note: Click "No Thanks" to go directly to my Substack without subscribing.

(Plus the very occasional email such as this one.)

Artificial Intelligence

Perplexity AI has changed my life.

OK, OK, I’m aware of the present and scary future evils of artificial intelligence. I have a friend who won’t use it because of the enormous energy costs. AI can imitate voices and is already being used for scams. And who knows what will happen — in the creative arts — if AI gets beyond the present state of artistic slop?

BUT AI research – for me — is enormously useful.

Examples:

1. Recently I had written something about how my friend Paul Wingate learned how to be a carpenter, but couldn’t locate it. Perplexity pulled it right up:

“In his November 2025 article ‘Game Plan for Young Builders’ on lloydkahn.substack.com, Kahn describes how in the 1960s, his friend Paul Wingate wanted to become a carpenter.…”

2. I’ve done a ton of research on the harm that so-called “environmentalists” are doing to local economies: shutting down organic food production, eliminating blue-collar jobs and homes, and in the case of Bolinas, attempting to ban fishing along 8 miles of our coast. (See more on this below.)

3. What’s the best rootstock on which to graft apples?

4. It will give me one page, one paragraph or whatever length I designate summary of any book.

I always check out the referenced URLs.

It’s an extraordinary tool.

I loved Once Upon A Time in the West. This is what the West was really like, not the romanticized Hollywood versions. Look at the deck here.

My Next Book

It looks like I’ll be doing my first book in four years later this year, titled: Breaking Free in the ’60s: An Autobiography of Sorts. (Formerly titled Live From California.) It will be published by AdventureKEEN.

I grew up in San Francisco and went to high school in the Haight-Ashbury district and what I saw happen in the city in the ’60s differs from all the many books and articles and videos on the subject.

In writing it, I decided to outline my background: growing up in SFO, Lowell High School, Stanford, surfing in Santa Cruz before wetsuits, running a newspaper on an Air Force Base in Germany, building two houses in Big Sur, etc.

It’s not really an autobiography, since it ends in 1973 (when we did the book Shelter) and also, I don’t feel comfortable getting deeply into my personal life, as most autobiographies do.

I’ll be serializing it for paid subscribers on my Substack platform, plus there will be a real hold-in-your-hands book for sale. Stay tuned.

Stewart Brand’s New Book

I hung out with Stewart a lot in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, working on the Whole Earth Catalogs and sharing excitement about countercultural changes; then in 1974 when we spent several weeks exploring (and pouring a house foundation) on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.

Flash forward 24 years: at his 50th birthday party in San Francisco in 1998, he seated me next to R. Crumb at dinner (for which I will be eternally grateful).

Flash forward another 25 or so years, :

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/25/tech-legend-stewart-brand-on-musk-bezos-and-his-extraordinary-life-we-dont-need-to-passively-accept-our-fate

This Guardian article was a couple of months ago, just discovered it now.

Regarding Stewart’s health:

“In terms of physical maintenance, Brand has always been a healthy, active, outdoorsy person – he was a keen sailor, he was hiking up mountains with rocks in his backpack in his ’60s, and he started going to CrossFit when he was 75 – ‘that built a pretty strong constitution.

“Now, though, he has a respiratory illness, he says, ‘…which is progressive, incurable and fatal’. He’s in a stable condition, and still exercises, but uses supplementary oxygen as well. ‘I’d be very surprised by making it into my ’90s,’ he says, seemingly without regret: ‘Imagine the luck, to get to be 87 – it’s just fantastic!’”

-Steve Rose, The Guardian, Feb 2, 2026

And more recently, this insightful and timely interview by Ezra Klein in the New York Times on April 26, 2026:

He was in good spirits at a small party in Sausalito last week, signing books and talking to maybe 50-60 people. He seems clear headed and in his skin.

In fact, (with profound help from his wife Ryan), he’s kickin’ ass!

His First Book in 15 Years

My big surprise here: it feels somehow like the early Whole Earth Catalogs.

He’s got these very cool publishers in SF, Stripe Press, who’ve created an author’s dream of PR and swag. There was a cool book-signing party at Fort Mason in San Francisco, at which Stewart said that back in the day, as a writer AND photographer, he wanted to tell stories graphically. Rang a bell with me.

The book has a refreshing words-with-graphics look.

Kevin Kelly calls it “…an instant classic.”

Environmentalism Has Become A Business

A war of the elite on fishermen, farmers, homebuilders and the working class

At first this seemed like a local issue. But lo and behold, it’s going on nationally.

Locally

Our small seaside town, Bolinas, a fishing port (among other things) for over a century, is currently being threatened with a ruling that would ban all fishing along 8 miles of our coast. Not only fishing from shore, but yet another onerous restriction on our small local fishing fleet.

The plan is sponsored by the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin and is not based on any scientifically valid data and was put forward with scant local input and in an underhanded, sneaky way.

Nationally

With the environmentalism started by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, then rising ecological awareness of the ‘60s counterculture, the Environmental Protection Agency was established in 1970. Environmentalism was real. The first Earth Day was in 1970 and it eventually became the world’s largest civic observance.

But as the years progressed, starting with the Reagan administration, businesses rebounded by creating groups calling themselves environmentalists, but actually using environmentalism as a tool to — among other things — further an elite approach to wilderness.

Groups like the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin are actually businesses. The EAC has a big budget ($800K donated in 2024), hires lawyers, has political connections, and has contributed to shutting down local food production in West Marin — oysters, dairy, beef — much of it organic — destroying jobs and eliminating homes for 30 people at the Drake’s Bay Oyster farm and 90 tenants on the ranches on the Pt. Reyes Peninsula (mostly Latino).

We were blind-sided by their petition to the California Fish and Game Commission filed in 2023 to make our home beaches a Marine Reserve. We are fighting it (Save Duxbury Access) with a petition of our own.

I’ve gathered a tremendous amount of information on the “environmentalists” of today and am looking for an investigative reporter who’s interested in what I think is a big national story. I just don’t have the time to do it myself.

It’s way too big to cover here, but if you’re interested, I suggest doing some of your own research.

Especially if you contribute to the EAC or other “environmental” groups; are you aware of their anti-local, anti blue-collar, anti-country people actions? Do you want to be contributing to shutting down local food production and causing local people to lose jobs and homes?

And if you know of an investigative reporter who might be interested, let me know. I’ve done a ton of research, glad to pass it along.

BTW, The Nature Conservancy, the world’s biggest environmental organization, has $8 billion (!) in assets and pays its CEO and CIO each salaries in excess of $800 K annually. It’s been criticized for its corporate alliances and locally disruptive land decisions. CEO Jennifer Morris released a statement shortly after Trump's election indicating TNC's intention to "work with the Trump administration."

Hummingbird Week

Last week I discovered a baby Anna’s hummingbird on the ground. I located the nest, and put it back in (with a sibling), but the mother never returned, so I brought them into the house and starting feeding them, keeping them warm with a light bulb.

One of them died, but this one had a fierce desire to survive. I fed it sugar water through an eyedropper and added mashed-up aphids (Lillian’s idea) and flies for protein, but after 5 days, I was exhausted from feeding it every hour, so took it to Wildcare in San Rafael, where they are way better equipped for bird survival — which I should have done in the first place.

It was a unique experience having a roommate for 5 days. Every time I’d walk into the room, its tiny heart was still beating and it would be bright-eyed and open its beak for food. I’d get up every few hours at night to feed the hungry critter. It was a real responsibility.

Update: Wildcare says it has survived and is perky. They have a lady who specializes in hummingbirds and is giving it proper food and heping it learn to fly.

Strangely, I got attached to this tiny (weighing 1/10 of an ounce when fully grown) being and am so glad it’s thriving. I wonder if Widcare will allow me to visit.

Closing with this song, recorded live in Tokyo in 1975. I know, I know, I’m prone to over-enthusiasm, but that said, I think this may be my favorite song of all time, not just for Ray’s heartbreaking voice, where he bends the notes, but trumpet player Johnny Coles’ solo, and the interplay of voice and brass.

Resist much, obey little.

-Walt Whitman

In 1965, I’d been an insurance broker for five years in San Francisco, but I’d started smoking weed and was straining at the leash. I’d sensed there were a lot more interesting things to do than becoming rich. Things weren’t going too well on the home front, so I took off with a backpack and sleeping bag one night about 9 PM, walked out to the highway and caught a bus into San Francisco.

Greyhound bus to Bakersfield, arrived at dawn, hopped a freight to Barstow, jumped off and started hitchhiking, ended up getting a ride at dusk that evening in Needles with a kid in a 1950 Ford heading for Detroit and we shared driving and gas expenses, barreling straight through. Greyhound from there to NYC.

I was probably influenced by reading Jack Kerouac’s On the Road in the late ‘50s and figured if I got out on the road, solo, especially in 1965, I could figure out what to do with my life. I didn’t know anything about vision quests in those days — the Native American rite of passage — fasting and going solo in the wilderness in search of a vision. But in retrospect, I guess that’s what I did.

I spent about a week in New York, staying with friends on the Upper East Side, did the I Ching for the first time, went to see rock n roll in the village, and watched an anti-Vietnam parade (where there were what today would be MAGA types jeering at the protesters). I went to see The Fugs, an outrageous rock band of poets perform in the East Village, and roamed all over Manhattan, soaking up the big city vibes.

The energy, the density, the excitement of this city was something new to me, and with the countercultural revolution in full swing, things were humming; I was stimulated, inspired.

I hitchhiked out to Provincetown to hang out with my cousin Mike, an artist, for a few days. Then — in hitching back to New York, I got a ride from some students from The Rhode Island School of Design. “We’re going to a Bob Dylan concert tonight in Providence, want to come along?” Well, yeah-uh!

Bob played the first half acoustic, the second half electric. This was a couple of months after his switchover to rock ‘n’ roll, and probably half of the audience booed and left when they saw the electric guitars.

I was shooting Tri-X black-and-white film with my Nikon and the cops let me get right up next to the stage. Years later, I looked at the photos and realized, “That’s Robbie Robertson, that’s Levon Helm — that’s The Band!”

I stayed with the kids in their loft for a few days, then back to New York for a few more days of roaming and big-city excitement. I got a driveaway Volkswagen bug owned by a Jewish couple to deliver to Miami Beach, spent a few days there in the balmy climate, then got a Pontiac driveaway to deliver to Phoenix and from there, a Greyhound back home.

I woke up after my first night back home and realized I needed to change my life, and quit the insurance business.

I decided to make a book about the trip (little knowing that this crude little homemade job would lead to some 60 years of publishing books), and pasted up my photos along with newspaper and magazine clippings on 8.5 x 11” pieces of cardboard, 12 pages in all (collages were big in the ‘60s). Looking back, I guess it was the first material manifestation of my lifelong compulsion to communicate.

To see what Mike did in future years in Arizona, see:

I was delving around in the photo files from our book Home Work, published in 2004. This is the so-called round barn, built by cattleman Peter French and what is now in the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in southeast Oregon.

In 1872, French set out for Oregon from Sacramento, California with 1200 head of select shorthorn cattle, six Mexican vaqueros, and a Chinese cook.

He drove the cattle across the Sacramento River and then northward up into Eastern Oregon, where he settled on the west side of Steens Mountains.

Over the years, his ranching Empire grew to encompass 200,000 acres and 45,000 head of cattle, one of the largest cattle empires west of the Rockies.

In the late ’70s or early ’80s, French built three round barns for breaking horses in the winter months. This one is 100 feet in diameter, the conical roof framed with a 35-foot center pole of Juniper (about 40” diameter at the bottom, tapering to maybe 28” at the top), 14 surrounding Juniper posts and then a third wall of posts at the perimeter about 8 feet high.

This configuration provided an unbroken interior circular ring inside the barn so horses could run around and get exercise during severe weather.

He built three such barns, with this one being preserved.

It’s a breathtaking building; I spent a couple of hours there in Spring, 2003, shooting photos.

Barns are my cathedrals.

It’s a great story, with 7 more photos, told on pages 206 to 207 of Home Work.

I did over 5000 blog posts back in the day. Every once in a while I’ll drag something over to Substack, like this one.