98

98 BLOG

 

MODULES FOR LIVING

TABLE MODULE

                                                

MY LINE OF NOMAD FURNITURE

I've moved so many times since I left home for college that I finally had developed my own LINE OF FURNITURE.

_Flooring: We had all this cheap wicker type of squares 12" square that would easily fold up and stack for moving, yet presenting a nice warm, comfy floor in  the living area.

Chairs: I found some large, square, cushions and made a low base with a slanted back for two of the cushion, allowing us to sit around with our all on drugs &  wine to solve the problems of our universes.

Book cases: I finally devised a box that had handles cut into the ends, so they could be tossed in a trunk and not have to pack/unpack.  Books.

Bed:  The waterbed was around but I thought it too cumbersome so I opted for the inflatable mattress, just making an appearance.  The only real problem I had was they all came with a flocked coating which was very hard to get around when I had to fix a leak  with my bike tire patch kit. Otherwise this was ideal, except it was blown up manually and took some time. 

Eating: We didn't Dine, we scarfed.  For a table, I had a large 42" round  butcher block top, remove 4 screws, then roll it out to your car.

THE SPEC HOUSES

BRIDGE HOUSE

 

'M' FRAME

LANGWORTHY TOP OF WORLD

HEX HOUSE

CONCEPT ONE

CONCEPT TWO

            

Of course, the mere smell of wood & concrete this readily got me into building 'Spec' Houses in Laguna Beach .

Spec means that you buy a lot, design a house for it, then sell it on condition, or   'On Speculation' that you will recoup your investment plus some profit involved for all the work you've done. When I opened my office in South Laguna during my 'Mostly lived on carrot juice days' I met a Japanese fellow who had some backing from his folks in Tokyo and wanted to build some "On the edge of the Spearpoint ' house so we did a few really far out Spec houses.

            The first one went pretty well. The plan was based on three hexagons with the two car carport,  which had huge umbrella roofed area.  I did all the structural calculations (Still do) but after we finished the carport, there was an unusual flexibility of the heavy steel center support column as I could rotate the entire 20' roof roof with my finger several inches. But easily solved with a small bolt to the adjacent retaining wall. We alway re-used materials like the  wood siding was from a friends old fence. 

  But you have to realize, we knew that 99% of the market was being catered to by Tract builders,   so we were after the 1%, but not the 1% you know who have most of the money, we were after the .09% who had TASTE!  . Well, it turned out that the percentage was less than than that, but we got lucky,. An architect from Taliesin & his partner, a successful artist loved the place & bought it right away. Then we found an impossible lot , bought it and built an 'M' Frame house on it , We were able to use a lot of redwood plywood in those days as it was fairly cheap. This place had 20' ceilings in the living area and we actually  sold it too.

  But we kind of met our Waterloo when we built the plastic roofed house on Top of the World, the plan based on the old Mexican haciendas, around a small patio where one had to go outside (although covered ) to get to the living area. This was 1965, the lot cost 12,000, construction materials another 12,000 as we did all of the construction. (This, our Labor, turned out to be free). My partner & I did all the labor (I mean all, concrete, carpentry, electrical. Plumbing, etc.). However, after several months after we finished it we ran out of money to keep up with the loan (Yes! We were able to obtain  construction loans from the local bank) so we voted that Lamont move in and make the payments on the loan. You  can only appreciate the irony of me living  in the best house in Laguna, on Top of the World (That's what it is actually called, sitting up about a thousand feet above town, overlooking a huge cattle ranch) but friends generously collected food boxes from the elementary schools  for my small family (Me, Patricia & new daughter, Medina). But fortunately for everyone, our neighbors, who were renting, loved the house and bought it after several months. Ted & Lucy, both Greek scholars , also bought the lot across the street and hired me to design another fine home.

   My partner, Patrick, dropped out of the high risk games (He got busted for having a maryjane joint but my next client, Tom Lyster, got the bug, and after we finished building his house,  which was first published in a German Architctual magazine  called "Bauwelt" or something similar. built another Spec House on the adjacent lot that was more or less a historical garden from Old Laguna days. In order to preserve the wonderful historic gardens in this little Canyon, we used the obvious things, and built a "Bridge House out of pre-fabricated roof truss, as Tom was a salesman for them. Well, everyone builds a spec house that bridges 40' over the gardens below, don't they? But this time we got lucky and sold it before it was finished to a professor who was head of the Art Dept. at the new  Irvine University. This owner was great, as he hung original art work all over the place, like Licktenstein originals, (the guy who did blow ups of comic book people & things.)

  

BOOK ALERT

I found the alternate story of the WAR (not the last war) of WW2. It's titled   THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. by Philip Dick, who was a science-fiction writer and also wrote DO ANDROIDS EVER DREAM OF ROBOT SHEEP?  This later became the Cult movie "Blade Runner", which will be released in October as an upgrade of the older ones. It seems only S-F writers have enough imagination to write alternate histories. This was written 17 years after the war was over. An interesting story, as the author has the protagonist write an alternate of the alternate, (in other words, How the Allies Won" That was easier) The U.S.  was divided up between Germany & Japan, but it was better to be on the Jap side as the Nazi still liked to kill any Jews. But life is fair and the Germans attacked the Japs and took them over too. Are there any Japanese Jews? (Not any more!).

VIDEO ALERT

If your still interested in politics you might like REQUIEM FOR THE AMERICAN DREAM featuring Noam Chomsky, who is one of the few who have a memory of recent political happenings and the shenanigans of most of  our recent presidents. Wars, finances health care, don't seem to important issues with us .  Anyway, it's Rather sobering. (I'll drink to that!).

ANOTHER VIDEO

The curious case of Benjamin Button.  F. Scott Fitzgerald did a short story on a kind of reverse aging person who is born old but gets younger, unlike the rest of us. His relationships tend to get pretty weird as how would you like to see your spouse getting younger and reverting to a baby?

BELIEVE IN TRUTH

To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights. 

                                                by Timothy Snyder

I'M GETTING A LTTLE WORRIED ABOUT OUR SPORTS MANIA.

I happened on  to the beginning of a national basketball game a while back and was really appalled at the adoration of the Star Spangle banner was shown. This whole thing was rated as a Holy exercise, where all had to show obeisance to the music by standing, hats off, with their hand covering their heart. Usually the playing field is showing a giant American Flag (Patton!) and anyone stupid enough to forget the "under God l" would probably be tarred & feathered, and dragged  around the field before any activities began.

  This worries me a lot as it seems the mainstream has forgotten that there is no "Uber Fatherland" to require our obeisance especially with a song that was penned by a

 Brit who used the music of an English Drinking song but putting a more Nationalistic twist on the lyrics.  We have to be careful to be able to differentiate between Nationalism and Patriotism and Religion.

LET'S TALK ABOUT OUR FEDERAL BUDGET

Maybe it's time to re-access our monetary requirements that impact our tax requirements so.

I noticed the other day an article talked about the small amount it took to take care of  one of our military problems (some trans-gender stuff) was only 3 to 9 million dollars. And went on to say it was ONLY .05% of our military budget I thought it was about  500 Billion.  Now, here I thought a few million was a large sum, but now it seems to be pocket change. Maybe our leaders should hire a  small book-keeper to set our national priorities. Here's how I would see it working;

   Let's begin with a clean slate and ask ourselves what exactly should be the role of the Federal Government? Our founding fathers may have done that but it sure got distorted afterwards.  I wonder if they knew about the power of lobbyists?

We pay most of our taxes to the Federals, except I now see our sales taxes (which are local taxes) are creeping up to 10% of all we buy (State Tax)(except food?).     

                        1.  Military - It is more efficient to band together and hire a Military force. That is the primary reason for a Federation of individual entities, isn't it? Also the expensive cost of weapons, especially nuclear subs, fast fighter planes & bombers can cost millions and billions each!  When did we assume we had to have the largest Military twice over of any country on earth? No other country spends 60 % of their money on the military . Even so, our new president wants to increase the percentage.

                        2.  Health care for all;(6% of our budget) Most developed countries have a pretty adequate Health system for most of it's citizens. Our best system is not even good enough for our Senators & Congress men, who have their own super Health care system. My favorite doctor is quitting (retiring) due to being overcome with paperwork that supports an inadequate health insurance.

We've given it over to large Pharma and Insurance corp. This means that the independent doctor will be extinct as he can't afford to do all the paper-work that large companies can do. Doctors will have to work for large companies that will relieve them of the obnoxious paperwork. Soon, Medical doctors will be majoring in accounting with a minor in Medical.  Maybe we could allow abortions but certainly not pay for them. And lets cut off the Viagra to the geezers. 

                        3.  Infra-structure;  -  Build & maintain a national system of roads and rail (& air) to move things and people around in a defense mode.  It should be obvious to our lawmakers that fast trains are much too expensive for any one state to afford to build, to say nothing of maintaining.

            The above items are large scale projects and need everyone to chip in. A good example is California trying to build a fast train from half the length of the state that is costing more than we can afford on a local level. All we have to do is look at other countries to see how they do it, and we may find that only the federal government  can afford to build & maintain such projects.                        I suppose infra-structure should include large electrical generating facilities, which used to be dams, but is now  PV or wind or wave generation. This takes a lot of money & support. What state can afford to put up $7500 for every electric car sold in their state?

$15.000,000 will cost the Feds for just the last 200,000 electric car still to be subsidized.

    How much money is generated every payday?  Maybe it sounds crazy, but maybe the Budget should be based on our earnings. Take 10% of that and that should be how much you can spend on everything. What percentage of that should you pay to Feds?, To the State?                          4. Social services. ;- This is a big one. Just look at your phone book (I know, you probably just google it) and you'll find most of it is Social Services that take up several pages .

How would you describe ...S.S.?  I suppose most of it would be something Socialist countries support , sometimes too much, making the country potentially bankrupt, or out of money. College? How about promoting & supporting work that will actually earn you a living? maybe education should be kept on a local or State level?

 Polititions love to use the word “socialism” in a derogatory way, but aren’t our Social Security, Health Care, Fire and police kind of Socialistic?  I don’t believe that is a dirty word.

            However, we sometimes are responsible for our own plight, as we are still believing Everyman should be able to own his own house, on a small plot of his own, even if there is only 3' to the property line. What Is wrong with us? Are we brainwashed to only want a small bit of dirt, but not all the  entities of communal living?. Just try to get financing on a very small living unit. I have, and couldn’t get anything.

A SHORT, INTELLIGENT NOTE

  The old American idea that giving money to Political Campaigns is free speech means that the very rich have far more speech, and so in effect, far more voting power, than other citizens.

                                                            Tim Snyder

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97 blog                                     

REVISIT THE DATING GAME

I thought I had it all figured out on my #66 BLOG , but after after thinking about it a bit, let's review it.  This will never be sought after by the U.S., we can't even get the Metric System accepted.

A couple of thousand years ago  Justinian accepted that the Christians were a formidable force, and  he restarted (changed)  the dating from the time of a wise man by the name of Jesus (at least 300 hundred years earlier.). But when Mohammed was born and conquered most of the contemporary world of the time, they started their own ,  at about 635 AD. , Do Muslims still use that system?

I might as well get on the bandwagon and announce that from here on, we will begin the dates from the time of my birth, which is kind of handy since it is on a decade number, say, 1930.. If we do that, today's date would be 87 AL (After  Lamont). Of course, everything that happened before I was born would be BL (before Lamont, or BS;  Bullshit), which we have been living with since day one (birth of Jesus?). Just kidding....

  Proposition; Let's try to minimize the use of "Before & After. " and start dating from around the time of Troy or 1200 BC.  That's kind of a wild card as no one knows when the time of Troy was.

However, assuming that, it follows that the following figures will apply

            Founding of cities                                -6800 BT ( We may
                                                                          have to use Before Troy)

            Discovery of writing                            -1310 BT

            Time of Troy-  1200                            0 (Anything previous to
                                                                                      be BT)

            Founding of Athens - 1000?                800?

            Founding of Rome                              753.   (By Remus
                                                                     & Romulus, a Myth)

            Socrates death - 900 (No BC or AD)  900?

            Jesus birth                                          1200 (Another Mythical
                                                                                             story)

            Mohammed birth                                 1850? (A real guy)

            WW One (The War to End All Wars?).  3114

            WW Two (Or was it this One?)            3141 (Pearl)

            My birthday                                          3130, June 4

            Birth of a Nation                                   2976, July 4

BOOK ALERT

DARK MONEY by Jane Mauer

If you are interested in where the money comes from in American politics, you might be interested in reading this book. Climate change? Lots of money will take care of that from the Koch (Coke) Brothers. 25 million. Obama Care? More $$ will take care of that. Amway gave 20 million to get out of paying taxes to IRS. These folks have invented an array of organizations that are called "Tax - deductible Philanthropy" , academic institutions, Think Tanks, Congress, etc. Have you even heard of Richard Mellon Scaife? He & the Koch's buddy in donating millions to orgs so they could get around paying taxes.  Jane traces the Byzantine trial of the billions spent by these folks and gives us vivid portraits of the colorful figures behind the new American oligarchy. It appears we are duplicating the fall of Athenian Politics, as their 600 senators were all Land Owners. No peasants, please.

           

          

Jeffers Place

Wright's Walker House

 

ON A LIGHTER VEIN.   We visited my old haunts in Big  Sur & Carmel a while back and I use these times to re--connect with my love of  Robinson Jeffers work. His fabulous stories of old Big Sur I have read several times as they are so pithy and manage to convey the early people who lived there.  He built a wonderful small stone house in Carmel that is always worthwhile, also it is nearly across the street from Wright's 1948 Walker house, perched on the seashore there. Anyway, it gives me an excuse to remind all of you readers (of books, you are out there , are you not?) of Jeffers works. ('Give my Heart to the Hawks,' 'Tamar', 'Roan Stallion'). 

           

SO MUCH FOR SECURITY  When the secret service was established in 1865, it had no responsibility for protecting the president. This, despite the bitterest irony in American intelligence and protective services; The authority to form the Secret Service was given by president Lincoln on the day he was shot. The agency began with ten men, and it's first mission had been to combat currency counterfeiting at a time when more than 1600 private banks printed their own money. It was not until after 1906 that Congress authorized the agency to expand into a protective force around the president, a espesially  after the deaths of Garfield 1881 and McKinley in 1901. But remember; Guns kill people, not guns.

MISCELLANY

DEFINITIONS; A   musical interlude

The ARCHITECT is the  COMPOSER hired by the KING or the  OWNER

The  DIRECTOR  is akin to the CONTRACTOR, organizing & keeping the workers  in line

The SUB-CONTRACTOR is akin to the MUSICIANS who actually do the work.

The AUDIENCE or your FRIENDS enjoy the fruits of every ones labor.

Hot day; Cool beer.

DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME

My first experiment in beer making was a gallon of Mead, something akin to what early, Medieval  imbibers drank. A simple recipe, mostly fermenting some honey.  Along my trail of beer making, I usually showed friends how to make their own Pliny the Old Guy.

Michael wanted to make up a small batch of it so I showed him the ropes, then he took the gallon jug home to ferment on the kitchen counter.

The crucial item I did not give him was a cork that had an air-lock, which allows the gases to escape as they build up in the container from the yeast action.  Mine only fit larger bottles.

Well, during the night, Michael was awakened by an explosion and he opened the door of the end room, he noted the hallway was sprinkled with glass shards. Luckily, he or his young son had not been in the hall , they may have even seriously hurt, if not killed, when the gallon of beer exploded due to build up of pressure that had no other way out but to explode.

RELIGION & MYTHS

Since the discovery of  Akadian Clay tablets (Part of the Epic of Gilgamaesh, King of Ashurbanipal , 668 BC) more than a dozen Cuneiform tablets have been discovered, all of which have some version of the FLOOD  MYTH  , some which pre-date the bible  myth by a thousand years. (That would be the Old Testament). 

A LITTLE POETRY INTERLUDE  IS CALLED FOR HERE;

From 'I AM A LOVER'  My favorite book from 1961 (Captions of Photos)

I am a Lover,

But have not found one to love.

How shall I learn, Supreme Mystery?

To know thee, tho I muse continually?

Under what form of thine unnumbered forms Mayst Thou be grasped?       

                             Bhagavad Vita

Winter is icummen in,

 Lhude sing Goddamm,

Raineth drop and staineth slop.

And how the wind doth ramm!

                          Sing: Goddamm.      

                                                Ezra Pound (I never could understand that guy)

In the artists studio all distinctions disappear.

One has neither name nor family;

One is no longer the daughter of one's mother,

one is one's self - an individual -

And one has before one

ART,

And nothing else.

                        Marie Bashkirtself  (Never heard of her)

'Twas brillig,

                        and the smithy troves

Did gyre and gamble in the wabe:

All mimosas were the boron overs. . .

He took his Vorpel sword in hand;

            Long time the manxome foe he sought -

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

            And stood awhile in thought.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

            The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun. . .

...the frumpious Bandersnatch!                Lewis Carroll. (Now that I can understand !).

            Let your life lightly dance

on the edges of Time like dew

On the top of a leaf.

            Rabindranath Tagore

CORDOBA

Distant and alone.

Black pony, great moon,

And olives in my saddle-bag.

Although I know the roads

Never will I reach Córdoba.

By the plain, through the the wind,

Black pony, red moon.

Death is watching me

From the towers of Córdoba.

Ay, the road is long!

Ay, my valorous pony!

Ay, that death should await me

Before I come to Córdoba!

Córdoba.

Distant and alone.

                        Frederico Garcia Lorca

            Lord, I do fear

Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year.

My soul is all but out of me - let fall

No burning leaf, Prithee , let no bird call.

                        Edna St. Vincent Millay

The capacity of the people for error

Is not to be underestimated.

                        Westbrook Pegler

VIDEO ALERT

I've just discovered on YOU TUBE I can pick up short bits of the great movies, like "Blazing Saddles", "Young Frankenstein" & "Little Murders" Even Bob & Ray Radio clips. But my favorite is the Wedding Scene from "Little Murders", one I've always wanted to show my kids. But now you can see it anytime by You Tube , Wedding in "Little Murders". This as written by Jules Fiefer, a fabulous  Political Cartoonist of past days. The movie is probably from the '70's starring Don Sutherland & Elliot Gould, who photographs dog shit.

HISTORY OF THE CAMERA

  Of course the first 'Camera'  was a room with a small hole in one wall that projected an image (upside down, before  Single Lens Reflex Rooms))  discovered by some painter in France or Holland around 1600's .But carrying a room around with you was not practical at the time.. 

And they also had a hard time selling upside-down paintings,

  For those of you who only know that your iPhone is also a camera, It didn't change much the first few decades after it was invented in 1814, but Eastman made it so most of us could take a picture by 1900. Color was not available until 1907, but not for mass consumption. The early photographers of the West needed a whole wagon to carry their own development lab, but by the 1950's serious photogs carried glass plates around and viewed their image upside down, when doing serious work. However, we may have won the war with Japan but their ingenuity was evident in their development of cameras. Before that, if you wanted to view the subject as is, you used one to look down into, or upside down,  but soon, the Japanese invented the Pentra-Prizm, SLR (Single Lens Reflex) that turned it rightside up in your Lens. Even during the 60's I developed my own photos  (we're still in black & white mode) in my bathroom. The Japs eventually excelled and took away the market from the Germans. Prior to this , you had to use a large plate , ergo, a large print in order to get a fine print.

The electronic camera wasn't developed until the late 80's, after the 'Land Camera' was invented in order to get instant photos. It was basically a photo lab in you camera and spit out a complete print 'In Color' in  a few seconds. However, after a few years , the photo could deteriorate, much to the chagrin of us looking thru old photo albums. But the electronic camera changed all that. NO FILM REQUIRED! Even on our initial trips to Europe (1980's) we had to save all the used rolls of film and buy new film in the Farmacia, In France or Italy.  By 1995 we could buy small cheap "Point & Shoot" cameras that stored hundreds of shots on a small chip. The downside of that was when a thief took your camera (and they will!) you lost hundreds of shots of your vacation in Europe. Our  solution was to change the card every week so you wouldn't lose them with you're camera.

But now I could store them on my desktop computer and view them large scale.

  Then apple comes along and adds an excellent camera to your phone. But if you are serious and need telephoto lenses, or other filters, you may still want to buy the $2,100 model from Nikon.    

NOTE: The origin of the  THE VENICE CARNIVALE is  "MEAT IS VALID" Must have something to do with the Catholic "Lent period".

Note #2: The Italian name for Eggplant is 'Melanzanov' which means "Unhealthy Apple" which comes form the mid Eastern 12th century. Don't ask me why.

Note also; The Porcini mushroom means 'Piglet', don't ask me why.

HURRAY! THE WARS’ OVER!   (This from 2003)

Our president (Bush) has  just told us  the war in Iraq is over.  I was wondering how that was  going.  I guess we’ve got all the  nuclear warheads out of. Is  there still a war in Afghanistan?  And remind me what we were doing there. Other than protecting our oil supply.   Do we still believe we are there to help  these poor bastards into Democracy? Don’t any of our advisors read history books? We all know that these Muslims have been killing each other since   Mohammeds brother started an off shoot of Muslim religion .

     I know its’ not PC to question ‘What went wrong?’ but I have to. Just ask anyone from ORHA (Committee to put back the country after we’ve trashed it, or the one’s who were supposed to set up a government when the killing stopped , like we did for Germany and Japan , two years in advance).  In actuality, we began planning for such a thing in Iraq until a couple of months before “Mission Accomplished”.  The ORHA folks were given a bare space without even desks, to say nothing of the telephones. Washington sent recent Grads from Prestige Schools to help run Iraq. One young woman was given the job of all traffic control in the country of millions! Yet she knew nothing of Urban Planning. Worse yet,  in 2003 Paul Brenner was sent in to run the whole crazy deal. He initiated several disastrous programs.

    First, he closed all form of government the Iraqi’s had.

2^nd; He fired all Saddams workers and disbanded the existing Army. That immediately formed a group of 500,000 men who had no jobs & no way to support families & relatives. Oh, and by the way, these men knew where all the arms wore stored. Immediately there was wholesale looting of one of the most historic Museums in the world, as well as their incredible library with thousands of ancient writings, but worse, the U.S. didn’t feel it was necessary to protect theses from looting and destruction.

I forgot to mention he let out 100,000 prisoners to help out the looting.

   3^rd;  And we didn’t see why it was necessary to protect the several large arms dumps.

Have I painted a stupid enough picture yet? 

I’m glad also we got it all sorted out about just who or what was the difference between a Rebel, insurgent, Militant, Shiite and Sunni?

These new wars against a sect of Muslims, fighting them  in the streets doorways with with huge aircraft carrier and supersonic fighter planes.  At least Drones can get in closer than a high altitude bomber at 30,000 feet.  Our politicians still don’t admit to why we were in ‘nam or Iraq, but don’t we all know it’s the Oil?

Destroying expensive equipment (Humvees, helicopters, etc)  so our Military/Industrial folks can keep up their living style? Is that why we keep doing all this?