IT WILL BE A GRIND!

Re-incarnation, re-purposing, re-using, re-treads . . . people deny reincarnation because they cannot recollect their past lives . . . absence of memory is not sufficient proof of non existence . . . nor should absence of memory deter us from re-using and re-purposing and recycling all we have stashed in our garages, storage units and closets . . . the rampant consumerism of America will be curtailed by her economic woes, although through the holidays i noticed Walmart is still as busy as ever as everyone shops for the cheap stuff made in China which is exactly the opposite of how we should be righting our economic ship in turbulent seas . . . now is the time to spend quality money at your local mom and pop store and drag those things out of storage and fix'em and use them again . . . same as we will all do with our cars!

Happy Holidays and be Happy!

Full Circle

I recently made a banking decision that has made me so damned happy . . . i will just have to share it with you!

i got so tired of Bank of America and it's impersonal largeness that my desire for community drove me to research circle bank!

if you visit this site, you will feel their personal touch! https://www.circlebank.com

pictured is Lisa Raffi, our personal contact at the branch in Petaluma, who is counting our pennies because the dollars will follow!! 

it is so refreshing to be supporting community and banking too! and i have not even attended the branch yet!

IO SATURNALIA!

The New Dish on the Dish

I am reposting this in concert with my wee rant on KRCB with  Bruce Robinson, please add your comments if you have any!

A wee bit ago I moved from a great old barn i was staying in and cancelled my Dish Network service . . . herin follows a description of a practice that abhors me!


To Whom!

I recently cancelled a television and internet contract with Dish Network . . . besides becoming a process akin to extracting teeth, there were a few disturbing extrapolations of the process . . . when one cancels their contract, it is incumbent upon the client to climb upon the roof, or wherever the dishes are located and indulge in some complicated maneuvering to extract the brains of the dish network while leaving the dishes wherever they may be . . . my first reaction to this was, what if the clients are 80 years old and cannot afford to hire someone to remove the desired parts . . . besides having to cancel my subscription multiple times, which has been a long and arduous journey worthy of it's own saga, the company will not take any responsibility for the dish apparatus themselves . . .

I was originally called with a recorded message telling me that it was incumbent upon my own self to return all of the companies equipment to them within a certain time period . . . I have packed all the materials in a 2' x 2' x 2' box but they will not accept any of the parts except the hard drives and receiving chips.

I have been told by three different representatives that I am to throw the perfectly good, one year old parts in the trash! while I was having this conversation on the office phone . . . part of the seven hours that I and my office manager have spent thrashing through this corporate nightmare, one of my clients waited til I hung up in frustration and mentioned that she and her husband had the same frustrations and difficulties but finally gave in to some semblance of compliance as life got in the way, and he is Dr. Rocky Rohwedder, professor of environmental studies at Sonoma State!

I run a re-use, re-purpose and recycle company and devote endless hours to trying to achieve zero waste and here is a company that finds it more efficient to ship newly manufactured materials in cartons from China to wherever and out to consumers and leave thousands of perfectly good equipment pieces littering the landscape daily!

I believe that we are two of thousands if not tens of thousands of people that are appalled by this approach! I am writing you in the hopes that we might draw attention to this very disturbing and wasteful manner of doing business.

In a country that has been striving to decrease it's already world record production of landfill, where the most oft spoke key word is green, where jobs could be had to resurface old dishes and re-use same and where we sully our once beautiful landscape daily with technical accoutrements including the hundreds (maybe thousands) of dishes left singing their ungainly, unsightly, disconnected woeful tune, it would be nice if we could make some sense of this behaviour!

Best shop door in the Biz

I have had many a woodshop and worked in a few besides, but i do love our little back door in our Heritage Salvage yard on the mighty Petaluma River . . . we are constantly entertained by passerby, including Red Hawks, Swans, swimming Deer, river Otter (Otter know better), Ducks a paddlers of human types, and a plethora of pigeons in formation!

all blessings flow in the appreciation of your own life!

Time to Fix It!!

As Mr Morita once said when asked about the American propensity to get bogged down in Politics, In Japan most politicians are engineers, so when something is broken we try to fix it! In America, most politicians are lawyers, so when something doesn't work, they sue! 

Although when the Japanese went through the same thing economically, some fourteen years ago, they tried to intervene the same way we are doing and their economy has remained stagnant since. Can we not garner lessons from the past?

As i wandered about the Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit at the Tech Museum and wondered at his exceptional and non-stop propensity to invent and improve and to facilitate things mechanically, i wondered what he might think now, of how far we have taken his acumen and how close to the edge of breaking we have brought humanity and our penchant to devour the planet! I wish we could just vote and decide on the issues and need not bother to vote for another human to decide what is best for us by listening to those who can butter their bread best! . . . ahhh, but vote we must!

Green and Golden Parachutes

Although Leonardo Da Vinci invented the parachute long before airplanes were invented, American business has invented the golden parachute, which irresponsible executives can deploy long after the plane has crashed . . . gotta love America and the politicians on both sides who let it all happen!

I am just hoping for a green parachute, which may mean that we all still get to stay on spaceship earth after all we have done!

Gotta love it!

Mary Nova desert Bound

Our Dearest Mary Nova is winding her way to the Camp of Martin Prechtel's Bolad's Kitchen in the desert of New Mexico . . . Mary has been our graphic artist, web weaver, wearer of many hats for the most many moons of any HS associate/employee . . . she is primarily responsible for the look and feel of our appreciated website and we wish her fabulous success on the path of her choosing . . . always a joy to be with and a gentle nurturing soul for our one and only earth mother

TRAVEL ON THE WINGS OF YOUR SOFT APPROACH!!!

We Love You!

The joys of Gardening

singing with Bobby Mantis !!
The rewards of gardening are the icing of the fabulous produce you proudly consume and give out to your friends and neighbors and the cake of the  journey getting there!

too long, too little

Gerstle Cove                Rivers End!

It's been a month since i blogged, and that is just a tad too long gone . . . this is a happy camper who just returned from a busman's holiday delivering wood to fine clients Peter and Marianna and staying at their beautiful casa north of Gualala . . . i had all these great photo's to show off their home but left them on the beach . . . when i inadvertantly erased them trying to make room for photo's at Cool Rocks Beach (otherwise known as Gerstle Cove in Salt Point Park) . . . it is worth supporting state parks by giving them the 6 bucks, and finding yourself alone for 5 hours climbing moon rocks, wondering at wild life and hiking through beach pine forests . . . i have finally been reminded often enough to get out and smell the planet . . . life is too short . . . on my second evening i hung out at Anchor Bay with old friend Jerry Powers at his fabulous property and in his inimitable fashion ran me about his neck of the woods, uncovering hidden beaches and natural wonders and enticing me in to introspection! Then on third day after douing my cool rocks hike i hung out with Joe Hawkins and discussed the passing of the torch with the Blue Jacket . . . more later!

Friends are so valuable! as is time spent wondering of the wonders of our one and only! What a ball our home is!!

A Kinder Gentler Future

In a simple gesture with trusting implications the Na Na sisters ( Oona O'niell and Rianna Bowen) raise the flag of peace in a modern day "swords into plowshares" maneuver. It seems to me that if we exhibit faith in our Daily Acts we will be rewarded with results , , , and speaking of Daily Acts . . . the latest edition of Ripples produced by Petaluma's own delightful crew of walk the walkers led by the intrepid Trathen is a most worthy read . . . sign up now for your edition . . . go to http://daily-acts.org/ . . . Petaluma keeps growing as a green, compassionate caring community . . . welcome to the overground!

Lock your doors

Here is bug's new river ride . . . a 1961 Silverline 15' runabout with a 1961 Evinrude 2 stroke

We have reached that time of year when one must be careful about leaving your unattended car doors unlocked . . . you may just come back and find it stuffed full of giant zucchinis . . . be that as it may, the community of abundant gardens is no doubt my favorite time of year . . . i get to walk 30 feet from my door and start my day off with a big bowl of blackberries . . . real tomatoes remind me why agribiz does not satisfy . . . saw the mad scramble at the county fair as we delivered things to the fabulous Suzanne Alexander at the Sustainable Sonoma Tent . . . check it out . . . the fair opens today!

Swords to Plowshares, Barbed wire to Tibetan Prayer Flags

Well, our excitement at Heritage Salvage about the impending annexation of the property into the city limits of Petaluma have caused us to dress up the front entry to reflect our pleasure. As a gift to the fine burg of Petaluma we have fashioned an old style barn roof sign of  "Welcome to Petaluma" and added some salsa garden beds with our version of a verdant flourishing lawn (recycled artificial turf) Our next step was to take some of the cyclone fencing down and replace it with chicken roosts repurposd as fencing. We have also begun removing the barbed wire, of which i am not a fan, and are replacing it with Tibetan Prayer flags. As i began researching Tibetan Prayer Flags, and discovered that there were like 500,000 places to purchase same (half of which are probably made in China), i handed the task over to the intrepid Kim Sprouse of our office and showroom fame, and she ended up speaking with the Marin Tibetan Center and they are going to have the Prayer Flags Blessed before we come to get them! 

Here is the Backside of our movie set entry way . . . our intention is to keep morphing the yard into a Green Architectural Playland! Many more things to come. At this point we have just received about 40,000 bd ft of con heart and con common redwood from a manufacturing concerns boneyard, 2x4, 2x6, 4x4, and 4x6, never used and dry! Another new addition is a collection of 60 limestone fenceposts from Kansas! Come on by!

locavores revel in Farmers markets

Being the firm believer that there should be Farmers Markets every couple of miles so that everybody could walk, bicycle or take their solar wheelchair to get there, i love this time of year when the proliferation of fresh produce from local farmers rolls into town . . . and you can find out down to a tenth of a mile how far our food traveled . . . and it's so damn good . . . my very late planting of my salsa garden at the yard has taken hold, not sure how me peppers and tomatoes will fare but it was so satisfying to put it in! . . . a couple more maneuvers to ensure that the voracious forest rats known as deer will not be able to use the tomatoes for dessert . . . it is so dry they will be going the extra mile to glean fresh greens . . . i've seen a lot in the river this year . . . speaking of which, i spent the day after work trying to tune my sleek new river craft, a 1961 Silverline 15' runabout with a 1961 evinrude . . . sweet package indeed . . . more time will be spent on my back door waterway! I am now looking for HS to be sharing more space with community endeavors and am reaching out to bring in like minded Petaluminaries to build a central green presence in our fine burg. We are pleased to be supported by and in turn supporting Suzanne Alexander and Sustainable Sonoma . . . we are planning a presence at the Sonoma County Fair in the Sustainable Sonoma tent!

Buy local, shop local, meet local and be a friend!

MP

Gifts of Unknown Things, and unknown things as gifts

waiting for an appining!


this is a bit of a long story but i am going to tell it by gosh, i am . . . . i have become very enamored 

of two dervishes that i recently discovered 

via the ethernet . . .

 rumor has it that they are living in or around Salmo, BC, Canada, 

that's a salmon without the N . . . 

which was given to Elson and it became Nelson 

 . . .  but that is a story for another day . . . these dervish type fellas were seen in Salwarkhamis tunics probably from their Grandma's stash of exotic things

(this would be reporters speculation)

Now these two dervishes probably have some connection to the two amazing Grands mentioned in previous blog! . . . ohhh the wondrous way of the World Wide Web and the exotic possibilities that may yet unfold with Worlds Weird Weather . . . The Merry Plankster is thorughly pleased!

Relativity beyond Theory

Be i so pleased to officially announce my Daughter and my two Grands to this very page! May all your happinesses be as special to you as these three are to me! Through a very special set of extenuating circumstances i have not yet been able to meet these three very handsome, sagacious, fun-filled and frolicsome relations . . . whole story soon to come to a bookstore near you! That would be Suzy, Hayden and Mason . . . there is always something to look forward to!

Everything is Relative!!

June swooned and went away . . . July Flies! . . . in the California Heat with a glass of wine and a smoked sunset my thoughts have turned to relevant phrase of " everything is Relative" which when asked, "how are you?", when things were not going well at the yard,  and i had just heard my younger brother had been diagnosed with Stage 4 Carcinoma, i reflected and replied, "Personally i am excellent, healthy, emotionally unsettled and concerned for the well being of my brother! What a trooper we knew he would be . . . as the Deakin and extended family immediately circled the spiritual wagons and the realities of the frailty of Diagnosed life enters our consciousness we all, Dennis and Janet first, have stepped up to the nothing is impossible page! . . . i quote from "Alice in Wonderland" . . .  

"There's no use trying.'  Alice said, 'One can't believe impossible things!'

"'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen, 'When I was your age I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'" (I was reminded of that quote reading Barbara Kingsolvers "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" which is a fine read digging to the roots of locavores! )

You gotta love the reappearance of many things at the farmers markets!

So, I digress, with the great attitude of two families and many friends, we venture forth! looking for alternative solutions and will be happy to hear of any!

I look forward to spending many closer years with Brother Dennis as i am reminded of the frailty of our existence and things not done!! . . . and of the power of the human spirit and things yet to do!

More about the reality of Relativity next blog!

June swoon

well, been too something or other to blog . . . many things as we look to expand space at yard . . . trying to keep up with curve of recession and putting the float back together to display at Sonoma Marin fair . . . all good things . . . i have been watching the Bluebirds building their nest in the bird house . . . so much work, so vigilant . . . i added an extra landing spot so they had one more place to keep six and a shorter hop into the hole . . . also had to put a stainless bowl over the top of the post as the ranch cats were enamored of all the activity and parking themselves on the post in hopes of some feathered dessert! that's mama B just heading out for some more building materials! www (weird world weather) has been up to her tricks in all areas . . . does Gaia herself feel that this is any kind of a big change?? i think not! Now NASA is flying a testalite into the Sun . . . cool!

the plankster

Dobie Gillis and Maynard

Home is where your car is . . . well, not really, but here sits Patina, my veggie Merc at the back door of my home du jour! Barn again!

Okay here's the deal . . . we will all go to our local grocery stores that sell organic produce and collect stickers that tell us it is organic from every shopper for one day and we will roll them all into a ball! more on this later as i figure out how to choreograph this move.

spent my early evening watching the bird traffic around the barn . . . one needs an air traffic controller here as they are all winging in every direction and then the bats fly into the mix . . . i'm sure there are a thousand bats in the barn . . . now i am starting the bat guano tea for the gardens on the ranch

a sterling day as i blog by my barn window . . . off to the Sebastopol Farmers Market as i missed Petaluma yesterday . . . was open at the yard too long!

Bugaroo

Taking Time

I know we have all noticed that there is no time left in the day any more . . . as we swept into the information age and we were all going to get things done so much more efficiently, we are instead found with the capacity to do so many more things that your friends don't even have time to email you any more. Of course the me generation can text while they walk and talk all at the same time . . . where will they be at when they're 50? 

We went through a week of another slow start but finished with a flurry. I love the people i meet in their various pursuits of patina and green building . . . of well intentioned deal shopping or leafing through the yard as art!

. . . and watching bright eyed kids bush tailing through the stacks and cooing with curiosity, destined to find purpose in the most innocent piece, imaginations unbound!

the Plankster

 

A little bit of everything!

Office Notes . . . as it finally dawns on us why the printer/copy/fax machines come so cheap . . . because they sell you ink refills with about as much ink as a ballpoint pen in them for $20-$30 . . . what's up with that!! (very nice of them to recycle your ink refill container and put 2 grams of ink back in it and you buy it again for $$$$$$ . . . sheesh 

Home notes . . . my latest home improvement effort has yielded immediate results, i think i should be one of those curb appeal consultants for home sellers . . . i have watched this old bird house just outside my "home in a barn" window and wondered why no one had moved in! well, there was no little roosting stick under the doorway so drilled a hole and placed a small stick of eucalyptus and within 24 hours the joint was sold!

Road Notes . . . why are biofuels going up faster than fossil fuels? i guess i better filter my stash of used veggie oil as it's value keeps increasing

Food notes . . . so glad that farmers markets have all started up again . . . such a pleasure to give the money to the farmer, not to mention buying organic food that doesn't have inorganic stickers on it to tell you that it's organic . . . shouldn't it be the other way around?  let's see . . . genetically engineered food gets two impossible to remove stickers, standard fare one sticker and organic food should get to speak for itself!!

We could really make Memorial Day memorable if we honored those who died in the service of their country by devising some method of deciding our differences without killing anyone!

The yard at Heritage Salvage has been cleaned up and now the other half is for rent . . . trying to decide if we can afford to go in this direction . . . i always wanted to make an architectural disneyland of the whole thing and what with the new selection of slabs and more lovely pieces finding their way into the yard each day maybe there we go . . . will the sun shine on this new possibility?? we have been annexed by the lovely town of Petaluma and we are so happy to be here . . . i think we need to have a welcome party . . . it is Memorial Weekend  . . . bring back the wooden nickel!

MP 

Gazillionaires

The problem with our set-up on this planet is that there are just a handful of gazillionaires and a gazillion of handfullaires! As we watch big business take and take in this big old country where all you need is a gas pump to stick it to the population . . . lookout world, Butterfly just got her license . . . last seen in Humboldt driving a Humvee campaigning for more bus stops in a world that don't know how to stop . . . shooting for discovery channel with the great crew from Authentic TV (that's Mathilde sitting on a 21 ft redwood slab with camera dude and the bugster talkin' smack) has vaulted the purpose of HS and our "Barn Again Tour" on the fast track to doing our treatment for the Television tour of same name . . . hope to start putting together step two soon . . . from one of many, lands of weird weather and wonder that it isn't weirder . . . when gas is ten bucks will we drive less or just complain more . . . can't we put those profits somewhere good instead of oil companies slick parachutes for golden executives . . . have a merry time of it all!

the Merry Plankster

Shooting for Discovery Channel

 We love these old barns baby!

Tuesday, May 20th, spent the day with a great crew from Authentic TV. shot for 8 1/2 hours at three locations. Mathilde the producer was great, French, grew up in Africa . . . up at Rick and Lamar's barn in west Petaluma . . . great Couple who definitely get the concept . . . disturbing site on the way to the shoot, somebody who bought a piece on the corner of Middle two Rock and Eucalyptus brought in an excavator and a bunch of dumpsters and trashed 3 barns that were in better shape than the one we are taking down for the shoot . . . after trying to pound this point across for the last five years, and all the green, recycle news stories and awareness, how is it that people do not get it yet . . . here is a photo of the view from Rick and Lamar's and this beautifully patina'd old barn!

The day before the big shoot . . . discovery channel discovers heritage salvage discovering salvage and salvaging the heritage of it's discoveries!!

the Merry Plankster

My First Blog

Look out world the bugs gonna blog...