The Kit Houses of the Pacific Ready-Cut Home Company

...m was actually a dining room with a curtain, probably like this one in the picture above. In our neighborhood, house flippers have taken to ripping out all the walls and built-in cabinets in old houses in a misguided attempt to make them conform to the current vogue for everything mid-century modern. As a real estate agent once told me, “people like an old house on the outside and a new house on the inside.” Let it be known (and you heard it first...

Read…

Brunch at the End of the End of History

...of high rent in a very unaffordable city. I’m also holding in my mind this picture of the no-nonsense Dorothy Day looking like a character in a film noir. I can imagine her taking a drag on that smoke and saying, as she once did, “Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.” Then I can imagine her, as she also did, getting to work in a struggle harsh on systems but big on love of neighbor. As she said, “We have all known t...

Read…

The Mystery of the Zero-Irrigation Squash

...to be clear, that means they’ve had no water for months. The chairs in the picture above are holding over 100 lbs (45+ kilos) of food grown with zero water inputs! To top that, this was one of the healthiest squash plants we’ve ever “grown” or rather allowed to grow. How did that work? And more importantly, how can we make it happen again? I have three thoughts: 1) Perfect timing. Volunteers know exactly when to come up. They’re rarely wrong. We h...

Read…

Wake Up and Fight

...nnocuous New Years post. In the dream he went on about how putting up that picture of a pupusa just wasn’t “serious.” This is, of course, a silly anxiety dream. There’s no way this person would ever have complained about any of my posts let alone that one. But this dream crystalized two writing fears of mine: offending people and going off-topic. These fears lead to writer’s block and timid writing. They can also cause you to lose contact with the...

Read…

What Kind of Wall Anchor Should I Use?

...thing just plain fall of the wall. By all means, if you can, get thee some picture rail. But, if that’s not an option, take a look at Rodriguez’s article for all your wall anchor needs, whatever kind of wall you’re dealing with. I’d like to highlight two of the suggested anchors in that Fine Woodworking article for those of us in the lath and plaster tribe. One I’ve already blogged about, is the pull toggle pictured above. It’s not perfect as some...

Read…