The Gathering Storm

...e. I can continue Peter’s paragraph. The historic Zane Grey estate where I used to teach classes with the late Joseph Shuldiner and the former owners, Steve and Gloria, gone. A friend’s house, gone. Anther friend’s former house (right across the street from Peter), gone. The office of a massage therapist who helped me heal from a car accident, gone. The hardware store I’d drop into, gone. The coffee place, gone. The gallery I went to an opening at...

Read…

Go Plant a Million Trees

...trees, a bunch of ponds, enriched soil and wild stories.” In our own small urban yard, we’re beginning to see the fruits, literally, of our own small-scale arboreal efforts that we began over ten years ago. This month we had a abundant crop of Mission figs, avocados, olives and pomegranates. And that pathetic vegetable garden I blogged about? My heretical thinking is to give up annual vegetables entirely and use the space to plant two small citrus...

Read…

Journal of the New Alchemists

...) covers mostly their agricultural experiments, but occasionally dips into urban planning and other subjects. Biodome. Image: Journal of the New Alchemy. It’s interesting to look back at their work to see what ideas went mainstream and what faded away. What didn’t stick is what Nassim Taleb would call “top-down” approaches to design epitomized by the 70s fixation on geodesic domes and self contained ecosystems (though we’re starting to see a resur...

Read…

For the Locals . . .

On that foot sign Alissa Walker, one of my favorite journalists, covers urban design here in Los Angeles. She wrote a great piece on our nieghborhood’s iconic podiatrist sign. Walker agrees with me that we need much more than kitschy signs to mark our neighborhoods. She concludes, We need more reminders of what history predates our presence. We need more streets that are designed to connect us instead of being fast-forwarded through in cars. We n...

Read…

Hay Hooks–The New Hipster Accessory?

...chickens I predict that hay hooks will become just as indispensable to the urban hipster as is the fixed gear bicycle. After years of hauling staw bales up the 30 steps to our house (to use as bedding for the chickens) I just broke down and bought a pair. A vaquero at the feed store intervened with a neat tip when he saw me struggling to use my new hay hooks to load some bales into a friend’s truck. Here’s what he showed me. Note the red arrow in...

Read…