The Everyday Beauty Of The Bear River Valley...

~Afternoon Sky~

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

Our View From The Dining Room This Morning
Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

Each of our days here is enriched with the overwhelming beauty of the natural world.
Yesterday afternoon found us under the splendid sky pictured above while this morning a family of deer graced the orchard outside mom's dining room windows.

Our Home Away From Home Here In The Bear River Valley Of Utah

Mom's House In Farm Country

Click on any photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

Peggy, Dallas, and my shadow coming home from our first 5 mile morning walk in Utah.

We'll be spending at least the next 6 months here helping my 85 year old mother out around the place.

Peggy and mom, still in their jammies, in mom's kitchen this morning.


Peg & Dallas on a morning walk along a crossroad near our new digs. We are headed back to the road mom lives on, which runs perpendicular to this one, about 1/4 mile east (the direction Dallas is facing) where we'll turn right for another 1/2 mile to get home.


Another view of mom's big house which she fell in love with about 5 years ago on a trip from California to visit her sister. She put a deposit on it, sold her house in the San Fernando Valley, and moved out here, lock, stock, & barrel, at 80 years of age.


Looking northwest through part of mom's orchard with our chickens still in their traveling cage. They have since been moved into a large makeshift coop.



A horse named Horse, whom belongs to one my mother's friends, resides on a back corner of the property. The view is to the west.

Looking north across the back 1/2 acre of moms property I can envision a huge vegetable garden at this end with chickens and goats inhabiting the far end.

We've already made the small shelter in the distance into a makeshift coop for our chickens, which we brought with us. This area lies just behind the orchard and large raspberry patch.

Looking northwest from the middle of the orchard which has varieties of apples, pears, peaches, cherries, and apricots. Below are a few pictures of the fruit we are now harvesting.

This pear tree is just loaded!

This apple didn't bear heavily this year but the fruit is sweet, crisp, and delicious.


This apple tree is heavily laden and we're planning on baking some apple pies here in the next few days.

More apples.



Horse with our makeshift chicken coop in the background.

Looking northeast across a view of the Bear River just a few hundred yards south of my mom's place. This is one of the places we go on our morning walks now.

A view to the northeast from the orchard fence. My mom's property ends where the cornfield starts and the raspberry patch is just behind where I was standing when I took the picture.

A view to the southeast with part of mom's raspberry patch in the foreground.

The raspberries were in dire need of water as were parts of the orchard, all the trees need pruning and there's much weeding and outdoor cleanup to be done.

That's why we're here and hopefully we can get much of that done before it snows and the ground freezes., we've already made quite a bit of progress.

~POSTSCRIPT~

To our friends who are trying to e-mail us. I have to contact Charter.net and set things up differently before I can reply or send e-mail, and, at this point, we are no longer receiving e-mail either.

Big Brother Raids R-Own-Ranch & Condemns Property!!!

At Home On The Smith Family's

'R-Own-Ranch' in 1980 Click on photo to enlarge - ©1980/2010 jim otterstrom

Photo left to right; Thelma Smith, Edgar Smith (gramps), Karen Smith (Miller), Peggy Otterstrom, Jim Otterstrom, Ed Smith, Debra Smith, Clark Smith, with Boots & Chewbacca in front.

Just before Peggy and I moved to Big Bear this is where we lived, in that army surplus quonset hut, on the Smith family's 60 acre 'R-Own-Ranch', a secluded paradise two miles up a dirt road from Mulholland Drive in the Santa Monica Mountains near Malibu Canyon Road.

We moved here shortly after we were married, and the ranch is also where we started our own family, Jimmy came into the world during our time here.

We were quite happy living alongside this down to earth Old Calabasas family who welcomed us into their lives as if we were born & raised right there with them.

Most of us worked for the Post Office, either in Calabasas, or Woodland Hills, which is how we became friends, and we held many unforgettable postal gatherings up at the ranch---far from the rat-race---where people could relax and let their hair down without bothering the neighbors, because there weren't any.

At these large pot-luck get-togethers there was often live music provided by musician friends---from young rockers, to aging big band era players---the majority of whom were working at the Post Office too. The family also---long before my days there---had rigged up a fenced (with chicken wire), night-lighted (with salvaged flourescent fixtures), volleyball court, Ma & Pa Kettle style, where, old & young alike, would often play into the wee hours of the morning.

On more normal quieter nights, the family always gathered in the living room of the original old home-built house where four generations of Smiths would gregariously indulge themselves in hours of playing Scrabble, Monopoly, or any number of board, dice, or card games, until way into the night, and there was also a game room with a pool table off the living room overlooking the vegetable garden.

I loved sitting in on those games and listening to family tales about things like hiking miles to the old Calabasas School on a trail which led from the ranch, over the mountains, and down to the quaint little town of Calabasas. But, I don't believe I ever once beat my ol' buddy, Ed Smith, or his sister, Karen, at a game of Scrabble. Those two were just too damned sharp, but then again, they played the game almost every night for much of their lives.

That's the kind of thing families used to do when they lived in remote rural areas, far from the nearest neighbor, before cable or satellite TV, or computers.

I was absolutely charmed by this unassuming family of self-reliant old-fashioned folks who still lived---even during the 1970s, '80s, & early '90s---much as they had throughout the 1940s & '50s. I felt like I had come home, and I still think of them as family, and their 'R-Own-Ranch' as the country home I always longed for.

During our few years there most of the activity centered around the main house, which apparently came into existence around 1927---long before there were enforced building codes in those unincorporated areas---with several rooms obviously added on, maybe as late as the early 1950s. Also, of course, was the war surplus quonset where Peggy & I lived---which had been erected in 1956---35 years before the city of Calabasas was incorporated. And there were a couple of small trailers there too, available to family members who sometimes came and went depending upon their situations at any given time.

Living at the ranch was always an adventure, and definitely not for the faint of heart. The day we moved in was during the midst of a wet winter, and the private road leading up to the ranch had just washed out about a 1/2 mile down from the house, so Peggy and I had to trudge back & forth up that last muddy 1/2 mile with all of our belongings. That would've been late 1979, the year I bought my first 4-wheel drive Toyota, for obvious reasons.

The Smiths owned a tiny, ancient, rickety Caterpillar bulldozer which could, periodically, be patched into some semblance of working order to assist with road repair during washouts, which came in handy because the 1.2 mile dirt section of the road was almost completely wiped out twice during our 3 year stay at the ranch. Those are rewarding and memorable experiences in my life, working side by side with the Smiths to rebuild their road, and this is also when Peggy learned how to use a chain saw and I got to know her rugged hard-working side.

Then there were the fires. A couple of years before we moved to Big Bear a fire broke out to the north of us in the middle of the night, near highway 101, and we were awakened by a call from the fire department warning us to be prepared because it was moving in our direction.

There was a fire hydrant on the property near the main house---the cost of which was surely added to the R-Own-Ranch tax assessment, but the fire department would no longer allow their equipment up the narrow road to protect just one old house. They did however offer to provide us with some fire hose, a nozzle, and a bit of safety instruction if we wished to defend the place ourselves, an offer we gladly accepted.

Over that tense ensuing day the fire moved slowly toward us and some of the Smiths decided to drive down and talk with the firefighters stationed by the big fancy houses at the lower paved section of the road near Mulholland Drive, to see if they might change their minds about sending a truck up. What happened instead, was that a sheriff wouldn't allow the guys back up the road, which left me and Peggy, along with Thelma Smith, probably in her late 50s then, and her son Clark, in his early to mid teens, to defend the place.

I suggested to Peggy that she should leave and told her I was going to stay and fight the fire. She said, "I'm not going anywhere without you"! So, Peg and I followed the fire department advice, wrapping our heads & faces in wet towels as the fire advanced over the hill and moved in upon us. We kept the house and everything around it soaking wet, and when the smoke got too thick we'd adjust the nozzle to a fine spray over our heads and breathe, through the wet towels, the oxygen that was emanating from the misting spray of water falling around us. A few times I had to leave Peggy in charge of the hefty fire nozzle so I could run back to the quonset and use the garden hose to extinguish small fires that had ignited in knot-holes of the leafless deciduous 'Trees of Heaven' growing along the side of the metal building, which was otherwise rather impervious to fire. That's when I discovered how strong and courageous Peggy is.

The fire burned around us for a couple of hours but eventually moved on and the Smith homestead was spared for the time being. Then, in March of 1983, just a few days before Peggy & I moved away, another fire headed toward the ranch, and we were prepared to man the hoses again, but the previous fire had cleared most of the underbrush so this one just burned on past us.

Sadly, in 1996, a third fire finally burned the original family home to the ground while the Smiths stood by helplessly at the bottom of the road where the police, once again, wouldn't allow them up to defend their uninsurable property.

The quonset hut and trailers survived though, and members of the family, including Thelma's now 70 year-old brother, Lloyd Smith, and his son Gary, continued living on what was left of their scrappy beloved ranch, until, completely unannounced and unexpected, "on July 8th, 2010, the Calabasas Community Development Department, its building officials, code enforcement officers, other employees, personnel and agents, Los Angeles County Animal Control, and armed Sheriff’s deputies — a total of 14 people, eight of whom still remain unidentified despite requests for the City to identify them — descended en masse on one of Cold Creek’s founding families in the heart of undeveloped upper Stokes Canyon, 1.2 miles off the beaten track"*.

*Excerpted from the Las Virgenes Homeowners Federation August, 2010 newsletter. Read the whole creepy story about the raid here.

In more decent times and places, in an America once striving toward democracy, these human beings---long-time historic pioneering residents of their community---would've been treated with a modicum of courtesy and respect, instead of like common criminals. Their old non code-compliant homestead would've been considered grandfathered, and partially exempt from today's strict regulations, and they would've been officially notified as to whatever health & safety issues required immediate attention and given some time to come into compliance.

But no, 11 days after the raid the Smith family's electricity was cut off, and 7 days after that the water too, leaving 70 year-old Lloyd, and his son Gary, homeless. The bastards even came and capped off the fire hydrant!!!

Because, as you can plainly see, the Calabasas of today is a miracle of modern Capitalism, where destructive profiteering defines progress, and appallingly ugly subdivisions of enormous disgusting "mansions" are smeared all over the once lovely hillsides that the Smith kids wandered on their way to school.

There's no room in Calabasas any more for down home folks like the Smith family, or in the rest of the Santa Monica Mountains for that matter, it's all gone to shit now! And the robber barons who run the world these days don't even have the decency to come in and make the family a fair offer for their land. They just send in a bunch of lackey bureaucrats to do a little dirty work, raiding, condemning, and evicting elderly life-long residents, probably figuring they'll be able to get what they want for almost nothing, while these people are suffering under duress. And I sorely suspect they may well succeed, because ordinary folks just don't have the resources it takes to fight powerful monied interests.

Interestingly, this raid was conducted around the same time an out-of-state owner of 300 acres somewhere in the vicinity of the Smith property, was inquiring about having his land incorporated into the city of Calabasas for development purposes, and would it surprise anybody if the Smith acreage just happens to lie between his land and the rest of what is already contiguous to Calabasas?

Whether this turns out to be the case or not, you can bet your ass that somebody's got an eye on making big bucks off the corpse of R-Own-Ranch, where generations of Smiths, through their labors of love, toiled away for 60 some years on their remote little plot of paradise, enlarging their home, one room at a time, planting gardens, building ponds, repairing roads, paying taxes, and raising their kids, all by themselves, without the need for pre-schools, playdates, or ritalin.

As for the people who live in all those sterile new giant Calabastard enclaves---those anti-coyote, anti-clothesline, anti-cesspool civilized newcomers whose filth & excrement flows through a nasty maze of pipes to some oft malfunctioning sewage treatment plant before being dumped into the Santa Monica Bay; whose countless Hummers, Escalades, and Navigators foul the air above the sacred mountains I once called home---I feel sorry for you and can't even imagine living in one of those oversized crapboxes and calling it a home.

In my eyes R-Own-Ranch is a victim of the same corporate driven oppression which has subverted democracy all across America by buying off the government, rewriting the rules to benefit the rich, and redistributing the wealth of a once thriving middle class---who were the backbone of the country---to a small percentage of the population, which is why the gap between the rich & poor is wider today than ever before, and growing by the hour. Pure raw evidence of the class wars the entire world is in the midst of.

And, for the record, these are my own opinions, and neither my thoughts nor my memories were verified, approved, or authorized by any member of the Smith family.

My anger and indignation over human beings subjected to this kind of treatment is my own, and I'll speak my mind about it anytime I damned well please, especially when it hits this close to home.

Finally, to all the members of the Smith family; to Ed & Cindy, Karen & Dan, and all your kids; to Thelma, Lloyd, & Gary, and all the rest of you. Peggy and I hope you will find a way to get 'R-Own-Ranch' untangled from this nightmare. We will always feel like a part of your family and this is very painful for us too.

Edgar Smith in 1980Click to enlarge - © 1980/2010 jim otterstrom

The late, Edgar Smith, patriarch of R-Own-Ranch who bought the place in the 1940s.

'Smitty' in 1980Click to enlarge - © 1980/2010 jim otterstrom

The, late, 'Smitty', son-in-law of Edgar, husband to Thelma, was the sole rural letter carrier for Calabasas, delivering the mail to every residence for several decades.

Peggy in October of 1981 Click to enlarge - © 1981/2010 jim otterstrom

A very pregnant Peggy, with our goat, in front of the R-Own-Ranch vegetable garden in October of '81.

Peggy on Friday, November 13th, 1981 Click to enlarge - © 1981/2010 jim otterstrom

Peggy, in front of the quonset with Smith family dog, Chewbacca, about 16 hours before our son Jimmy was born, and check out the cat on the tin roof above the door.

Quonset Bathroom - 1981Click to enlarge - © 1981/2010 jim otterstrom

The quonset bathroom during a facelift I was doing on the place while we lived there.


Remodeling Our Bedroom - 1981
Click on photo to enlarge - © 1981/2010 jim otterstrom

Ed Smith, grandson of Edgar, son of Smitty & Thelma, helps me (in the middle) with the drywall in our bedroom while, Debra Smith, looks on from the doorway to the bathroom.

Peggy - 1981 Click to enlarge - © 1981/2010 jim otterstrom

Peggy, just days away from motherhood, poses for me in our newly remodeled bedroom in the quonset hut at R-Own-Ranch.

Postscript

If you think this post simply describes an unfortunate isolated incident please follow this link to see a short audio slideshow about ex-Marine & Viet Nam vet, Joseph Diliberti, a stunningly creative human being who may lose his 4 acre property in San Diego County, as well as his magnificent hand-crafted ceramic home, under somewhat similar circumstances.

This kind of stuff happens every day, to good people all around the world, who are victimized by the thievery of empire builders who are now beginning to run out of resources to steal; and by classism, elitism, racism, and sexism.

If you lived along the Yangtze River in China, they came and took millions of your ancestral homes for a huge dam to power the industrialists factories, an engineering monstrosity which, at best, will silt over in a dozen decades or so. If you live in Tennessee, they may soon come for the coal under your feet---if they haven't already done so---removing the mountian tops around your home, destroying the landscape and displacing the wildlife who live there, while ruining the watershed and poisoning your water and your air. If you live in Sumatra, and survive a tsunami, they will come and confiscate your land, replacing your fishing villages with luxury resorts. If you live in Central America, they will come and confiscate your homeland for banana or coffee plantations and put you to work in sweatshops making designer shoes or T-shirts for a few bucks a week. If you were a Native American, they might have brought you gifts, like blankets intentionally infected with smallpox, to kill off your people and take over your land with much less resistance. If you live in Iraq, they will come and destroy your country to procure the oil you're sitting on.

And the list of victimization goes on forever, from East Timor, to the Tar Sands of Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast of America; from the brutality of the British, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Chinese, & American empires, to the murderous history of religious fanaticism; from the Crusades, to witch burning in America, and the horrific radical muslim fundamentalism of the Taliban.

I believe, as Dan Quinn wrote in his best-selling novel, Ishmael, that some humans are takers, and some are leavers, and for the past 10,000 years or so, the takers have been winning big, but I think they are running out of time. The planet can't afford them anymore...

Friday Morning ~ Home, Sweet Home

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

You are looking at about one quarter of our native plant garden. This morning's photo is to the east, from the deck, with the beer garden patio and shed in the background.

Enjoy your Friday, and your weekend, this is where we will be spending ours...

~PEACE & LOVE~

New Pine Floor & Door For The Sewing/Crafting Room

First, We Tore Out The Carpeting... Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

Our current project is the renovation of the sewing room.

Before we could start on the fun stuff we had to tear out our vintage 1969 lime green carpeting and pull up the foam padding to reveal the plywood sub-floor beneath. Then we pried off the nasty carpet tack strips at the perimeter and pulled out all the staples which held the padding in place. Once that was done we had a clean slate to work with.

To keep it simple and affordable, and to avoid using exotic hardwoods or synthetic laminates, we went with standard 1x12 pine planks from our local lumber yard.

We used Taylor's 2071 Tuff-Lok solvent-free floor adhesive to adhere the boards to the sub-floor, and then nailed the planks down, three nails across, every two feet, with square shank copper boat nails to add beauty and help prevent cupping of the wide planks.

Yes, pine is soft, and it does wear faster than hardwood, but in my opinion it wears beautifully.

We made the decision to use pine planks after looking at photos of wide-plank pine floors in old houses, some of them over 100 years old. That's durable enough for our purposes.

Square Shank Copper Nails Add Beauty & Durability
Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

Laying these floors is a pretty simple straightforward job. We measured and cut all the boards first and laid them in place to make sure everything was square, then we picked them all back up again, and glued & nailed them down one at a time. I pre-drilled the nail holes in the planks to prevent splitting and the 3-inch long 8-gauge copper nails (from Faering Design) go way into the thick plywood sub-floor.

We did the living room floor by the same method nearly 5 years ago and it's still as flat and solid as the day it was finished.

A New Pine-Panel Door Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

We also relpaced the beat up holllow core door with a pine-panel door to match the floors.

The door isn't the pre-hung type so I had to buy door jamb stock and build the casing myself.

I've hung a lot of doors in my time but this one was a bit of a chore because standard door jamb sets are too wide for our walls. They're milled to fit 4x4 framed walls with drywall on both surfaces, but our cabin doesn't have drywall, only a much thinner wood paneling, on the interior walls.

So I had to rip about 3/4 of an inch off the jamb stock to make it fit properly, not really difficult, just a little extra work.

The New Floor & Door Together
Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

This is how the entrance to the room looks now with the door installed and a preliminary sanding done on the floor.

The Semi-Completed Floor
Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

This photo shows the floor before the preliminary sanding so you can still see the pencil lines I used to lay out the nailing pattern. I have since sanded off the pencil lines and any obvious stains or rough spots in the wood which still needs to have a finish applied and baseboard installed.

Nearly Completed Door
Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

The pine panel door as it looks from inside the sewing room.

The trim molding has been applied, the finish nails recessed with a nail set, and the holes filled with wood dough. A little more sanding and it's ready for a few coats of satin clear finish.

Painting The House...

...I spent much of today on this ladder Click on photo to enlarge - © 2009 peggy otterstrom

The past several days we've been prepping and painting the house in between our other activities around here. We're hoping to have the whole thing done before the weather turns on us.

It was 25° F on our back porch this morning, but the tomatoes, eggplant & squash are doing fine in the greenhouse thus far, and the vegetables growing outside are relatively cold tolerant.

Tool-Shed/Workshop/Studio/Beer-Garden Nearing Completion

Front Entrance & West Facing Beer Garden Patio

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2009 jim otterstrom

All summer long we've been enjoying our meals out here on this cozy little patio decorated with the recycled artifacts of the lost (Mid-Twentieth Century) civilization I grew up in.

South Facing Wall With Big WindowClick on photo to enlarge - © 2009 jim otterstrom

I just finished siding the north and south walls of the shed, the day before yesterday, then painted the recycled window olive drab.

The siding on these walls all comes from four 10 foot long sections of weathered picket fence we salvaged from a neighbor several years ago when he replaced it with chain link. I still have three more 10 foot sections for some future project.

This beautiful wood was either going to be kindling for a fireplace or would've ended up at the county landfill.

The big window came from an old lodge up here that was being remodeled some decades ago and fitted with new windows. I got several of them free of charge, just for hauling 'em away, and they've been used here over the years as tomato hot-houses and even a temporary home for baby chicks once. I have at least two more of these I'm saving for a garden potting-shed.

North Facing WallClick on photo to enlarge - © 2009 jim otterstrom

On this wall I staggered the old fence pickets randomly, using as many of the original nail holes as possible and then drilling new holes where they were needed.

The very old marble-reflector porcelain-on-steel DETOUR sign was given to me by a friend & neighbor some years ago.

Workbench Click on photo to enlarge - © 2009 jim otterstrom

As you might guess, I spend a lot of time out here now tinkering around with my various hobbies & crafts. Again, most everything here was built from scrap, salvaged wood, or recycled junk. The 'carvings' at each side of the window are from an old piece of junk furniture we dismantled (I have 3 more of them too).

The workbench and ceiling are from salvaged wood, and the wall around the window is covered with empty seed packets used in our vegetable garden, which I adhered to the wall then tinted with amber shellac. The trim by the ceiling is recycled wiggle-board.

The small stained-glass windows hanging there were the first two windows I made, for a stained-glass class I took way back in the early 1970s. The tulip design was made from a very simple beginner's pattern.

Beer Wall Click on photo to enlarge - © 2009 jim otterstrom

As some of you may be aware, we have several friends who get together now and then to enjoy the many delicious craft beers being brewed these days, so, just for fun, I decorated the back wall of the shed with nearly 100 different beer carton graphics, giving them the same amber shellacked finish as the seed packets.

These are the actual cardboard six-pack (or four-pack) cartons which I cut out and pieced together one by one. They were mostly donated to me by my beer drinking buddies, Bill and Denny (thanks guys), but I've had just about every one of these beers over the years. Ohhhh, and so many more!

They make an appropriate addition to the workshop considering that the adjoining patio is the beer garden which will be served by the tap in the front wall, starting on September 27th, when we will be christening the joint with keg of good beer and a shrimp-kabob barbecue.

Jim In His Workshop/Studio This MorningClick on photo to enlarge - © 2009 peggy otterstrom

Peggy took this shot of me in the studio about 8:45 this morning, a quite common sight around here now.

I have a just little more work to do inside, finishing up trim on the interior west wall.

Click here, here, & here, to see older posts of the beginning and evolution of the project...

A Visionary Architect, Humanitarian, Writer & Philosopher

Nader Khalili 1936-2008 Click on photo to enlarge - photo credit unknown
Borrowed from Kelly Hart at his Green Home Building Blog

"No one can prove there is a meaning to life. I must make my own life meaningful. That is all."

One of the ways Iranian born and educated architect Nader Khalili made his life meaningful was by designing and building beautiful earth-friendly super-adobe structures at his Cal-Earth Institute Of Earth Art And Architecture in nearby Hesperia, California. And by sharing his ideas and enthusiasm not only with his Cal-Earth students, but also within a larger global community of thoughtful, creative & hopeful people from all walks of life. People who are concerned about a viable future as they take deliberate steps toward sustainable living.

Peggy and I had been admiring Khalili's work, through photographs, newspaper articles, and websites for some 15 years before finally visiting Cal-Earth last April for a first-hand look at his delightful creations.

See photos at our post here.

We didn't get to meet Mr. Khalili when we were at Cal-Earth, we missed him by a day, and figured we'd get the chance on our next visit, but that's not going to happen.

Nader Khalili passed away last Wednesday, March 5th, he was 72 years old.

Much has been written about Nader Khalili by the people who knew, loved, and worked with him.

Yesterday morning, one of those people posted a comment at my previous post.

I have re-posted the comment below---and I thank 'anonymous' for the information---because Nader Khalili was the rare kind of human being this over-populated world needs more of.

"Nader Khalili, internationally renowned architect, author, and educator, passed away at the age of 72 on Wednesday, March 5th.He died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Hospital, of congestive heart failure.

Khalili was known for his innovation into the Geltaftan Earth-and-Fire System known as Ceramic Houses and the SuperAdobe Construction (sandbag and barbed wire) technique also known as Earthbag.

He developed his SuperAdobe technology in 1984, in response to a NASA call for designs for human settlements on the Moon and Mars.

He had been involved with Earth Architecture and Third World Development since 1975, and was a U.N. consultant for Earth Architecture.

In 1991 he founded the California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture (Cal-Earth), in Hesperia, CA, which teaches his SuperAdobe building technique.

His sustainable solutions to human shelter have been published by NASA, and awarded by the United Nations, the Aga Khan award for Architecture, amongst others. (see http://www.calearth.org/khalili.htm, for more.)

He authored six books, including his international best-selling auto-biography, "Racing Alone," (his newest book "Emergency Shelter," available this summer) as well as two highly-acclaimed volumes translating the poetry of Rumi, "Fountain of Fire" and "Dancing the Flame."

Born in Iran as one of nine children, his quest was to empower the world's poor and refugees to build homes using the earth under their feet.

He was a prominent American leader on the value of ethically based architecture, where the needs of the homeless are considered above all else.

Inspired by the mystical poetry of Rumi, (whose poems he studied and translated, from an early age) his architecture was distilled from the timeless principles of this universe and its timeless materials -- the elements of earth, water, air, and fire, and has been described as "Poetry crystallized into structure."

Laura Huxley, Aldous Huxley's widow, called Khalili the "practical visionary."

He was a quiet hero and a gentle humanitarian, who wrote: "No one can prove there is a meaning to life. I must make my own life meaningful. That is all."

He is survived by his wife Iliona, son Dastan, daughter Sheefteh, eight brothers and sisters and extended family.

~~~The Burial Ceremony will take place at 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday March 11th at the Sontag Greek Amphitheater, Pomona College, 300 E. Bonita Avenue, Claremont, CA, 91711. North-East Parking Lot entrance.

Burial and wake to follow after the ceremony.

10:00 - 10:30 am arrive at the Sontag Greek Amphitheater: For directions call: (909) 576-9830 (The Sontag Greek Amphitheatre is adjacent to the Seaver Theatre due east of Oldenborg Residence Hall.

Located in a wonderful wooded area known as the Wash, it is secluded from traffic yet a five minute walk from the center of campus. There are many theaters in the college but only one open air amphitheater.)

Ceremony until around 12:00 noon.

Then to Oak Park Cemetery for the burial. The main entrance is at the end of Oak Park Drive, cross street with Sycamore Avenue. (909) 399-5487

After the burial, the wake/refreshments at the Seaver House, Pomona College close to the amphitheater and the organic garden."

Wake Up Call - Earthquake At 4:14 A.M.

~A Mild 4.0 - This Time~

Click on map to enlarge

All maps in this post are courtesy of the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

I added some of the text to personalize the information.

Peggy and I were jolted awake by a shaking rattling house at 4:14 this morning.

It was a relatively mild quake but it served, once again, to remind us of where we live and what we can expect from the geology of our locale.

As life-long residents of Southern California, and most particularly, because we've always lived on, or at the edges of, California's Transverse Range and the infamous San Andreas Fault , we're both well experienced with earthquakes.

The above map shows significant earthquakes in Southern California over the 25 year period between 1970 and 1995. I have added the numbers 1 through 4 to the map to show where I've lived my life, in close proximity to the most frequent and strongest quakes. Peggy has lived her life in the same places, except that she was born in the San Fernando Valley, where we grew up within a few miles of each other.

Todays little temblor (shown on the USGS shake map below) was a polite wake up call for us to make sure we're as prepared as possible for the impending disaster somewhere ahead of us.

In the last map of this post I've highlighted an oval which shows a 100+ mile section of the San Andreas Fault that is way overdue for a major quake, and, where we live in relationship to the fault.

It's not a matter of if, but when.

You can read a related National Geographic News article, by clicking here, which explains the known history of this segment of our infamous fault, and what we might expect in the very near future.

This isn't lunatic fringe doomsday prophesy, it's the factual reality of the geology of places like this, which straddle the edges of tectonic plates.

Today's Mild Temblor

The closer you are to the red areas on the above map, the more frequently you can expect earthquakes to occur.

Click on the above map to see the highlighted overdue section of the San Andreas Fault, which could very well bring us the next Big One, if the, also overdue Hayward Fault, in Northern California, doesn't beat us to it (again, you can see a related National Geographic News article by clicking here).

Fires! Floods! Earthquakes!

Why would anyone, in their right mind, want to live in the crowded, congested, expensive, smoggy, crime-ridden sprawl of Southern California when they also know, for certain, that some catastrophic disaster always lies just ahead?

Well, I can't speak for the millions of people who came here from somewhere else, for the climate, the scenery, a job, or to make it big in Hollyweird, whatever. In fact, it wouldn't break my heart if they all went home.

Because...

For me, it's simply about Place!

And, regardless of those who would question whether I ever had a right mind to be in, I'm going to explain why place is important to me anyway.

I was born here 62 years ago, at the west end of this gorgeous range of transverse mountains. And, if overdevelopment, sprawl, pollution, squalor, and outrageous prices hadn't driven me off, I'd still be living with the fires, floods, and earthquakes of Santa Monica, Reseda, or Topanga Canyon.

But somewhere along my journey I realized that we can't keep trashing the places we call home, and then just move on, because, as we should understand by now, we're about to run ourselves completely off the planet.

So, instead of invading someone elses part of the world (maybe even yours), I'm hanging on here, at the easternmost end of my home on the Range, where I can still afford to live, where I'm familiar, and where I'm surrounded by the relatively unspoiled beauty of Southern California's San Bernardino Mountains.

A few minutes walk from our dwelling, in any direction, takes me home to the nature of my place.

Fires, floods, and earthquakes define Southern California every bit as much as our beaches, mountains, and deserts.

They're the interacting forces of nature, which together, created the once gorgeous wide-open freedom of this place we call home.

Plate tectonics built these mountains and coastlines, while floods carved the canyons and filled the valleys with rich fertile soil, and wildfires groomed the dense forests and chaparral, allowing magnificently diverse gardens of botanical inventions to evolve into existence, along with a corresponding abundance of animal species.

The Transverse Range of Southern California is my home, I love and respect this place deeply. What is good for the nature of these mountains is also good for me.

So, naturally, I would also have a great respect for wildfires, floods, and earthquakes, the most fundamental building blocks of my place.

It's not my goal in life to control the forces of nature, it's my goal to try and learn to live in harmony with them.

Our small cabin is a sturdy wood frame structure which came through the 7.3 magnitude Landers Earthquake (July, 21, 1992 - 4:57 A.M.), and the 6.4 Big Bear Quake a few hours later, relatively unscathed.

Most everything inside the house was damaged or broken from the severe shaking, yet aside from a hairline crack in the foundation, and some slightly tweaked kitchen cabinets, the structure is still sound.

That doesn't mean the place will make it through the next shaker, especially if it's an 8+ magnitude 'mother of all quakes' along the San Andreas Fault some twenty miles from here.

And, a wood frame house doesn't seem the ideal structure to inhabit in a fire prone alpine forest either, does it?

We're also in a bit of a flood plain and have twice experienced our home becoming and island in two-foot deep floodwaters.

Fortunately the builder was aware of that problem and built our place nearly 3 feet above ground but some of the neighbors aren't so lucky.

Still, the unpredictable and extreme weather predicted as part of global warming & climate change could bring us heavier rains than we've ever known before.

If this house is eventually destoyed by fire, flood, or quake, and I live through it, maybe I can construct a dwelling more compatible with the forces of nature (or go back and reclaim my cave in the Santa Monica Mountains).

Architect Nader Khalili, of the Cal-Earth Institue in nearby Hesperia, has had the plans for this environmentally friendly earth home (click here) approved by the County Of San Bernardino.

The house was structurally tested and proved to be very earthquake and fire resistant, and, if thoughtfully situated would withstand floods too.

A wood frame home in a forest makes about as much sense as mobile home parks in the hurricane ravaged gulf coast states, or in tornado alley, or as skyscrapers, freeways and bridges do in earthquake country.

Nature can accomodate us quite sufficiently if only we would live in accordance with her counsel, or even with plain old common sense.

Any species long term survival is all about how they adapt to the opportunities, and the limitations, of the places they inhabit. Humans have a relatively brief history, as species go, yet we have already forgotten how to live, in, and of, our places. We now live upon, and separate from them.

I believe our relationship with our place should be an open reciprocal exchange, like a good marriage. Instead, we conquer the nature of our places, subduing them, like an abusive spouse dominates a potential partner. And when our places become stifled and debased by our control, we covet the wild, free, beauty we see elsewhere, and move along to consume new horizons which soon resemble what we left behind.

In our relentless quest for power, control, and omnipotence, we have essentially divorced ourselves from nature and the ability to love our places for what they are. We mold and form those places to be subservient, something nature's not capable of being.

But the lessons of our time tell us with blunt urgent clarity that we cannot continue living out of context with the nature of our place, whether it be Los Angeles, New Orleans, Greensburg Kansas, San Francisco, Big Bear Lake, or Planet Earth.

Today, on so many levels, we humans are confronting the dire consequences of trying to subjugate nature.

The immediate reality of a grossly overpopulated world, addicted to an economic system that demands growth in the face of rapidly dwindling resources, and the now perpetual wars being waged to gain control of those resources, is sobering and scary.

"Go Forth And Multiply" worked OK, I suppose, until we overshot the carrying capacity of our whole blessed biosphere!

We are now face to face with the man-made calamities of global warming, ozone depletion, climate change, rising sea levels, depleted fisheries, mass extinctions, peak oil and a subsequent economic collapse, as well as nature's relatively benign fires, floods, earthquakes, volcanism, hurricanes & tsunamis. And none of this is lunatic fringe doomsday prophecy either, it's here now, whether we like it or not.

We've been like the Mr. Magoo of cultures as our myopic clumsy civilization bumbled its way into a self-made disaster which threatens the entire globe.

Whereas, throughout human history, extreme events in the natural geology, or weather, of any given place typically affected only those areas. Places where more attuned beings, living with an accumulated, respectful, historical knowledge of their places, might avoid the worst aspects of predictable natural events (like the Sea Gypsies of Surin Island did during the 2004 Indonesian tsunami).

So, the very hard realities of humankind in this Twenty-First Century A.D., and our dismal failure in adapting to our ecosystem, should be our true Wake Up Call. Nature will regenerate much of what we've destroyed (sometimes by fire, flood, and earthquake), and create countless new life forms too. Mother Nature is generous and will even include some of us in the future if we will only cooperate.

A big part of my earthquake survival kit (or should I say, my generic, one-fits-all, disaster kit?) is my awareness of the inevitability of it all. I am mentally prepared for it and will not be disoriented or confused as to how such events could happen. And that applies equally to the ecological and economic cataclysms now unfolding all around us.

In the very near future the unwieldy materialistic lives we now know will have ceased to exist. For much of my life I've seen this coming and I fully understand why we're on the verge of societal collapse. So, if I actually live to see the worst of it, at least I won't be stumbling around in a dumbfounded state wondering how it happened, or why.

I realize the dizzying momentum of all this is overwhelming to many people, but our collective lack of will to change course still pisses me off!

It's not something we want to envision, but young people, alive right now, are going to witness the human population of Earth decline, substantially, to something resembling sustainable numbers.

That is a prediction based on a lifetime of open-minded witness to the verifiable down-to-earth facts of the realities we live with, not on some end-times religious dogma.

I'm not predicting the end of the world, just the decline of the human species.

And, whether you think this prediction qualifies me as a fringe lunatic doomsday prophet or not, history will corroborate the accuracy of this disturbing observation, if anyone's left to record it.

And, when my time comes, whether I succumb to old age, disease, or die as the result of one of these disasters---either natural or man-made---I hope to be right here where I belong, at home, in Southern California, the place I know and love.

In the meantime you will find me, for a good part of each day, outside, walking, and worshiping what's left of the lost paradise that once graced the west coast of Turtle Island.

postscript-

This post is now complete. My personal experiences with Southern California disasters, which I was going to insert here, will now be a future post.

There Really Is No Place Like Home...

...Believe Me!

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2007 jim otterstrom

This picture was taken Saturday, November 17th, about 1:30 in the afternoon.

It was my first day home after being gone for two weeks, and oh, how I had missed Peggy, Dallas, and our cozy little cabin.

Don't get me wrong now, the train trip to & from Oakland, on Amtrak's Coast Starlight, was a blast! And, I got to visit dear relatives I haven't seen in a good while, meet a brand new member of the family, and spend my 62nd birthday with my good friend Brian, but there's still no place like home!

Pictures of the trip are coming to a blog near you, SOON!

But I wanted to post this picture today, of the little world that means so much to me, and that I'm always so glad to come home to.

~HOME, SWEET HOME~