It is very hot. Yesterday I worked for 6 hours in 101 degree heat building the urbanite stem wall for the cob studio. I didn't actually realize it was THAT hot, but it was. I was totally spent. I hope to have the stem wall done by the end of this week, and cobbing will start soon thereafter. This is also my last full week at TriMet. It's hard to undertake a major project like this cobbing while still working a regular job, so I am looking forward to being able to go at it full on.
Seems like last year's was just yesterday. So far I've been on the Kickoff Parade, the World Naked Bike Ride (along with about 400 others Saturday night) and Shawn Granton's Dead Freeways ride yesterday, on which we learned lots of fascinating history of Portand freeways that both were and were not built. Being from Seattle I was always fascinated by the several "ramps to nowhere" in that city, most prominently the ones that were meant to link the 520 freeway with the would-be R.H. Thompson Expressway, which would have devasted the Seattle shore of Lake Washington and its neighborhoods. Portland had its own simliar battle in opposing the Mt. Hood Freeway, which would have run from I-5 to I-205, destroying the corridor of blocks between Clinton and Division Streets.
Freeway Mania is apparently not dead, as the deservedly dormant idea of a "West-Side Bypass" freeway from Highway 30 over the forested SW Hills to Washington County has been revived by its long time proponent, Tom Cox. Cox is a supposed Libertarian who is running a serious campaign for the Metro Council based on his support of this ridiculous boondoggle. He is a venerable champion of the West-Side Bypass, which most people thought was long dead. This freeway is not intrinsically needed, but would be basically just a huge gift to would-be sprawl developers in Washington County. And if built, it would destroy a vital forested wildlife corridor to Forest Park.
Couple days ago I went up to OHSU Hospital to visit Ernie Wisner in the Ortho Trauma unit, turns out he was in another surgery on his leg, so I will go again tomorrow along with Matt Phillips (my friend who also took the Cob Workshop in Coquille.) I talked with Ernie briefly on the phone today and his attitude seems extremely positive. I said something to the effect of "what a bummer" and he said upbeatly "its just something that happened to my leg."
As I launch into this rather huge project of building a small urban cob cottage, I am a bit daunted, but I know it is what I want to be undertaking right now. There is a rightness to it, on so many levels, regardless of how long a time I end up living in the structure. I think "natural building" is primary to building the world and culture we want. Not just applying techniques of "green building" to the typical pattern of large-house suburbia, but rather a realization of the true rightness and enjoyability of hand-building small dwellings. To become once again the builders of our own dwellings: this is primary. Every culture in history (and pre-history) before ours did this. And hand in glove with this, of a single fabric with it, is what has come to be known as permaculture: the harmonious growing and harvesting of what we eat and the material elements of our lives: this too is basic to being human. Cultures cannot ignore what is fundamental to being human without going crazy. Simply as a matter of economic necessity in an age of scarcer and more expensive resources, I envision a process of hand-built small-dwelling infill in areas that are currently single-detached homes, both in older "urban" (but really 1920's suburban) neighborhoods and all later suburbia. I believe that Jane Jacobs is right in describing the elements of successful cities, and that these elements are in fact different from that of small town or village patterns. On the other hand I do believe in the rightness and true livability of the village as the basic unit of human settlement. So I think it MUST be possible to, in effect, gradually build our cities (at least those of the western North America suburban pattern, such as Portland) into a vitally interconnected web of villages. Such that the city functions successfully AS a city, with all the diversity and trade and human cross-traffic that implies; and at the same time the villages themselves are lively, well populated and successful local centers of dwelling, trade, manufacture, food production, and all else one might expect to find in a vital human settlement. Jacobs might disagree with this conflation of city and villages into one organic unit. But I think a unity of city and village patterns is possible. I would agree that there will likely always remain a core of the truly urban. I'm talking more of using a hands-on, natural building/permaculturalist approach to the piece by piece remaking of the current vastness of unlively residential grey-zone. Even "nice" older neighborhoods can barely support a lively local commerce and street-life. They need more people. And the best approach to this, and the one which I'm quite sure will unfold naturally in a period of permanent fossil-fuel scarcity, will be the hand-building of small dwellings on space that is currently little-used back yard lawn. The space given to such structures and that given to food production will depend on the local and individual needs, and on site suitability and exposure. Most current yards have room for both, and a fire-pit and gathering space to boot.
I'm not talking about a utopian eco-vision of the 22nd century here. I'm making a simple prediction of what will more and more come to pass. The only question is how fast this change will happen. Greater crisis will provoke swifter change. The main thing I hope for is that people will come to things of their own free will, by being won over by the simple logic and enjoyability of living materially simple, community rich, hands-on lives.