When I was in seventh grade I took an art class. The woman who taught the class passed out paper and crayons and asked everyone to draw whatever came to mind. My parents had just returned from Hawaii and had regaled me with stories of an erupting volcano. Dad and looked at pictures of the event in Life magazine. And I wanted to draw a...
The heat is coming back. We are all losing the will and/or ability to communicate. I can't remember whether I am talking about achitecture, climate change, toilet paper or coffee. All of us have become cross-trained via absorbtion. Why is bleach bad and fair trade good. How natural building projects attract attention and build...
Dead tired but satisfied. We've been talking to folks for nearly 35 hours, signed up about 2000 people and Jack Johnson's crew has just arrived to help us with our quest. We in Planet Roo are basically numb, but the energy here is incredible. Gregor Barnum (Seventh Generation), Jasna Brown (Green Mountain Coffee Roasters) and I are all...
It is not often that Yestermorrow gets coverage in the Tennessean and a video no less. Watch and Enjoy!Bob Ferrishttp://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080613/VIDEO03/80613125
Mud. It rained last night. Hard. And now we know that why local soils lend themselves to natural building: They are full of clay and sticky. The rain has damped us in many, many ways. The challenge of designing communities for lots and lots of people in a small space becomes more apparent when stresses and oversubscribed systems come...
Baked awake by the sun at 6 or so. Came too early as we were at the booth until nearly 1 AM. Stumbled home to the tent to the strains of Lez Zepelin an all female Led Zep cover band. Great end of a very long day. At the morning meet up this AM there was a little less spring in everyone's step. But we all cheered when we saw the coverage of...
We have had our first case of heat stroke in the group and I have not showered for three days (tough on me and also the folks around me). But I am happy because I just realized that with the hanging of the United States Postal Service banner, Yestermorrow had (I believe) constructed its first federal building. And boy is the place attracting...
We went to sleep last night with heat lightening in the sky. Wonderful visuals, but made me think of climate change and the chemical and geophysical war that is being fought in our atmosphere. We need to do better with our buildings, how we live and how we design our communities.We woke with a city growing around us. By this evening we will...
After 24 hours in our version of the Magic Bus, we are sweating at Bonnaroo. Don't want to sweat too much because the showers here are $10.We are recovering from the drive and setting up our booth. Gregor Barnum from Seventh Generation and I are sitting on hay bales madly blogging away in site of the nearly completed Post Office which is...
Boy is it hot. The fudgecicles are being passed out in the office as I am packing up catalogs, writing an op-ed for Thursday's valley paper and anxiously getting ready to plop myself and my wife on a non-air-conditioned bus powered by veggie oil, bio-diesel and good intensions.We are heading to Bonnaroo to sell folks on the need to change...
It is wonderful to see our students do well. And Elizabeth has done very well. Congratulations on this article that appeared in The Eagle-Tribune on June 4th. And given Yestermorrow's strong current and historic ties to Yale and the fact that my father is also a graduate of the Governor's Academy (nee Governor Dummer) make it even nicer. We...
