Page 10 RAIN January 1978 ~OREGON A.T. ON THE M,OVE~ A neat thing happened here in Oregon No one had any,axe to grind or battle last week which we are reporting on to win within the group. Even though here, not so much because.anything has there were several combinations of yet been accomplished, but becaus~ it people with histories of not getting seems to speak well about the trend of along, the feeling of the whole day was movement these days. _one of cooperation- helping each other . . . over the rough spots of articulating Fifteen or so people rangmg from what needed to be said. Eastern Oregon community development people to inventors and networkers, to someone from the State Department of Energy gathered to discuss setting up some sort of statewide a.t. organization. All day, -a free-wheeling brainstorming se~sion•ensued,in which a laundry list of needs for action was put up on the wall: lobbying and advocacy work, training sessions, conferences, information sharing, establishment of working models and preparation of educational materials. It was pretty much decided not to set up any new organizations yet but to explore together the possibilities of beefing up existing gr·oups with new people, money, moral support and ideas. What was special about the meeting was its tone. There were amazingly no polemics-everyone seemed to be on the same wave length as far.as purposes, scope and ideals for this animal we've been calling appropriate technology. C BUILDING ) The Care and Use of Japanese Woodworking Tools, Kip Mesirow and Ron Herman, 1975, $7.50 from: Woodcraft Supply Corp. 313 Montvale Avenue Woburn, MA 01801 We have our house pretty well finished ·now- with almost no use of power tools, as it has turned out. A lot of practice switching from Japanese to American tools and back, and learning the sometimes obvious. Japanese tools are designed for seasoned wood, not for sawing boards in the rain that squirt water like an orange. They're real good, though -for what they're designed for. Care and Use is a really helpful aid to doing right by them. What it won't teach you experience will. A half-size and halfprice edition would be preferable, but this is the only thing around that covers the ground. -TB It felt like we'd all been doing our homework-getting our shit together. We know compost privies,.solar collec- , tors and small-scale recycling systems are the way to go, and we've come a long way towards making those mechanical devices a reality. We are now The Graf tsman Builder, Art Boericke and Barry Shapiro, 1977, $12.95 from: Simon and Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas , New York, NY 10020 This is the successor to Art and Barry's much-copied Handmade Houses and focuses, in the same format of lush .color photos, on the hqmes and workplaces of artists and craftspeople ra,ther than the wild and wooly l'hippie homes" of Northern California in the first 'volume. My favorite is an incredible adobe and ceramic tile complex.in California that goes on from where Gaudi and early Soleri ended!, -TB realizing that it js time to move into an a~tion phase-getting legislators and •bureaucrats to pass the enabling policies, learning to work well within groups, and getting the word out much mor:e :widely. Everyone at the -meeting knew that we weren't going to _solve all our problems that day. We knew we were each too busy to even tackle much of the . laundry list we have outlined right . away. But we felt how good and strong and open we are. And we're meeting again in early Januaty. -LdeM Rooftop Wastelands, 1976, $2 (Canadian) from: Minimum Cost Housing Group ' School of Architecture • McGill University 3480 University St. Montreal, ,PQ H3A 2A7 I don't usually do this, but the introduction to this book is so nice that I'm just going to let it speak for itself: "It is not about a great new city. It is about scratching at the grime, and letting the moss grow. The thing that will transform the city is not civilization, or architecture or public transport, but nature. All the straight lines could be covered up. All the concrete could crumble. All the roofs could be a garden." -LdeM Houseboat, Ben Dennis and Betsy Case, 1977, $14.95 from: Smuggler's Cove Publishing 107 West John Street Seattle, WA 98116 One of the best of the takeoffs on Handmade Houses-the exotic, expensive, poetic and homey visions of life on the water. -TB •
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz