From remote cabins crafted of driftwood to stunningly beautiful and unconventional family homes, Bolinas-based writer and photographer Lloyd Kahn collects innovative individual builders up and down the Pacific Coast.

Below are two examples of the buildings featured in the book: The elbaorate temple built by SunRay Kelly at Harbin Hotsprings, and a whimsical gazebo made of driftwood on a Vancouver Island beach.

The farther north he ventured, the more Kahn found projects that had been built in substantial part from found materials—driftwood on the beaches, and fallen timber inland. He says that immersing himself in that world has had an enduring effect in the way he sees potential resources around him now.

Lloyd Kahn's first building experience was with geodesic domes, which led to his first book as well. But  he eventually became disenchanged  the domes, and turned his attention to the more generalized subject of  Shelter, published in 1973. The success of that volume launched his Bolinas-based publishing business,  which concentrates on books about do-it-yourself homebuilding, and health. He'll present a slide show drawn from Builders of the Pacific Coast at Copperfield's Books  in Sebastopol on Thursday night, Oct. 29, at 7  pm.

For his next publishing project, Kahn says he will be narrowing his lens to focus on creative “micro” housing efforts, such as this work in progress.

The intricately ornamented staircase and loft below is yet another of the utterly unique homes Kahn has featured in Builders of the Pacific Coast.

U.S. law gives constitutional rights to corporations. Now a countervailing legal theory is emerging that defines and defends the legal rights of the environment.

Mari Margill is Associate Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, based in their West Coast office in Portland, Oregon. But as she explains here, the organization's origins lie in Pennsylvania.


Obtaining legal standing for nature, says Margill, requires enacting new laws to spell that out, something that is beginning to happen in scattered local jurisdictions, but faces an uncertain future on appeal.

For more information about CELFD click here.

A north bay activist’s independent fact-finding tour of Afghanistan recently found growing violence closing in on the capital city of Kabul, and a scarcity of aid for refugees or civilian redevelopment needs.

Norman Solomon says his trip to Afghanistan was informative and constructive, but its primary impact was emotional.

Part of that impact for Solomon came in meeting a young refugee girl who had lost an arm when her town was bombed and her family's home was destroyed. Guljumma, seven years old, is seen here with her father, Wakil Tawos Khan, at the Helmand Refugee Camp District 5 in Kabul . Last year, an air attack by the U.S. military struck their home in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province.  (Photo copyright Reese Erlich 2009)

The most profound finding Solomon brought back from his visit to Kabul was the disparity between our government’s professed intention to provide meaningful assistance to the Afghan people, and the absence of follow-through on those promises.

Among the small delegation organized by Solomon’s non-profit, the Institute for Public Accuracy, was a former US soldier who had served in Afghanistan, Rick Reyes. 

After enlisting in the Marine Corps, Reyes served as an infantry rifleman. He was deployed in "Operation Enduring Freedom" (Afghanistan) 2001 and then “Operation Iraqi Freedom” (Iraq) 2003. In 2008 he got involved in the Brave New Foundation's Rethink Afghanistan project and testified in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Video of that testimony is posted here. Reyes is a co-founding member of Veterans for Rethinking Afghanistan.

Global warming has moved from a looming problem to an imminent crisis, warns environmental writer Bill McKibben, and the international campaign to demand action rests on a simple three digit number.

The urgency that underscores the 350 campaign is tied to the newly realized effects of the well-documented one degree increase in the temperature of the world’s oceans. Noted environmental writer Bill McKibben says that until recently, it was believed that was not enough of a difference to trigger the cascading changes that are now being documented.

Even if humankind is successful in tempering the worse effects of global warming, McKibben says it will take generations to bring atmospheric carbon levels back down to 350 or less.

  Bill Mckibben is the author of The End of Nature and numerous other books on environmental issues, including the newly published Bill McKibben Reader. He’ll be talking about the 350 campaign  on Friday, October 2 at Sonoma County Day School in Santa Rosa.

The famous rum-making Bacardi family has deep roots in their native Cuba, where they first supported, then vehemently opposed the Castro-led revolution.

NPR Correspondent Tom Gjelten (below)  says he was surprised to find how deeply intertwined the histories of Cuba and the Bacardi family had been for over a century.

The Bacadi family were still strong backers of the revolution led by Fidel Castro (center, below) when they marched into Havana to claim power in 1959, although that changed 20 months later when their rum distillery and other business properties were seized by the new government.