Spring Visitors

Besides the giant bluebonnets, we had many human visitors in the area this week for Spring Break. This includes some of my family and friends who all made the journey out here over the past couple of weeks. I have been very fortunate to be able to spend quality time with friends and family out here. Here is a link to some of their photos.

Thanks to everyone who has been writing. I have heard from a few people about the link to this blog not working. Please note that the old URL ( terlinguajournal.com ) is no longer active. Feel free to bookmark earth-language.com instead.

Stocks on Steroids

Is it really the right solution for the federal government to inject the economy, particularly the stock market and credit and loan bureaus, with 200 billion more dollars worth of federal emergency loans ? Where is this money even coming from when our nation is already in debt trillions of dollars ? Who does this injection benefit ? Who will pick up the tab and when ? What do the federal interest rate cuts actually do and what is the lasting benefit ? Are there any policies or rebates which encourage people to save, be resourceful, and avoid debt ? What are the tangibles which back up our currency ? Is it oil ? Is it housing ? What will we do if our currency can no longer purchase cheap goods and services from subordinate countries ? What if our leaders' eye on the prize in the middle east doesn't result in a return on our investment as they had hoped ? These are important questions to stop and think about. As the true reality of our economy presents itself, we may find great opportunities to be creative and make positive and necessary changes.

The Housing Market and Domain Names

When I tried to buy the domain www.earthlanguage.com , I was forwarded to a company called URL Collection ( www.urlcollection.com ) … the company who owns the domain name. They buy domain names that they think people may want and then hold it hostage until they find someone who will pay an extravagant fee for it. After I inquired about the domain name, they emailed me to let me know that I could buy it for $3500. Their email mentioned how it was a steal, being that they usually start their domains for $10,000. I have purchased domain names before, so I know how much they are supposed to cost. $10 !

The reason I am posting this story on this blog is because their practice selling virtual space is a good analogy for the current housing market and the reason why we are approaching an unecessary housing crisis.

While there is plenty of space and resources for everyone to live debt free in a home somewhere, most housing is artificially priced and controlled to where debt free home ownership is out of reach to most people. Due to strict city codes and outlandish property taxes, even a tiny plot of land in the central city is out of reach to someone in the creative class who could use that space to build their own home. This is a modern phenomenon. Housing has never been this indebting anywhere ever before.

In modern times, housing is quickly aquired by investors who are not as interested in building community as they are in making a return on their investment. This drives up housing exponentially for everyone because it creates a pyramid scheme where the investors up the chain must make thousands of dollars every time a house changes hands. And so the property, whether it is a domain name or a small plot in the city, doesn't go to the person who would make the best use of it, but rather, it goes to the person who is the most ambitious to make a profit. Perhaps who is most affected is the investor at the bottom of the pyramid who didn't cash out in time.

The spot where I am building my studio is not necessarily my first choice, but it is a domain that hasn't yet been considered by investors. There are many more of them ! When this project is done, the price tag of the five acres, building materials, and water and energy catchment will be less than $10,000... the price of a domain name from URL Collections.

While URL Collection sits on an address they will never sell for what they want to, I will have to keeping telling people, "It's Earth Language dot com, but with a dash in the middle of Earth and Language, NOT an underscore."

For more information, go to www.URLCOLLECTION.com or www.NAMESTORE.com

bicycles and gardens

I have started riding my bicycle to get my mail. The mailboxes are about 3.5 miles from me, so it is a nice 7 mile roundtrip exercise chore. The ride takes me on dirt roads right past camel’s hump. It then spits me out onto the Terlingua Ranch road, which is paved and mostly flat. Sure beats driving ! The weather right now is ideal for bicycle riding. Most of the year is condusive to bicycle riding really...may have to just adjust the time of day you choose to ride ( mornings and evening in mid-summer, mid-day in the winter ).

In other news, I planted some seeds today. Tomatoes and beets. John Wells then showed up with some green bean and squash seeds, so I planted those too. I attempted planting tomato seeds twice already, but they didn’t germinate in this soil. It dries out too fast. This time I used potting soil so we’ll see what happens. Planting seeds is a good practice in patience and planning. It makes the fruit of one's labor that much more tasty. There are many ways to plant seeds in our lives and those are the things that are most worthwhile. And the motivation behind it is that while new seeds are being planted, older ones are yielding, giving a constant flow of, in this case, FREE food. It works the same way for energy and water harvesting. The instant gratification of a mass produced, purchased item can wear out quickly without leaving any residue of appreciation for what was consumed.

The dome building is back to a snail's pace since Emile left back home to Oregon, but progress is being made. The window wells are now fully lathed, and I've started to stucco them.

I have been listening to too much news while working, so I have begun listening to a music station called Sirius Disorder, a satellite station that is actually pretty good. No commercials. I am still only using 45 watts of solar panels, but it has been plenty so far, especially since Don Mcdowell ( another local Don ) graciously donated a brand new 12 volt battery. Thanks again Don !

Don't forget about total lunar eclipse tomorrow !

watering the dome

For 28 days, I am supposed to water down the stucco on the dome each day. This helps to cure it and make it much more stout over the long run. Being that there was a heavy dew this morning, I was able to skip a day. The thick dew saturated the dome inside and out. I asked Don what would happen if I missed a day and Don replied, “In a thousand years noone will notice”. It takes about 6 or 7 gallons of water to shower the dome, so this morning’s dew saved some agua.

cracking open the shell

Today was another exciting day. We removed the top form as well as one of the side forms. They came off a lot easier than we thought. It was a huge relief, because we had been worrying about this stage. This is the first dome of this shape and size that Don has used his new tracing method on and we weren’t completely sure that the stucco wouldn’t cement the outer form to the traced structure underneath. If that had happened, we would have had to leave them stuck to each other and it would have also meant that that the reusable form would be embedded into the structure forever. Furthermore, the days and days of tracing that we did would have been redundant. But that was all needless worry. The reusable forms broke free rather easily.

What was left standing underneath the cracked shell was a new self supporting structure of it’s own.

Today, we also finished coating one of the window wells. Don warned us not to go any further until we do a brown coat. The brown coat is a second skin of stucco on the inside of the dome. This will make it more stout before removing the rest of the forms.

The dome is no longer translucent. It is now a structure that blocks the sun and wind… two of the biggest hurdles out here.

Blotting out the Sun and Blocking the Wind

Things are coming to a head. As we started to stucco today, it felt as if we were painting shade and shelter around ourselves. This morning started out with 35 mph winds. It was also another very sunny day. We decided to start the stucco on the side where the wind was blowing. As we worked, the winds gradually subsided. The sun in our eyes started to vanish as we blotted it out with the first coat of stucco.

We used a different mix for this first scratch coat. It needs to be stout because it is the binder that future layers will grab onto. The mix we used was 2.5 gallons of sand, one gallon of cement, one small can of fly ash ( the ash left over from coal burning power plants ), and 3.5 medium size cans of water. We mixed the stucco on the watery side because the wind and sun can dry it out fast. The first batch that we made wasn’t sticking. We then realized that the sand we were using had too much gravel in it. We decided to use a double layered filter to sift the gravel out of the sand.

Stuccoing is not too difficult, but stuccoing above your head can be a bit tricky, as some of it ends up falling down on you. It is also a bit tiresome, even for 82 year old Don Bryant.

It is very important to scratch the stucco soon after applying it so that the next layer has a rough edge to grab onto.

The tools needed for this part of the project are a hawk ( much like a pallet a painter uses ), a trowel ( 14’’ pool trowel for this size dome ), a few 5 gallon bucket for carrying around water, sand, and the final stucco mix, a wheel barrow, a hoe or two, something to scrath the stucco with, and a mud board for use as an interim for storing the stucco mix before putting it on the hawk.