Primitivwerks opens today!

Primitivwerks lounge/reading area.

Primitivwerks is officially open! We have a lot more to do around here yet but we can open the museum, showers and camp spots today. I don't expect any business since we haven't done any advertising, but now I have a daily routine and an office to work out of. I can get back to writing for the ACL while I'm "working." No matter what happens here now I'm confident I can complete our writing obligations by the end of the summer. My angst over the manifesto and Jack's book can finally be abated. Thank you both for your extreme paitence.

Had a great talk with Darren Weeks last night. He's doing a new radio show on Republic Broadcasting and was hoping I'd be a regular guest. The timing won't work for me though, it's live from 8am to 11am eastern time, making it 4am here. He wants to do a show with both me and Nancy Levant, who has been totally out of touch since last summer. She disappeared from the scene and hasn't published anything since. Darren says she's working on a rural farm and doesn't have internet access anymore. He also mentioned her name and article links has been removed from the newswithviews homepage. Something's very odd about this and I need to talk to her myself. I promised if she'll go on I'll get up and do that show.

My next article for distribution is going to be about the Irish voters' gut level rejection of the EU Lisbon Treaty. If you're Irish and have an opinion you'd like to share with me about the new European "constitution," I'd love to hear it! I can't wait to tell my buddies Patty and Jill Flanary that their feisty Irish relatives STOPPED the 2nd EU attempt to expand the global government dead in its tracks. (The French and Dutch stopped the first attempt in 2005). Of course that won't mean anything to them since the EU and the emerging synthesis aren't familiar subjects with working class Americans, but they'll be proud anyway.

PrimitivWerks' new office. The dogsled was used in the first Iditarod and was used by Steven Segall in his Alaska movie.

Museum display case of prehistoric wooly mammoth bones,
ivory tusks, king salmon, grizzly, sheep and lynx skulls.

The Anti Communitarian Manifesto is down

PrimitivWerks Presents:

The Alaskan Peoples Heritage Museum

First 20' Gertee, Camp Redington, June 2008
under construction now

The ACL has been down for 2 days apparently. Don't know why or how long it will stay down. I'll see what I can find out from Nordica and hopefully nothing too serious happened with our hostess! We've had free hosting at twu.net since 2001 so it's always been the safest place for all our ACL research materials because I never could have made sure I had the payements. Jess is down too, so it could be a major glitch but hopefully it's just maintenence. If it is a permanent problem then we'll have to figure out where to put it.. man I hope that doesn't happen because I'd want to revise and update every page and I just don't have the time for that right now.

Bunch of searches for the Anti Communitarian Manifesto by name today, that never happens. Almost funny that now that people are looking for it, it's gone. Would have been great for hardcopy orders, except the order info is at the ACL. And so is 2020's.. bummer.. not so funny after all.Fuel reduction (this was a thicket when I started)

People are starting to pull in to see what we're doing. One guy was in construction for 30 years and just had to tell me that he'd never seen one of these. That will happen all summer. The forrest ranger stopped by too, and I took one of his official booklets and found it to be full of usefull information. What a suprise that was. I've read so much crap put out by the U.S. government that I was ready to read pure communitarian doublespeak about saving the environoment. Instead I find they like people who cut down trees and savagely destroy and uproot plants from their natural habitat. They recommend we kill all kinds of trees and shrubs and grass and destroy nesting grounds for all kinds of insects and suggest landscaping ideas for fire breaks. It's as if the communitarians had no input whatsoever in this brochure, and yet the Dept of Agriculture was the first U.S. agency to change it's mission statement to "sustainable development" in 1992. There was a weird moment when he first pulled in cause his truck looks like a Trooper's (only yellow) and we were burning all day so it could have been a different kind of visit, but he's a nice guy and I totally respect the job he does. Plus, he was only here to visit Tim (who's been a volunteer firefighter since he was 7). Then the craziest thing was a local gal wanted to do her community service helping us build the museum. So I had a communitarian slave for 2 days. I've decided slaves slow me down.

Update on the Manifesto: We're taking the next 2 days off from CR to go over the Manifesto one last time. I just had to get into the yard before the bees got here, it's scary thrashing around in our woods in the summer, there's millions of bees and they live in the ground and everywhere. Some summers they're very vicious; the reason I didn't take the tent down last summer was because it was full of them! These aren't honey bees.. these are the mean ones that attack.

More miniatures from PrimitivWerks

Making all kinds of things out of the box of wood I bought off ebay for 11 bucks. I used it to make eleven miniature Alaskan scenes and now I've made three tables and two benches, a cutting board, and the new door is lovely. It's like my dream gertee, I can only imagine what this would be like to live in. It will definitely give people a very different idea of what living in a yurt is like. I see it like how realtors use a furnished model home to sell new and unbuilt houses, and the only thing I can't do the same as they do is make cookies so it smells homey too.

So far feedback for the scenes is great, even burly men ooh and ahh when they realize how many things are in them. Everyone asks "How'd you get the Chitina bumper stickers so small?" It's amazing how few people out here know what we can do with photos these days. The fishing scene is the most popular so far, but everyone loves the miniature beers and vodka, heh. It's backbreaking work and killing my eyes but I'm finding it gratifying and thinking that in another life I would have been a carpenter for sure. My style is simple and very rustic but the wood is so nice it makes up for my lack of skill. By the third table I started sanding them, huge difference.

miniature cutting board on hutch
(I added the shelves)

miniature kitchen in gertee

miniature island with bench

miniature dining table and bench (in LR)

PrimitivWerks - A Living Alaskan Art Project

Summer season is only 3 weeks away and we just thawed out. Everything moves a lot slower in the country so we're still waiting for propane, phone lines, and book proofs. But the road is passable finally so we are almost set up to move gertee (and ACL headquarters) to Camp Redington for the summer. So the good news is I'm not living on the edge anymore and I have a summer job lined up. I just want to say thank you again to all the people who helped us make it through the winter, and I hope those of you who can will come visit us sometime!

Our museum construction is almost underway and it will be a 30 footer. We're making it into sections/scenes with titles, like Iditiarod Trail, Dead Things and Bones, Trapping and Hunting, etc. We're including a memorial section for locals who have passed on. We have some cool things left by a famous Alaskan (and around the USA) firefighter and unofficial "sheriff" named Alpine (he was born on the pool table at the Alpine Bar). Everyone out here has a great story about him helping them and they all tell a tale of a man who overcame amazing obstacles to become somewhat of a local hero. So we'll start with an Alpine memorial (and Tim's parents) and invite locals to share their pictures and stories about other Alaskan Sourdoughs and Indians who used to live around here. We do want to preserve our cultural heritage.

My winter gertee will be made into a screened cook shack where our guests can cook their fresh salmon and dinners. We may eventually turn it into a Salmon Bake. The camp will be a work-in-progess all summer long. Rick is for sure letting me put up his 18 foot tipi for a guesthouse (which I want to stay in too!). We're thinking of ways to build homemade hot tubs and a sweat lodge is another viable alternative. Nordica wants top open a spa, get a masseuse to come out and set up a table, and incorporate Catherine's T-Junction Alaskan herbal mud masks.

I finished reading Sinister Forces, A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft, BOOK ONE: The Nine by Peter Levenda. I learned a lot from it, but I have to say I don't much care for his New Yorker style and commentary, and I'm suspicious of his focus on the various denominations of the Catholic Church (Wandering Bishops?), a direction which seems to be gaining in popularity among certain groups of NWO researchers who argue against the researchers who include the Zionist connections. I've seen too much evidence of the connections between all the religions now, and I'm thinking I may be able to focus my times on the one thing Mr. Levenda never mentions: the Communitarian Church of Vermont. (Has anyone done a history of it?)

First fire of the year at Camp Redington

I've made 11 miniature Alaska scene boxes out of
exotic hardwoods for PrimitivWerks Bazaar.
I made the table and the shelf in this one.

Background picture of
Matanuska River and Chugach Mtns

Scene includes dried Alaskan weeds,
baby Golden Spruce tree, framed prints of
Joe Redington Sr, an Eskimo woman, a moose,
Alaska Travel book, Alaska Bizarre cover.

Rocket launch crew in Kenny Lake.

Back to back we faced each other...

PrimitivWerks Opening June 1

Our new puppy, Marco.

PrimitivWerks studio

Downtown Kenny Lake, Alaska.

A path not included in the plan.

Miniature Alaska homesteader pictures

Alaskan MiniWerks

Scene box: Growing Up Alaskan

1 1/2 x 1 5/8 inch framed prints
Top left: Vi Redington cleaning an animal
Top right: Joe Redington Sr. and Susan Butcher
Bottom left: Redington fish camp, Goose Bay
Bottom right: Joe Sr and dog team

The world of miniatures

Alaskan Cultural Heritage Museum Model 2008

We're building a miniature "eco-village" in the office as soon as it quits snowing and it all goes away finally. I've got spring fever bad ths year, we've been living in a tiny space for a long time. For theraphy I started making a model gertee and it blew into this huge project. We'll also have a 16 inch teepee, Tim's minature cabins, and even a cardboard travel trailer (which is an Alaskan heritage). So our little "camp" will be as authentic as we can make it, except for the smells. Along the way to setting this up I learned there are few pictures on the miniature market. So I've taken thumbnails of the Redington family photos and will sell them as framed miniatures to our summer visitors with portions of the profits going toward building the Alaskan Cultural Heritage Museum (which is what Nordica wants to call it now).

Alaska has always been filled with funny little dwellings, it is a badge of honor here to claim to have roughed it your first decade in the state. While my tent lifestyle seems brave and amazing to people outside, we know all kinds of people who lived in wall tents and 13 foot travel trailers with 3 or more people. My girlfriend Mary in Fairbanks had three babies at home in their dinky little place, Catherine had Jamie in their tent in Chitina, it's nor the norm but it is a fact of life here. Low-income and young Alaskans make do, and they feel like they're better people because of it. To Nordica and I, that is our true "cultural heritage," and that is what we intend to honor with our living Alaskan history project.

Mini Alaskan hutch with framed 1940s prints
from the Redington family collection

Visitors on our road increased 26 percent last year... that's the National Park Service count. The park also has their own cultural heritage project going on. They too are gathering the stories of the old Sourdoughs and Indians and saving their history for future generations. All we're doing differently is saying we're still here and our Alaskan spirit is still alive. The park explanations for why people are "allowed" to hunt out here is well worth the read for anyone who doesn't believe we've lost our lands to the international community. They think we're a Scenic ByWay and a buffer zone, and we're at the tip of the Wildlands Project (Y2Y?).

We've got more bike trails coming and meetings on motorized access to trails... same crap they went through in Yellowstone is now on our doorstep. But who knows for sure where it will all lead. NAIS is a growing topic in forums across the country, that program alone is waking up the people who (I think) have the most power to stop the plan... the rural landowners. They've been the most organized from the beginning and have a huge linkage.. I can't imagine that the Sawdust Rebellion and the Klammath Bucket Brigade have fallen off the face of the earth. I'd imagine they're all over the y2y issue and be shocked if they aren't. Once our people connect the land grabs to LA21 it's all downhill for the communitarians from there, right?