Why surviving in a Gertee works for me

I'm working on a new article and video of my life in a Gertee. My Gertees are going to be included in a nice English author's book on sheds, coming out this June. That honor, and the growing searches for "are yurts warm?" are part of the big push to get my Gertee Traveler business off the ground right now. I've been sitting on these PVC units for almost a year. Other people are telling my story, and I'd be a fool to not tell my own side too.

These are some of the new pictures that will be in it. I'm doing a blow by blow account of all my daily chores, describing items I use and how I've modified my entire environment to suit my own needs. I think I really understand now why the Mongolians call it a "different universe" inside. I also got a copy of the History Channel's show on The Great Khan and of the Terror he inflicted on all of Asia, the Middle East and into Europe. There are always teepees depicted in ancient Mongolian movies. Why did I ever assume only the American Plains Indians used teepees? :)

And, you know who I think the experts are on building ancient style dwellings? The set makers in movie land! I see gertees in so many historical movies it's amazing. In the History Channel version there's a big yurt on a platform being hauled by 20 oxen! And lots of teepees....

Right now I'd like to say there are 3 things I FOR SURE would hate to get caught without a stash of if the market/dollar/world collapsed. 1. plastic garbage bags, 2. baby wipes, and 3. candles.

Home Sweet Home

Using the glitter paints I got from Rebecca for Christmas!

Covering everything with fabrics!

New dining area has polyester, wool, lace and vinyl walls

View out my front door window

Put a 10' Gertee Back Yard Traveler with an all PVC roof ring up on ebay today:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110645486158&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT

RE: 2020/TACM book orders: The revisions are really almost finished. I'm so sorry I felt I had to revise the entire first chapter. I held up the whole process. Now Nordica is reorganizing it all. I should see final copy by the end of this week and promise to make only minor edits, no matter how much I want to add or change. It's very difficult to publish a current events book and revise it 5 years later... too many new developments since 2006. Again, and yes this is practically our mantra now... but I sincerely thank you all for your patience.

Spring is in the air!

First Gertee Traveler for sale on ebay now!

Took me all day, but I finally got the auction posted for the first PVC yurt available on the market.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110644723111&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT

My idea of a Livable Community

vinyl upholstery works great on the floor too!

Gerteeville on a cold and sunny fall morning
low 20, high 65!

I don't think everyone shares the same ideas about what a livable community means.

My idea of a livable community is Gerteeville, Alaska where I now live. I can guarantee you, not very many people would agree with me. Too many summer tourists tell the local kids I'm "weird" for living in a tent year round.

So how does the livable world system based on perfectly managed urban density accommodate people like me? I know most Americans don't live my way, but other people do all over the world. And if we think those people aren't happy because they don't have a fully plumbed government inspected apartment and a cell phone, we are mistaken.

I really love what I've accomplished here, and I'm rather proud of it too. I've hand built every dwelling we have using both new and used materials. We have no indoor plumbing and use wood stoves for heat and cooking. We burn as much beetle killed spruce as we can get access to (difficult when there's no public wood cutting areas). We haul freshwater from the community well and use about 50 gallons per week for a household of three people. I get electric off the grid.

There is no local government here. There is no county or borough government. Our only police are State Troopers whose offices are 40 miles away. All privately owned land is tax free. There are no land use regulations and no inspectors. We have an all volunteer fire department. We live side by side with moose, fox, lynx, ravens, eagles, owls, dogs, wolves and bears.

We have severe winters and nasty summers. It was 20 above this morning at 8am. I had to get up and saw a load of firewood with a broken chainsaw that barely gave me 4 pieces of slab. Every day presents new challenges, and the only time I get to be lazy is when everything is done. But these are prices I'm willing to pay. I like my independence and honor the personal responsibility I have for my own health and safekeeping. I love opening my strange little home to strangers who meander through our wilderness. I am nourished by the closeness I feel in spirit to the people who live in our neighborhood (except for the WISE bunch, who also happen to be the communitarians out here). We are not isolated nor are we alone, and it's funny that old acquaintances who live antiseptically alone in big beautiful Seattle homes think we are. Will people ever stop projecting their own limited views of life on others?

I was introduced to Building Livable Communities in Seattle, WA in 1999.

Seattle planners told us they were rebuilding our neighborhood to be more livable. They had many new ideas for how they could possibly implement what they called our "local" vision for the future. Several of the ideas included using federal police to gather our private data.

To verify their claims that our rights to privacy and property had been "balanced" against the community, I went door to door on my block (N.E. 65th Street entrance to Roosevelt H.S.) and not one of my neighbors had any idea about the plan to build a livable community.

Over the next year I asked hundreds of Seattle residents what they thought about their plan, and the answer was always, "What Plan?"

Everyone I knew also insisted I made up the quote from the Seattle Police's Mission Statement: "To increase livability by reducing fear." Seattle neighborhood planners refused to define Livability for me. Seattle Democrat Nancy Rising thought it all sounded completely ridiculous. My repeating the planners terminology in my letters to the planners got me branded as a wacko.

My original opposition to Building Livable Communities was based on the fact that the planners lied when they claimed it was what the whole community said they wanted. When I learned Livable Communities was a communitarian idea and that a old Israeli terrorist named Amitai Etzioni was the guru for the big new idea for livability, my opposition expanded to be based against the communitarian theory behind building livable communities.

A recent commenter raised the point that our opposition appears to play into the dialectic. We've pondered that ourselves many times at this blog. The ACL Manifesto is obviously, by default, the dialectical opposite of Etzioni's communitarianism. If communitarianism is not the perfect unnamed final synthesis in the Hegelian Dialectic, it does need opposition to morph into the next planned evolutionary phase. Our antithesis proves it is not the perfect final solution to unjust social systems, because Marxist teachers told us the final dialectical synthesis/solution would be so perfect it gives rise to no opposition. We exist, therefore it cannot be perfect.

So now the question I'm sure most rational readers ask is, does the ACL exist merely because we recognized their imperfect lies or because we are their agents and we're frauds? Are we truly independent opposition or are we controlled opposition? I have no way of proving that to you. All you can wonder is why the hell we're the ONLY dedicated opposition research in the world. If there's supposed to be a "movement" arising from the people that opposes communitarianism, then based on the way that's NOT happening I'd guess we're going to be stuck in the communitarian phase of the Hegelian dialectic for a looooooong time.

Other writers have some evidence communitarianism is just another Hegelian phase of the forced evolutionary process, and I linked down on the right to Bobby Garner's Dialectical Tetrad article for those interested in the theory of Transcendence. Much of the idea is based on Alice Baily's writings, which I've yet to find time to study, and I'm guessing I'm going to learn more about it from Manley Hall when I find time to read his works. Will I stop being the opposition if I become convinced I am only helping move society toward the final Stutopian solution? Good question.

Miniature Homies Go Hunting in Alaska - on ebay now!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110447868933

Weather, News & Entertainment from Kenny Lake

Alaskans love their music!

3rd Annual
Music Between the Ranges
July 17, 18, 19, 2009,
11 mile Edgerton Hwy
Kenny Lake, Alaska
www.musicbetweentheranges.com
www.betweentheranges.com

One of the things that hooked me on Alaska when I came up in the 70s was all the great music. Most nightclubs still had live bands (in the age of disco), there were lots of piano bars and honkey tonks (I was a can can cutie at the Palace Saloon in '79), and in the summer there were glorious outdoor music festivals. The old Solstice Festival in Fairbanks out on Chena Hot Springs Road and the old Talkeetna Bluegrass Festival were my favorites. Both events drew musicians from all over the state and the quality was consistantly top notch. Even after the mainstages shut down you could wander from fire to fire and listen to the small groups of pickers who played all night long. Of course most events eventually went big time, became over organized and their Alaskan hometown charm faded, but here and (somewhere up near Healy) the tradition of low key, music lover's festivals is making a revival. I didn't go the last 2 years, but this year I get 2 free tickets to Music Between the Ranges because I'm going to help with their advertising and websites!

What happened to our summer????

Big winds all day yesterday and it was the day I set aside to finish the roof and walls on little gertee. Made for a challenging makeover but I finished most of the exterior coverings by midnight when it got a little too dark to see. Insulated and covered the entire western wall (no window) and made the eastern wall completely screened and covered it with cut pieces of canvas I can roll up (if it ever gets warm here again). I'll get partial morning sun through the trees and have shade in the afternoon with a nice breeze flowing through ... I am dreaming of 80 above!

Outside temperature at 3:00 am

Took the inside thermometer outside,
had to see if it was really 20 degrees.

Gerteeville update

Gertee prototype at 3 am this morning.
Trimmed the new roofcover and installed the woodstove

Fred makes sure insulation is properly installed

Mini flower arrangements

Fresh wildflower mini bouquet

Dried and hairsprayed wildflower mini bouquet

Miniature willow basketweaving

Anika stopped by to see if we want to ride her horses.
She's always looking for riders if that sounds fun to you!
She stayed to show me how to weave a mini willow basket.

Starting is the hardest part because you slice the stems
and have to weave branches through the holes.