1978

[Typist’s Note: the following is paragraph and list are from a piece of notepaper stuck in the journal.]

The only good thing about jobs is that they make you do something so you find out you can have an effect on the world. One of you is very afraid to put herself out there. You find you can do it, and well, but otherwise fear (or being busy with other things) can keep you from being able to try.

 

Where is our journal?

Other things:

  1. busy work
  2. fear
  3. keeping watch
  4. processing stuff
  5. sitting around being a genius

 

 

A HOUSE OF ONE’S OWN

 

Contents (and Malcontents)

 

The House Itself

Buying a house, or, if you’re going to keep your privilege, at least use it to good advantage. Downward mobility reconsidered.

 

The Living Room

the sanctuary, some friend’s house, the altar, the tape recorders (1)wedding present (2) Roland dream the phone unhooker, the paintings, let there be light.

 

Marcella’s Room

Marcella’s absence, Marcella’s presence.

 

The Storage room or fun with Material

wall hangings, drapes, doors, covering piles of things, screens;

 

The Kitchen

food; an you keep tapes in a silverware drawer? Why I chose Corningware. Sacramental Recipes and Zen meals. The advantages of Goodwill.

 

The Bedroom

the door, the deck, how a deck is made. A deck is made.

The bedroom –

the changing view from the bed.

Live symbolically – try it, you’ll like it.

 

The bathroom

the shower, the mirrors, the toilet seat, the shower revisited

 

Outdoors

Cutting the grass. Ethyl

 

Deborah Carr            A home away from house.

 

Just because this is the book about a house of one’s own doesn’t mean that all the pages have to look like this –>

 

County code: staircase:

straight max rise: 8” per step

min tread length: 9”                          }  comes to 10 feet?

head room 6’6”

 

new law: not law till 76 code goes into effect:

spiral staircase                     sect 3305, paragraph f

goes up to an area not to exceed 400 sq. Ft.

(But 32 X 14 (22-8)=448

+the bathroom

max rise 9 1/2 “

min run 7 1/2” @ 12” out on radius

head room 6’ 6”

Tread: clear walking area extends 26” from outer edge on center column to                       handrail.

 

Water:

Possible agreement: 3/4” service line

2’ cover _ service connect at top of hill –

$375 connect fee (onto mains installed prior to ‘73)

added cost – say, when Briggs subdivides –

your share of main by front foot plus the then connect fee – to new main                                                                                                                            (–post ‘73)

(in area of $700 now)

 

What do you want to do in your new house?

 

Latihan                      listen to the rain

write                            watch the fire

sleep

exercise

 

 

Denis Amin

consultant

@ $35/hr

Design: different/what’s feasible

 

“Everything you do is related to real estate – if an appraiser won’t give you credit on it, you’re a real estate boob.”

 

What sells in order 1) good kitchen          2) master bedroom and bath

3) entryway – successful traffic pattern    4) fireplace

 

average ownership/occupancy     6 years           Southern Oregon

average tenantship 1.8 years

self-designed– 2 years?

 

Economics: 3.4 population can’t afford to build own house now

 

Increasingly important:

1) what it costs to heat it. Within 10-15 years – energy bill for typical             home will exceed mortgage payment.

Design more into small house:

1) don’t allow anything to do just one job

 

Foam insulating: Catalytic process OK, water base flammable

_____________________________________________________

 

Hot water heater on/off switch located handily

Greenhouse effect

 

Something non-standard – subs raise prices construction features.

Pretty elevations – raise price

 

satisfying appraiser/lender             building inspector in Ashland, a Czar

Architects/designer – 6% w/specifications / 10% further help

$10,000 override, architects own experience

 

Building costs:

nationally increase 80%

here, 40%

 

start from inside out designing

 

Price now average/ 20-22 sq. Ft/ 30 sq ft.

 

Appraisers: don’t count insulation

__________________________________________________

Flat-plate high tech – costs more energy to manufacture than will produce

Swimming pool technology

flat plate collector [Typist’s Note: there is a drawing here of a solar flat-plate water heater]

 

gets tax credit:

Save 10% of energy bill; up to $7,000

 

Justifying cost – D.A. Says “cost” is always passed on – it’s a capital investment.

But

can’t it it’s Henry Forded out of competition.

 

40 X 20 X 2 = 1600 sq. Ft.

                            30

 

$48,000

 

Passive: natural convection           no pumps, etc.

 

Solar house will only work with well-insulated house.

6” walls –                    Wintertime heat

_______________________________________________________

 

Solid wood around windows and doors reduces insulation – less room for insulation.

What happens at the top of room is most important – because heat rises. 6” walls help. In a well-insulated house, most heat loss by 2 X 4’s. Wood not such a good insulator. Building paper is a moisture barrier/not insulator.

[Doorway big enough to cart in wood?

 

                                                Glass

filters out too much U.V.

Windows that open are better.

A buried house:                    walls go all way up

sunlight reflects off roof

 

Interlinear: Sauna Insight Friday: “The trouble with most people is that they don’t think the universe revolves around them.”

 

A Universe of One’s Own

 

Jan 19, Thursday, moon just more than half way to full. Universe suddenly so full –

2 days ago – only – I invented my house (Marcella made me a badge for that: [Typist’s note: there is a drawing of a badge with the a star at the top and “INVENT

R “

and also invented a totally new way of teaching ethics and got a letter from Norman Malcolm saying he’d like to read my thesis next June.

 

Yesterday errands etc.

Today – taught again, realized I should be taping this, that it might make a better ethics book than any currently available. & I’m prepared to be very clear/articulate about how I see what we’re doing.

 

May get rug in room in Churchill

Got free tapes to tape the discussions                            mike stands?

Support from John – “That’s probably the right way to teach ethics; I think you’ve got it.”

Classicism? Read from “Country Lesbians” (Billie) I didn’t tell them the name of the book. Some noticed.

 

Came home – having fasted since breakfast –

with a banana for lunch –

weak – ate rice with almonds, peanuts, etc. cooked in steamed onions, green pepper and mushrooms with cottage cheese –

felt the urge to go to the show –

though I was tired after such a big day.

Show was an Italian animation film of perhaps Sethian dimensions. [Reference: The jane Roberts “Seth” books] “A gorgeous send-up of Fantasia” Charles Complin [?] LA TIMES

Later I realized their choice of that review was deliberate and enlightening

– a critic missed the point almost altogether.

 

INSERT FROM T

-1

 

Well, I was wondering if I’d ever create anything fresh from here (441 Beach/Ashland – here) or whether I just needed to be content with nourishing along my already-born children. That answer was yes – I had to publish “Highway 5” and write (if not yet “send”) a cover letter to Sinister Wisdom and type out the box to see how it types – it does – surprisingly, send it off. Say if they want a tape to hear before a final decision, I’ll get them something, tho perhaps not a definitive version.

___________________________________________________

 

Hmm – thought I wrote this way only on mushrooms. By the way, never carry journals to school or around casually where you might leave them. And by the way, Wednesday of “errands” “Marcella” “Grandma” was also “Sue Warne” warning and you figured out a line to make you much safer –

You used to smoke. Quit: other ways. Stoned consciousness began to permeate regular.

But – how much did I learn from it, feel indebted to it –

Also, not free both to talk about it and to do it.

 

Anyway – saw a maneuver to make myself much safer – and if I construct this alternative in detail, I might begin to even understand its total reasonableness, who knows? It certainly is a liability.  What does Ram Das do?

 

Anyway, came home from the show, looked at my watch a few minutes, knew I wanted to invent something. Put on “the Planets” – invented “5 -0 Clock on Polaris” or whatever its name is – the whole clock and series of clocks. Called Don, when he got it, he concurred. May be Wow I mean Now it is 3:29 AM

 

Insert from Time To

Possible other Clocks:

 

Name one “Five Oclock on the Sun”

in distinction to

FIVE O’CLOCK IN ELVISH RUNES on

 

Sell clocks at philosophers’ meetings.

 

Time’s Child! Oh, I get it!

How perfect that I should invent a clock.

Again. And yet another still.

And recently I have begun to think how if I am time’s child, then time is my mother – as, indeed, is the case – and so I’ve been stopping to thank my mother for the food she feeds me – to see it coursing down her veins and into mine –

Oh, I get it, the movie tonight –the old man, the love of beautiful women forever beyond his reach, walks the while, unknowing the body of the goddess

and now I think one of my deepest fantasies was the return to the womb and how perhaps I am all the while in time’s womb. Yes, I think. But a womb means protection, and here there is none.  It’s been nice so far, but the universe will refuse to protect me as my mother did, to, after our nine months of ________ was up. “Yes – and what happened then?  Was it not “birth?”

__________________________________________________

What do astronomy and home decorating have to do with each other.  Not much, usually, if you’re a man, but if or whenever you’re the lady astronomer Miss Fitch, you build a house this way:

 

 

Journals – you can have circles in your own head – various selves

____________________________________________________

Anyway, should write story of the watch and the missing shade of blue.

_____________________________________________________

 

Omission in New Women’s Survival Catalogue – in legal section – no mention of where to turn to patent or copyright something.  What images of women – all that’s there is needed, but so is this

. Be prepared for things to get better, in case they might.

_____________________________________________________

Make clock so you can hang it in various ways.

 

Perhaps the missing shade of blue is blue-black. (?)

As for lots of little precise lines around the globe? Clocks don’t always have to tell you the exact time.     c.f. Peter Max [decorated clocks in the ‘70s]

 

 

[Typist’s Note: There is a drawing of a circle with lateral marks all around it, spaced as per minutes.] Cut crystal, or hairline marks

 

But who does need to know exact time? – Space scientists. You could make some money off NASA for a change – this would sell to a lot of them – maybe even change them if they need it.  As a curiosity it might even attract “heads of state.” Which state? Well, quite a few, interestingly.

 

Glory tripping. Ramifications, fines esses, new wrinkles in time

make ‘em available pretty big. Sell to science departments, etc.

 

Well, yes, that’s my name for this invention’s producer right now –

 Olive Press Ventures

The concept of philosophers being clever enough to support themselves if they want so that corrupting the Athenian youth is not the only choice for financing time for philosophical investigations. (How hard it was to use that word, though the one I want. Give it back. L. W.!)[Ludwig Wittgenstein]

 

5-o clock in a galactic arm

 

Illustrations”

4-0: Dissertation on “Dreaming”

5-0: Clock on “the Sun”

 

Assignment: Make diagram, instructions,

Catalog

for SideREAL Clocks

 

Brochure to send to some philosophers, with illustrations

“You are here” light.

 

Provide paper grid, map with places in north Hemisphere –

Fit it over

 

[Try for international patent]

Make unlighted cheapo for peons and no-electricity people. Battery powered?

Key – wound? – hole invisible in black sky – black hole, have to recognize where it is by constellations. Problem with number disc – do battery power.

 

What if some museum’s done it?

 

Good presents for Jimmy Carter to give the visiting rulers –

if there’s one fancy/expensive enough.

 

Price: Expensive enough to qualify the clock as a candidate for                                 gifts from Carter to visiting heads of state.

 

Make a big one and some people will give it a wall – (or a ceiling)

Occupancy permit: local bldg inspector

Get BI’s opinion, if anything at all different.

[Several flues more efficient than one.

[But need cleaning more often.

 

[Typist’s Note: a drawing of a stove: woodburner on bottom, another drum over it, connected with two flues, a third flue rises above upper drum.]

If hot water storage tank is up high, heat loss less.

 

Correcting building inspector embarrasses him. Sometimes it’s just better to do what he says.

 

Possibility of heating hot water by coils around exit stove and chimney pipes.

 

Student in class

Shelly Groshon – masonry

 

Solar heat pump: Finds, stores, relocates heat

Collect, move, store.

Greenhouse: great generator of heat

greenhouse heats up even on overcast days –

 

R-factor: resistance to heat loss

 

fan: air circulating in well-insulated house.

Up to 15 uses of BTU instead of one or two.

Need smoke detector – put on inside in main vent

automatic opener to vent to outside

 

Collector- D.A.  Says can be done for 70¢/sq ‘ collector area

 

Roof- shingles not required.

Greenhouse fiberglass – Tedlar-coated.

Sod?

 

[Typist’s Note: There follow several pages of notes about various items concerning the house the author is planning: water heating, insulation, skylights, heat storage. Consultation with the author instructs me not to type in these notes.]

 

Feb 6, 1978

Oh, it’s lost, it’s lost, my precious is lost.

“La Plume de ma Tante” –

My life from “Who am I writing to? Me”, “just saw Islene” – Spring in Eugene – buds lacelike along the bicycle path

To what little I wrote after coming here –

including the letter to Thyme.

Lost in a blue back pack

on a day of inspiration two weeks ago

day of having just designed my house

day of introducing (and thinking up)

apple-circling into ethics class

Lost in a blue back pack with two

apples.

[Is someone saving it to blackmail me?

What is in it?]

Where is my child?

‘I love you,

Plume de Ma Tante

[name of lost journal]

I ask for your return.

I ask to accept what is.

 

[Typist’s Note: More pages of house-building notes, not included here.]

 

{ Follows is a letter written to Sinister Wisdom]

 

Dec 28, 1978

[?

]

still at: 441 Beach St.

Ashland, Oregon 97520

Dear Sinister Wisdom,

You wrote to me in late September accepting a story I wrote, “The Box”, for publication “probably in issue eight.”

  1. A) This made my year.
  2. B) Various last-minute thoughts and communications:

 

  1. I want to change the bio to:

Pearl Time’sChild alter ego lives in the patriarchy yet, teaching philosophy for a living. She wrote “The Box” during a year spent in the Oregon women’s culture; currently she writes lists and lecture notes. She wants to grow up to be an author.

 

[Next page:]

MS Rejects: That Ain’t All She Wrote

 

“imaginative”             “tender”

“healing”                                “magical”

 

 

 

[From a piece of paper stuck in journal:]

Dead friends,

If you want to know how I feel about you

well, I hope it’s not hard for you to figure out that I love you.

This is not some secret I hide but something I try to show you and give you in whatever ways of loving are coming through me.

I am glad of your company in the world, and I give you what I have to give you what I can/ what you can accept, use.

 

{ From another piece of paper stuck in the journal:]

Dec 4, 1978

Uncenteredness

Images of fear

A slight sound outside me brings me wide awake

Maybe I’ve got too much energy for a good night’s sleep anyway –

Resentments at the whole day spent at my parents with Gma, Mike’s birthday – too much family isness

–> ungrateful, look at the time there spend more

 

Jan 2, 1979

I am almost afraid to begin writing in the same journal as where there are all those houseplans …. In fact, maybe it would be better to take off where I left off in Eugene dreaming of

 

A Home of One’s Own

 

or, rather, as she put it then

 

“A House of One’s Own”

 

 

 

Dear Registrar,

 

I know this may look weird, all A’s. But it truly is my considered opinion that everyone in the class did what I would in previous classes have considered A work. Maybe we just found a system where we all get A’s – Is there actually a law that says everyone can’t succeed?

____________________________________________________

Logic: Course Description                          intuition/deduction (or induction)

We’ll spend some time talking about process/product, rational/irrational, left brain/right brain, linear/nonlinear, conscious/subconscious matters. – to determine the place and importance of logic.

Then we’ll dig into a traditional logic book – fallacies, proofs, etc. Or else we’ll write our own.

Grade:

Part 1 discussion, writing

Part 2 exams, exercises

Or will this attract too many non-likers of logic?

Enrollment strictly limited to 25.

Could I get students to write you a recommendation – in case you might need one – or do you want to hook into that sort of reality at all.

Still, this textbook is potentially seen as subversive. Keep it safe and anonymous. Protect the innocent and the guilty from first stones.

 

I being judgmental

II Duties to yourself

A  Suicide?   B. To your body?

  1. “A sound body, a sound mind” –
  2. sports
  3. dancing, athletics

 

Get good copy of Holly singing “We’re Coming for You” to play for class – maybe in booths if not class. Get Holly/Redwood address.

 

Logic: for: to think better with, right?

 

So: what helps you think better?

  1. Getting into nature
  2. Being by myself
  3. Getting stoned
  4. doing yoga
  5. praying, latihan
  6. feedback, response
  7. taking time
  8. being creative
  9. being challenged
  10. being free
  11. believing my world revolves around me
  12. thinking I can

 

This’ll be a good class for you if you have some space in your life for thinking about this right now – If it seems too spacey to relate to – let somebody else have a turn now.

 

Call Dee to dialogue about that article

 

Journal

What I didn’t say and wish I had

What I didn’t say because I was afraid of people’s reaction.

What I didn’t say because it would have made me too

  1. a) sad b) angry         c) embarrassed        d) other ___________

to say

 

Find out from La Neva: do I have access to duplicator, multiplicator?

 

Dianne: would she like to transcribe?

What use can I make of her stuff

she said today – re. Class

 

Get a journal for yourself. For the class and a new black one.

 

Oh, is La Plume de Ma Tante really lost?  Been missing just a week now, last seen wearing a blue backpack and accompanied by two apples, the original apple of knowledge of good and evil.

 

Ethics:            Textbook: Your life and experiences (including but not limited to what                      you know from books and media)

Classroom procedure: Lecture, circle;

 

Topics: Race, class, age, death, women’s issues, childhood, religion, “insanity”, values, sexuality

Required work: keeping a journal, listening to discussions.

____________________________________________________

There is a gulf of a year at this point – see house blue prints, house book, back of this book – there’s a bit from the summer in another journal