What happened to this country?

[redpowerd]

im happy with this "lawrs" stance on r -v- wade, and, im not sad to see someone with a knowledgeable working background in law head that mess up. someone needs to set the bench straight.

if not roberts, who do you suggest?

[Gunny]

Wiam:

Don't quite know where you're located but I've been traveling up to Plainfield the last two years working on my MFA at Goddard.  Taking a break from the writing right now to finish up getting those millions of things I'd neglected taken care of now.  But the domes were/are for real and we lived in and loved them.  My dome years were by far the most "enchanting" of my life.

All the domes I built back in the early-mid-'70s ranged from (2) 26' diameter, (1) 32', and (2) 40-footers.  Both 40s were built on top of full basements and were NO FUN at all!  I'd go with a triad of connected 18-footers if done for a home again.

In this climate--much like yours, I imagine, but with more humidity--we sheathed our domes with 3-in-1 glue tab asphalt shingles, insulated them with 3" fiberglass batts, ran 1" white foam over that, taped the seams (we used silver duct tape) and triangulated our paneling with cull rw/rl pallet boards that'd been scrapped.  I have old and faded pics around here somewhere and the dome(s) were beautiful.  The first one--the project we did while running the fed anti-poverty program in Newaygo County--made the front page of the paper several times and cost us $1,842.00 plus change to complete and move into.  Might even be able to do that again this time, too, since we'll be fabricating most of our materials from our own woodlot. 

A full chapter of one of the books I drafted for the Goddard program describes the journey in detail but I'm not ready to sit and do my final revision so that read will have to wait.  Our domes were all engineered by a fellow named Bill Woods who owned Dyna Dome in Phoenix, AZ.  I think he split for Alaska about 30 years ago.  The ancient "Domebooks One & Two" are a great place to start but the majority of the people featured in those were too stoned to get to the part of sustainable housing and got rained out, blown out, and/or frozen out in their first few months.  A clear head and long-term goals work wonders in all things...

I'd be delighted to provide a detail every now and then and even share the full experience as best I can recall it as we go along.  I'm sure that encroaching government controls would deny you many of the privileges we enjoyed in those days in that region.  But, as always, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Oh, BTW: I took along my senior student (he's now 78 years young) as my navigator last year up to Plainfield since he'd been around the world with the WWII Navy but had never seen your Green Mts.  He was awe-struck and got a crinked neck as I tooled along those two-laned tarmacs from Amsterdam, NY, through Woodstock, Rutland, Barre, etc. into Plainfield.  I even took him to the famous nude swimming hole on the Winooskie (sp?) River.  We have photos.

Love that area but mid-MI is my home.  I truly felt the magic of those mountains!

Best your way.

[wiam]

Gunny,    Thanks for the info.  Barnet is about 25 mile east of Plainfield and a little south.

Will

[treecyclers]

When Katrina hit, my partner and I contacted many Fortune 500 firms to sponsor us, providing a little seed money and supplies to get us into the damaged areas, and get started working removing trees as fast and efficiently as we could.
We specified that we would hire 3-5 local people on to help, and lumber produced would be divided between Habitat for Humanity and us, 40% to them, 60% to us.
Any firm that sponsored us would receive advertising in the form of their logos and icons emblazoned on our trailer, and my truck. We'd also get all the news coverage we could garner, getting their name on the tellyvision, so that we could get hot and get into the zone.
Only 3 companies responded. American Standard Oil, Walmart, and Warn Winch.
American Std offered to offset the costs of diesel and gas for us, Wallyworld offered use of parkinglots for concentration yards, and Warn offered their monster winch 15000XP or something like that.
I almost pulled the trigger, and saddled up the truck and mill, saws and all.
Having only about 8K in cash on hand, I wasn't totally confident that I could pull it off, and make it cash flow before I went broke.
I Thank Walmart, American Standard, and Warn for their willingness to help us help lots of people.
What happened to the other 498 Fortune 500?
Dunno....
Dave