Building Dreams: How One Texan Contributes to the Green Collar Economy

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So far, three single mothers—one with four children, one with two, and a widow with one child—have built their own houses from recycled materials under the mentorship of a seasoned builder. A couple with five kids built their own house the same way. These people had nothing to do with the building trades before. And, yet, each mustered some grit, banged a thumb or two, and did it. And their pride resonates back over the millennia to the dawning of humanity—something very few of us can even fathom. Anyone can build a house—not the St. Louis Arch or the Empire State Building—but personal shelter. 

What’s your wildest dream—the one crazy thing you hope to accomplish?

My wildest dream is to see the melding of the unbelievable technology at our fingertips with “homespun” and on-site strategies—a new toolbox, as it were—to leave the smallest footprint possible with no loss of quality of life. There are primitive pleasures in “chopping our own wood,” and “hauling our own water”—pleasures we haven’t been privy to for a century. And there are thrilling pleasures in the technology that is currently galloping through our lives. My wildest dream is [big type]that we are smart about our arrogance and humble about the opportunities the planet has provided[end big type].  We can re-sensitize synapses that have long ago atrophied.  There’s still time. And I want to be a part of that.   

Dan’s favorite things

Lecturing to groups wanting to know more about how to build with recycled materials—a strategy that is dead center John Dewey, Art As Experience.  We are still in the age of Dewey, and he can teach us many things, as can Friedrich Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy.  Rarely are Dewey and Nietzsche more understandable and relevant than when you use chicken eggs, warped lumber, and broken mirrors to build a house.

Wine corks. I use them for floors. Surprisingly enough, if you put the word out, corks start arriving on the jobsite; they arrive in the mail (from all over the world); and people call, saying, "Shall I drink some more wine?"  Corks are a great way to get people involved in my agenda.  The subtext, of course, is Recycling is Fun.

Prime rib—medium rare—with cabernet sauvignon, while watching a hurricane pass through without damage. A good cabernet is intrinsically designed to make a hurricane simply fizzle. 

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