Our Family Home

These old photos of our family home and me arrived from my sister, setting off a chain of ruminations and reactions on New Year’s Eve, a few hours shy of 2025.

Here I am on my first day of kindergarten. I vaguely remember the house on Stoepel Street in Detroit. Dad kept making the gate latch more elaborate to keep me in the yard. Mom worried when I got out, but Dad was proud I had figured out how to open it. I’ve been figuring out how to get out and about ever since.

As you can read in my autobiography (on this site) after I was born on Hiroshima Day in Pontiac, Michiga. We soon moved to Bay City, Traverse City, Detroit, Palmer Park, two places in Berea, Ohio, and back in Michigan to Keego Harbor. Lots of moves. Lots of making friends and leaving. Dad finally bought a summer cottage on Oakland Lake, near Pontiac. This was to be our family home for the seven of us, Dad, Mom, me, my younger brother, and my three younger sisters. It was our family home. It was where we came into being. It was where my love of nature began.

Oakland Lake had prehistoric fish – gar pike and dogfish – and muskrats, bass, turtles, and frogs. Pheasants and rabbits lived nearby. Canadian Geese and Arctic Swans still visited, even though the vacant banks of the lake soon filled with houses. Peg Leg, the squirrel I had rescued and repaired, hobbled about the yard.

Dad constantly remodeled the former cottage into our family home. He installed large glass windows on the lower and upper porches. Thinking the new rooms would need extra heat, he plumbed in natural gas heaters. However, there was so much south-facing glass, the new big windowed rooms picked up solar heat for the whole house.

This was years before passive solar houses were seen as a sensible way to decrease the need for heat and cooling. It just worked. Any sunny day warmed the whole house.

We also composted in the yard. Table scraps went into the ground. The worms multiplied. The soil got better.

But solar gain and compost for the soil aren’t new ideas. Roman courtyards were designed to take advantage of winter sunlight and summer shade. Deliberate use of sunlight and cycles of replenishment has been with us for a long time. They reach back to prehistory. What worked then still works and always will.

The most elaborate and sophisticated house is still subject to passive solar principles. Sunlight and shade apply whether we work with them or against them. Same for advanced solar,wind, and electric cars. They’re what I call “Good and Getting Better.” We already have cars and houses that run clean and cheap, that don’t require external fuels. I know people who run their cars and houses on the sunlight gathered on their roofs. We needn’t waste money and pollution for mobility and comfort.

Such local independent acts of living add up when more do it. There’s lots of time for humans to live well. Just as habits that extract, deplete, and waste result in costly ruin and leaves us in a worn and vulnerable place, so will little habits of personalized repenishment cleanly put us into an ever more abundant and healthy place. The success of a few such houses implies the potential success of many or most houses. The savings in our houses, cars, and wallets are ample.

This alarms those in the business of extracting coal, oil, and gas to fuel our modern society. They pooh-pooh this soft approach. They will invest in ways to divert and slow the adoption of appropriate technology to keep their old-timer profits coming. As seen in this last national election, they’re winning. But ultimately, the new ways will win.

Dear Readers,

I’ll spare you the pages of my gripes and fears about the impending Trump/Musk administration.

If interested, say so and I’ll send it to you.

I dwell on gloom yet hope for glory. My political, social, and environmental apprehensions need not sully the spark of intent roused by old photos of me off to school and my family home.

It’s good to wrap up a year remembering what went well.

We lost decent people last year: Kris Kristofferson, Quincy Jones, and Jimmy Carter to name only three. They had class and kindness. I admire their efforts and grieve their loss. (It is synchronistic and fitting that the flag will still be a half mast during the next inaugeration.)

Meanwhile, I celebrate the skill and humor of Kamala Harris, and I’m glad for such as AOC and Bernie Sanders. I’m inspired by Noam Chomsky, Mo Gawdat (former chief Business Officer of Google X, who intends to help a billion people be happy), Bill McKibbon, and Steven Colbert (who tells the truth with jokes).

I get to hang out with friend Kelsey and his crew, including the rooster, Mr. B. I get to go the the Y for workouts and showers. My favored places in town for music and conviviality are busy again. People are learning how to be healthy and happy.

I’m happy my sons helped me afford to put in new carpeting and ceilings. The old one was used when we put it in over 30 years ago. Son Tobias and I did most the work (and Nole). Now it’s fresh and chushy.

My artist eldest son, Tobias, took up oil painting. “Desert Dog” is his first.

I’m also pleased and proud that my youngest son, Ben (who rode well-deserved scholarships through college in International Relations, and later, law school as an environmental lawyer), is working remotely here in town with Kayla, his wife, now my daughter in love. He and she have birthed my only grandson, Abel.

Finally, I’m glad Stretch the cat isn’t rotting in a cold hole in the yard, he’s a living cat healed of his bizarre wounds and sitting on my lap again.

Like that dog with me in that photo above, I’ve had many pet persons during my life. Stretch was spooked by all the upheaval in the house these last few months. I remember Tyler the dog, Blue-eyed Bonnie and Emerson the cats, and Ben’s ferrets and iguanas. I remember the doves and chickens in North Carolina. I remember Red, my Irish Setter, Mr. Bones the crooked cat, and Tweetie the parakeet. I remember my first dog, but not his name.

Pets are family, too. Family is wide. Home is the place we live together. There is a wide family and many homes.

It’s almost midnight. Thanks for reading this rambling, somewhat sloppy writing. Sorry; couldn’t focus. I’ll post it for my loyal readers, but only for a few days. It went in too many directions and didn’t make a point other than talk of my families of birth and progeny. What should receive eloquent words and poetry went weak. I’ll be taking this down after a few days.