OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2015
Living large is easier in a tiny house
S
earch some apparently innocent words
in Google and you’re in for an offensive
onslaught — slavering packs of predators
lurk in the weeds of the Internet Serengeti,
delighting in ambushing unsuspecting
eyeballs.
So you’ll be happy to learn the loaded
phrase “cabin porn” does not inevitably
lead to photos of Viagra-popping
sodbusters and buxom
schoolmarms, but to
hundreds of cabins,
shacks, alpine shelters,
huts and other enviable
little
habitations.
Set amidst fantasy-
igniting
natural
scenery, cabinporn.
com’s photos are
Matt
pornographic
only
Winters
in the sense that they
make us long for things in short supply
in 21st century American life: Simplicity,
immediate connection to lands and waters,
silent surroundings and free time to enjoy
them. Raptly gazing at the images, we
imagine lives without mortgages, dining
on fresh trout caught in a sinfully pretty
Scottish lake.
Submitted
This small Swiss house is one of many fantasy-inducing offerings on cabinporn.com
There are hundreds of
other stylish vernacular
beach homes in our area.
built-in storage — land yachts for smelly
bachelors.
Factory-made tiny houses will need
years of seasoning and customization
to attain anything like the character of a
multigenerational cabin at the beach or
in the mountains. However, they have
instantaneous appeal in being better
scaled to suit young people just starting
out and older people shedding the mass
of possessions that encrust our lives.
Resources like thetinylife.com accurately
report that a typically sized, modest family
home can easily end up costing more than
$1 million by the time principle, interest,
repairs, insurance and other expenses are
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owe our souls to the company store as
did the character in Tennessee Ernie
Ford’s song Sixteen Tons, but our houses
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for the mortgage-industrial complex than
domestic sanctuaries for our families.
Snobbery and classism are intimately
bound up in our housing choices, with the
tar-paper shacks and mining-company
towns of Ford’s day now replaced by trailer
parks, which the mass entertainment media
uses as symbols of low-class laziness and
tastelessness. Elites who would claw your
eyes out for making a racial slur somehow
feel it’s acceptable to call somebody “trailer
trash” because they reside in a small,
manufactured house. In contrast, I think of
my Grandaunt Bertha who lived in a tiny
trailer in Salt Lake City. The interior was
almost literally carpeted and wallpapered
in her psychedelically colored crocheted
afghans. She somehow managed to live in
humor and dignity on about $385 a month
in Social Security. Poor? Hell yes. But what
a gal. I’d share a talcum-powder scented
trailer with her for a hundred years before
I’d spend an afternoon in one of Donald
Trump’s pretentious hotel suites.
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there’s an inverse relationship between
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owned, the only one I truly regret selling is
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in 1953. Used, I bought mine for $1,500
and sold it for $1,800 three years later.
If you know of a good one, let me know:
I’m thinking of being a trailer person again
someday.
as we live. Some days, though, I fantasize
about being in a place about a quarter
the size of where we are now, where my
wife and I will each soon have an entire
1,000-square-foot story to ourselves once
Submitted
unctional and practical, small dwellings Elizabeth leaves for college.
The Wreckage in Ocean Park, Wash., is a
notable local example of coastal vernac-
work on a human scale. Often they’re
constructed of stones and wood from
KHDSSHDORIVQXJDQGHI¿FLHQWKRPHV ular architecture.
the construction site or nearby, or from
with lots of individual character has exterior view on the company’s website
salvaged items. “Vernacular materials, most recently found expression in the (tinyurl.com/ktl7r77) reminds me quite a
WHFKQLTXHV DQG IRUPV´ LV WKH RI¿FLDO 7LQ\+RXVH0RYHPHQWJHQHUDWLQJPXFK lot of the sheepherder wagons that Basque
architectural term for it. We shouldn’t interest at both ends of the demographic and Hispanic men used to reside in for
over-glamorize all these utilitarian DJHVSHFWUXPLQWKH3DFL¿F1RUWKZHVW7KLV PRQWKVDWDWLPHLQWKH5RFN\0RXQWDLQ
homes: For every elegant and organically week at the Seattle Home Show, a display high country when I was a boy. Later
beautiful resident-built dwelling, there are PRGHO E\ 6DOHPEDVHG 7LQ\ 0RXQWDLQ supplanted by cheap campers, these wood-
perhaps a thousand shanties where no one Houses caught the eye of attendees and a and-iron framed contraptions had roomy,
should have to live. But when time, space, KING5 news crew (tinyurl.com/o6e4s64). shellacked canvas roofs, cook stoves
materials and skills come together in just It is indeed a cute little house, though an ventilated by tin stovepipes, and plenty of
the right combinations, little handmade
houses are one of the highest expressions
of human creativity.
On our coastline and Northern California
— most famously in Carmel before the
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pines and ocean-delivered lumber were
long used to build homes that feel like
they’ve naturally grown out of hillsides —
fully formed and inviting. In the past I’ve
mentioned The Wreckage in Ocean Park,
Wash., as the starring local example of
shipwreck-salvage architecture. There are
hundreds of other stylish vernacular beach
homes in our area, though winter storms
and neglect have devoured a good many.
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my own house has been a good example of
deferred maintenance — something you
can’t get away with for long in this climate
where blackberry vines and English ivy
soon cover anything that stands in one
place for too long. Thanks to the kind
and incredibly diligent crew at Dr. Roof,
— M.S.W.
Photo courtesy of Matt Winters
everything is now literally safe and sound Matt Winters sometimes wishes he still lived in his 1953 New Moon trailer, an elegant-
Matt Winters is editor of the Chinook
Observer and Coast River Business Journal.
again, and we’ll probably be here as long ly efficient and inexpensive housing option.
F
T
Open forum
Too simple
T
he farmer vs. environmentalist
editorial “Convince us; don’t
sue us” (The Daily Astorian, Feb. 9)
was amazingly naive. Not only was
it full of silly hyperbole, but it was
misleading as well.
Going through the legal process
is like bombing a nation? This is one
of the most irresponsible pieces of
writing I have read in a long time.
The legal process is there for a rea-
son, and any group that does not take
advantage of it is foolish.
It’s not like only the environ-
mentalists have the ability to use
lawyers. The farming lobby is rich
and has batteries of lawyers just like
the environmental lobby. If the edi-
tor thinks otherwise, he hasn’t been
around the capital much. His edito-
rial leaves the impression that some-
how people on polar opposites of im-
portant issues should try to convince
each other of their positions.
Come on. The editor can’t be so
amateurish as to really believe this.
Does he read what he writes before
he publishes it? Let the legal process
go. It has served us well, and will
continue to do so into the future. You
only have to fear it if you don’t have
a case.
Wow. The editorial “Time to Re-
store the Natural Balance” (The Dai-
ly Astorian, Feb. 10) could not be
more simplistic. The editorial board
again shows its near inability to un-
derstand a topic before writing about
it. What gives?
Have they read the history of
humankind “assisting nature in
maintaining the right balance”? It
isn’t very good. Think of this: The
Army Corps of Engineers is going
to destroy 11,000 birds. The Corps
of Engineers. The people who build
dams and dredge the Columbia. Why
should we trust them with our wild-
life? This whole issue needs more
serious study by wildlife profession-
als. A solution has to be based on
the interests of all the wildlife con-
cerned, and not just the economics.
The editor’s reference to cormo-
rants as mini-pterodactyls is cute
but obtuse. It misses the point. The
cormorants should not be penalized
for being successful hunters. If we
are supposed to be the wise species
(that’s what the sapiens in Homo sa-
piens is, after all), we should be able
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destroying 11,000 creatures.
The editor makes it sound as easy
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him, it is.
DON ANDERSON
Astoria
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of research data to the point that
even Dan Roby — the lead Oregon
State University investigator who
conducted this 18-year research,
monitoring and evaluation program
(paid for by the Army Corps) —
was compelled to submit a com-
ment letter.
Roby’s letter states that use of le-
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ses with unknown uncertainty, large
outside the available
Greed and exploitation extrapolations
data, and methods that apparently
ow discouraging that the hu- have never received independent
man race, with a population in peer review. These analyses do not
excess of 7 billion, has such little XVH WKH EHVW DYDLODEOH VFLHQWL¿F LQ-
tolerance for other species that we formation and are substantially less
resort to lethal means to safeguard rigorous than analyses identifying
our greed and exploitation of earth’s other salmon recovery objectives
resources. For 18 years, the Army in the National Oceanic and Atmo-
Corps of Engineers’ effective cam- spheric Administration’s (NOAA)
SDLJQ DJDLQVW ¿VKHDWLQJ ELUGV KDV 2014 Supplemental Biological Opin-
brainwashed the public and shifted ion for the Federal Columbia River
the at-fault perception of salmon de- Power System.”
cline from human-caused factors.
Roby’s letter also states “the se-
The Army Corps’ fast track solu- lection of the Preferred Alternative
tion to the natural predator “prob- in the draft environmental impact
lem” at East Sand Island is based on statement (DEIS) is neither rigor-
H
T HE
D AILY A STORIAN
Founded in 1873
ously science-based, nor defensible
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less of its merits as a management
policy for resolving this natural re-
source management issue.” (Full
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statement (FEIS) at http://tinyurl.
com/robyltr)
To no avail, the Wildlife Center
of the North Coast has submitted
multiple requests over numerous
years to the Army Corps for the re-
lease of annual cormorant baseline
diet data that is now used to justify
lethal actions. That public domain
data has not been subjected to full
peer review.
Suppressing this underlying in-
formation in an effort to prohibit
public scrutiny creates an atmo-
sphere of public distrust and hints of
conspiracy. We encourage The Daily
Astorian to do its homework before
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oric and misinformation.
SHARNELLE FEE
executive director, Wildlife
Center of the North Coast
Astoria
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