This is a superb and historically important album, a compilation of music by indigenous musicians in Canada 1968-1985. It’s telling that I had only heard one of these tracks before hearing the album; it points to a disturbing lack of airplay of native music during those years.

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Chandelier at Northern Rockies Lodge on Muncho Lake, Northern BC. Wooden rounds each hole-sawn to house a pot light. It was really quite beautiful.

The lodge is on the Alaska Highway that stretches from Dawson Creek BC to Alaska.

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These photos are from an an article by Terence Conran in UK’s Telegraph online, based on his new Eco House Book(Octopus, 2009). This house is completely off the grid, and was built by one man alone over an 18-month period.

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These shapes are so minimal and so perfect, they might almost be the line drawing you’d find if you looked up “barn” in an old encyclopedia. At the same time their strange blankness almost qualifies them as sculpture.

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The bottom photo shows a functioning scarecrows made of indigo-dyed hemp. The original book caption reads “The bold design of this piece of shibori-dyed hemp by Seizo Ishikawa, a farmer, seems at home working as a scarecrow by a newly harvested rice field.” The birds in Japan must have been accustomed to seeing farmers in real Japanese indigo yukatas, waving their arms.

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