VOA – CONNECT
EPISODE 44
AIR DATE 11 16 2018
FULL TRANSCRIPT (11 16 2018))
OPEN ((VO/NAT))
((Banner))
SuperAdobe
((SOT))
It's a 400 square foot tiny house concept. We are saying: come, learn yourself, figure out how to build it.
((Animation Transition))
((Banner))
Breathing Room
((SOT))
What we found was a significant drop in heart rate when people were walking past the vacant lots when they were greened compared to before they were greened.
((Animation Transition))
((Banner))
The Secret Life of Saddles
((SOT))
Some of the saddle makers were so secretive of their trade, that when they knew someone was coming into their shop, before anybody could come in, they would throw a cover over their project, so nothing could be seen of what they were doing.
((Open Animation))
BLOCK A
((PKG)) SuperAdobe
((Banner: Building Houses and Self))
((Reporter/Camera: Arturo Martinez))
((Map: Hesperia, California))
((NATS))
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
I love coming out of my house now and seeing this thing.
((NATS))
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
Here we are, building, and you've come to Cal-Earth to learn how to build and there is a physical aspect to that. We are suddenly here, building a house. Six inches more to the outside.
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
I was working in Los Angeles as a musician. Struggling really, and I just had arrived at a point where musically I hit a wall, financially I felt like I hit a wall, and I wanted to try and provide for myself.
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
You know, musicians drink, and they don't get much sleep, and they do all kinds of terrible things. So, I had a lifestyle that needed to be modified.
((NATS))
Oh yeah. I didn't have a particularly healthy life and slowly as I moved towards eating whole food and eating healthy food, it doesn't take much of a jump to start to ask: well, what about a healthy house? What about the health of the structure you live in?
I just suddenly stopped renting a house, sold my stuff, got on the phone to Cal-Earth and showed up.
((NATS))
((Dastan Khalili, President of Cal-Earth))
Cal-Earth is the California Institute of Earth, Arts and Architecture. We are a nonprofit foundation and in our nonprofit work, we are an educational institute and also a disaster relief charity. We teach our students, empower our students how to build structures called SuperAdobe. What that means is taking long sandbags and barbed wires and building structures that you see. Now these structures are fireproof, hurricane proof, tornado proof, earthquake resistant. They work in harmony with nature and they have a minimal carbon footprint.
((NATS))
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
We have right here, Adobe. We have earth and we can build a house out of earth. You put the earth in the bag and you put the barbed wire on top of it. It's not much to that.
((NATS))
And that's why we can reasonably say to people: hey, come and we'll show you how to build a dome house quickly.
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
This is an example of what can be done with sandbags and you pack the soil inside these tubes and then compact it and each layer comes up like so, until you've generated some sort of a structure. Most of these buildings can be built in one day with ten people and you could create these structures. We teach workshops and in a matter of a few days, we have people doing this. So, it really is a very simple method of building.
((NATS))
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
So, these are long term apprentices building a dome. Right now, they are laying the foundation layer. It's the part that touches the ground.
((NATS))
((Michelle, Cal-Earth student))
I love super adobe. I love working with the earth, so that's what I'm doing here.
((Jerry Alan, Cal-Earth student))
I would love to build my own house up in upper Michigan. I think once people see this technology up there, they're gonna want to do workshops, maybe an eco village.
((NATS))
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
I've found in architecture what I used to have in music, which is excitement and passion and fun and everything that you hope to have.
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
That's eco dome. It's a 400 square foot sort of tiny house concept. We could deliver that, no question, with paid labor for $50,000. But we're not selling anything. We're selling education. We are saying: come, learn yourself, skip the $50,000, pay $10,000 for the material input and figure out how to build it. There's a solution there. It's to do with people power and cooperating and forming relationships with people.
((NATS))
((Michelle, Cal-Earth student))
Hopefully, we will be finishing the dome that's behind me next week. It's been moving a little slow and we've definitely had to correct ourselves quite a few times but it's all part of learning.
((NATS))
((Jerry Alan, Cal-Earth student))
We are getting close though.
((NATS))
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal Earth Institute))
We are going to do this. You are getting really close to the top. This is the coda to our work.
((Michelle, Cal-Earth student))
I'm excited to be closing it.
((NATS))
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
That's it.
((NATS))
((Jerry Alan, Cal-Earth student))
I thought it was going to be a lot easier but there's a lot of things that can go wrong.
((Michelle, Cal-Earth student))
This is a small scale so we were really excited to actually build like an actual official dome.
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
If they can do this, as they've demonstrated in the last three weeks, then they become part of a team of people who, today, can build houses out of sand bags. So for us, that's just a win. It means we've got five more people in this army that we're educating and moving forward. So, I mean, I feel fantastic.
((NATS))
((Michelle, Cal-Earth student))
Hi. I'm Michelle. Nice to meet you.
((Bob Lien, Builder of SuperAdobe house))
Where are you from, Michelle?
((Michelle, Cal-Earth student))
Lake Arrowhead.
((Bob Lien, Builder of SuperAdobe house))
Oh wow. Cool.
((Michelle, Cal-Earth student))
Not too far. Thanks for having us here.
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
This is not new. Right now, as we speak, as you're filming this, I know for a fact because I've looked into this, half of the world lives in adobe houses.
((NATS))
((Bob Lien, Builder of SuperAdobe house))
We started this myself and two of my older kids. We started in 2006 and we moved in in May of 2010. So, I call it almost four years, really.
((NATS))
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
This super adobe system is able to advance a very significantly ecological model of housing. That's the right thing for this time in human history.
((NATS))
TEASE ((VO/NAT))
Coming up
((Banner))
The Power of Green
((SOT))
Gun violence has gone down, and you know, people's heart rates is being reduced. People are exercising more in certain sections of, you know, Philadelphia. You just be like, wow.
BREAK ONE
BUMP IN ((ANIM))
BLOCK B
((Banner: Places to Thrive))
((PKG)) THISTLE FARMS
((Banner: A Safe Place))
((Reporter: Saleh Damiger))
((Camera: Yahya Barzinji))
((Adapted by: Zdenko Novacki))
((Map: Nashville, Tennessee))
((NATS))
((Becca Stevens, Founder, Thistle Farms))
The story of Thistle Farms, though, is a story of hope and recovery of women coming together and trying to make the world a more loving place.
((NATS))
Thistle Farms has been around for twenty one years. It started off really small. It was just a community of women, residential community of women who were survivors of trafficking and prostitution and addiction. It was a small group that said, ‘Let’s try to live together for two years. Let’s not have any authority in the house, no rent, and see what healing looks like when women come together.’
((Jennifer Clinger, Survivor, Thistle Farms))
I ran away from home. I was trafficked, introduced to child pornographers. More trauma on top of that other trauma. All my childhood training taught me that the only thing I had to offer the world is my body.
((Doris Walker, Former Resident, Thistle Farms))
When I first got here, they handed me a key and that was the first time in a couple of decades that anybody had trusted me enough to give me a key.
((Becca Stevens, Founder, Thistle Farms))
If you go into prison and you say the word “home”, women will weep, because they need it so bad.
((Doris Walker, Former Resident, Thistle Farms))
And then they asked a very profound question. They didn’t say, “What have you been out there doing, Doris?” They asked the question, “What happened to you?”
((Ty, Employee, Thistle Farms))
When the new women come, it’s like the best time for me. You know, I get to pass on what I’ve learned, get to train them how to make the products, get to train them how to run the machines, and I get to show them a whole lot of love.
((Becca Stevens, Founder, Thistle Farms))
There’s this deep trauma that the women have experienced that contribute to the dysfunction, the disease, the choices, the fears, and the incarcerations, and so, to me, what we have to do as a community is to say, “We are going to welcome women home.” We know they didn’t get to the streets by themselves. It takes a diseased community, a community that still allows, you know, young girls to be assaulted.
I thought it would be a great idea to name the program after that last flower that was left. And the women that I was serving were a lot like those thistles and a lot like me. You know, prickly out leaves that have a survival by poking people if they get too close, but they also have this beautiful deep purple center that reminds us how soft and beautiful people are too, even with those hard, outer edges.
The story of human trafficking, the story of sexual violence towards women, it’s a horrible story and it is global and it is huge.
((NATS))
((PKG)) GREEN SPACES
((Banner: Green Spaces))
((Reporter/Camera: Steve Baragona))
((Adapted by: Zdenko Novacki))
((Map: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania))
((Banner: LandCare is a model of urban revitalization that addresses the widespread challenge of abandoned land plaguing Philadelphia))
((NATS))
((Keith Green, Pennsylvania Horticultural Society))
The program started as a pilot program to clean vacant lots. It sets itself up for dumping like this. It's really not safe for the kids that live around here because, you know, it’s an open lot. Anybody can hide in here. You can stash drugs in here. It’s huge for everybody involved. It's huge for the community because, you know, you're cleaning up vacant lot. And, you know, in these neighborhoods, you're giving small businesses opportunities that they may have not had, and you're also hiring, you know, local residents to perform the work.
((Sheila Parker, Philadelphia Resident))
People, you know, they go out their door and they just see rubbish and trash and nothing cut. It does a lot to a person. I know this has really been helpful for me, really has.
((STILLS: Before / After))
((Keith Green, Pennsylvania Horticultural Society))
We, like, educate the community people in, like, basic horticulture, teach them how to water, the difference between an annual on a perennial.
((STILLS: Before / After))
((Dr. Gina South, Emergency Room Physician))
What we found was a significant drop in heart rate when people were walking past the vacant lots when they were greened compared to before they were greened.
((STILLS: Before / After))
I did a qualitative study in which I interviewed people who are living in neighborhoods that had a lot of vacant lots and abandoned buildings and asked them what they felt the impact was on their health. They had a lot to say. People felt like it had a negative impact on the overall well-being of the community and, in particular, that it fractured ties between neighbors. So, it affected that social milieu of the community, which we know has an impact on health, and then people felt like it impacted their mental health. They felt stigmatized and neglected and then experience a lot of negative emotions like depression and anxiety and fear, because of living on a block with a lot of vacant lots or abandoned buildings. People reported feeling 40% less depressed and an overall improvement in their mental health. We took care of a lot of shooting victims and did a great job of treating their physical injuries but did little to nothing to think about what was causing them to come in as shooting victims to us in the first place.
((Keith Green, Pennsylvania Horticultural Society))
Gun violence has gone down, and you know, people's heart rates is being reduced. People are exercising more in certain sections of, you know, Philadelphia. You just be like, wow.
((Dr. Gina South, Emergency Room Physician))
Our results were most prominent actually in the poorest neighborhoods in the city so indicating that there may be certain neighborhoods where interventions like this can have the biggest impact.
((NATS))
TEASE ((VO/NAT))
Coming up
((Banner))
Off the Grid
((SOT))
There’s no sewage here. There’s no, I mean, there’s sewage, but it’s all septic tanks and things. There’s no actually city operated sewer system or anything like that. There’s a city, there’s a water, a water company, but other than that, there’s not enough of anything else to let people come up here and live in large quantities. So, this town will never grow. So, it’s pretty much, for the rest of my life, it’ll be pretty much like this.
BREAK TWO
BUMP IN ((ANIM))
BLOCK C
((Banner: The Wild West West))
((PKG)) SADDLE MAKER
((Banner: Back in the Saddle))
((Reporter/Camera: Philip Alexiou))
((Adapted by: Zdenko Novacki))
((Map: Jackson Hole, Wyoming))
((Keith Valley, Keith Valley Saddlery))
After my father died in 1971, my uncle, who spent all his childhood in Wolf Point, Montana, introduced me to the work of Charlie Russell. He had this book and he gave it to me, but this is the old, one of the earlier books of Charlie Russell and you can see it’s pretty wore out. I really wore it out as a kid.
((Keith Valley, Keith Valley Saddlery))
And just the western art kept my interest in the cowboy life.
Back in like 1994, when I made my first saddle, and I was working horses and had ordered a saddle from a gentleman. It was just in my mind. It was just taking him too long. So, I just made the deal with him that if he gives me the supplies, we’d call it good and then I would build it myself. So, that’s how I got started.
((NATS))
It’s estimated that there’s around 84 pieces of leather to create a complete saddle. The majority of my business is anywhere from California to Florida. It’s amazing to see how some marketing that you think is going to work really well, not worth anything. And then like Facebook comes along and you are like ah, that can’t work and it’s phenomenal. Some of the saddle makers were so secretive of their trade, that when they knew someone was coming into their shop, before anybody could come in, they would throw a cover over their project, so nothing could be seen of what they were doing.
This particular style, you can see the shape of the seat looks like a shovel. So that’s what they call a shovel back and it’s high. This style is a little more traditional. It’s quite a bit wider. We’ll start with a handmade tree, a wood base, and then rawhide finished. One of the goals I have in putting a seat in a saddle is to cradle the pin bones and help support the center of the rider. The true horseman wants to feel as much as he can of the horse to where they know where every foot is hitting. And they want to have control of the feet and in controlling the feet, the center of gravity is very important for the rider, so they can cue with their knees or their legs in the most subtle ways to control those feet in motion. This comes in pretty handy when you are riding green horses and you need to have a handle behind your seat. That’ll hold you in position pretty nice. So, this is number 62 for me. I will have to say most of the owners of the saddles I have built, they’ve turned into really good friends. They really appreciate the work.
((PKG)) WILD WEST TOWN
((Banner: Ghosts and Gold))
((Reporter/Camera: Genia Dulot))
((Adapted by: Philip Alexiou))
((Map: Oatman, Arizona))
((NATS))
(("Big" Mike Fox, Oatman Resident))
Oatman is a gold mining camp that was actually officially started in 1901. Between 1901 and 1942, they took 36-million ounces of gold out of these mountains. All the gold that paid for World War I came from these mountains and the vulture mine over in Wickenburg. In 1942, Roosevelt deemed that gold mining wasn’t necessary for fighting World War II. He needed the materials to fight that war rather than the gold. So, he asked all the miners that were working here to go mine the things he needed for fighting the war. They, out of honor, did, went and mined other things. So the population of Oatman dwindled down to about 300 people. The gold mining stopped and nothing happened here until, and in 1951, they put in a bypass and came in the needles around the backside of these mountains back here. And when they did that, the town of Oatman dried up and became a ghost town.
(("Big" Mike Fox, Oatman Resident))
Most of the geologists that were working in this area when they shut it down said, they’d only taken a third of the gold out. So, if there was 36 million ounces of it they took out of here, there’s, you know, two thirds, two times that still in the ground. And they never did find it out here what they call a motherload, which is where they think most of the gold might have been coming from, out of the ground. So, who knows how much gold might really be out here somewhere. For every ounce you can see, there’s probably anywhere from eight to 10 ounces there that you can’t see. That’s just so small your eyes would never see it. But it’s there. We just do it for fun. But if we were going to make a living out of it, I could easily see getting 10 to 15 ounces a month. You’re talking, you know, 15 thousand dollars a month or something like that if you really wanted to work at it and that was all you were doing.
((Banner: Oatman now relies on tourism))
((Linda Woodard, Oatman Photo Studio Owner))
Our country is very young compared to, like, the European countries and the Asian countries, so they’re fascinated with the Wild West.
((NATS))
Right there. I got the gold.
((Linda Woodard, Oatman Photo Studio Owner))
And they like to come over and, you know, the cowboys and…..
((NATS))
Billy, say draw! Draw!
((Linda Woodard, Oatman Photo Studio Owner))
You know, all the different things, the miners, you know, this is actually a mining community.
(("Big" Mike Fox, Oatman Resident))
The hotel up there is, you know, we know of at least three we know by, we think we know by name, and there’s at least five of them there. They’re ghosts that actually interact with you. They’ve interacted with me for years. Moving things around, whispering in your ear, talking to you, all kinds of things they can do to interact with you and let you know they’re there.
((NATS))
(("Big" Mike Fox, Oatman Resident))
Some other stuff it needs, there’s all kinds of stuff in here that shouldn’t be there. This town will never get any bigger than what it is. There’s no sewage here. There’s no, I mean, there’s sewage, but it’s all septic tanks and things. There’s no actually city operated sewer system or anything like that. There’s a city, there’s a water, a water company, but other than that, there’s not enough of anything else to let people come up here and live in large quantities. So, this town will never grow. So, it’s pretty much, for the rest of my life, it’ll be pretty much like this.
((NATS))
(("Big" Mike Fox, Oatman Resident))
I live here. I’ve been here all my life. This is the way I lived. This is the way I grew up and it’s freedom.
((Reporter))
Freedom in what sense??
(("Big" Mike Fox, Oatman Resident))
Freedom in that people don’t tell me what I need to do. I live by my own wits and my own decisions and my own way. And nobody's telling me what I have to do, and you know, you got to go and do this, you got to have insurance, you got to do this, you got to do that. No, I live the way I want to live. And out here, living out here in this, especially the Parker Strip, is a rough way to go. Because it’s hotter than hell in here during the summer and, you know, it takes, it takes, it takes some living off the land mentality to be able to survive here and do it well. So, it’s just freedom.
((NATS))
COMING UP NEXT
In the coming weeks on VOA Connect:
More than 115 Americans die each day from Opioid overdoses.
VOA looks at three stories from the epidemic.
((Banner))
Opioids in America
Philadelphia Part 4
((SOT))
CLOSING ((ANIM))
voanews.com/connect
BREAK
BUMP IN ((ANIM))
SHOW ENDS
