GIMME SHELTER Newsletter Spring 2026
The state of the state I'm in as the days are getting longer…
GIMME SHELTER is a summing-it-up newsletter I do maybe three or four times a year (infrequent and sporadic). I send it out to via email to about 6,500 people and, also print it out here on my Substack. If you want to be on the list of recipients, send your email address to: lloyd@shelterpub.com. (It won’t be used for any other purposes.)
(In this case, it’s getting Substacked before we send out the full email.)
Going It Solo
I haven’t been single since I was 12 years old.
(When Gloria asked me to hold her hand as we walked back from the beach on the Russian River.)
Girlfriend after girlfriend, 3 of them serious, then 18 years the first marriage, almost 50 years the second.
As I’m shifting to being a soloista, I’ve at the same time — journalist at heart— been observing the process,
It’s way different, let me tell you.
I have a ton of solo friends, and they all seem to be doing fine. They’re not bitching about living alone — and they know stuff that I don’t.
Sure, I miss Lesley, but focusing on that gets me nowhere. And she appears unexpectedly now and then. One day I was walking along the brick path and came across a red flower, and got a jolt — there she was! Or a picture of her Shari handed me that I hadn’t seen before. She’s still here.
Plus:
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
-William Blake
What’s different about the solo life?
Day-to-Day Busyness
• Doing all the shopping, cooking, dishes; washing and drying clothes (in the fresh air or by the fireplace); sweeping, composting, recyclable and non-recyclable garbage
• Getting firewood, kindling, splitting, stacking
• Gardening, which is huge around here. Tomatoes, cucumbers, KALE, chard, potatoes, zucchini (for first time ever, I kept ahead of the zucchini’s prolific production last season, picking a zuke every day or two — went on until December), hot peppers, artichokes, asparagus (20-year-old bed), strawberries raspberries, apples, plums, parsley, chives. Plus my friend/chef/neighbor Kate and I are planting a robust garden…
• Ongoing homestead maintenance: pests like termites, ants, skunks; leaky valves; roof leaks (7 roofs); septic system maintenance, weeding, grass cutting, pruning (4 apple trees, 1 plum, raspberries, red currants), watering (most of the year from shallow (15’ deep well). Everywhere I walk on this 100x100’ piece of land, I see things to do, to maintain, to fix.
• No one to curb my enthusiasm
• More time for introspection
I feel like — at 4 years — I’m still testing, learning, groping, adapting, but things are finally starting to sail smoother on this ship of a homestead. It’s taking years to reconfigure the garden to something I can manage. I can’t picture what it would be like to live in a city apartment — life on a piece of land is so different.
Planetary impact: I’ve got rooftop solar panels, generating more electricity than I use. Most of my heating is from scrounged eucalyptus firewood. I dress in (sometimes 5) layers, merino wool, once in a while use a low-wattage electric heater. Dishwater gets dumped in the garden, virtually no grease goes into the septic tank. Every scrap of leftover food (banana skins, coffee grounds, chicken bones, spoiled food), has gone into the garden for over 50 years now. When I stay in a city, I have a hard time putting food in the garbage can.
Living a solo life makes me realize how efficient it is for two people to live together. Two people to pay the rent, two people to divide up the chores, two people to amuse each other.…
The nuclear family, subject to much disparagement since the ‘60s, is nevertheless an efficient setup, especially if you’re doing something like building a homestead.
Soaking up the soloism: around mid-March, I bottomed out with people. Day after day, lots of people to deal with. All good people, friends, interesting, fun — but I started craving alone-ness. The first night solo in a while, I cooked a wild duck, played Shorty’s Bunkhouse on our local (world-class) radio station KWMR, and danced around the room, using Indian clubs, dumbbells, and kettle bells to do various exercises to the beat. Fun!
That night, being alone was sweet.
I’m up and down. Lesley was very balanced (a Libra), but I swing from depression to ecstaticness. Just her calm presence would provide me a measure of balance, but now I’m on my innate solo roller coaster of emotional ups and downs. So be it.
Was the goin’ up worth the comin’ down?
-Kris Kistofferson
When I’m having an extraordinary day at the beach, or running on one of the beautiful Mt. Tam trails, driving home on Highway One with kick-ass music! — well, sure! Worth it.
But when I’m in the dregs of depression? Galumph! I’m having to learn toleration and patience — wait it out, not worsen things by bitching. Sloopy hangin’ on.
And furthermore, heh-heh, there’s this:
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
-William Blake
Aging
The Substack posts I do on aging are by far the most popular. Probably the boomers — closing in on their ‘70s, ‘80s — are curious about what’s coming.
This Gettin’ Old Sure Is Gettin’ Old
-Song by Mick Kolassa
I Lost a Day
The latest gorilla in my life of getting older:
The other day— Sunday, I thought — I went down to a barbecue at our boat club at noon. Funny, building crews were at work on a big downtown project, and there were plenty of parking spaces. Odd for a weekend.
Ulp! It was Monday, not Sunday. It gave me pause. Jesus! Like some sort of time machine, I’d lost a day! Discombobulating.
The Experiences in Getting Old Are New Experiences.
We’ve never been this old before, and the various decreasing abilities inherent with aging are happening for the first time.
• Forgetting names
• Malfunctioning of various physical parts
• Health issues
• Getting out of the car
• Losing strength, agility, flexibility
• Loss of manual dexterity, like buttoning shirts, threading needle
• Worsening depth perception
• Being out of touch with the stunningly fast-changing world
• Doing increasingly stupid stuff
What Did I Come In Here For?
It’s now happening a couple of times a day: I get into the house, cannot for the life of me think what I came in for, and walk back out to the studio, then remember and hurry back before I forget again.
Misplacing Phone and Car Keys
Happens all the time. Thank heavens for Apple’s “Find My.” Even so, sometimes it takes a lot of searching.
Missing calls, texts, DMs, WhatsApp’s
I can’t keep up with all the different forms of incoming messages. Often, I’ll recall a message, like someone asking for something and I check my texts or phone messages but can’t find it. So if I don’t respond, that’s what’s happening. The best way to contact me is by old fashioned email: lloyd@shelterpub.com.
Also, I don’t have my phone with me even half the time — hey, I’m 91 — I don’t have to be connected 7/24.
Forgetting Your Name
This happens daily. I remember faces but not names associated with those faces (or context of what this particular person does or how we met). When we meet, tell me your name.
Here are my previous Substack posts on aging:
A Night on the Beach
The other night I grabbed my backpack and headed for the beach. Normally I’ll walk about 2 miles to a somewhat distant long sandy beach but this time, the pack felt really heavy, so I set up my tent and built a fire closer by, where a creek flows into the ocean.
Been years since I’ve done this, so it was a bit awkward setting up, erecting (Nemo) tent, inflating (Nemo) (v. comfortable) air mattress. Cooked some venison on the coals plus potato and onion in foil. I’d left on an unseasonably warm afternoon, and didn’t take enough warm clothing or my warmer sleeping bag, so was pretty cold. But getting away from electricity and phone/computer/TV screens left me refreshed. This is what life used to be like!
Compulsion To Communicate
I’m a curious person, and I love telling people about extraordinary things I see going on in this world.
Lover of all things alive, wonderer at all he meets…
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1885
Now that I’ve sold my publishing company, my main forms of communication are Substack, which I love, and Instagram, which unfortunately Zuckerberg has kidnapped and downgraded in pursuit of profit.
I do about one post a week on Substack. Take a look (subscriptions are free):
(Plus the very occasional email such as this one.)
Artificial Intelligence
Perplexity AI has changed my life.
OK, OK, I’m aware of the present and scary future evils of artificial intelligence. I have a friend who won’t use it because of the enormous energy costs. AI can imitate voices and is already being used for scams. And who knows what will happen — in the creative arts — if AI gets beyond the present state of artistic slop?
BUT AI research – for me — is enormously useful.
Examples:
1. Recently I had written something about how my friend Paul Wingate learned how to be a carpenter, but couldn’t locate it. Perplexity pulled it right up:
“In his November 2025 article ‘Game Plan for Young Builders’ on lloydkahn.substack.com, Kahn describes how in the 1960s, his friend Paul Wingate wanted to become a carpenter.…”
2. I’ve done a ton of research on the harm that so-called “environmentalists” are doing to local economies: shutting down organic food production, eliminating blue-collar jobs and homes, and in the case of Bolinas, attempting to ban fishing along 8 miles of our coast. (See more on this below.)
3. What’s the best rootstock on which to graft apples?
4. It will give me one page, one paragraph or whatever length I designate summary of any book.
I always check out the referenced URLs.
It’s an extraordinary tool.
I loved Once Upon A Time in the West. This is what the West was really like, not the romanticized Hollywood versions. Look at the deck here.
My Next Book
It looks like I’ll be doing my first book in four years later this year, titled: Breaking Free in the ’60s: An Autobiography of Sorts. (Formerly titled Live From California.) It will be published by AdventureKEEN.
I grew up in San Francisco and went to high school in the Haight-Ashbury district and what I saw happen in the city in the ’60s differs from all the many books and articles and videos on the subject.
In writing it, I decided to outline my background: growing up in SFO, Lowell High School, Stanford, surfing in Santa Cruz before wetsuits, running a newspaper on an Air Force Base in Germany, building two houses in Big Sur, etc.
It’s not really an autobiography, since it ends in 1973 (when we did the book Shelter) and also, I don’t feel comfortable getting deeply into my personal life, as most autobiographies do.
I’ll be serializing it for paid subscribers on my Substack platform, plus there will be a real hold-in-your-hands book for sale. Stay tuned.
Whatever you do today, do it with the confidence of a 4-year old in a Batman cape.
- Anon
Stewart Brand’s New Book
I hung out with Stewart a lot in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, working on the Whole Earth Catalogs and sharing excitement about countercultural changes; then in 1974 when we spent several weeks exploring (and pouring a house foundation) on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.
Flash forward 24 years: at his 50th birthday party in San Francisco in 1998, he seated me next to R. Crumb at dinner (for which I will be eternally grateful).
Flash forward another 25 or so years, :
This Guardian article was a couple of months ago, just discovered it now.
Regarding Stewart’s health:
“In terms of physical maintenance, Brand has always been a healthy, active, outdoorsy person – he was a keen sailor, he was hiking up mountains with rocks in his backpack in his ’60s, and he started going to CrossFit when he was 75 – ‘that built a pretty strong constitution.
“Now, though, he has a respiratory illness, he says, ‘…which is progressive, incurable and fatal’. He’s in a stable condition, and still exercises, but uses supplementary oxygen as well. ‘I’d be very surprised by making it into my ’90s,’ he says, seemingly without regret: ‘Imagine the luck, to get to be 87 – it’s just fantastic!’”
-Steve Rose, The Guardian, Feb 2, 2026
And more recently, this insightful and timely interview by Ezra Klein in the New York Times on April 26, 2026:
He was in good spirits at a small party in Sausalito last week, signing books and talking to maybe 50-60 people. He seems clear headed and in his skin.
In fact, (with profound help from his wife Ryan), he’s kickin’ ass!
His First Book in 15 Years
My big surprise here: it feels somehow like the early Whole Earth Catalogs.
He’s got these very cool publishers in SF, Stripe Press, who’ve created an author’s dream of PR and swag. There was a cool book-signing party at Fort Mason in San Francisco, at which Stewart said that back in the day, as a writer AND photographer, he wanted to tell stories graphically. Rang a bell with me.
The book has a refreshing words-with-graphics look.
Kevin Kelly calls it “…an instant classic.”
Environmentalism Has Become A Business
A war of the elite on fishermen, farmers, homebuilders and the working class
At first this seemed like a local issue. But lo and behold, it’s going on nationally.
Locally
Our small seaside town, Bolinas, a fishing port (among other things) for over a century, is currently being threatened with a ruling that would ban all fishing along 8 miles of our coast. Not only fishing from shore, but yet another onerous restriction on our small local fishing fleet.
The plan is sponsored by the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin and is not based on any scientifically valid data and was put forward with scant local input and in an underhanded, sneaky way.
Nationally
With the environmentalism started by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, then rising ecological awareness of the ‘60s counterculture, the Environmental Protection Agency was established in 1970. Environmentalism was real. The first Earth Day was in 1970 and it eventually became the world’s largest civic observance.
But as the years progressed, starting with the Reagan administration, businesses rebounded by creating groups calling themselves environmentalists, but actually using environmentalism as a tool to — among other things — further an elite approach to wilderness.
Groups like the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin are actually businesses. The EAC has a big budget ($800K donated in 2024), hires lawyers, has political connections, and has contributed to shutting down local food production in West Marin — oysters, dairy, beef — much of it organic — destroying jobs and eliminating homes for 30 people at the Drake’s Bay Oyster farm and 90 tenants on the ranches on the Pt. Reyes Peninsula (mostly Latino).
We were blind-sided by their petition to the California Fish and Game Commission filed in 2023 to make our home beaches a Marine Reserve. We are fighting it (Save Duxbury Access) with a petition of our own.
I’ve gathered a tremendous amount of information on the “environmentalists” of today and am looking for an investigative reporter who’s interested in what I think is a big national story. I just don’t have the time to do it myself.
It’s way too big to cover here, but if you’re interested, I suggest doing some of your own research.
Especially if you contribute to the EAC or other “environmental” groups; are you aware of their anti-local, anti blue-collar, anti-country people actions? Do you want to be contributing to shutting down local food production and causing local people to lose jobs and homes?
And if you know of an investigative reporter who might be interested, let me know. I’ve done a ton of research, glad to pass it along.
BTW, The Nature Conservancy, the world’s biggest environmental organization, has $8 billion (!) in assets and pays its CEO and CIO each salaries in excess of $800 K annually. It’s been criticized for its corporate alliances and locally disruptive land decisions. CEO Jennifer Morris released a statement shortly after Trump's election indicating TNC's intention to "work with the Trump administration."
Hummingbird Week
Last week I discovered a baby Anna’s hummingbird on the ground. I located the nest, and put it back in (with a sibling), but the mother never returned, so I brought them into the house and starting feeding them, keeping them warm with a light bulb.
One of them died, but this one had a fierce desire to survive. I fed it sugar water through an eyedropper and added mashed-up aphids (Lillian’s idea) and flies for protein, but after 5 days, I was exhausted from feeding it every hour, so took it to Wildcare in San Rafael, where they are way better equipped for bird survival — which I should have done in the first place.
It was a unique experience having a roommate for 5 days. Every time I’d walk into the room, its tiny heart was still beating and it would be bright-eyed and open its beak for food. I’d get up every few hours at night to feed the hungry critter. It was a real responsibility.
Update: Wildcare says it has survived and is perky. They have a lady who specializes in hummingbirds and is giving it proper food and heping it learn to fly.
Strangely, I got attached to this tiny (weighing 1/10 of an ounce when fully grown) being and am so glad it’s thriving. I wonder if Widcare will allow me to visit.
Closing with this song, recorded live in Tokyo in 1975. I know, I know, I’m prone to over-enthusiasm, but that said, I think this may be my favorite song of all time, not just for Ray’s heartbreaking voice, where he bends the notes, but trumpet player Johnny Coles’ solo, and the interplay of voice and brass.
A few years back there was a very good documentary about a lady in the Malibu hills who rescues and nurtures hummingbirds
I really loved this. I lost my husband unexpectedly a few years ago, when I was 36. I never thought I’d be flying solo at this age, and the grief was obliterating. But with the passage of time, I’ve augmented what was already a great life with incredible new friends and infinitely more gratitude. Loss sucks, but this new time has been unexpectedly wonderful.