THE RETURN OF THE CORDWOOD HOUSE

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Remember those great old monster movies . . . and the way they always seemed to turn into a whole series of motion pictures based on a single character? You know . First there was FRANKENSTEIN . .. then THE RETURN OF FRANKENSTEIN . . . then BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN . . . then SON OF FRANKENSTEIN . . . then FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WEREWOLF . . . and on and on and on.

Well, that's the way we're beginning to feel about the Jack Henstridge family's dynamite article, WE BUILT A $75,000 HOUSE FOR ONLY $10,000, which appeared in MOTHER NO. 45. Because, since publishing that piece, the Henstridge Clan has been buried under an avalanche of mail . . . we've heard from a second promoter of the stackwood (but with a difference) building concept . . . and good ole Jack Henstridge hisself has been kind enough to send us an Alberta Oil Sands Environmental Research Program booklet entitled "Housing for the North . . . The Stackwall System" (how's that for being generous to the "competition"?) which outlines yet a third approach to constructing substantial-yet-snug-andextremely-low-cost homes from cordwood.

So stand back.'Cause here's an update on all these developments . . . in a special three-part feature that we cleverly call:

PART 1: THIS IS ABOUT THE BOOK ABOUT THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT

EDITOR'S NOTE: There are several builders of do-it-yourself airplanes and members of the Experimental Aircraft Association on MOTHER's staff and one of these no'er-do-wella--for some reason-was talking to Harvey Swack (of Baby Great Lakes-a particular homebuilt aircraft-fame) a few months ago when Harvey said, "Hey! 1 know of a great story for THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS°. There's this friend of mine, see, up in Canada, who's building a whole house-and it's a big one-out of cordwood. You should get in touch with him."

So we did. And that friend turned out to be Jack the Henstridge, who immediately wrote back saying, "1 know all about THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS and I'm already working up an article for you guys. I'll bring it down when 1 get it done." And he did. And that's the article you read in MOTHER NO. 45.

At the time Jack visited our offices, though, he was deeply engrossed in the planning, writing, and production of a self-published builder's manual on the subject of stackwood construction. And he asked us a lot of questions about publishing (since we were already in the business and all) and we tried to be helpful. The main thing we kept telling Jack, however, was that what looked easy to him-the publication of a guide about building a low-cost cordwood house-would (based on our experience) probably turn out to be about as much hard work as the actual fabrication of the house itself. But we encouraged him to go ahead anyway, since we thought that he had a lot to contribute to MOTHER-type folks all over the world. And Jack did go ahead and he did have more trouble than he'd anticipated. Which explains the tone of mock-exasperation in parts of this section of our cordwood construction feature.

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