I don't want to brag, but check out my composting toilet which just happens to be THE GREATEST COMPOSTING TOILET IN THE FREAKING WORLD! 

Top picture- The side of my tiny home (no siding yet but it's coming) with my new flower box and the access door to the composting toilet and propane locker. 

Bottom picture- Propane tanks that I use for heat and a visual of how my composting toilet works. You sit on a toilet seat inside and do your business just like you would on an old-fashioned shitter. The solid waste drops into a bucket that is lined with a compostable bag. You throw in the toilet paper and a scoop of coconut fiber to aid in the composting. 

The urine is diverted through a diverter from Johnny Compost into a tube that drains into the flower box. Rain water helps to dilute it so plants like ornamental kale can use the nutrients to grow. 

​This is a composting toilet that has no urine tank and requires no plumbing for flushing. 

I've been using a composting toilet for a year and a half now so that makes me an expert. And we all need to be good at something, right? I've got this down!

There is no greener way to take care of your waste than with a composting toilet and I fully believe that the future is not Plastics, the future is Composted Waste.

Pictured above is not the toilet I built for my tiny house but one that I made to sell on Ebay. I'm including over a month's worth of supplies but in the week or so that it's been up, I still have no takers. There are a few others on Ebay- the Nature's Head for $950 and a few that are about $280 that are smaller than mine and not finished out. 

I see an industry here. There's a tiny house village just down the street from me and none of those 30+ homes have a toilet because there's no running water. So every person there, whether they're perfectly healthy or in a wheelchair, has to go out to the portable toilets outside in the middle of the night. 

RVs have to take their waste to dump stations and to the best of my knowledge, there are two places in Seattle they can legally dispose their waste. People who liveaboard their boats, like I did for over ten years, have a disgusting waste tank that has to get pumped out regularly. And backyard cottages and tiny homes, which are becoming a more and more viable option for affordable living, whether in the city or out, are perfect for composting toilets because they don't require plumbing.

The concept is perfectly simple and is all about separating the urine from the feces. A urine diverter (I get mine from a dude in Arizona who sells his 3D printed units on Etsy as Johnny Compost) channels the liquid into a tank while allowing the solids to drop into bucket that I line with a composting bag. I use a drying agent (coconut fiber and cedar sawdust) to dry the solids and there is NO SMELL.

The bags of waste can be thrown into a large barrel and in about a year it's just dirt. Or you can put the bags in a paper bag and throw them in a dumpster. It's basically neutral waste. And I'm now making a flower pot to divert the urine into that will grow hearty plants like hops and ivy because it turns out urine is full of nutrients! Who knew?   

My cousin Craig works at CBS and he asked news correspondent Kenneth Craig if he could do a quick Happy Birthday video for my dad, Ken Craig. Kenneth Craig says in the video that he's never met anybody before with the same name. 

The Craig name is as old as Scotland. Older, maybe, as it is considered by some to have been given to a group of Picts who lived in the rocks, or crags. Our family tartan is made to look like moss covered rock and is, unlike most tartans, actually very beautiful. 

Our clan crest is of a knight in full charge, riding into battle with a broken lance and our motto is 'Jai Bonne Esperance', which means 'I have Good Hope'. They used to say of the Craigs, 'Well, they're not very bright, but they're optimistic!'

The name Craig was originally pronounced and spelled in several ways, like Craik, Craegh and Craigie. Most immigrants to the US, Canada and Australia took the opportunity to re-spell their name Craig, which just sounds better, including our great grandmother, so I'm told. 

My dad and I and all the first born sons in our family were born James Kenneth Craig or James Kenneth Craik. My dad goes by Ken and I go by Jay, which was a compromise. My dad, of course, wanted to name me James Kenneth Craig. My mom wanted to name me Damian, which would have been cool, too. So they named me James Kenneth Craig but gave me the nickname Jay. 

There are many notable Craigs and Craiks who have left their mark on history. James Craig was the architect of New Town in Edinburgh, which is pretty fucking cool. James Craik, however, killed the Father of Our Country. James Craik was Scottish and came to this country and became the Surgeon General of the US Army. He also became a good friend and personal doctor to George Washington. When George Washington got ill, Dr James Craik gave him a good old-fashioned blood letting, whether he needed it or not. 

If I ever had a son, I would have voted to name him Kenneth. I never did but when I rescued a Cairn Terrier, I named him Kenny. A couple years ago, after having him for ten years, Kenny retired and went to live in Connecticut with my parents. Kenny immediately attached himself to my parents and I'm sure that while my dad was watching Kenneth Craig say that he'd never met another Ken Craig before, Kenny was right there at my dad's feet. 

UPDATE!!

My cousin Johnny has been doing some research on Craigs/Craiks and found something veerry interesting... 

It is an honest-to-freaking-god Mason membership card from a relative named George Washington Craik!! Of course the Freemasons killed the Father of Our Country. And of course our great grandmother changed our family name from Craik to Craig!

It's all beginning to makes sense!

For many years I used to spend most nights hanging out/working at my friend Denny's shop at the Fenpro in Ballard. There was a constant flow of very entertaining people who would stop in for a whisky or to get something made, or usually, both. If you needed something fixed or fabricated, it would usually cost you a bottle of bourbon. 

One guy that came by a lot was Darryl. He used to be a sculptor and Denny helped him out a lot when they both had shops over at the Foundry in Fremont. Darryl was an amazing artist. He did the sculpture of the girl holding origami birds over by the University Bridge and a series of rock and roll legends including John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix. The statue of Jimi is up on Broadway on Capitol Hill.

Darryl graduated with a degree in art history and is the most talented artist I have ever known. But he absolutely hated the business of art. Some artists love selling themselves and scoring big commissions but he hated it. All he wanted to do was make stuff but that's not how things work so he got a job for many years as a security guard. He recently retired and is now painting custom motorcycle tanks, which makes him happy. 

One thing that he was always proud of was how nobody ever fucked with his statue of Jimi. Even though it had some very delicate parts. Nobody ever snapped off any of the tuning pegs and he saw that as a sign of respect for the work. 

Nobody respected Darryl more than Denny. But if Denny were still here I would have sworn he was the one who put a snowman's head on Jimi a couple days ago.  

The verdict is in and the trial is over. It was a horrible accident that killed five international students and wounded several others. Ride the Ducks of Seattle received 30% of the liability while Ride the Ducks International, who supplied the amphibious vehicles, received 70%. 

I worked for two years as a Duck Captain, back when the driver also gave the tour. Then I left for a couple years and drove for Metro, MTR Western, who charters luxury coaches and ran the Emerald City Trolley, and a senior living facility in Ballard. After the Accident, I went back to the Ducks where I now just drive. .

Without question, Ride the Ducks of Seattle has the highest commitment to Safety that I have ever seen. We have to. We are under the oversight of both the State and the Coast Guard and get regular COIs (certificate of inspection) where we break down each duck and go over every inch of it.  

Before a duck leaves the Nest in the morning, it has had three inspections. A Post-Trip inspection done at the end of the day by the driver, a Pre-Trip inspection done by a mechanic, and a Pre-Trip inspection done by the next driver. All inspections include getting under the duck on a creeper to inspect tires, wheels, brakes, steering, suspension, hull plugs, etc. We check all alarms and systems, even if you're the one who ran it the day before. 

Drivers are also Captains, which is a built-in weeding out process. Every Duck Captain has not only gotten a Commercial Drivers License, but also at least a 25 ton Coast Guard Masters license. A man or woman behind the wheel of a duck is probably the most trained and safest driver on the road. Our safety record is actually pretty amazing. We have a full-time Safety Manager whose job is to ensure the safety of our tours. We get briefings every morning about the weather and traffic. We have cameras and GPS and if you do anything wrong Moti will know about it. 

Our policy is to stay under 30 mph at all times, even if the speed limit is 35. If you do 32 on Westlake, Moti gets an alert and you will hear about it. We go through additional Coast Guard training every 90 days. We review video of close calls constantly. We are, by far, the most safety conscious company I have ever worked for. We have to be. 

I love driving a duck. I love showing off this beautiful city and sending people home with a wonderful impression of this city. And I'm always sure to tell them how much it rains here. Seattle's a great place to visit but you wouldn't want to live here, for sure. 

A few months after my buddy Dave died we had a big party at his shop. 

I hired a bagpiper, a white guy named Tyrone, and didn't tell anybody. I told him to start playing off in the distance and walk up to the shop around 4:00. I knew by then we'd all have had a couple of drinks.

I heard the pipes first, of course, and waited for the reaction. Somebody swung open the large door and there was Tyrone, in full regalia, playing Scotland the Brave (Dave was proud of his Scottish heritage). He then played Amazing Grace and everybody was openly weeping. Dave's sudden absence had been a shock for so many people it was good to see so many other people felt the same way.  

Then, as I had requested, Tyrone played the most jaunty, bouncy jig he had. I saw Dave's dad singing along with some bawdy lyrics thru both smiles and tears. Tyrone then turned and walked off around the corner, playing the whole time. We all kept listening but you could never really tell when he stopped playing.   

It was a perfect send off to a great guy. It also helped pull me out of the darkest depression I ever went through. I decided I would dedicate my life to bagpipes. 

Tyrone gave me some X-rays of a Great Highland bagpipe and I set to work making crazy looking composite bagpipes. It took me years of work and contributed to both my wife leaving me and the failure of my boat business, but they are beautiful examples of Functional Art. They are perfectly functioning Great Highland bagpipes that could also be displayed in a museum. I'm very proud of them. Not because of the art or vision or any of that, but because of the countless hours I put into them.

THOUSANDS of hours to make pipes that 99% of the bagpiping community completely dismissed as stupid. I took them to many Highland Games and of the ten or so sets of bagpipes I made, I only sold one, the Guinness pipes but that was because I was desperate for money at one am and needed $500 now. I still regret it. 

But I'm done. I put my last set, the Green Marble pipes, up on Ebay for $4,000. It got over 1,500 views and nobody wanted them. So I raised the price to $20,000. 

​I would much rather have them not sell for $20,000 than not sell them for $4,000. That would just be embarrassing. 

Things got pretty slow with the Ducks so I figured I should take on some part-time work. I went back to the Ballard Landmark for a few weeks to fill in and help train a new driver but when that work ran out I asked my buddy if I could go to his store in Pioneer Square and sell Utilikilts. 

He offered me minimum wage and no benefits, but I knew that he keeps his fridge full of beer so I jumped on it. On Thursdays I bring a bunch of kilts to the store and enter them into inventory. On Fridays and Saturdays I hang out at the store and sell kilts. 

He started this company in 2000, selling kilts he made himself at the Fremont Market. He moved into a shop next to my boat business and met my buddy Dave before meeting me. Dave told me later that day about a dred-locked hippie who just moved into the neighborhood- "Stay away from that guy. He's crazy."

But then Dave died and I met Steven myself. And Dave was right. Steven was crazy. But it was a fun crazy and we became drinking buddies. Dave's death threw me into a pretty bad depression and there was something therapeutic about wrenching about on cars and motorcycles while drinking beer and blasting the Ramones. 

My Mom called me one day and said she and my Dad just saw something on CNN about some guy who was selling some kind of everyday kilt somewhere in Seattle and asked if I knew anything about it. 

"Yeah," I laughed. "That's Steven. He comes over and drinks my beer." We sent my Dad a Utilikilt but still, I thought they were stupid. Steven was convinced that he was gonna but men in skirts but I thought he was nuts. 

Then one day a local TV station came by to do a story about some bagpipes I was making. I told Steven I needed to borrow a kilt for the segment but he said, "No. No posers. You have to buy into it."

I thought he was just being a dick so I figured I'd just buy one and return it the next day, get my money back 'cause it didn't work. 

But as soon as I put it on something happened. I went to the beer store and instead of feeling like a dork in a skirt, I felt free. After the filming I met a bunch of friends up at a bar in Greenwood for the first time since Dave died. The waitress thought the Utilikilt was the coolest thing ever and if I wasn't married, I totally would have gone home with her. 

The wife, however, was completely unimpressed. I thought after several months of depression and various medications she might welcome my new lease on life. But when I threw my pants in the dumpster she saw that as the last straw and left me within a week. Utilikilts sells freedom.

And now I'm selling freedom. Thursdays through Saturdays, mostly. Stop by in the afternoon for a beer and let's see if I can get you out of those pants.  

​I was going through a pretty rough time about six years ago. I was manic and not sleeping for days at a time. I didn't have much work and that's never a good thing for me. I need to always be working. Always.

I went on CraigsList and saw an ad that said, 'Do your friends think you're crazy? Has anybody in your family ever tried to get you committed? Well, then, you should be a Duck Captain!'

I became the grumpy Scotsman, Captain Braveliver, who was heavy on the history, didn't sing or dance, and didn't do any quacking games. The people that got me thought I was hilarious. The people that didn’t sent in complaints. Now we have a driver and a tour guide and I just drive, which is fine, because believe it or not, driving a WWII-inspired amphibious vehicle through downtown Seattle and out onto the busiest fresh water lake in America is WAY less stressful than entertaining 150 people who are all expecting something different. 
 
A few years ago Ride the Ducks did a Holiday Tour, a land-only 40-minute tour out of Westlake Center that toured the Christmas lights Downtown. It was supposed to be singing Christmas carols or whatever, but they let me do the tour as Frank, a department store Santa who hated Christmas and hated kids. 
 
After all the passengers were loaded, I would come up the stairs yelling, ‘HO HO HO!! Merry Christmas!! Oh, what FUN!!’
 
Then I’d pause for effect and take off my fake beard and confess, ‘Okay, I’m not really Santa. My name is Frank at I work at Macy’s.’ Then I’d pull out my fake belly, which was a hemorrhoid pillow, and put it on my seat. ‘Look. I’m just one of Santa’s helpers. Santa’s busy making toys up at the North Pole so a bunch of us are down here filling in for him. We’re all members of BFD (Bearded Fat Dudes) Local 86, United We Santa!’ I’d say throwing a fist in the air. ‘Oh, wait, you need to be facing North when you say that… United We Santa!’
 
I’d drive by Nordstrom and I’d yell, ‘Hey kids! Who’s that?!?’ They’d all yell, ‘SANTA!’ and I’d say, ‘…nooo, that’s Larry! I told you, Santa’s still up in the North Pole! Hi, Larry! United We Santa!’
 
I drove my mostly un-amused passengers around for 40 minutes bitching about how Christmas has gotten too religious and then I’d try selling them on Scottish Buddhism. I know I got a lot of complaints and I didn’t make any tips AT ALL, but it was fun. 
 
We ran tours a couple days after Christmas so I went to the Goodwill and got some surfer shorts. Frank was going to Hawaii, baby! But there wasn’t a very good selection of shorts in December so I had to get a pair that was about five sizes to small. They were so tight I couldn’t button them or even wear underpants. I made my way up to the front of the duck and did my whole, ‘HO HO HO! Merry Christmas!’ bit when the shorts failed and almost exposed myself to a bunch of kids and their grandmothers. At the end of the tour I carefully made my way to the back and dropped the stairs but didn’t bother going down first to accept tips. 
 
 
I have a friend who photographs kids with Santa and she hooked me up with the guy who places Santas all over the Northwest. They make a shitload of money and parents will love me ‘cause I’ll talk kids out of being materialist little shitheads. It was too late to do it this year, but next year…
 
United We Santa!

I love history. I grew up in New England surrounded by the Revolutionary War. Then I became fascinated by the men and women who got us through World War Two. And then I moved to Seattle and discovered the most interesting city in the country, Seattle.

Here in Seattle we have the largest collection of Romanesque Revival buildings anywhere in the world, and it's all because of one man that you've never heard of- Elmer Fisher. 

Elmer Fisher was born in Edinburgh, Scotland (or so he said) and came to the US as a young man. He worked his way across the country as a mechanic, cabinet maker, sash maker, band sawyer, carpenter and building contractor. In 1886 and 1887, he designed and built buildings in Victoria, BC and Port Townsend, WA, several of which still stand today, like this modest little guy-

But then he moved to Seattle, which he thought would be the next Big City in the Northwest. He started an architectural business and on June 6th, 1889, the Greatest Thing Ever happened! The entire business district burnt to the ground! Nobody died, but the timing couldn't have been better. 

Seattle was a mess. It was built on a tidal flat and twice a day it would flood. The streets were covered with sawdust and the buildings were slapped together with wood. 

But Seattle was a lumber town and San Francisco kept burning down and they kept rebuilding out of wood, so Seattle had a shitload of money. And Elmer Fisher was ready. The first newspaper after the Fire had a bid ad on the front that said- 

Elmer Fisher, Architect!   

He talked about all of his experience, how he had graduated from the greatest architectural college and worked in the finest architectural firms, and he got the jobs to design 54 buildings, HALF of all the buildings built directly after the fire. 

​

My favorite building is the Pioneer Building.

It's got a huge skylight and original elevators and was built for Henry Yesler on the site of the sawmill that built Seattle. 

The Pioneer Building was named the Finest Building West of Chicago after it was built by the American Institute of Architecture. 

He also built the Hotel Seattle, which was named the finest hotel on the West Coast. It was torn down in the early early 60's and replaced by the Sinking Ship parking garage- 

When I stand in the middle of Pioneer Square I'm constantly amazed that these beautiful original buildings were built in less than two years. Elmer chose a style called Richardsonian Romanesque Rivival and the other dozen or so architects copied the style. It is the largest collection of Romanesque Revival buildings anywhere in the world. And not only did Elmer and his team of draftsmen design these buildings, he oversaw their construction- over fifty buildings, that all went up in less than a year and a half!

Well, they looked into it a couple of years after he died and they discovered that Elmer Fisher never went to college and never worked for any architectural firms. But he's responsible for over half of the buildings in Pioneer Square, including the Finest Building West of Chicago! All built by a guy that never went to college!

As somebody with bipolar disorder, I see manic depression in people who may or may not have had it. Maybe Elmer was manic depressive, maybe he wasn't. He had many different jobs in his relatively short life, architect being only one. At the height of his success, an old lover accused him of being her lover, basically, and his career and reputation were ruined. On a whim, he went up to the Klondike to strike it rich and then down to LA to be an office manager. 

He essentially created Pioneer Square and few people have even heard of him. I can imagine him panning for gold in the Klondike, telling somebody about how he rebuilt Seattle after the Fire. And maybe rambling on about whatever his latest interest was, and other prospectors thinking, 'Man, what a nut!'