I first met Jay in Twin Falls, Idaho, as a child. We were both students at St. Edwards Grade School, though, like everyone else there except Jay, I was Catholic. That made him special. But he was special in other ways, too, as I found out years later in the ’70s when I remet him, again in our home town, where we had both returned, drawn by nostalgia, desert vistas and the smell of sagebrush after rain.

Jay, an architectural designer who studied at Frank Lloyd Wright’s School of Architecture at Taliesen and later worked there as Associate Dean of Administration, designed and built an extraordinary, mostly underground home at the edge of Twin Falls for himself, his wife and four children. That home, unlike anything before or since, seemed to rise slowly up out of the desert, and even featured a huge (volcanic? can’t remember) rock set in as the centerpiece of a living room ringed by picture windows.

Jay was an eternal student even then, setting up shop as “The Idea Man” downtown, where he offered advice on any number of questions.

So when I got this facebook posting from him today, I couldn’t help but nod my head. Yes. In order to creatively integrate what the internet has to offer, we must come to it prepared, each of us in our own individual way, but deeply, thoroughly.

That, hopefully, is what I offer in this exopermaculture blog.