Tribal Messenger solar serialization

From March through late October 1973, Steve Baer serialized a book on solar energy in The Tribal Messenger, a small local newsletter. Each issue carried a chapter or numbered installment (“Chapter One” appears April 2; by August 8 the header reads “Installment 8” and by October 10 “Installment 13”). The companion tribal-notes pages are the newsletter pages themselves, carrying a continuous hand-written archive pagination (5, 5a–5e, 6, 9–30) that runs across issues; “Tribal Notes” was the newsletter’s column banner under which Baer’s opening letter appeared. Together, the 46 files form the earliest extended writing in the archive. Pages 7–8 of the hand numbering are absent, an apparent gap in the scanned run. A May 28 editorial note records that back issues were kept on file at Zimmerman Library, UNM, and on microfilm in fifty-six other libraries.

How the serialization began

The March 12, 1973 issue ran a “Solar Energy” photo insert on the Baer house in Corrales — Mel Buffington’s photographs of the black-painted 55-gallon drum walls with their fold-down insulating panels, the light-sensitive motorized window opener, the windmill and zome, and a neighbor’s solar panels — with admiring editorial text signed L.K. and S.W. (“Whole Earth Catalog calls Steve Baer an energy-generating young inventor”).

Baer then introduced the project in the March 26, 1973 issue with a “Dear readers” letter printed under the Tribal Notes banner. Skip, the editor, had asked if someone at Zomeworks — perhaps Day Chahroudi (printed “Chahrohdi”) — would write a technical piece to follow the house photos. Baer volunteered and immediately saw a bigger scheme: serialize a solar energy book, one chapter per issue, as “an informal first draft” that could later be revised and published.

I don’t have the time, ability or the patience to write really good books. I offer as evidence the two books I have written — Dome Cookbook and Zome Primer. But still who wouldn’t like to think of himself as an author? Besides — look at the kind of stuff people read. So why not? Skip is for it, and he is the editor. And if the pieces I write are not for you — well, it isn’t as if we sold you a roof that leaked or a car with a bum transmission.

The first technical chapter was promised for the next issue: “Acquaintance with energy units.”

Topics covered by issue

Date	Messenger topic	Notes pages
1973-03-12	”Solar Energy” photo insert — Baer drumwall house in Corrales (Mel Buffington photos)	—
1973-03-26	Introduction — “Dear readers” solar book announcement	pg5 (pg5a–pg5e filed here; scans dated 2 Apr)
1973-04-02	Chapter One, “Acquaintance with energy units” — energy in a car crash, BTUs, dams, gasoline drinker, “baskers”	—
1973-04-13	Chapter Two — government grants (Ford/Chevrolet), sun radiation, earth’s orbit	pg6
1973-04-30	Day Chahrohdi’s “What is a Biosphere?” (reprinted from The Astral Projection #13) + Baer’s “Interlude” — basic technology, ice ranch, Harold Hay, skylid, van Dresser	pg9, pg10, pg11
1973-05-14	Chapter 3-A: Heat exchangers — junkyards as classroom, conductivity table	pg12, pg13
1973-05-28	Chapter 3-B: liquid-liquid exchangers, counterflow, bird legs; Chapter 4 begins — heat collectors and houses	pg14, pg15, pg16
1973-06-13	Chapter 4: temperature fluctuation, thermostat critique, mammals vs reptiles; Beadwall and Skylid	pg17, pg18
1973-07-24	Chapter 4 cont.: flat plate collectors — non-focusing heat collectors; “Tools, God, Life”	pg19, pg20
1973-08-08	Installment 8: heat conduction, collector morning warmup, gap losses; convection engines and “reverse juice”	pg21, pg22, pg23
1973-08-22	Free view — Drop City anecdote, Fisher’s Peak	pg24 (pg26 filed here; content continues Sep 5)
1973-09-05	Drop City convective rock loop heater — air circulation, pancake vs column bins, rock surface area	pg25 (+ pg26 by content)
1973-09-26	Loop design — rock storage air loops; sizing collectors and bins (Box #1/#2 heat-loss calculations)	pg27, pg28
1973-10-10	Installment 13: bubble pumps, eduction pump, immiscible liquid pairs, condensers, bubble wheel	pg29
1973-10-31	Bubble wheel efficiency; report on the ISES US Section meeting in Cleveland — A.D. Little orbital satellite critique, Exxon solar cells	pg30

File dates follow the archive’s naming, which tracks each issue’s cover date range (the newsletter ran biweekly). Two filing quirks surfaced on inspection: the pages numbered 5a–5e carry the April 2 date in the scans (they are Chapter One), and page 26 is the second page of the September 5–18 Drop City rock-loop piece even though it is filed with August 22.

Key ideas from the extractable text

Energy intuition: Baer starts from everyday physics (a 2000 lb car crashing at 60 mph converts to only 311 BTUs — about what one square foot of sunshine delivers; a pint of beer warming in the stomach takes 58–59 BTUs) to build intuition about BTUs, heat flow, and temperature differences. Chapter One closes with fables — the gasoline-drinking attendant Jerry, the sun-oil “baskers” — and a warning against trusting equations over experience.
Heat exchangers: Chapter Three tours junkyard heat exchangers as physical education — most photos taken at the ACME metal junkyard on North Second Street — with a materials conductivity table, counterflow explained via the heat exchangers in birds’ legs, and salvaged refrigerator panels proposed as solar collectors.
Thermostat critique: The June issue argues that thermostats make mammals behave like reptiles — outsourcing temperature regulation the body already handles (“Reptiles need mammal houses”), and imagines Honeywell surgical teams removing the now-unemployed organs.
Flat plate collectors: Baer explains collector physics from first principles — plate temperature, pipe spacing, single vs double glazing, sacrificed heat in gaps, and the cost of waking a collector’s thermal mass each morning. Windows and skylights are repeatedly named the best heat collectors.
Zomeworks devices in situ: The serialization documents the Skylid (freon-canister-driven insulating louvers) and Dave Harrison’s Beadwall (styrofoam beads vacuum-blown between glazings, invented in a UNM class), alongside Harold Hay’s Phoenix roof-pond work and Peter van Dresser’s “sun tempered” framing.
Rock storage: The September 5 issue describes the Drop City convective rock loop heater — hot air must leave at the top to warm all the rocks, pancake bins beat tall columns — and the September 26 issue revises the rule (what matters is where the air leaves, not where it enters) and works two house-sizing examples (Box #1 and Box #2).
Convection and bubble engines: Installment 8 treats every fluid volume in gravity as an engine (“reverse juice” water below 39 °F); installments 13 and the final issue describe eduction pumps and bubble wheels using immiscible liquid pairs (hexane-water, carbon tetrachloride-water) — low-temperature-difference engines that reappear in later thermosiphon work.
Government critique: Baer consistently questions government grants to universities and industry, comparing them to Ford studying Chevrolets. The final issue reports on the ISES US Section meeting in Cleveland: the A.D. Little $200,000 impact study and orbiting microwave-satellite scheme are skewered, Exxon’s $30 silicon solar cells admired (“beautiful but terribly expensive”), and Baer proposes the government stop subsidizing research and instead promise to buy solar, wind, tidal, and geothermal power at a high price.

Why it matters

accessible writing + junkyard education + first-principles physics = archive seedbed

The serialization is where most of the archive’s later ideas first appear in rough form. Flat plate collectors, rock storage, heat exchangers, convection and bubble engines, the Skylid and Beadwall, and the suspicion of institutional solar programs all start here. The tone — informal, opinionated, rooted in physical objects — sets the style for every later Baer document in the archive.

Most of the tribal-notes markdown files are untranscribed stubs pointing at PDF scans; the per-issue topics above were verified against the scans themselves. The scans still hold hand-drawn figures, photographs, and worked calculations beyond what any transcript captures.

Tribal Messenger solar serialization

How the serialization began

Topics covered by issue

Key ideas from the extractable text

Why it matters

See also