Maine farmers came out today to protest the cuts to Food for Schools and other agricultural bills that support Maine farmers. Tractor brigade!
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this was a good read. i do not consider myself a prepper, but i do keep emergency stores of canned food, bottled water and first aid supplies. you know… hurricane prep.
the takeaway i got was that the wiser strategy or survival is collectivism over “rugged individualism”. it truly does make better sense to know your immediate neighbors, take care to help neighbors in times of emergency (like a major storm, or the fascist takeover and collapse of society) rather than bunker down with only supplies for yourself… and guns.
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This is the nature of society. I know a hell of a lot about medicine, herbs, growing food (including canning, dehydrating, pickling, etc), working wood. I know jack shit about mechanical stuff, hunting, fishing and many other topics that would be important. No one has all the knowledge needed to get through a crisis of more than a short period of time. Having a community is absolutely vital.
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Yeah, I think that’s the point… certainly, it’s wise to have supplies on hand in case of emergencies like a hurricane, wildfire, what have you, but long term, hoarding isn’t helpful. Community is…
Yep!
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I’m a proud lefty prepper and it’s good to see acknowledgement that we exist. Like religion, it’s one of those things that seems to have been just assumed to only exist on the right in some weird way. The culture wars and stereotypes have truly screwed everyone over in multiple ways.
As a minor side note in this topic, I hate that my algorithm insists on sending me Republican political content just because I am interested in building a windmill for grinding my corn!
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Totally. Have you ever watched “Alone?”
It’s the manliest men who seem to end up the most shriveled and depressed, despite all their rugged, individual skills.
My favorite season had a young woman who wanted to have a nice time. She made a chair to watch the sunset from, and I think some kind of musical instrument. She was doing fine, but when she found herself dwelling on the monetary prize instead of the overall experience, she tapped out. With food to spare (she foraged a fair bit).
Maybe two days later the last contender tapped out and the winner was named. He was a shadow of his former self. At the reunion/show wrap up, you could see the utter baffled looks on those last guys’ faces when they saw she’d left on her own terms, healthy of body, mind and spirit, and with food to spare.
Not really “community,” but she brought the theme of building something nice into the mix, instead of just seeing it as this ordeal to survive.
(Caveat: though they try to create equal “territories” in that show, in terms of access to resources, it’s always a bit of a gamble. But when I was watching it all the time, I was kind of surprised how much effort everyone put into hunting in lieu of foraging!)
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You’re reminding me of another show: Frontier House.
One of the families kept insisting that they were in danger of real starvation because they weren’t able to eat enough meat, and when given an opportunity to add animals to their homestead chose a cow. They did not do well on multiple levels. I think they even left early.
One of the families did a lot more planting of food, and when given the same opportunity for animals chose chickens and a goat. They did great!
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Putting this here, so I can watch it later!
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The only season I watched showed how difficult it was for people to eat enough to maintain their body weight. Most were trying to fish or eat what they found under rocks, with little success. However, there was one man who had excellent survival skills. He built a yurt, trapped an animal, and seemed like he could stay indefinitely. Although he was a successful hunter, he pointed out that doesn’t make you a competent butcher. He did the best he could in the amount of time he had before hiding what he couldn’t eat or safely preserve. Other predators in the area tended to come out at night, so he buried what was left.
In the end he tapped out because he was worried about his mother. She had been ill before the show. IIRC he decided he needed to spend more time with her.
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The Good Life.
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Includes Lesson 18 from On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder.
And, ends like this:
The night before I was stopped by the police, I had been driving that truck through water. It was a time of high rain in the central United States. Highways were flooded.
In the pre-revolutionary France of the eighteenth century, decadent rulers said “après nous, le déluge” — “after us, the flood.” We care not at all about the consequences of our actions; we are here to profit so long as we can. This is the attitude of Musk, Trump, and the rest. They are in it for themselves, provoking disasters for the rest of us along the way.
A few days before that drive began, I finished my doctoral dissertation, about revolutions, based on research in post-communist Poland. One of my supervisors was the the British historian Timothy Garton Ash. Considering the task of Poland’s new democratic government, he reversed the formula of French royalty, writing: “après le deluge, nous.”
After the flood, we remain. The disaster brought by the decadent is part of the story. But it is not the conclusion. It is what we do next that matters.
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From The Cure at Troy
By Seamus Heaney
Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured
History says, don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.
Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there’s fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky
That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
of new life at its term.
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Here are some resistance strategies on engaging with / using GOP and MAGA supporters to achieve our goals:
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Stop being emotionally reactive; let’s focus on the outcome.
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Okay, no namecalling, but she then had a magnificent list of names to call him!!! 
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Did she say Nice-ty? Portmanteau of Nice and Nasty?
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“It has always seemed strange to me,” said Doc. “The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”
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