Classic American Cultural History

I remember that when I was growing up, my Mammaw had a liking for the acting skills of Michael Landon. I never saw the appeal, being more enamored to the likes of the entire cast of 21 Jump Street, but I am happy to report that whenever I am home for a vacation in Indiana as an adult, I get to enjoy Bonanza with my dad. He watches it on a weird half-channel called, "me TV." So that was my most recent exposure to Michael Landon until my roommate Amanda reminded me about Little House on the Prairie.

WHO in their right mind would ever have guessed that Little House on the Prairie would offer an episode that goes by the title of "Survival?"

I took notes while I watched. (Mock if you must, but this information will come in handy someday!) I also attempted to live up to my New Year's Resolution of being useful by writing a student video guide for the episode at the same time. Here are a few questions I wrote for the kids. Take a stab at them:

2. Which of the following best describes what the women/girls wear on their heads to keep warm in the wagon?

a. baseball caps            b. knit bonnets                        c. beanies         d. earmuffs

8. Can you think of a better way to transport a deer besides carrying it on your shoulders?

13. Why does Lamehorse take a hot poker out of the fire?

and finally...

16. Would you help someone if it meant risking your life? Why or why not?

17. In which circumstances, if any, do you think it is acceptable to tell a lie?

And now for the piece de resistance, my unedited field notes to this episode. 

Survival Tips from Little House on the Prairie

¨     Wear warm clothes when traveling in the snow

¨     Invest in a big axe, and a hatchet which you will NOT drop in the snow for a person of dubious motive to find

¨     Snowshoes!

¨     Mark your trail

¨     Learn, study and remember history

¨     Spend the time during which you are tied up to plan your escape.

¨     Echoing James Wesley Rawles, it’s good to know how to perform minor surgery in the event of an emergency.

¨     Go ahead and lie to the law if it could save somebody’s life.

¨     Echoing Erik Larson, always believe warnings about bad weather from people who have more experience than you.

Speaking of watching TV with roommates, I remember blitzing through the entire series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I wish I had taken notes. Oh, well. If you're a Buffy fan, please to remember my favorite episode, "Lover's Walk," from season three. Of course you can't watch the whole episode on youtube, but here's a link to the original version of the aspect in that episode that absolutely makes it my favorite. 

I fear I have strayed VERY FAR from my intended topic. That's the danger of the internet. I also fear I've spent too many posts talking about TV. If you will, though, consider this: these posts about TV have less to do with TV itself than they have to do with spending time with people.

I vow to dedicate the next posts to something that doesn't wiggle around on a screen powered by electricity. (Except of course that I plan a post about video games, because video games help us improve hand-eye coordination.) Until then, my loyal readers...

Lite Reading

As you know, I am busy reading Independence Days and How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It. The first is about food storage and preservation, and the second is about which guns to buy to stock your arsenal and how we should all invest in Pakistani medical kits, plenty of extra birth control, heirloom seeds and gold. SO I'll keep reading these things and reporting on them if there's anything of interest to a general readership.

In the meantime, in response to numerous recent requests on facebook about what to read, I will offer a list for myself and others. Surprisingly, I am a slow reader in my old age. It should not be surprising that most of the information I find useful in preparing for a possible catastrophe comes from history. I was thrilled with Erik Larson's Isaac's Storm. From this read, we can learn not to squabble pretending we know more than someone who could actually help us. We can also learn not to put off projects that we know need to be done "someday," and not to ignore warnings of imminent doom. I recommend it. Like the other of Larson's books that I have read, Devil in the White City, it starts out slow but pays off if you stick with it. The last line makes the whole read worth it.

Lately, I haven't finished anything else of note since the nice post-apocalypse utopia in After the Fall, which I read during Nevada Day weekend. Really, the only post-apocalypse aspect of After the Fall is its story of wanting to get back to your family, and how people who know how to do things can work together to accomplish good. Not for consumption by people who don't want to read about a lesbian main character.

Before that, it was summertime and I was reading Divergent (shout out to HydroJen's Book Envy blog!), The Urban Homestead and a couple of books about the Salem witch trials. I suppose it was those books that got me interested in thinking about building a skill set for a different economy. Which you may have noticed I'm not building. I'm just thinking about it.

Of course you're already familiar with the now-classic The Hunger Games, which teaches us how to prioritize in a pinch.

Other than that, books upcoming on my reading list are more by James Wesley Rawles: Patriots, and of course Alas, Babylon (recommended by Miss Gokey, whose name nearly escaped this post...). If I think of anything else useful, I will update. Until then, may as well practice reading like in the old days, from pages and not from a screen. But don't do that for too long, or I'll lose my loyal readers! Hahaha.

Barn's Burnt Down...

This title/first line of a famous haiku by Masahide, a late 17th-century samurai, was introduced to me by my traveling companion and perpetual star of my Single Girl's Guide to the Impending Apocalypse Blog, Miss Gokey. The full text of the haiku is:

"Barn's burnt down
now
I can see the moon."

It is particularly fitting that I use the poem in this post because my friend Oren (buy it!) participated in Indianaplolis' Encyclopedia reading last night after publishing a haiku on facebook in the early afternoon.

In my perpetually optimistic and lighthearted childlike naivete, I began this blog about the potential impending apocalypse. Well, kids, it's all fun and games until you start reading James Wesley Rawles, creator of SurvivalBlog. The first 25 pages of the first of his books that I'm planning to read convince me that the barn is indeed going to burn down. We are going to see the moon. We may as well know what we're looking at.

In that spirit, Miss Gokey and I made a triumphant return to the Lake Mead National Recreation Area to attend a little stargazing seminar and participate in the Globe at Night Campaign. Globe at Night is collecting data once a month in January, February, March and April to raise awareness of light pollution. You look at Orion, then submit your data via the web app. The website has family activity packs and detailed instructions. I encourage people to do this. Personally, I'm totally following Globe at Night on Twitter and I plan to do my own personal entry tomorrow night.

In fact, I found this video on Twitter, entitled, "Does Las Vegas Care About Their Light Pollution?" I would argue that we do. But this blog is not a forum for my ranting about how I'm tired of people not realizing that there are actual people with actual social consciences living here. So, back on task. The evening was fabulous. We:

- ate sour gummies
- took an alternate route to Lake Mead
- got (only slightly) lost twice even though we know that we're supposed to do research and recon before we head into the wilderness
- saw two jackrabbits
- saw a coyote (my first!)
- learned how to read the star chart (kinda)
- got free January star maps
- learned about open-source stargazing software at Stellarium
- learned how to use our fingers to figure out our latitude (at least in the Northern Hemisphere)
and finally...

...the piece de resistance (drum roll):

we viewed the Orion Nebula through a telescope.
Yeah, it's under his skirt. It's okay. These things happen.

So, when James Wesley Rawles convinces me that no matter how much I scramble, I can never, ever be prepared for "the end of the world as we know it," I can revert back to the words of the heroic samurai. When the barn burns down around us, we will be able to pay more attention to the stars.

Have fun submitting your data to the project! Let me know how it goes.

Battling the Elements

REAL blogs, blogs like The Wannabe, post often and on a regular schedule.

Yeah, this blog isn't like that. Instead, I'll post when I find something interesting. Lucky for you, I've been joyriding around the paradoxical city of Las Vegas, burning up the fossil fuel and increasing my carbon footprint. This particular post cost $1.97 in valuable, dwindling fuel according to Road Trip America. 

I feel like many of you already know these things, but it's new to me, so hopefully there are one or two of you out there who will be able to use this information. 

I think it's important for me, as I prepare for the possible apocalypse, to better use the resources available to me in order to learn skills. To that end, I attended the Winter Camping Basics class at REI (bougie outdoor gear store that gives classes designed to get you to buy things) this evening. I attended the class with Miss Gokey, who thought the instructor was quite attractive. I tried to get her to flirt with him, but she refused. Since it was a free course, I don't feel bad about ripping off the content, adding my editorializing, and passing this gold on to you. I believe this is relevant to surviving the apocalypse in case we end up on the road in the winter-time. 

Like the copyright-wary social studies teacher that I am, I'll change the notes just enough to not get sued. 

The handout gives us ten essentials for winter camping: 

1) Navigation: know how to get where you're going. Map, GPS, compass, whatever you need to stay oriented. 

2) Sun protection: sunglasses and sunscreen. 

3) Insulation. 

#3 includes clothing: a base layer, an insulation layer, and outerwear. NO COTTON! Wool is the way to go. Personally, I recommend flannel pajamas! I'm partial to the sledding penguins, but that's just because my parents bought them for me for Christmas. 

4) Light: flashlight/lantern/headlamp + extra batteries

5) First-aid kit

6) fuego

7) repair supplies: knife/duct tape/trash bags

(You'd be shocked and weirdly pleased to know how useful trash bags and EXTRA trash bags can be.)

8) Food. Lots of food. Especially carbs. There were images of fancy camping stoves, but something about the idea of carrying a little canister of kerosene into the wilderness still freaks me out!

9) Water. While at the bougie store, I did pick up some Potable Aqua Chlorine Dioxide Water Purification Tablets, which kills Bacteria, Viruses and Cysts including Cryptosporidium. But I also learned that this steri-pen exists! The steri-pen is exciting because it uses batteries to channel UV rays that neutralize bad stuff in the water. It works, according to the "teacher" of the workshop, in the third world. Anything that prevents third world amoebas is alright with me! Haha. 

10) Tent, shelter, etc. 

One more note: 5,000 cubic inches in a backpack is "relative luxury." Just so you know. 

On that happy note, having taken up too much of your time already, I bid you adieu. 

Like a proper teacher, I have "taught" you the word bougie so that you can understand its contexts in posts of the near future. 

Thanks for reading, and remember, "the map is not the territory." 

Location, Location, Location

The problem with long weekends is that although it is fun to think about laying around all day, when it's 1:30 p.m. and you're still in your pajamas (therefore not fit for public viewing) you get a little bored.

If you're me, this means you type, "places to go during the apocalypse" into Google to see what comes up.
Turns out the first few results are from Business Insider and Mother Nature News.

I like the second article better, because although it is limited to the United States, it has actual information in it that you may not have known before. I personally had never heard of The Greenbrier Resort, Mount Weather or Cheyenne Mountain. I would love to begin an investigation into the location of Vivos, but I doubt I would have much success. If you sleep at night on top of large piles of money, this is the story for you, as you can actually purchase shelter. This reminds me of the NWI Times article about 1950s bomb shelters that I clipped over the summer. I particularly like the last place listed, "Your crazy neighbor's house." Haha. Indeed.

While searching for the aforelinked article, I participated in a survey question, "Should Hammond sell water to Illinois residents?" I voted, "no," and found out that I stand with the minority, 39%. Fools! Don't you know water is the most valuable resource in the New Economy? Ugh!

At first, I thought I would like the Business Insider piece, because it mentions Denver, and I like Denver, but later on it gets racist and/or takes the attitude that the U.S. can and should continue taking over the world, so...if you're like me and you prefer my website over and above all others, I've saved you some time. Apparently, that's the Business Insider style: snarky. I'm all about some snark, but I like to be on the giving end of it instead of the receiving end. Much more useful than the original article was this list of 20 things to stock up on, which I found in the Economic Collapse Blog while clicking away from the previous site.

Lest you think that all I do is search the internet for signs of gloom and doom, I thought I would post some photos of last weekend's trip with Miss Gokey to the Historic Railroad Tunnel Trail in the Lake Mead NRA. It is part of the national Rails-to-Trails Conservancy and provided some good practice, since walking long distances seems like it's going to be my M.O. after the end of the world. If you lack the time or stamina to read through the articles, I will tell you that the trail used to be a railroad line that shipped supplies in for the building of the Boulder/Hoover Dam. If you *do* read the articles, please take special note of the fact that this part of the rail line is particularly awesome because most of the rest of it is underwater. Ok, I have to go. I need to watch Northfork again. Since the theme of this post is location, I thought I'd share a good one. Enjoy.

Here's a distant view of what we've done to our hydroelectric miracle...

These concrete plugs were used as placeholders at the bottom of the lake before the water went in.  Then they got thrown off the side of the railroad bridge.

The remainder of these photos are the doorways to the tunnels &tc.

Back to Reality

There's a reality show that places volunteers in a post-apocalyptic-Los-Angeles-warehouse for 10 weeks.

The show is called The Colony and is available on Netflix. Fascinating idea, isn't it? The volunteers are all weirdly skilled at strange things. It kind of reminds me of the values-clarification lesson where you write a list of occupations on the board and have the students create a new society on the moon (or wherever) using just a few of the people on the list. I have been making my way through Season 1 (2009). Honestly, if and when Season 2 becomes available, I will not watch it, as there are plenty of other post-apocalypse shows out there that I should sample and review for you. Anyhow, the participants in Season 1 include a "handyman," an electrician, a doctor, a trauma nurse, a martial arts instructor, a marine biologist (?), a contractor, and three engineers: a computer engineer, an aerospace engineer, and a mechanical engineer. 

WHY ON EARTH DON'T THEY HAVE A HISTORY TEACHER? One of the show's viewer comments on  imdb.com says, "I guess in the post apocalypse no run-of-the-mill folks manage to survive and come together." 

So these ten people are stuck in a warehouse where they miraculously have most of the stuff that they need to survive. As in any reality show, they also have producers who help them out if one of the disaster contexts they (the producers) design somehow goes horribly wrong. Disaster contexts include such things as, "resource scarcity," "unity and complacency," "exploration of faith," "dealing with loss," etc. It was this last one, "dealing with loss," wherein we hear the narrator tell us that a member of the cast has been removed from the experiment but the "colonists" don't know it, and then we get to watch them grieve, that convinced me that there needs to be a history teacher in any disaster scenario. A history teacher would've reminded them that a producer was currently driving their friend to McDonald's. When they resort to eating rats, the history teacher would've reminded them that they were near a river previously known for its edible fish population. Whatever. I'll see where Season 1 goes and then move on. IMDb informs me that viewers who like The Colony also like an earlier series, Jericho from 2006. I think I'll put that on the queue next. 

In the meantime, this show is still on the air. It has an active website where you can audition for Season 3 if you're interested. 

At any rate, you should stop by the site and do the best thing (in my opinion) about this show, the Survival Personality Quiz. It's less real but more entertaining than the one from Yes! magazine that I posted a few weeks back. Here is my own result: "Your odds of survival in a post-apocalyptic world are pretty slim – and that’s OK with you because there is no life without TiVo and chai latte. Hopefully, you won't suffer too much on your way out." 

On that happy note, I may as well head toward Starbucks. 

It's About Time

What follows is my review of Time magazine's 2012 User's Guide: Essential Info for the Year Ahead. 

I was disappointed in the attempts of the writers to make political forecasts, as these forecasts do not help my quest to prepare for the uncertain future. However, there are some gorgeous maps in the issue that you social studies teachers will want to rip out and share with your students, including "Where the 1% Lives," "A Map of Trouble," and "Million-Dollar Disasters."

This last map was located in the middle of my favorite article in the issue, "Weather Beaten." I suspect that my enjoyment of the story is based on my continuing read of Erik Larson's Isaac's Storm and my lifelong love for Tom Skilling. I was devastated to learn that Tom Skilling isn't on Twitter, although I have recently liked him on Facebook.

Quoting "Weather Beaten:" "...the answer for anyone in harm's way is to quit seeing the warnings as a hassle, an inconvenience, a chance to gather for a hurricane party. It takes only one gust of wind, one loose foundation, to change your life forever. That's not sensationalism; it's the hard truth." Now THAT, my friends, is apocalyptic! Kudos to Jim Cantore. Jim Cantore has a Twitter account.

I also enjoyed "Fearing Well," because I prefer the soft sciences, and "Control Freaks," about how TV networks are dealing with the switch to on-demand streaming. Again, however, these pages offer little advice.

Finally, "The Last Party" is a fun little flow chart suggesting activities and travel ideas for "your options for how to ring in Armageddon."

There you have it. In my quest to be useful, I have saved you some time and helped you to decide whether to budget $4.99 for the issue on your next trip to the store. I am living up to my New Year's resolution. If you want online access to the content (more useful for you social studies teachers, perhaps, than ripping the maps out, especially if you don't have a document camera), all access magazine-tablet magazine-online is $30 for one year. As for me, I will save my $30 towards buying a variety of sources from the newsstands.

Happy newsmongering!

I'm All About Some Food

Following the Great Casserole Fail of 2012, wherein Miss Gokey came over for a cheese blintz casserole that flopped and forced us to call Marco's Pizza, I decided to commit this post to food.

One of the tasks in Independence Days is to sit down and make a list of 4 breakfasts, 4 lunches, 4 snacks and 4 dinners that your family will actually eat (SCORE for being single!), that you can make using mostly ingredients that can sit on a pantry shelf or come from the garden.

After scratching cheese blintz casserole from my list and vowing never to trust recipes from the Northwest Indiana Times again, here is what I came up with (based on what I have RIGHT NOW):

Breakfasts:
1) granola
2) donuts
3) oatmeal
4) breakfast bars (highly processed, maybe not what Sharon Astyk had in mind.)

Lunches:
1) protein shake
2) PB&J with pretzels/chips
3) diet coke
4) carrots

Snacks:
1) trail mix
2) dried fruit
3) cookies
4) nuts

Dinners:
1) soup
2) pasta
3) ?
4) ?

"Off to a good start," indeed. Good thing I keep lots of breakfast items and I really like soup. What does your list look like?

I watched a documentary called Ingredients on Netflix. It was about the whole "buy local" movement that has been popular for many years now, but which I am just now hearing about. Growing food and buying locally is also a big part of Kelly Coyne's The Urban Homestead. I do not keep a garden because it only frustrates me, although I know people who do. For you, I found this handy guide to eating your flowers.

It is difficult to buy locally here on the northern edge of the Mojave Desert, but I do what I can by buying regionally. I received an e-mail in response to an inquiry I made to Tesco, the company in the U.K. that owns my favorite grocery store. It seems that 60% of my produce is grown in California, so that makes me feel better, kinda...

So, this has been my first post about food, but it definitely won't be the last. Happy Eating! May all of your casseroles be delicious the first time you make them.

National Geographic Weighs In

This beautiful article gives National Geographic's official stance on the end of the Mayan calendar.

Since most of you cannot invest the hour to watch the video linked in the article, 2012: Countdown to Armageddon, I watched it for you. It features a "young scientist" living my dream of traveling around the world being smart. It concludes with a timely message about the dangers of climate change, a popular ending for some, less popular with others.

Good Times with Google Maps

I am reading the book Independence Days by Sharon Astyk.

One of the things she recommends doing in your free time is making "backroads" directions for close friends and family, so that in a catastrophic event that closes the highways, your loved ones will still be able to get to you. I envision this scenario post-fossil-fuel and have therefore come up with the following information.

It will only take me five hours on foot to meet up with Miss Gokey at Mojave this way.

It will only take me TWO hours to walk to the corner of Lake Mead and Lamb like this.

Sorry, Krista, but seven hours? After that, I think I would lack the ability to climb over the surely-by-then-defunct gate! We should devise an equidistant place to meet, because the post-apocalypse world is nowhere that I want to live without your banana bread and jam!

In the process of doing this task, I learned that it would take just short of a week for my parents to get from the recently-closed public library around the corner from their house to within a mile of me on their tandem bicycle by following these directions.

From there, it would take us just short of a month to walk to the middle school around the corner from my bff's house by this route.

Although the directions are in beta and warn that "This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths," I feel that I have taken one more productive step toward preparing for the upcoming apocalypse. If we make it to 2013, perhaps one day I'll strap my tent to my back and start walking towards home during summer vacation. Probably not.

On a slightly off-topic but still related matter, this evening after Amanda and I opened our matching packages of free address labels from the National Museum of the American Indian, we celebrated Christmas. I received The Zombie Combat Manual: A guide to fighting the living dead. 
This super-useful gift will come in very handy, I'm sure.

In the meantime, though, I will continue enjoying Erik Larson's Isaac's Storm, about how Isaac Cline fared in the great hurricane that hit Galveston, TX in 1900.

A Day Late and a Dollar Short

As I may have mentioned in my last post, I planned on starting a NEW blog entitled, "Single Girl's Guide to Impending Apocalypse." Upon reflection, I realized that would mean I had no fewer than four online forums to update on a weekly basis, so I decided to be efficient and make "Single Girl's Guide to Impending Apocalypse" eat my current personal blog for the duration of 2012.

This plan allows me to continue to promote "real" blogs like The Wannabe, Mel's Journey and the perennially awesome, although infrequently updated Kaleidoscope Faith. 

I've been preparing for the end of the economy (that's what I believe will happen in 2012: before the next inauguration, POTUS will ask Congress to raise the debt ceiling, and Congress, ever surly and contrary, will refuse. And all world financial systems will implode. Or something like that.) ever since I played my first game of Chicken Riot two years ago.

But I really started to worry when I took the Yes! magazine "How Resilient Are You" quiz and scored an abysmal, "You're off to a good start." It was after that devastating magazine quiz that I sent the famous text message: "I don't even know how to train carrier pigeons!!!" You can take the quiz here.

It is in a spirit of reflection, preparation, artful conversation and a little pinch of good old-fashioned hysteria that I will dedicate this web address for the next 364 days to a discussion of the end of the Mayan calendar.

Happy reading! Enjoy.