Not to be confused...

Here's a valuable lesson I learned just now:DO NOT confuse James Wesley Rawles' official SurvivalBlog with the less scrupulous commercial site with the suspiciously similar URL. The latter will try to sell you a very handy magnesium firestarter for $12.95. We already know you can get the same thing on amazon.com for $5.

I went looking for James Wesley Rawles' site again today because this past weekend, I was able to help my friend Dana while she moved into her new house. WELL...now that I said that, I don't know how much I helped...I'll say I visited her while she was moving in and ate a lot of her cookies.

The sun doesn't set in MiddleO'Nowhere, Michigan until about 9 p.m., so it must have been around 10 or 10:30, when the noise of the crickets surrounded us as we sat around the fire, that I made the comment, "Yeah, I'm going to die in the first phase. There's no way I could live out here in MiddleO'Nowhere." I was pretty scared just thanks to the darkness and the crickets.

Fear aside, I also thought that Dana's new crib would be a pretty sweet place to be in the apocalypse, so I thought I would compare her property to James Wesley Rawles' "Criteria for Choosing a Retreat Locale in the Continental United States." I will concentrate on the positive. If you'd like to see both sides, the negative and positive, I have hyperlinked it for you.

• There is a source of water in the back yard.
• Plenty of sunlight for gardening (and grapevines for making wine!)
• Low to low-moderate ranking on the natural hazards scale
• Not in the path of real estate developers
• Not near any nuclear power plants

Combine with these basics the fact that the surrounding area is relatively away from major highways and also fairly pro-gun, I do declare that Dana has made a very good choice of home vis-a-vis the potential end of the world. I don't think she will have any problems, but I do suggest that food storage be her next apocalypse priority. :)

I would post a photo, but I'll have to add it in the next two weeks, because my T-Mobile Sidekick (aka "Beezlebub") has decided to force me to practice living without my handheld electronic device.

I can still play Fruit Ninja, and at the end of the day, that's what really matters. But it won't read my SD card, and neither will this AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual Core Processor that I'm working with, either. (I used big words for the sake of using big words, but really I have no idea whether the processor has anything to do with the card readers, and I'm guessing it probably doesn't).

Memory Eraser

As I predicted as I was leaving Don Sutton's garage on Saturday night to go over to Miss Gokey's and plan our fabulous SPRING BREEEEEAAAAAK!!!!! (upcoming), I sat down today on my freshly-weeded patio, put on my gloves and safety glasses, picked up my preform and remembered...absolutely nothing.

I will prevail, however. Via YouTube and the magical wonderland known as the Clark County Public Library, I will remember how to make a sharp pointy weapon from a rock. That's what Don Sutton was teaching me how to do in a lesson I dubbed "flintknapping for the total beginner." It was super intense. Here are two of the arrow tips that Mr. Sutton demonstrated making for me.

The process of flintknapping is truly amazing, and this past Saturday's excursion to North Las Vegas to see and try it was one of the best possible uses of my time that I can think of. Mr. Sutton is an artist. Here's a link to some of the pieces he makes.

Flintknapping is more physical than any of my other hobbies. Forgive me for saying so, but although my shape is good, I am not in good shape. That's why it took me a day and a half to sit down and try it again. My arms were sore from exerting force, although Mr. Sutton said such exertion was unnecessary and advised me not to grunt. I seem to remember that I also whined at one point, issuing the same kind of whimper as my parents' border collie when he wants to hit the trail but you're not moving.

I am not a patient person, but getting a boulder down to the size of the items you see in the photo above is an exercise in meditative patience. You kind of have to get the rock to talk to you. It's good at first, almost shouting, "hit me here!" But by the end of the process, when you almost have an arrowhead, the rock forgets to say, "Attention Patawan: you are holding me backwards and upside-down."

Imagine the delight of my students if they knew that in addition to talking to my own self, the computer and the walls, I now also talk to rocks.

During a nice Sunday conversation with Dana of Kaleidoscope Faith, I was talking at her and saying that these are exactly the types of skills that we need to learn and pass on to future generations lest they get lost. Judging from the forums and events that happen nationwide, there's no danger of losing this skill any time soon. Nevertheless.

Below is a photo of the kit and sundry goodies with which I left Mr. Sutton's garage. The copper tools simulate the antlers the indigenous people would have used during the Neolithic Age as they chased their food sources around.

It would be so cool to be able to say, "Make a pointy weapon from a big rock? Yeah, I can do that."

I can't say that yet, but I will be able to someday. 

Happy working on your marketable skills, loyal readers!