Getting an inch of snow is like winning 10 cents in the lottery.—Bill Watterson
Winter Masquerade (2012) was a delightful romp in the snow. It can be done.
Those of us sitting here in the heart of the Midwest are feeling rather pleased this morning. Sure, it’s cold, as it always is in January, but this year we’ve gotten off lucky. There is, at most, maybe two-and-a-half inches of snow on the ground with no more in the immediate forecast. By most any comparison, this is proving to be a delightfully mild winter and that makes us very happy.
Our friends along the East coast, from Virginia to Massachusets, are bracing for a blizzard this afternoon that could dump two to three feet worth of snow on them. Boston, of course, home of the everlasting winter, knows how to handle an event like this. After last year’s great snow-in, this storm is practically a cake walk. For our nation’s capitol, though, this snow is an Armageddon. The mayor of Washington D.C. has closed city schools and offices at noon, and is encouraging businesses around the city to do the same. Even underground transit will be closed by Saturday.
Federal offices are closed as well, which is great for all the government employees who actually get things done. Be sure that all the hot air, otherwise known as Congress, has already left the city, which may be one reason so much snow is in the forecast. In a way, though, D.C.’s tragedy is a great advantage for the rest of the country in that, the longer Congress stays away, the longer they can’t do something stupid, like attempting to repeal the Affordable Care Act for the 50 gazillionth time. From that perspective, the rest of the country wouldn’t really mind if the city stayed socked in until Spring. Sorry, D.C.
Since we have so very much experience with piles upon piles of snow, I thought this might be a good time to share some of our expertise with those who are about to experience one of nature’s most amazing displays of power. You really have no defense against a storm like this, so it is better to make some last-minute adjustments this morning so you’ll be able to survive until Monday. Not this coming Monday, mind you. We’re thinking the third Monday in April if you’re lucky. Here is our list of essentials.
- Rush to the store and buy everything. It doesn’t really matter how much food you already have, you must go buy more. Buy anything edible, just in case it doesn’t stop snowing and this is the beginning of the next ice age and you’ll never see your friends and family unthawed again. It doesn’t even matter if you don’t have enough room in your refrigerator. When it’s this cold, you can store foods right outside your window. Most likely, there’s not much left on the stores now but bad beer and brussel sprouts, but that can keep you alive.
- Make new friends and invite them over. This is a perfect time to make lots and lots of new friends. Hang out at the coffee shop (which will be the last place to close) and buy coffee for any prospective new partners. Now’s not the time to stand on morality, though, and it certainly isn’t a good time to be embracing monogamy. The more the marrier, and warmer! You never know but what you might need to help re-populate the city. This also gives you more options should you run out of food.
- “Borrow” the Netflix passcodes from four or five additional people. You don’t want to run out of entertainment during the storm, but neither does anyone else, and, sadly, Netflix has limits as to the numbe of devices that can be signed on to a single account simultaneously. Everyone is going to be watching Netflix, which means the passcodes belonging to the most popular people are likely to be ineffective. Stock up. Get the passcode from that little old lady three doors down who has all the cats. Hit up the wino on the second floor. Check around on dating sites. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
- Refill all your medications. This can be a little tricky if you’re on something that is highly regulated, but the last thing you, or any of us, want is for you to get stuck three days in without your crazy pills. This is a severe danger, because people on anti-depressants are often to depressed to remember their refills, and people on anti-anxiety meds are too jacked up to go by the pharmacy. There are also those regulartions about the number of pills you can have at one time. Lie. Go to multiple pharmacies. Do whatever it takes to make sure you have enough meds to get you through until Spring. Just don’t take them all at once.
- Assemble all the candles you can find. I’m not sure there are any Wicks ‘N’ Sticks locations still open (their website is completely gone), but if nothing else this would be a very good time to raid the Dollar Tree. It doesn’t matter if the candles have pictures of the Virgin Mary or Donkey from Shrek, you need all the candles you can find. Power outages are inevitable during a storm like this, and flashlights just don’t cut it because you can’t heat up a can of Dinty Moore over a fucking flashlight. You need candles. Be sure to save the wax as it melts, too, because it’s reusable once your other candles are gone. You can use shoestrings as wicks because you aren’t going anywhere.
- Leave instructions for your next of kin. Sadly, not everyone is going to survive this storm. As the days linger on and you grow hungry and delerious, you may post things on social media that would tarnish your sterling reputation. Make sure your next of kin knows your username and password for all your social media accounts so they can delete that shit upon your demise. You want people to remember the good, happy side of you, not the starving, raging, homicidal maniac you are about to become.
That’s about the best advice we have to offer. Those survival steps have kept folks in the Midwest going for almost 200 years now. We wish everyone about to be affected by today’s storm good health and long periods of sanity. For those who don’t make it, we promise to miss you and think of you every time we’re stranded and shivering in the cold. Be careful, stay safe, and, should you survive, keep in touch.
Sunday, January 26, 2025
Being About The Land.
With everything that’s going on in the world at the moment, I’m going to assign you some extra reading. You don’t necessarily need to do so right at this moment, but given that it’s Sunday and you likely didn’t have anything better planned, this seems like a good time to cover some things I simply don’t have time to write about. I try to keep morning updates between 300-1,000 words. If I go over 1,000 words, which I did three times this past week, it gets labeled as a ‘long read.’ Think of this as the background reading you might do before a college lecture.
Any of those articles are worthy of their own commentary and exploration, but I only have one post in me per day anymore. The need for brevity is not pleasant. I’m a strong advocate of long-form writing. Brains don’t retain headlines. To understand the world and the things going on in it requires volumes of information from multiple sources. Please, take the time to read and share. Sharing this post and its related articles helps keep others informed as well.
Just about the time I think I have a grip on my life and everything going on around it something always comes up and puts me back in bed. If previous experience is any indicator, I’ll be getting in extra mattress time for the next two weeks or so. Somewhere in there, we should have a biopsy for that three-centimeter nodule on my left thyroid. At least, it was only three centimeters two years ago; we’re hoping the damn thing didn’t grow. The ‘luxury’ of this time is that I get to lie there and ponder deeply the many challenges we’re facing. Our house isn’t being bombed. We’re not forced to relocate (yet). Compared to much of the rest of the world, we’re reasonably safe. However, recent events indicate we should take on a preparedness approach that is more aggressive than what we’ve done in the past.
In the past, I’ve looked at survivalists as some form of doomsday extremists. Kat’s mom has a survivalist thread to her cloth and we quietly laugh about her stockpile of dried foods and meals-ready-to-eat (MREs). She’s not as severe as those who build deep bunkers and have enough water stored to get them through nuclear fallout, but she takes the matter seriously and keeps her rations fresh. Given the events of this past week, I’m beginning to think that she’s not as reactionary as we’ve believed. Perhaps taking on more of a survivalist mindset would serve us all well.
Fueling the survivalist thoughts this morning are Felonious Punk’s comments aboard Air Force One about emptying Gaza of all Palestinians. Never mind that these people have occupied this territory for at least 6,000 years, arguably longer. Once nomadic tribes have settled down in recent centuries, built cities, hospitals, and schools. They have contributed to science, philosophy, and mathematics. They have homes and a deep, vibrant culture. And along comes the American Idiot who wants to ignore all that and make them all move. Obviously, he has no respect for people, their lives, and their history.
The same applies in our own country. Videos of the Tuskegee Airmen and women WWII pilots have been scrapped from Air Force training. The unconstitutional push to end birthright citizenship. The ridiculous assault on immigrants. People of sound mind would never consider the obliteration of history, culture, and civilization that is being pushed by this White House.
Across the street and one house to our North resides a multigenerational Latinx family. There are four generations living together in a three-bedroom house. Everyone works. By 7:00 each morning, they are all gone to various jobs, the babies to daycare. They come home and they keep working. They keep chickens that provide them with both meat and eggs. Everyone has a different assignment: cooking, cleaning, laundry, caring for the babies (of which there are now three). They own their house. The elder generation has lived there over 30 years. They are all US citizens. Yet, they are concerned that this administration might attempt to deport them.
For current generations, the future has never been more uncertain. We thought we were safe. We thought the Russians were the biggest threat to our lifestyle. We never considered that half of us would elect a brainless demagogue who has no respect for any of us. Today, there is no life in the United States that is not in danger, not from outside military forces, but from our own government.
One of the big issues during last year’s election was the price of eggs. One of the campaign promises that got Felonious Punk elected was that he’d bring those prices down. One week in, egg prices have gone up and so have other items such as insulin. The California Farm Bureau says fears in the Central Valley have led to migrant farm workers not showing up for work. This will result in higher food prices and a lower quality of life. Without access to affordable food, disease rates will increase.
Put all this together and it becomes clear that we need to, in the short term at least, take on a more survivalist mindset to how we live. One of the topics I think we need to revisit is gardening. Our last attempt, six or seven years ago, was an absolute disaster. We can’t even get weeds to grow in that part of the lawn now. What I’m thinking now is that we were on the wrong side of the house. Grass on the East side of the house grows significantly faster and thicker than anywhere else. That tells me that the soil there is, for whatever reason, more suitable for growing things. A garden might stand a chance of taking off.
Gardening with a survivalist mindset is significantly different from gardening for the pleasure of it, though. More thought has to be given to which crops produce the highest yield for the longest amount of time. Nutrient-dense vegetables like potatoes, sweet potatoes, kale, and spinach move to the top of the list. High-calorie crops, such as corn, beans, and squash, offer a significant energy source, which is important if we’re having to fight to survive. Plants like basil, oregano, echinacea, and chamomile can flavor your meals and provide natural remedies for various ailments. True survivalists look at perennial plants as well, but given Kat’s and my health concerns, I’m not sure planning that far into the future is worthwhile.
Survivalist gardening comes with its own challenges, starting with the amount of work that has to be put into making such a garden flourish. Working in the garden is relaxing for some people, but a survivalist garden pays attention to production rates and that means getting in there and giving plants the absolute best environment for growth. That takes a lot of time starting well before anything is planted. One has to pay attention to how things are arranged and planted, such as pole beans and tomatoes. The East side of our house gets more afternoon shade, so that becomes a factor as well. Do we have the energy that it takes to produce this type of garden? We may not have a choice. This could be a matter of survival.
Another challenge is what to do with everything one grows. Canning is a time-honored tradition in many homes and is great for preserving foods so that they’re available out of season. Have you ever tried canning, though? It’s hard work, takes an intense amount of time, and always carries with it the chance one might blow up the whole kitchen. Once the canning is done, one needs a place to store all the jars. We already don’t have enough space as it is! Where we would put everything is a serious concern.
Then, there are the dogs. For a long time, Kat has wanted to raise chickens. From a survivalist point of view, that’s a good idea. We could rather easily build a chicken coop along the South fence line. However, chickens have a bad habit of escaping from their coops, and dogs like ours have a bad habit of invading them. The garden would also need strong fencing to keep the dogs out. We didn’t do that with our last garden and I’m sure that’s one of the many reasons it failed.
While there are ways to meet most of those challenges, the answers tend to be expensive and money is another one of the things that we don’t have in abundance. The raw costs of fencing, fertilizer, and ground prep create a heavy row of red ink across the spreadsheet of profitability. Without a lot of hard work and high produce yield, there’s not much of an ROI in such a venture. Still, as the availability of food becomes more scarce and the prices continue to climb, by summer gardening may be the only way most people have of affording food.
We are fortunate to have enough space where gardening is even an option. People living in apartments have fewer choices and are likely to not be able to produce the amount of food their family needs. Community gardens can be an answer to that problem, but such planning needs to have already started and I’m afraid a large number of people won’t see the danger until their pantries are empty.
The challenges being thrust upon us are severe and unknown to current generations. We all thought was were well past the pioneer days of 150 or so years ago, yet here we are, needing to grow our own food and not certain that we won’t have to relocate later. While fighting the fascism of this administration is critical, we also have to give space to the need to survive in the here and now. If we only focus on one, we lose the battle for the other. The journey of the next four years is going to be exhausting even for healthy people, and Kat and I are not healthy.
As G considers his educational options, he’s leaning toward an option that would provide him with vocational training in construction or HVAC in addition to his normal coursework. Transportation is the biggest issue there as the nearest facility is in Fishers, where the buses don’t go. Still, with all the challenges of the future, he’s not wrong in thinking that one can’t count on a single form of employment being enough. A 40-hour workweek becomes irrelevant when one needs multiple jobs to survive.
Meanwhile, I’m sitting here in pain, struggling to breathe, and feeling envious of all the animals sleeping on my bed. There is a significant part of me that wants to give up.
There’s also a significant part of me that wants a waffle.
We’re going to need more coffee.
Share this:
Like this: