How to Take Care of People and Bikes

I've been trying to figure out how to fix the blog up a bit so that it looks better. I'm not a fan of clutter, so one of the things I've been fretting over are the links off to the side. There's a whole heap of them. Some of them lead to invaluable information and some would probably just be better off as bookmarks for me. So in trying to figure how to trim and rearrange my links lists, I've ended up -- not-so-surprisingly -- finding even more links to add. For now, I'll just share them here until I've figured out whether they're keepers. Many of them are geared towards skills acquisition or low-tech alternatives to things we usually take for granted in the age of cheap fossil fuels.

For instance, I found a free online book called Where There is no Dentist which contains information on how to treat mouth-related problems in a setting where the services of a dentist aren't available. Of course, you still need to have certain supplies on hand, including dentists tools. I'm no dentist, so I can't vouch for the information. It comes from a non-profit org called Health Wrights, which works to advance health, basic rights, self-determination and social justice in have-not countries. Another group called The Hesperian Foundation (or Hesperian) which is "a non-profit publisher of books and newsletters for community-based healthcare" has similar books called Where There is no Doctor and A Book for Midwives. Here's a link to all of their free book downloads.

Of particular interest to me right now was to find some information on bicycle repairs. Whenever anything goes wrong with my bike, which is my primary source of transportation and exercise, it seems that said bike invariable ends up in the shop for a minimum of 24 hours and I end up having to fork over anywhere from $35 to $100. So? It's in my best interest right now to learn how to repair my own bike. Additionally, as oil supplies continue to diminish in the future and this cost downturn we're experiencing now ends up being nothing but a nostalgic memory, things like bicycles will become invaluable when it comes to transportation over short distances. Possessing basic maintenance and fix-it skills will be vital. The Bicycle Tutor site features over 40 videos on everything from how to check for chain wear to how to true your own wheels. The site also has a links section that lists over a dozen other websites that teach you about bike repair.

Crochet Chain Stitch

The chain stitch is sort of the equivalent of "casting on" in knitting. It's basically what you need to do to get started -- to create that first row from which you then crochet your project. I like this video better than the previous video I posted. It only covers this one part, though. Before you can even get to this point, you need to know how to make a slip knot. Click here for a video that shows you how.

These, and the rest of the instructional crochet videos I'll be posting, were found via the Knit Witch website.

Skills, sustainability and self-reliance links

I'll be adding these links to the left of the page over the next few days, but thought I'd share them here first.

Here's a new foraging link -- a free e-book about acorns, a wild edible found readily across North America.

You'll find out almost everything you want to know about preserving food here at the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

This was by far one of the most intriguing (and potentially dangerous) things I've come across in a while. I've only glanced through it. It's a .pdf guide about practicing medicine in austere conditions where appropriate technology and professional assistance are unavailable. (I'm no medical expert, so I'm certainly not recommending any of the info in that guide, which is full of disclaimers itself.)

Then there's Howtopedia -- the Wikipedia of practical skills, where users are invited to write articles to contribute to this self-described practical knowledge library.

Finally, here's a simple guide on how to make homemade cider vinegar.

Peak Oil, The Disposable Society and Exchanging Skills

I was speaking to a friend a few weeks ago about wanting to start up a local group to trade off skills -- the kinds of practical abilities these last few generations have more or less lost, thanks to plentiful and cheap energy having enabled (and accelerated) our consumerism. We're a disposable society, and I mean that in every sense of the expression. On one hand, long after we wipe ourselves out, life on this planet will keep on going on. On the other hand, we're also disposable in the sense that cheap oil has allowed us to evolve into wasteful creatures, to the point where we no longer even know where the hell to put all of our garbage.

A friend of mine frequently points out how our city is constantly littered with disposable Tim Horton's coffee cups, for instance. We leave our homes in the morning, spend minutes idling at a drive-through for a cup of coffee in a paper cup with a plastic top, which inevitably ends up on the ground or in a garbage can. For someone with a mean caffeine habit, investing in a travel mug and brewing a pot at home in the morning would pay for itself in a month. You can even buy a container of Tim Horton's coffee to make yourself (I say this in response to some Tim's addicts who insist that they like the specific taste of their coffee). What's the fascination with having something to throw away?

The ridiculousness of it all struck me yesterday as I popped into the local supermarket to discover a new entry in the ''cheap plastics 'r' us'' book of wastefulness. In the produce section, I discovered small clear plastic containers, each holding smaller plastic bags with what looked like prewashed and cut fruit. For instance, one baggie contained 3-4 grapes in a smaller baggie, and then a couple of orange segments in a second baggie. Fruit -- something sold loose and with its own skin, wrapped in plastic baggies inside bigger plastic baggies inside a plastic container, undoubtedly carried home in a plastic bag. I don't get it. It's obviously not about convenience since I could peel an orange faster than it would take me to cut open all of that plastic.

When I was a kid, I remember reading old Little House on the Prairie books with wonder at the lengthy descriptions of how food was grown or gathered, and preserved. Things were dried, or salted, or pickled in those Tupperware-free days. I grew up in a home where pies were made from scratch -- from strawberries we picked ourselves, with a family that engaged in the annual fiddlehead picking ritual so popular in the Maritimes and Maine. Once a year, my mother and some of my older cousins would head out to a relative's farm or large garden and load up pillowcases with string beans and then bring them home, where she and my grandmother would spend an afternoon sorting through them and snapping off their ends to prepare them for canning.

Even with that, though, I still remember leaving home for my first year of university and not even knowing how to do anything but open a can or follow the simple instructions on the side of a box. I made Kraft Dinner and ate Mr. Noodles. I had frozen pizza and Campbell's Soup. I jumped into consumerism head-first because I could. It wasn't until years later, when I became a vegetarian and became mindful of the foods I ate, that I actually learned to cook whole foods; it wasn't until I had my first garden that I learned how to preserve herbs and vegetables. These were skills I should have and could have learned from my mother and grandmother, but at the time, there was no sense of a need for them to be passed on to me. After all, a strawberry pie could be bought frozen at the supermarket, where canned or frozen string beans were also plentiful.

So oil's running out. Cheap plastic and cheap energy are running out. Consumerism is convenient for us for now, but at the price of leaving us dependent on cheap plastic and cheap energy instead of learning hands on how to prepare and preserve things ourselves. And it's not just about food. Which brings me back to the original idea I mentioned in this post. Since consumerism has led to a breakdown in the traditional passing on of skills that enable a certain amount of self-sufficiency (and that certainly lead to a less disposable lifestyle), it seems to me that the best way to go about remedying this is to find others who have some sort of expertise in this or that area (composting, knitting, bicycle repair, foraging, wine making -- heck, even darning socks) and to trade off these skills with each other in some sort of informal but organized manner. Anyone in my area interested?