Free Learner

The Witch of Hebron

I've now finished Jim Kunstler's latest, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  I'll just mention a few disconnected things that I liked.

The world that he's imagined looks a bit like the 19th century, but with the occasional nylon rope or carbon fiber fishing rod thrown in, salvaged from the "old times," i.e. today.  The high-tech items are irreplaceable in the new times, and are very much treasured.  In contrast, much of the old times clothing which is still being worn seems absolutely ridiculous.  In the middle of a scene in which three men are reviving a woman who's almost been killed, one of them runs to find her some more clothing.  He comes back with, among other things, a shirt featuring the Bugs Bunny Road Runner, with a speech bubble reading "beep beep."  In contrast to the rather dark drama which is unfolding, the shirt seems incredibly stupid.  And there among the descriptions of gorgeous landscapes and life-and-death struggles you have the guy in the Ben & Jerry's T-shirt with cows on it.  The inanity seems almost offensive.

The central importance of food comes through just because of the number of times it's described, which is constantly.  That's not a complaint-- it's interesting.  Roasted dandelion root "coffee" and peppermint tea; chili pepper jelly (since there's no pepper); salads of lettuce and rocket (arugula) dressed in buttermilk, honey, and cider vinegar dressing (oil is very scarce); applejack, plum brandy, and corn whiskey; wheels of hard cheese; ramekins of butter; and crocks of sauerkraut and pickles.  Again, there are the intrusions from the 20th century; one man uses his old refrigerator as a meat smoker, since the electric has been off entirely for months.  Everyone has a kitchen garden and chickens, many families have a goat, and -- if they're really lucky -- a cow.  It's October in the book, and people are relishing the last of the fresh salads, very much aware that they won't have them again till early spring when the dandelions emerge.  Where food is an afterthought today-- just a matter of which drive-through to visit, oftentimes-- the procurement of food is a constant task in the book, but it's also one of the main sources of pleasure.  Coffee, black tea, pepper, and cinnamon are very much missed.  (There's also a reminiscence about ordering a Bloomin' Onion and a rack of ribs at the Outback, back in the old times.  This was pretty funny, since it's hard to imagine Kunstler having eaten these before.)

Children in the book seem to get older faster, which is something I would expect, since I've read John Taylor Gatto on the subject of "extending childhood" via public schooling (a scheme dating back to the early 20th century).  During harvest season the one-room school is held only half a day, since the children are needed at home.

Holidays are much more important, even Halloween.  The passage of time is meaningful to everyday life in a way that it isn't today, so this only makes sense.

The plot and characters are entertaining as well, as are the linguistic changes (there's been a return of "dalgurned," "ding-danged," "this here" and "sumbitch," but only among the religious sect).  But I really just loved being immersed in an imagined future which is both better and worse than ours today.  And I think it's useful, too, because it's merely an exaggerated version of what a country staring down peak oil and hyperinflation is actually looking at: massive re-localization and simplification.  Let's hope it happens as slowly as possible so we have more time to adapt than the people in Kunstler's last two novels.

Reading Kunstler

I'm now reading The Witch of Hebron by Jim Kunstler and quite enjoying it.  If you like post-apocalyptic fiction, you might want to try World Made By Hand first.

 

Update on making preparations...

Since I posted that site with all the survivalism / sustainable living stuff, I thought I'd explain where my own family is on this.

One change is that, as it turns out, I am very bad at rotating food.  You're supposed to store what you eat and eat what you store.  Well, we weren't doing that.  So, some food has been donated to the food gatherers, some has been eaten, some is still okay, and some I'll have to throw out.  (I'm not counting the buckets of wheat, salt, sugar, etc which keep practically forever and which constitute most of our food; it's the canned food I'm talking about.)  I'm now leaning toward keeping cash and a list of items to purchase rather than the actual items themselves.  Some preppers would say this is a terrible idea because a currency collapse / bank holiday can happen overnight, "like lightning," without warning, etc.  Maybe it's hubris on my part but I sort of think that by reading about economics every single day, including at sites specifically anticipating a dollar collapse, I will probably have some kind of a heads up.  The moment I get a possible indication of a crisis, I'll be spending my time ferrying goods back to the house and visiting Costco.  Until then, I am focusing on non-food preparations.

People talk about building in redundancies, of finding multiple sources of necessary things like water, food, heat, and light.  So, for water you might get a rain barrel and a water filter, and look at obtaining water from your hot water heater.  (The faucet on our heater was like an inch off the floor, so we needed a short piece of hose to get the water into any reasonable receptacle.)  You might get one of these indicators to tell you when the water is safe (i.e. when you've had it at a given temperature for so many minutes), and shove a small bottle of bleach into a closet somewhere.  That way you have more options if a water main breaks.  We're on a well, so we're looking to buy a hand pump for power failures.

For light, I am very fond of oil lamps -- provided you also own a fire extinguisher.  We had 2 days without power recently and we all sat around the dining room table with my grandmother's oil lamp in the evenings.  You can also buy a small generator or an inverter.  Today I bought an inverter which is 1500W and can handle surges to 3000W (because things use roughly twice as much electricity when turning on).  This is enough for the chest freezer, coffee grinder, lights, a fan, etc.  (During the recent black-out I ground our coffee by hand, which was fun but time-consuming.  I did it while sitting in the back of the minivan with my husband's iPhone plugged in to the cigarette lighter power outlet, listening to YouTube interviews.)  You hook an inverter to the car battery, and your car has to be running on idle, but judging by the noise and smell of our neighbor's little generator I am not sure this is all that much less fuel efficient.  I have seen 5000W generators on Craigslist for a few hundred dollars, which is more wattage per dollar than an inverter (which was $200 for 1500W).  The inverter can also be taken on camping trips, though, and requires a LOT less space.

We don't yet have any firewood stored.  Our neighbor has a ton of wood and I suppose if it came to that, we'd go buy some from them.  But I do want to get some pallets or something and find a place to keep at least a little wood.

The food growing isn't going so well (as in other years... sigh).  Things I learned this year: 1) the basement is too cold to grow seedlings, even with warming mats underneath.  2) Yes, you need seed starter.  3) Rain = weeds, therefore rain requires prompt weeding.  4) Don't plant anything without first finding out if it's invasive, and just because it isn't invasive in the shade doesn't mean it won't be invasive in the sun.

I don't think of this as preparing for "The Collapse," like it's a discrete event.  I try to imagine that maybe my family are "early adapters" who are trying to shift our lifestyle and expectations to match a declining standard of living which I imagine will continue for some time.  I used to think we'd have 3 bad years or maybe 5.  Now I'm thinking more along James Howard Kunstler or Michael Ruppert lines, the "long emergency," the gradual collapse, taking perhaps 20 years.  It's not all bad, but it will be different.

Preparing for bad times -- podcast treasure trove

What I'm calling "preparing for bad times" seems to be known by a host of different names depending on the subculture you come from.  If you're an environmentalist you might call it sustainable living, whereas if you're right-wing you may just call it survivalism.  If you visit the lefty blogosphere a lot you probably wouldn't refer to yourself as a "prepper" as this is pejorative in those circles, but if you adore Sharon Astyk and talk about homesteading and relocalization, you're golden.  But all these groups are seeing a lot of the same things on the horizon.

Anyway, this very useful site compiles mp3 files on the topic of preparing... highly recommended!

What is wealth?

Here is a typical mainstream treatment of "survivalists," courtesy the Wall Street Journal:

We're not talking about the extreme end, the "preppers" who are "New Mattress Stuffers" gone wild. They believe you have to be ready for a return to an almost primitive state of existence and survival.

No... that's wrong. Just because I value wheat and firewood does not mean that I expect to return to the Dark Ages three years from now. What it means is that I looked at the money accumulating in the checking account and tried to think how to convert binary digits into real wealth. That is, into things that human beings have always needed to survive and to be comfortable and happy. I bought military surplus wool blankets for $20 each. The first time I bought wheat, I got 50 pounds of the highest protein, longest shelf life (10+ years), organic wheat for $28 (it now sells for twice that). The pressure canner was a couple hundred dollars. The rechargeable batteries and solar battery recharger were maybe $100 or $120. I also bought a lot of classic literature and games. Was my money seriously better off sitting in a Chase account getting no interest, awaiting devaluation and bank holidays?

[Yes, I also own gold and silver. But at some point I realized you can't eat it, wear it, or use it to keep the rain off.]

The mainstream news engages in a kind of propaganda that disparages those with historical perspective, those who are not convinced that all is well simply because Twitter is still functioning and the ATM still spits out bits of green cotton. When I was growing up I read the Little House books several times over. The Ingalls family didn't live in the Dark Ages, they lived 150 years ago. And they nearly starved (and froze) to death, one winter. Trains that had been expected to deliver food were trapped in impassable snow-filled gullies and could not get through until May. They braided hay to burn in their stove in lieu of wood. A different year, locusts decimated their crops. Once, when the girls were left alone and a blizzard came up, Laura brought the entire woodpile into the house, terrified of freezing to death as some neighboring children had. She might have been 10 or 12 at the time.

Similarly, I've read 19th century novels in which one's proximity to the fireplace conveys one's social status. Warmth, it turns out, has long been a privilege. Were the gentlemen of 19th century Britain primitive savages? Hardly. In historical terms, the temporal distance between us and them is but the blink of an eye.

A bewildering tide of new technologies has made most Westerners believe that concerns about heat, clothing, shelter, and food are now, thankfully, obsolete. In fact, says the Western establishment, such concerns are absurd and paranoid. To put aside a month's worth of food for one's family is, according to the Wall Street Journal and every other mainstream news outlet, simply loopy. And yet, a 19th century man would not be able to comprehend our trust, our blind faith that the grocery store will always be chock full of food, the electricity will always be on, the gas or oil will always be there to fire up the furnace and keep us at 72 degrees. Americans used to value self-sufficiency. Now we laugh at it.

I watched a YouTube video put up by a Serbian man who had undergone Yugoslavia's currency failure in the early 90's. He talked about a pensioner who had used his entire month's check to buy a pound of good salami and a loaf of bread. The pensioner then went home, ate a couple of salami sandwiches, and hung himself. He left a note, saying "I don't want to die of starvation." This happened in the late 20th century, in Europe. It did not happen in 1702 or in Sao Paulo or Mumbai.

The mainstream media tries to laugh at "preppers" by implying, more or less: "Come on, now, your iPhone still works, doesn't it? The sports are still on TV, right? You can still buy 1,200 different food-like items at your local supermarket, eh? So let's not be paranoid!"

What I have is not paranoia. It's a respect for the human condition in history. It has very little to do with fear. It has to do with my understanding that 0's and 1's in a computer at a bank are intrinsically worthless. People who understand this take different routes: some buy junk silver, some buy wheat and a grain mill, some buy real estate in foreign countries and enough gold to bribe their way out of a failed state should the very worst somehow occur. Some do all of the above. But the point is, the 0's and 1's in your checking account -- and even moreso the binary digits in your 401k -- are purely theoretical and could lose all value in a moment.

Have some respect for your ancestors. Think about what they would have considered "wealth" and what they considered to be insurance against hardship. Stop putting unmatched funds into your 401k or tying up cash in stupid CD's and money markets. Stop being smug about your lifestyle, here at the apex of an empire, here in the last heyday of the Cheap Oil age. Buy a few real goods as a gesture of respect to those who have gone before you.

On being prepared... mentally

The one thing that seems to get left out of "survivalist" or preparedness plans, on the blogs and sites I come across, is the mental health component.  I think, perhaps, that even the worst doom and gloomer suffers from a bit of romanticism.

"Suppose the power goes out," says the Doom and Gloomer.  "Wouldn't that be fantastic?  We could haul in some wood and snuggle in front of the fireplace.  No TV, no video games, no Internet-- it'd be just like camping!  We could cook all that wholesome oatmeal in the dutch oven and read to one another all evening.  Even use our fireplace popcorn popper!  Good times!!"

Yeah, I suffer from that too.  You try to be balanced, you know?  You say "Well, okay, jobs are disappearing like beers at a frat party, but we'll all be closer to our families."  Or: "Well, I may never eat clementines again, but I'll be developing a relationship with my local farmers."  Or: "If there's no TV for a week it will bring my family together."

It's mostly true, too.  But then again, last night my family was brought together -- all of us having a grand old time and laughing our butts off for 2 hours -- by The Simpsons Hit and Run video game, in which you not infrequently mow down cartoon pedestrians as you mishandle your vehicle.  (In my defense, that's not the point of the game and we try hard to stay on the road!  And if you hit someone, they just yell at you as they roll out of your way.)  To be honest, I just can't see Candyland or Chutes & Ladders (other games which all 4 of us can play) as being anywhere near that much fun.  When it comes to old-fashioned values, The Simpsons Hit and Run game fails miserably on all counts, but that much laughing together has to be good for us.  So I suppose I try to look on the bright side, but I also try not to romanticize things like a Depression, peak oil, power outages, or having to stay inside the house for 3 solid weeks because of H5N1.  The fact is, I kind of like the 21st century.  I can't help it -- that's what I'm used to.

My own (minor!) "crisis" experience, when I went without power for 4 days in August of 2003, was far from romantic or refreshing.  I huddled near the radio, clinging to our local radio station like a lifeline, praying the batteries wouldn't quit, because by the time I'd gotten to the grocery store (45 minutes into the blackout) they were totally sold out of batteries.  And ice.  And bottled water.  And any kind of meat you'd typically grill.

Let me tell you, if you're an Internet junkie -- and we know who we are -- you need radios.  I mean, you need a hand-crank back-up radio, a regular radio or two, alkaline batteries, and possibly rechargeable batteries and a solar battery charger, plus headphones or ear buds to save those batteries.  Maybe even a shortwave radio.  My MP3 player has FM radio and I can charge it in a few minutes off the car battery, without starting the car; if you have one, consider getting the car charger.  You might even consider one of those radios that picks up TV, even though supposedly they are always about to halt old-fashioned TV network broadcasting.  If you are the kind of person who checks the internet more than a couple of times a day, you need INFO and you need it YESTERDAY, and thank god the local station put on BBC at 10pm so I could go to sleep feeling connected to the rest of the world.

Secondly, you need light.  Flashlights don't cut it, not even close.  A single night of reading by flashlight is enough to depress you and make your children crazed and creeped out.  I would aim for at least one small room that you can keep pretty well illuminated.  There are bright LED lanterns that are totally kid-safe, including some that are solar.  There's the old-fashioned kerosene lantern, the antique oil lamp (which we used in 2003-- thank you Grandma for giving it to me!), and there are 100-hour candles if you can manage those safely with the kids in your family.  (The 100-hour candles are round, squat, and hard to tip over.)  Hand-crank flashlights are a good back-up and kids think they're fun, and I'm glad that we own a couple.  But they do get tiresome, so I think recharge batteries with an AC and/or solar recharger are a good bet.  By the way, Costco sells a recharge battery set that has the "spacers" that convert an AA battery to fit a C or D slot.  This means that with one set of AA batteries and one AA recharger, you can put batteries into almost any flashlight.  Lastly, head-lamp style flashlights which strap onto your head may look ridiculous, but hey-- it's a no-hands flashlight.  Could be very useful.  Kids find them amusing.

So again, from my experience, a couple of flashlights somewhere in the house doesn't cut it.  It's not a matter of "Can I get to the bathroom without breaking an ankle?"  It's a matter of "Can I get through 4 days without power while not becoming depressed /creeped out by darkness every evening?"  Some kind of little battery / solar nightlight, or light sticks, are a good idea if you have kids in the house, as they can panic when waking up in pitch darkness.

And then, of course, you need entertainment.  If you can work out some way of listening to an audiobook, that's fairly entertaining and can be done on batteries.  Obviously someone can read aloud.  You can also put aside some "beach reads" for the adults & some previously unseen books for the kids -- I'll bet your local library has cheap paperback novels -- for emergency escapism.  I've also put aside sudoku, crosswords, cards, games, puzzles, etc.  Keep in mind that during crude oil disruptions schools will be closed, so whether you homeschool or not, in such a scenario you'd be (or someone would be) with your kids all day, and possibly without power.  (We take coal to our power plants largely by diesel truck-- brilliant, eh?)

And, for those who are stockpiling beans, barley, wheat, rice, and other wholesome Amish fare -- may I suggest Doritos and candy?  (Okay... organic non-GMO tortilla chips and fair trade cocoa powder?)  Don't forget junk foods as a treat.  Even if you very rarely eat junk food, your family may need something to cheer them up, make things a little easier.  Canned soups (Costco has good deals on Progresso), chewing gum, chocolate, potato chips, and so forth may compensate for other inconveniences and keep everyone in a cheerier state of mind.  (Whiskey or half a case of Charles Shaw doesn't hurt either, for extended disasters... for adults, I mean!)

So that's my two cents on crisis preparation, on the sanity front:

Connection, light, entertainment, and treats.

10 Reasons to store food

Yesterday there were some bits of news that were positive.  There were some indications that more money was being passed around in the financial sector, and the Dow was only down 189 points, a relatively good day.  Six central banks around the world had made a coordinated interest rate cute of 0.5%.  Translation: they all pitched in and took emergency measures to make it cheaper for banks to borrow money from one another.  For about three seconds it looked like it might be helpful in getting money moving again.

Eh, well.  That all came to nothing.  Today was positively hideous, with GM stock closing at $4.76 and Ford headed for penny-stock status if this continues much longer.  The Dow was down 679 points to 8,579.  (One year ago today, the Dow hit its all-time high of 14,165.)  Credit markets were frozen again, with the LIBOR rising.  The LIBOR interest rate is what determines the new interest rate for many American adjustable rate mortgages, so this has a direct effect on US families.

Tomorrow, hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of bets taken out on Lehman Brothers will undergo "price discovery."  The people holding these legalized gambling contracts might get 12 cents on the dollar, or 50 cents, or who knows.  And we don't know how many of these bets are in existence.  And we don't know who the bookies are-- as in, just who is it that has to cough up the dough?  It's a big unknown.  Depending on how the Lehman thing works out, markets could rally, or the Dow could drop a thousand points.  Some folks on the blogs have already dubbed it "Black Friday," but if the news were good, we could see some stabilization in stock prices.

Things are not improving in Iceland.  The IMF says it's going to "help" them.  This is like Dracula saying he's going to cure you of a disease by draining half your blood.  It's true that Iceland allowed its banks to grow to 11 times the size of their entire GDP, but their entire GDP is piddling.  Google is bigger than Iceland.  Hell, if the amount of money the Fed gives to banks on an average day could just be funneled to Iceland instead, the country's problems would largely be solved!  But no.  Iceland is to be thrown to the wolves.  This is how the West treats the least among us: we cut them off, and worse, sic the IMF on their asses.  Meanwhile, the head of the European Central Bank says the banks can have as much money as they want.  No-- seriously!!  Unlimited cash.  Unlimited cash for banks, and Iceland can go starve.

On to the title of this post: 10 Reasons to Buy and Store Food.

1. It's only going to get more expensive, so buy it now and eat it later.
2. Banks could be closed for days by government order; stores would close.
3. A diesel shortage could disrupt food distribution; stores would run out of food.
4. Extra food provides a cushion when you have an unexpected expense.
5. #4 goes double when the banks begin canceling all our credit cards.
6. Buying in bulk and at bulk discount stores is cheaper anyway.
7. The government says you should have 2 weeks worth of food.
8. They're serious about #7.  They're hopelessly incompetent during disasters.
9. You'll learn about shelf life, food preservation, and nutrition.
10. You will feel less scared and more empowered during this economic unraveling.

At least get a sack of rice, a big box of spaghetti, and a giant #10 can of marinara.  How hard is that?

The carnage continues

A lot has been happening in the financial world, but the news comes so fast I hardly know what to blog about.

Ireland, Greece, and Germany are guaranteeing all bank deposits, with no upper limits, while in the UK and the US the upper limits are being raised.  This may sound good for the citizenry, but it indicates that bank runs are feared in these nations. 

In the US, there is a lack of physical cash.  If too many people start hoarding cash under the mattress, we could have a bottleneck during which physical cash can't be printed up fast enough.  Sure, everyone has credit cards, but those are about to go the way of the home equity line: banks will soon begin canceling them.  People will need real hard cash again, and there won't be enough.  Moreover, banks have about 70 cents of cash on hand (mostly 0's and 1's, not paper) for every $100 their customers have deposited.  I don't pretend to know what will happen when credit cards dry up... I don't.  I can't imagine it.  I guess the Fed will print new money as fast as it can and people will all be assigned debit cards in lieu of paper cash, but there are a lot of people who depend on credit to help them squeak by.

Iceland, which got heavily involved in international finance, is in a bad way.  I mean a really bad way-- the UN better start drawing up plans for a food relief program.

Iceland is on the brink of collapse. Inflation and interest rates are raging upwards. The krona, Iceland's currency, is in freefall and is rated just above those of Zimbabwe and Turkmenistan. One of the country's three independent banks has been nationalised, another is asking customers for money, and the discredited government and officials from the central bank have been huddled behind closed doors for three days with still no sign of a plan. International banks won't send any more money and supplies of foreign currency are running out. [source]

They have had panic buying at grocery stores because there aren't going to be any more food imports, since no one will take Iceland's currency.  People should watch what happens in Iceland, because this nightmare will happen one day in the United States.  Thankfully, it is much easier to grow food in the US than in Iceland, but on the other hand we are heavily dependent on imported crude oil and we don't make any shoes or clothing.  Economist John Williams, who runs the well-known and much-cited Shadow Stats website, has predicted that hyperinflation might hit the US as early as 2010.  Mr. Williams defines "hyperinflation" as a time when what used to be the largest bill in circulation (the $100 bill, in our case) becomes "more useful as toilet paper" than as currency.

The EU banks turn out to be in even worse shape than US banks, unbelievably.  They have massively more liabilities (loans to be repaid, depositors who need their funds back, etc) than they have capital.  Germany's second largest real estate lender is going down, and the government is in emergency talks with other banks to try to salvage the situation.  If they cannot save this major lender, it will cause large financial ripple effects in Germany.

That said, Germany is one of the healthiest of EU countries, fiscally speaking.  France wants an EU bailout of many EU banks, and Germany (the main country with a lot of savings) is saying No.  The southern nations (Spain, Italy, Greece) are not doing as well as northern ones, and Germany is refusing to funnel their own wealth into these poorer economies.  I do not think the Eurozone will be able to stay intact as this financial disaster continues.  Already, German citizens are hoarding Euros printed in Germany (there is some sort of number or symbol that indicates which country they were printed in).  They do not trust any currency printed in Italy or Spain, even if they are, ostensibly, all Euros.

In other news, I went to a coin shop and asked about silver.  The guy had two 5-ounce bars ($95 each) and two 10-ounce bars ($180 each).  That was it!  He was getting 20 or more calls per day asking about his available silver, including from Ohio.  He had received several hundred silver bullion coins one day last week, and they sold out in just 90 minutes.  All this silver was going for about $18/ounce, on days when the ostensible price of silver (the spot price) was around $11.  You always pay a little bit more for minted silver (coins or bars), but not 64% more!  The paper "spot" price just doesn't mean anything nowadays.  It has disconnected from the real world and is an imaginary value.  The same goes for gold.  There are extreme shortages of both metals and it is very hard to obtain coins in either metal.

Never mind, though-- most people should, at this point, be buying long-term storable food, shoes and boots, clothes for their kids in the coming years... in other words, tangible goods.  Other ideas, off the top of my head, include: camp stoves, rechargeable batteries, flashlights & LED lanterns, firewood (if applicable), very heavy blankets & sleeping bags, home insulation, Polartec hats, canning jars, a pressure cooker/canner, cases of cheap wine or whiskey, vegetable seeds, gardening implements, escapist fiction (try your library for cheap used novels), basic medicines, knitting / crocheting / sewing materials, a solar cell phone charger, a solar battery charger, and a wind-up radio.

Garden warning

If you grow any kind of hot pepper in your garden and you have kids, make sure to frequently remind them which peppers NOT TO EAT.  Tristan bit off the end of a fire-engine red cayenne this evening.  He is okay, but I feel like I've been through one of those Poison Control Center directions: Flush with cool water for 15 minutes.

On the positive side, he didn't throw up, and I didn't panic even though he was panicking.  Poor little guy.

This is why I am loathe to grow medicinal herbs that can be poisonous or simply make you ill, like pennyroyal or lobelia.  I've watched Tristan eat purslane from the edge of the driveway, and seen Anya rub lemon balm between her fingers to inhale the scent, and seen both of them collect catnip for the kitties.  And I had resolved only to grow safe plants, because of the kids.  But the problem with this rule was made apparent to me tonight: I like spicy food, but cayenne peppers cannot be considered "safe" in a household containing small children.  Usually Tristan only picks veggies when I'm out there, with some guidance... but not so this evening.  A ripe cayenne, after all, is a gorgeous thing.

Perhaps next year I'll tie tinsel on the "dangerous" plants.

Quality used goods

Today I bought things from two different Craigslist folks, which put me in a good mood.  I've always had very pleasant exchanges with Craigslist people.  I am still waiting to hear back about a solid wood, 5-drawer dresser someone was insanely selling for $20, which I highly suspect has already sold.

First, I went and picked up 3 dozen pint jars and 4 dozen quart jars from a woman about 15 minutes away, for $3/dozen.  These were stored in very old cardboard boxes that the original jars had come in.  Check it out:

Whoa!  Holy 1950's, Batman!  I love how "Mom" appears to be in her dotage already.  And catch that bit of sparkle on the glass....

The woman I purchased these from had had gardens and had canned for many years, even while raising 6 children.  We chatted about gardening for a while, she said she was glad to give the jars to someone who would be growing their own food, and it was nice to see younger people gardening.  We agreed that our college town farmer's market has extremely high prices.  (There's a granola snob factor, around these parts.)  She said I should put newspapers covered with straw under my cucumbers, while for my part, I recommended Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (for about the 100th time).  She also threw in two dozen "spaghetti jars" for free.  I thought maybe Ball made some sort of specially decorated jar for tomato products or something, but no--  These turned out to be commercial spaghetti sauce jars which are actually, when you take the label off, 26-oz regular mouth Mason jars.  I have to remove a few more labels, but the 26-oz size should be good for applesauce.  I am not sure how to adjust canning times, but I can treat them as quart jars if need be.

Second, I bought 18 hardcover Time Life Nature books from the 1970's, most of them never opened, for $40.  You might think these would be rather dated, and it's true they say "man" and "mankind" everywhere.  This is something I will soon have to discuss with Anya.  When reading non-fiction books to her, I routinely swap out many of the male pronouns for female ones on the fly, and when reading to herself she usually reads only small bits at a time.  She therefore has not yet realized that older books pretend all people are male.  But hey, I have to explain this at some point, right?  In other respects I like these books much more than recently published ones.  The newest science books for kids have so many photos and graphics that they are often visually confusing, and you have to hunt for the text.  It's all sidebars and footnotes and captions, and the little bit of real information is largely given in "random factoid" form.  The old Time Life books do have many gorgeous photos, as well as diagrams and maps, but there is a lot of text, sometimes several pages of small type in a row.  This seems like a better balance, to me.  And the photos seem well chosen, from a time when every illustration was costly, rather than now where the goal seems to be a cornucopia of color and the maximum number of different fonts per page.

Yes, when it comes to newly made things I have become a curmudgeon.  I used to buy T-shirts at Target, but now the material is so thin and shoddy I will have to go elsewhere.  I looked at some waffle-weave thermal blankets at a store recently, and they were so thin and badly woven that in places they looked like gauze (so much for "thermal").  And then there are the stories about food items that still have the same price, but the sizes are just a bit smaller, which they hope you won't notice.  Instead of 12 ounces of cereal it's 9.8 ounces; instead of 32 ounces of mayonnaise it's 28.  We have rampant, galloping price inflation in the US, which has now hit roughly 13.5% per annum.  If you bought jeans or lettuce or printer paper or gasoline today, then by this time next year the cost would be (as a rough average) 13.5% higher.  I say "would be" because companies are finding ways to avoid sticker shock, mostly by giving us junkier and junkier crap.  Corporations are trying to hide price inflation by cutting the quality and the quantity, and trusting to the indiscriminate nature of the impulsive American consumer.

As Dmitry Orlov says [pp. 81-82 of Reinventing Collapse]:

For decades now, the main thrust of marketing has been to convince everyone that new is better than old, all the while witnessing a steady degradation in the quality of many items.  Taking the case of furniture as an example, it has evolved from solid hardwood to softwood with a hardwood veneer, to particleboard with a hardwood veneer, to particleboard with a faux-woodgrain plastic veneer.  While solid hardwood furniture can be sanded down and refinished, making it as good as new, the cult of the new forces people to throw it out and then pay for a new, shoddy, disposable, but new-looking replacement.  Over the years, I have consistently been able to trash-pick better furniture than I could find in stores, while the overall quality of the trash has gone down continually.  At present, most of the trash I see, even in the prosperous neighborhoods, is simply appallingly bad and not worth picking.

Another way of making consumers dependent on a continuous flow of new products is through the use of fashion.  Here the goal is to make products that are ugly, while simultaneously convincing consumers that a certain kind of ugly is "in" this year.  Next year, a subtly different kind of ugliness reigns supreme, while the previous year's ugliness is simply that -- ugly, and therefore no longer desirable.  The combination of teenage rebellion, adolescent conformism and plain immature silliness offers particularly fertile ground for this type of mass uglification.  The result is, again, obvious: when the flow of fashionably ugly new products stops, the products that remain are just plain ugly, and the self-esteem of those who are forced to use them rather low.

. . .

The last act in the American consumerist tragedy will end with the now naked consumer standing on top of a giant mound of plastic trash.  At the end of an economy where everything is disposable stands the disposable consumer.

As one last example, if you buy non-stick pans you are going to have to buy them all over again in a few years, because inevitably the teflon flakes off.  Lately, I care less about the price, and think more about when I will have to buy this item again.  Stainless-steel and cast-iron pots and pans will NEVER have to be purchased again, so that's what I use.

And if the durable stuff is more expensive, well... keep your eye on Craigslist.