#2 BEING RESOURCEFUL: In the end, those who know how to survive will be the ones who will survive.
I cooked up a traditional Italian feast this Christmas for family and friends, and in return I feasted on their compliments, especially that minute of total silence when everyone was so focused on what they were eating that they all stopped talking! I'd been preparing that meal for two days, with two kinds of lasagna (traditional meat and béchamel spinach) as the main course, side dishes of zucchini, mashed Kobocha squash, string bean casserole and garlic bread, appetizers of toasted pita bread and hummus, fennel and celery sticks, and for dessert, Espresso with home-baked almond and chocolate biscotti! Everything was organic and made from scratch and the nurturing mother in me was gratified to know that in addition to delighting everyone's taste buds, I had provided them with healthy nourishment. The camaraderie and laughter that was shared across four generations during that meal made all the effort worthwhile.
Afterwards, when I was portioning out leftovers for my guests to take home, I thought about how unfortunate it is that so few people these days know how to cook. I mean, really cook -- starting with basic ingredients and knowing how to embellish a recipe or create your own. How many households don't have anyone who can put together a healthy meal using whatever fresh produce is in season and whatever whole grains are on hand? It's an important question for many reasons, including health, costs and the future availability of food.
Unfortunately, those skills that were once relegated to women: cooking, sewing, gardening and even child care, seem to have been cast off along with the abuse and restrictions that kept women suppressed for centuries. Just as I was settling into the traditional female role of wife and mother, my liberated sisters were happily joining the workforce. Ladies' magazines where filled with advice on how to cajole our mates into sharing household chores or, that failing, paying someone else to do it. The vital arts of housekeeping were disparaged, demeaned and forgotten.
But what happens when there isn't enough money to go out to eat or to pay someone else to keep the house? What happens when we realize that fast food isn't healthy and we can't afford fancy restaurants? What happens when there aren't enough jobs for every adult in the household, or even for one breadwinner? How will families survive as the rules for survival are revised?
Having "survival skills" means more than knowing what bugs you can eat if you're lost in the wilderness or who to vote out on some TV "reality" show. In the real world version of Survivor our success is going to depend on cooperation and people in our community having the critical skills our ancestors acquired thousands of years ago for securing water, food, shelter, clothing, warmth and "waste management".
Imagine that there was suddenly a major natural or man-made disaster that left our entire area without electricity for an indefinite period of time, and you couldn't drive over to the local sporting goods store with your credit card to stock up on camping gear and MRE meals. Would you be able to provide even the most basic necessities for yourself and your family to survive? We may soon be facing a post-peak-oil world, where only the super-wealthy can afford gas and electricity. Will you survive? You only have to look as far as the enclaves of homeless people in our cities to realize that urban survival without financial resources is more difficult than survival in the wilderness. Not only do we need to be resourceful, we need to be cooperative.
In order to successfully engage in a Compassionate Resistance movement, we need to know that we can survive as a community without being dependent on resources the elite control, such as gasoline and processed food. We need to relearn those skills our mothers learned from their mothers: how to grow vegetables in the backyard without Miracle Grow -- how to make (or at least mend and alter) clothes" how to cook up a healthy meal with whatever ingredients we have on hand" how to collect and save water" how to compost" how to raise chickens and goats" the list goes on and on.
And there are equally important skills that our father's had that we need to learn, including carpentry and mechanical skills, to build and maintain shelter. We need to know how to adapt new, green technology to run existing apparatus, how to generate electricity from solar power, how to repair and modify cars for electric power, repair bicycles etc.
Humankind made a great step forward in recognizing that tasks and skills are not gender-specific. But the generation of men and women who knew how to get by just fine before there were supermarkets and computers is aging, and will soon be gone. If we lose their knowledge with their passing, it will be as devastating to humanity as the burning of the library of Alexandria. Fortunately, there are many creative people who are resurrecting the know-how of our grandparents and improving on it with new technology. We can grow food in less space with much less water using hydroponics" convert food scraps into super compost with vermiculture" build dome houses from raw earth with superadobe" use composting toilets to treat human waste" recycle grey water" and capture rainwater.
Let's learn and share that knowledge by converting our lawns to vegetable gardens, and converting every vacant lot into community gardens for people who don't have yards. Let's bring kitchens back to our school cafeterias, with real ovens and stoves and so we can teach our kids how to cook delicious, healthy food instead of "nuking" faux food. Let's get our communities off the grid with solar panels on every rooftop. Let's reintroduce home economics into our schools as a requirement for all students. And in doing this together-- learning from our elders and sharing what we know, and becoming more resourceful as a community by putting our skills and talents to work for the common good-- we will also be affirming our independence from fossil fuels, factory farming and consumerism. And seeing our liberation from the shackles of the dark shadows of greed, our detractors will grow silent and our movement of Compassionate Resistance will grow strong.
Jeeni Criscenzo is an entrepreneur, peace activist and author. She was 2006 Democratic candidate for Congress - 49th District. In 2003 she traveled around the country in an RV, writing her daily blog: CPR4Democracy. She is also a founder of (
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