The photo at the top is the entrance to the former Anderson College of Medicine, where my father went to school. At the time he attended, there were actually at least three medical schools in Glasgow and the Anderson College was sort of the ‘poor relation’ – the school actually shared some facilities with the other medical schools. But I remember a photograph actually much like this one, taken with my father standing pretty much where I am standing right now, in front of the very fancy Italianate iron gates. After the war, Glasgow University absorbed the Anderson College into their medical school and this building actually now houses their International College and some laboratories. Knowing my dad, he probably felt very grown up and adventurous standing there getting his picture taken since he was so far from home and was actually doing what he’d always dreamt of doing. He considered his time in Glasgow (despite the ferocious bombings) to be the happiest time of his life.

The place where we were not so lucky was at the place where my mom trained as a nurse midwife, the old Glasgow Royal Maternity Hospital, which was located on a street named ‘Rottenrow’ (no, I don’t know why it was called that – the common theory is that it originated as ‘Rue du Roi’ in the medieval period but there is no definitive proof of that either). The National Health Service decided after the war that this hospital (which had been built in the 1880s was now old, obsolete and antiquated and a new building was built elsewhere and this building was given to the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow is a real college town) which could not find any use for it and pulled it all down, leaving the entrance standing and turning the rest of the land (and using the rubble of the old building as fill and retaining walls) as a memorial garden. Looking around at the neighborhood, I could definitely imagine how poor the place was – I know my mom told lots of stories about going out to deliver babies in situations where literally the entire family had to sleep in a single bed built into the wall and my mom had to convince everyone else in the family to abandon the bed so that she could do her work.

Glasgow was actually a very surprising place – over the past 40 years, there has been a huge effort to recreate the city, which, during the 18th and 19th centuries, was the economic engine of the Empire – first creating millionaires in the tobacco and sugar industries and then in the ship building industry. With the death of heavy industry in Glasgow, the city has been able to establish a healthy services and financial base, and has also a healthy tourism business based on the city’s many wonderful museums and now it’s very large retail shopping district.

Now, it’s no Edinburgh – there are no castles there, but the city has a cathedral dating from the 11th century and the Necropolis, which is probably one of the most astonishing cemeteries in Europe. On the other hand, it also does not have the ‘in your face’ Disney-esque tourism of Edinburgh – the DH had to search around to find a store which actually sold the ‘key chain and chocolate bar’ level of tourist ‘tat’. So, from that aspect, it was very refreshing and we had a lot of fun. If we’d spent more time there, we’d have done more exploring of the areas outside of the city – a large beautiful national park, The Trussocks, iand Loch Lomond are about 45 minutes outside of the city and can be reached by train and bus.

Speaking of trains, the DH and I always take the train when we are in the UK. The train systems is extensive and very efficient; even when we had to change trains, we only had to wait about ten minutes for our connection. We traveled by train from London to Glasgow in about 4 hours; certainly worth it. We used Brit Rail Passes, which you buy by the number of days you are traveling. It was very easy and effective; we took care of everything before we left.

OK – folks, I am making the bold assumption that all of you reading this are comfy, cozy, and indoors. If I am wrong, raise your hands. Mmmhmmm? Oh yes..you in the back with the mukluks — how are you running your laptop? Oh, ok…
Back to the business at hand: Being Prepared. We haven’t turned out attention to that for a bit. Today’s news story about the hundreds of cars stranded on a section of the New York State Thruway (conveniently located just to the lee of Lake Erie and Ontario) because of a jack-knifed tractor trailer…in the middle of what is coyly referred to by all and sundry in the weather biz as a ‘lake effect snow event’ reminded me that it might be a good time to flog the idea that having stuff in the car ‘just in case’ might be time well spent.

Let’s imagine for a second the poor people hunkered down in their cars (probably idling until they run out of fuel) starting at about 3 p.m. yesterday. As of 3 p.m. TODAY, about 100 people had been rescued and taken to a community center, leaving hundreds of people still sitting in cars in the middle of snow coming down at the rate of about 1″+ an hour. With wind. I don’t know about you, but if I’d been in one of those cars at 3 p.m. yesterday, at about 4 p.m., I would have been cursing the fact that I was on an interstate and was not within walking distance of a bathroom, much less a coffee shop with something hot to eat and drink.

Having access to a bathroom is a biggie with me. It’s amazing just how painful and humiliating it is NOT to be able to…well, you know, when you need to. It’s not something like hunger that you can just suck up and sing funny songs about. And do not delude yourself that it will never happen to you. Actually it happened to the DH and I coming back from New York City, while we were stuck in the middle of the bridge at the Delaware Water Gap in the middle of a four-hour traffic shutdown. Not only no bathroom but no way to get off the bridge and find one. After about an hour, some of the other drivers, the guys, decided that they would – well, you know. Being in the middle of the bridge, we were not exactly in a position for me to jump out of the car and hightail it up into the pines to do a little garden watering behind the shelter of the evergreens.

This is when I became extremely grateful that for some reason, we had an empty plastic bottle in the back, which I doctored with a pair of nail clippers. Sweet relief, that, but I was lucky.

The DH and I once went up to cow country in Alberta on business and while there, we were introduced to preparedness Alberta-style, which for a vehicle includes a couple of milk jugs of water, several heavy blankets, blinkers, food of various kinds (including chocolate bars, etc.), and a five gallon can of fuel. Now, up in Alberta, the ‘law of the west’ basically requires that if someone shows up at your door in the winter, you take them in, no questions asked. And you get them warm and feed them and house them until daylight, when the RCMP can be called. You do those things because the next time, it might be you — and walking around in the dark when it’s -40 F in the wind is a sure way to end up in a snow drift, looking like cordwood.

So, being prepared is a good idea. One of the things about some of the people who were interviewed for this story on being stranded in the snow south of Buffalo, New York were the number of them who said something on the order of ‘I was just going out to (pick one: do a little grocery or holiday shopping, go bowling, visit my mom, go the post office…).’ Notice, they were not saying, “I was on my way out to Nebraska or Ontario.”

A lot of them thought they were just going on a thirty minute trip. Didn’t think to throw anything in the car. And then they got stuck at 3 p.m. and 24 hours later, they were still stuck out there in the wind and the snow – no food, no water and …no bathroom.

So. Here’s the list for the box that goes into the back of the vehicle in the fall. Leave it there until spring and then take it out. Then freshen it up and put it back into the vehicle in the fall again. Always have the box:

Two heavy wool blankets (three is better but we’ll go with what we got)
Ziplock(tm) bag with energy bars, chocolate, protein bars
Two big flashlights with fresh batteries — check ‘em each fall.
Beacons that blink – fresh batteries too.
Roll of paper towels
Power connection for cell phones and/or an extra power supply(search on ‘cell phone USBs”) that is fully charged up. Most of them will carry a charge for several months.
Plastic gallon milk jug, empty, with the top cut out of it so that the hole is 3-4″ across.

Also, whenever you leave the house, make sure you take at least one gallon of water with you and a gas can with 1-2 gallons of fuel. If you end up stuck and put the car into idle to keep warm, you will run out of fuel to run the car. And dress appropriately, which means: warm clothing and socks, boots, sweater, heavy coat, gloves, hat, etc. The number of people who just jump in the car to go down to the store in their indoor clothing is amazing to me. Sitting in a car in 25-30 degree weather with nothing on but jeans and a flannel shirt is going to get cold really fast.

OK? All straight?
Good.

And though our landlord was very encouraging (“Sure, you can rip up the lawn for a garden”), we felt the need to get some books because we wanted to ‘do things’ but did not know anyone who actually knew how. Over the years, we have collected a pretty extensive library of books which we have read over and over and consulted many times over. We haven’t felt the need to look for any books currently so we thought we’d take a look at what is being marketing right now on the shelves of what would probably be what most people have available to them unless they are going to the Internet. A lot of people buy books off the internet, but if you are looking for something specific, it really helps if you can go to the bookstore, plunk yourself in front of the shelf, pull down books and take a look and a bit of a read for yourself.

Today’s Topic: General Self-Sufficiency
Now, it’s obvious from my looking at the books that are on the shelves right now, brand new, that ‘self-sufficiency’ is definitely one of those ‘in the eye of the beholder’ positions. The range seems to run from the level of “How to handle survival after a nuclear attack” all the way through “How to slaughter your own pigs” and everything in between. So, a lot depends on what exactly someone’s goals actually are and where you are living. Because, if you are living in the suburbs, having a book that has general home and family stuff, gardening, a bit of home repair and maintenance, energy saving and so on is going probably be useful for someone who has never picked up a hammer or canned food. Having a book that delves deeply into radiation disease, setting up military level home protection systems and so on might not be your cup of tea. Or, it might, if you are into weaponry and thinking ahead…way…way…ahead.

This post is not meant as an in-depth review of every book out there. Basically, the DH and I walked into our local ‘extremely large big-box national chain bookstore’ and pulled every book we could find off the shelves that seemed to be handling certain topics and sat down and looked through them. We looked for certain topics that WE feel people who want to be more self-sufficient would want to see and at a level that is accessible, understandable, and in enough detail that a family could actually perform the task and complete it. No book is going to be truly encyclopedic but we felt it had to be good value and give people enough information to do the jobs; if readers want books that are more specialized, there are certainly books on specific topics out there, but for the true beginner, someone who perhaps is a little concerned or fearful, here are our recommendations for a good first book.

For those who really appreciate having photographic ‘how to’, detailed diagrams, uplifting copy, etc., the best book of the lot is:
Dick and James Strawbridge’s Self-Sufficiency for the 21st Century ($30.00 retail; DK Publishing, New York, NY. www.dk.com)
DK Publishing is to DIY books today what Readers Digest was 20-30 years ago: big, glossy, informative books which weigh a ton, filled with meaty material. Their position is obviously, “If you can only get one book, we want it to be OURS and we will make sure you get value.”

What put this book at the top of the heap for me was the totally realistic and pragmatic tone, a recognition that most people who are just starting out, who most likely did not grow up on a farm or even out in the country, not only don’t have a lot of skills or confidence, but also might have very…mmm…strong feelings about things like doing their own slaughtering. This is a British book; the father and son team of Dick and James Strawbridge have a UK television series called “It’s Not Easy Being Green” where they are working on a 300 year old derelict property. But everywhere I looked, the techniques and advice being given were right on the mark for people anywhere. Two big thumbs up.

Second Place, and only because I am extremely nostalgic about Storey Publishing is this compendium:
Country Wisdom and Know How ($19.95 retail, Black Dog and Leventhal Publishing, New York, New York)
Storey Publishing is one of the original ‘back to the land/do it yourself’ publishers in the United States. Their series of ‘Country Wisdom Bulletins’ (single topic booklets) have grown, expanded and been sold everywhere from through the mail to the counters at home and garden and farm centers since 1983. What Black Dog and Levanthal have done (and don’t misapprehend me here; it’s a clever thing to do) is to collect all of this material in the bulletins and other Storey publications, and put it into a paperback book the size of almost a newspaper – like the old Whole Earth Catalog. To do this, they are using extremely small print on the page, which is newsprint (which is not exactly a high contrast medium), and squeezing down the diagrams and drawings. Little showing of ‘how to’ and frankly, I doubt if they updated any of the material. This is referred to in some places as ‘old wine in new bottles’. I always felt Storey’s information was boiled down and very useful but with this font size, they really should have packaged this with a magnifying glass. Great material, almost encyclopedic but not current and not user friendly.

Third Place, or Top of the Heap if your goal is to be prepared for alien or zombie invasions or having to live off the land or dealing with natural or national disasters, is this book:

The Big Book of Self-Reliant Living, Walter Szykitka (Lyon Press, Guildfor, CT)

The Table of Contents says it all:
1) First Aid
2) Survival
a. Radiation Contamination
b. Survival On Land
c. Survival At Sea
d. Emergencies At Home
3) Health and Exercise (includes such topics as malaria and lead poisoning)
4) Food and Nutrition (includes preserving and drying)
5) Farm and Home (includes gardening, orcharding, and home repairs)
6) Tools, how to use them and repairs

If you are the sort of person who has a lot of concerns about whether or not your family is prepared for emergencies or some sort of disaster scenario, this is a book you might want to have on hand and use. And lest anyone mistake me, most American families are totally unprepared for what can happen.
Example: 9/11. Families all over the United States who had friends and relatives in New York and Washington, DC were suddenly unable to contact, find or assess what was happening to their loved ones. People were being evacuated; no one knew what was going on. It was horrifying.
Example: Hurricanes. Every couple of years (and sometimes in the same year), we have major hurricanes and people do not have any other plan other than putting up plywood on the windows. Thousands of families got stuck trying to evacuate from vulnerable areas in Texas the year after Katrina because…they ended up on the Interstates in a giant traffic jam and they ran out of fuel in their cars. There is nothing wrong with sitting your family down and talking about family emergency plans. This book contains information to help you through the process.

Books Worth Looking For in Used Book Shops:
If you are interested in looking at used books, Storey Publications and Readers Digest Books from 20-30 years ago are definitely worth looking at. Rodale Press books on gardening topics from that period are also excellent. Be careful about books which are frankly dated – “Five Acres and Independence” was probably one of the biggest sellers during the Great Depression but is practically useless today except in a general sense. The advice, product recommendations (DDT, anyone?), and so on leave it truly in the realm of ‘for popular historians only’.

And that has not changed.

I don’t care what the economics pundits and MSNBC bozos wave around. “It’s over.” “It’s NOT over.” “Green shoots” “Turned a corner.”

I could not care less what some of these know-nothing self-interested gasbags say, actually, because I know that there are a lot of people in a world of hurt right now and a lot of them have been that way, frankly, for years. A lot of them used to be middle class and owned their own homes and had retirement. And then things happened..

Job transfers overseas. Outsourcing. And now the economy is in the crapper. For some people, their emergency happened 3-5 years ago – they lost their homes a long time ago and have been living with relatives, driving around the country looking for jobs that are no longer there, or working in places like WalMart (which is really pretty ironic given that the price pressure that companies such as WalMart put on American manufacturers combined with the changes in the laws during the Reagan Administration were the two engines that moved all those jobs out of the country overseas..but I digress).

To get back to my point: One of the things that makes what is going on right now WORSE than what happened in the Great Depression is this: In 1929, people were a lot closer, in terms of skills and knowledge to being able to provide for themselves and to being able to cope than people are now. People who lived in places such as New York City, or Chicago, or Atlanta or a lot of other places were not only within one generation of growing and raising their own food, but were also still doing things such as making and repairing their own clothing, doing their own carpentry, canning and drying food and so on.

Today? Even people who have a piece of ground that they can grow something on if they want to and need to are at a loss as to what to do and how to do it. Additionally, for the last 30 years, we’ve been encouraged to live in a ‘consume and throw away’ society fed by loose credit. That credit threw gasoline on the economic fire and we all went along for the ride, encouraging companies to produce throw-away goods, which fed the economy and the landfills.

Only now, we aren’t buying so much. The savings rate at the latest report is at 8% – a huge increase for US consumers. Doesn’t do squat for the retail sector, but for people who are concerned where their next paycheck is going to come from, socking away money is the only way they know of to have some feeling of control over what is happening.

Now, there is not a whole lot Aunt Toby can do – the president and the head of the Dept. of the Treasury have not picked up the phone to give me a call and ask MY advice. And the only way I know of to help people is to put some knowledge into people’s hands. The only question is: How to get that information into the hands of people who need it the most. If you are really hurting, how are you going to find out what you need to know?

Let’s put it this way – if you know someone who is hurting, who has lost their home and is in a shelter, who is dealing with this situation please help them to get information. Even if it is not here – there is all sorts of info out there, both at a local, regional and national/international level. And to get to it, they need to find where they can get access to it.

In our area, that is at the local public library. In some places, the state labor department has free access in their offices or in job training areas. In some local school districts, or community colleges, they have free local access for community residents.

If you want to do one thing (and you know Aunt Toby is very big on ‘doing one thing’) that will enable you to help someone who’s having trouble in this economy(and it might even be YOU), pick up the phone or go to the public library and talk to the reference librarians and ask them where free internet access is locally. At the same time, ask them if they do workshops there at the library on how to use the internet, what resources there on locally and regionally in terms of finding information on topics such as:

–Job training and apprenticeship programs
–What to do if your home is in foreclosure – any resources out there to help you stay in your house.
–Food pantries
–Programs where people can grown their own fruits and veggies – do such things exist locally?
– Clothing banks
– If you lose your housing, what programs are available to get you and your family into some sort of shelter as soon as possible.
– Free programs for your kids for the summer
– Home heating assistance (it’s summer now, but winter will be here before you know it)
– Home energy efficiency assistance (as in money and help to get your home more energy efficient, whether it’s to keep the heat out or the heat in).

And if you are finding out the answers to these questions for someone else – if you find that in your community, things are not as effective or efficient in terms of these issues, perhaps it is time for you to make some calls, let other people know what the situation is and organize to get some programs started. Yes, I know the economy is in the dumper – but I’ve got to tell you that no one wants to find out in January that there are people sleeping outdoors because they’ve lost their housing and there is no program or not enough spaces for them.

When times are good, it’s easy to hide the ‘worry gene’ – because we all think that somehow, everyone is taken care of — well, before this is over, a lot more people are NOT going to be taken care of and in order for us all to get through this, we are going to have to be a lot more generous with one another. But like the guy in the photo at the top has on his sign: What people want and need is not charity (though charity will get people through the immediate need). What people need are tool that will help them survive – in his case, it was a job. A lot of people need jobs too, but a lot of people can also make use of information right now — people know that there are things they can do for themselves and others.

But to help take care of the immediate and the long term, they need information. Help to be the conduit for that information; it’s the most charitable thing you might be able to do right now.
(photos courtesy of renny67 and merfam)