As the kid says in the old New Yorker cartoon from the 1920s, while poking dubiously into a plateful of something set in front of him, “I say it’s spinach and I say the hell with it.”

It’s not that your dear Aunty does not believe in being organized, or having goals, or even of making lists. I just think that making lists that stretch out aimlessly to a distance of what actually constitutes YEARS has a built in failure factor. The thing that appears to be missing from all of these programs is some sort of moving it back to NOW.

What can I do now? What can I do THIS week and next week and the week after that to get that thing off the damn list?

Your Aunt Toby (and I believe a lot of people are just like me) is really good on what is coyly referred to in golf as ‘the short game’ – getting stuff done now is always easier and actually more satisfying than looking at a whole mess of long term global goals and responsibilities. I once made a list of ‘stuff I want to do’. Better to do stuff I wanted to do now while I still had the health and energy to do it, so I sat down and made this list.

It went on for damn near three pages. Single spaced. Numero Uno was: Learn how to play the fiddle. Guess how many of the rest of the items I got accomplished or even started on?

Yep – zippo. That was 9 years ago. And I’m still taking fiddle lessons and enjoying playing music but I really do feel that I probably won’t be getting around to many of the others. I used to feel bad about that.

The point of making these lists is basically to prevent people from waking up at the age of (insert your lightbulb moment here) and saying to themselves, “Oh, jeeze..I haven’t done anything with my life.” Now, Aunt Toby would never, ever say that to anyone, that they had not ‘done anything’ with their lives. People tend to get caught up in ‘living’ and the stuff they really wanted to do, dreamt of doing sort of got left by the roadside, like so much excess baggage.

And we all tend to cling to our baggage.

Aunt Toby has put a LOT of thought into this whole thing – I am at the age where the horizon in front of me gets a whole lot shorter every single day. What I concentrate on now is this: what is it that is going to make me feel good about me? What is it about me that drives me nuts and makes me feel bad? Everyone is different. For some people, it’s the feeling of being out of financial control, not knowing what they’ve got, being in debt and not seeming to be able to change that. For other people it’s the seemingly endless ability to procrastinate. For others, it seems to be this ability to not be satisfied no matter what they do, where they live, what their circumstances are, or having the fear of taking risks so they do nothing.

For Aunt Toby, it’s the ability to start all sorts of projects that would never, ever get finished. Here is a technique (and I don’t know where it comes from, otherwise I’d give credit where it is due) that I use to organize ideas, thoughts, projects, goals, etc. in a way that breaks them down into chunks that I can do in the short term, in short bursts of ambition (my ambition tends to come packaged that way), and I seem to be able to get more things completed this way.

And that, my friends (as John McCain and Martha Stewart would say, if they were doing this together) is A Good Thing. I always feel better when I can tic one of these items off the list because I know I am moving forward, an important part of the thing is getting done, and I don’t feel like some sort of slug.

I call this technique: The Thanksgiving Dinner Method (you can call it whatever you like). Think about it this way: When we face some huge family holiday dinner thing, we have one goal in mind. Get everything on the table hot, in the bowls or platters, ready to go, AND ALL AT THE SAME TIME. That requires thinking through the problem in this way: Where am I going and how am I going to get there? In the Thanksgiving Turkey illustration, where I’m going is: table all set, and turkey done/sliced/plattered, veggies cooked and in their bowls, salad made, etc. etc. ) and the thought process for how I’m going to get there is this:

1) What takes the longest – if it needs to be all ready and on a platter at 4:00 p.m., when does that have to get put into the oven?
2) What’s next longest and when does that have to get put into the oven (if it’s baked potatoes, I can tell you that in a 325-degree oven, they take a lot longer than they do usually – trust me on this one)?
3) Do I have room in the fridge for a big bowl of salad? If so, then I can make that as soon as I put the turkey in and put that in the fridge. Depending on the time of the year, I can also make it, seal it up and put it out on the deck in the shade or something.
4) When do I start the veggies? If I’m scheduled to dish up at 4:00 p.m., I’d better have the water at the simmer by 3:45 so that they can be done, drained, and in a dish ready to get out on the table in the right time.

So, what does this have to do with your own list which has been staring you in the face for a while and about which you feel rather poorly?

Let’s go back to the number one item on my old list: “Learn to play the fiddle.” Now, Aunt Toby knows herself pretty well – I’m no good at all whatsoever at learning how to do things from books or tapes. I definitely require hands on demonstration, a little bit of coaching and harassment and so on. So, for me that process started as: Find a teacher who is willing to work with beginners. After several frustrating weeks of working with a guy whose experience of beginners was in working with children under the age of 10, I changed that goal to “Find a teacher who is experienced at working with adult beginners.” Whole different ballgame, that was and I found my teacher through contacting a guy who had a radio program of traditional music.

You see, it is not enough to setting down goals – it’s what is going to work for you in terms of how you can achieve those goals. Another example — what I really wanted to do originally was learn to play the Uillean Pipes (sometimes referred to as ‘parlor pipes’), which are the small pipes from Ireland, not the big bagpipes that most of us are familiar with from Scotland). Could I buy a set? Yep – over the internet you can get anything. I asked all over the place for contacts for a teacher for Uillean Pipes – nice try. The closest person at that time is 3.5 hours travel away – one way. I knew there was no way I was going to achieve THAT goal with that sort of barrier. Finding a fiddle teacher was going to be a lot easier – and it was – so that made achieving the goal a lot less taxing for me. It’s got to be convenient. Am I disappointed in myself that I’ll never play the Uillean Pipes? Only a little bit – but a lot of the music itself that is played on those pipes are tunes that I can play on my fiddle – so I’m a pretty happy camper.

Another on-going goal I have is health-related. Aunt Toby hates, hates, hates socalled “New Year’s Resolutions” – they just do not work for me. I don’t even believe in ‘Doctor’s Office Resolutions” – I used to leave my practitioner’s office feeling that she’d hammered me – again – with a list of stuff she wanted me to do about my weight, my exercise, life in general, my medications yadda, yadda, yadda. And I KNEW what I needed to do. And I KNEW that she was right. But I always kept putting off the exercise and other stuff because it just was not convenient to make those changes. So, for years, every six months, I’d go back to my practioner and my cholesterol did not go down, I did not get the exercise, and I ended up feeling like a slug and a failure (yes, I realize this is shocking to read but I’m not a superhero). I also felt somehow I was letting everyone down – and not holding up my end of things for some reason (I’ll have to examine that at some point).

I used the Thanksgiving Turkey program with that, too. I have to go see my practitioner every six months so that she can balance my meds and check my lipids anyway, so I know that I’ve got six months to get the turkey done. And that turkey is: regular exercise. And I know that I have to work that back to right now – this week on an every week basis. I am really no good at exercising at home except that the DH rigged a platform on a treadmill in the basement so that I can put a laptop on it and can do email, blog, etc . while I am walking (you will start to notice a trend here..). I also check the next week’s weather to see if things will be decent enough for me to ride my bike to work (sorry, I do draw the line at riding when it is absolutely awful but that has to do with safety issues). On the days when I can’t ride, I cheat. I carpool in with the DH and I have him drop me off at a point about 20-25 min. walk from where I work. Once I get on my bike or I’ve been dropped off, I’m stuck – I’ve got to get to work, so I have to get the exercise. In other words – make it convenient to do it..or make it really inconvenient to NOT do it. But in the end, it all comes back to working that goal back to right now – this week. That way, the goal does not get away from you and stretch out and out and out until you feel you aren’t getting anything done on it.

What are you going to do this week that will move that goal forward? Research resources where you can take lessons or classes in Mandarin Chinese or Taiko drumming or ballroom dancing and make a phone call to register? Call and make an appointment to have your doctor look at that funny spot on your cheek that is waking you up at night because you are afraid it’s cancer? Take a walk at lunchtime to take care of private banking and get some exercise? Research whether your local area has any musical organizations that you can join? Call your local school district to see if they need volunteers to come help tutor kids in reading and math?

Doing one thing that moves your goal forward is actually better for you and reduces your stress a lot more than making a huge list that you can’t see over the top of. Because in the end, the goal is NOT to make ourselves feel bad because we aren’t doing what we want or should be doing – it is finding ways so that we can. And that makes us feel good.

Much better.
(turkey photo courtesy of tm22)

What Aunt Toby is here to tell you is that there are other ‘investments’ that sometimes do a whole lot better than fancy financial instruments, ‘regular’ and ‘preferred’ and Class A, B or C.

I’m talking about…potatoes (and yes, I realize that there has been a whole lot of coverage about this ‘early blight’ stuff that is basically turning tomatoes into the vegetable equivalent of cavier this summer – and is the same thing that killed a million Irish through starvation between 1845 and 1852 – and brought another million to our shores in the same time). And we have had a summer the likes of which I do not care to discuss (needless to say that if there are any leather shoes underneath Aunt Toby’s bed – they have already sprouted some rather exotic molds because it’s been one rainy summer Chez Siberia.

But remember these?

I’ve been watching that bed for a while because once potatoes flower, it’s time to keep a watch for the plants dying back. That means (drum roll, please) that it is time to dig them up.

I love digging up potatoes. It’s like Treasure Island and we are the pirate crew. The other part is that no matter how clever we think we are about getting every last one, we always miss a few. These turn into volunteers and usually, since they have had a head start from the fall before, we get even bigger ‘taters’ the next year. A nice surprise.

So, let’s review: In early March, I went to the Philadelphia Flower Show and I bought a little bag of seed potatoes – there were three little potatoes in that bag that weighed 8 ounces. A half a pound of potatoes that I cut into basically thirds (so that each one had a couple of eyes). The amount of ground that I used to plant them was a piece of a bed that was about 3 feet wide and 5 feet long. Frankly, those potatoes were not the only occupants – I had some basil plants hidden in there as well. Recently, the plants just seemed to give up the ghost.

And yesterday I dug them up. Frankly, I was expecting, between the rain and the whole ‘OMG – it’s the blight..the blight” thing, a slimy unedible mess that I’d have to dig the entire bed up and throw everything – potatoes, slime, dirt, rocks everything, away. Blight is a bacterial infection so I’d have to do that. But no – the bed (which the DH has worked assiduously for years, digging it out by hand, with a pick and shovel, de-rocking it, putting in manure and leaves and compost every year, was great – the dirt had drained well and the potatoes were just…lovely.

So, I dug them all out and I washed all the dirt off them and weighed them, just to see how much we’d gotten out of those three little potatoes..that 8 ounces had turned through the magic of being buried in the ground, given room, warmth, and rain, into…14 pounds.

FOURTEEN POUNDS.

You do the math:
14 pounds x 16 ounces to the pound = 224 ounces
224 ounces / 8 ounces is 28 — 28 times the investment

Let’s see now – if we invested a $1.00 today and 5 months later, we received $28.00 back, that would be SOME investment, huh? The difference between investing money and seed potatoes is that with a money investment, you can lose your whole investment. The chances of losing all of your potatoes are pretty small (small potatoes? Nah…).

So, now we have 14 pounds of potatoes. Actually, we have a good bit less because they are soooo good that we have already eaten some. And some are really too small to eat. So, I’m going to invest them again – I’ll put those back in the ground for next year.

Worth the risk.

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)

The business end of these tales usually involve the fact that it’s someone’s grandmother – who was canning in 1925, using the dial canner technology of the time…was not watching the damn canner (and did not ‘leave for a moment’ – but actually went outside to yell at one of the other kids – and had to chase the dog out of the garden and then decided to pick some corn for supper and so on)…and Cousin CindyLou got burned – because she opened the top or took the weight off the vent tube before things were cold inside. As for the windows blowing out – well, Aunt Toby suspects that there is a little bit of dramatic license being taken there to justify the fact that they never used the pressure canner again.

I think there is also this tremendous number of people out there who would like to can but who are terrified that they will blow up the house. Folks – it ain’t 1925.

Here we have a photograph (courtesy of my on-the-spot camera guy) where I am showing two of the three major safety systems in modern (post 1980) pressure canners. The handy fork is pointing toward the vent. That’s what you put the weight on and the steam coming out of that causes the weight to jiggle. My finger is pointing to the overpressure valve. If somehow the vent got plugged and too much pressure built up inside the canner, there is a button that would pop up, like one of those temperature gauges that’s installed in some turkeys – only on the pressure canner, it would release the extra steam. The third part of the safety system, which you can’t see in this photograph is a spring-loaded safety pin that is under one of the handles – this pushes on the rubber gasket that goes inside the lid and prevents the canner from becoming pressurized unless the top is completely sealed and locked down.

Here are a couple of hard facts that just might help you over some of your fear –
1) Pressure canner design and technology went through a complete change in the 1970s and 1980s. Any pressure canner made since that time is safe as long as it is operated according to instructions. And if you remember a couple of things, you should have no safety issues whatsoever:
a. First – don’t over fill the thing. In general, whatever capacity the canner says it has in terms of numbers of quart jars or pint jars, that is all you can get in there. As a matter of fact, in terms of pint jars because you’d be putting them on top of one another, I’d put in one jar less.

b. Secondly – do a safety check before you put anything into it. Hold the lid up to a light( your kitchen window, a lamp) and look out through the vent from underneath the lid. You should see clear through. If you can’t, then wash the lid and put a pipe cleaner or a piece of wire up through the vent and run it back and forth until it is completely clean. Plugged vents are a major contributor to pressure issues with pressure canners. pressure canner safety systems

c. Third – Do you know how old your pressure canner is? Is this a legacy from YOUR grandmother? Is it something you picked up at a garage or estate sale? Do you know if it was ever dropped (aluminum can sustain hidden damage and that could end up with catastrophic results). Although I am sure that someplace on this earth, there is someone who collects old pressure canners or even pressure canner dials, It is definitely NOT worth the safety issues if you do not know when the thing was made. On the other hand, even if it was built after 1980 and was used with tender loving care, it still might need to have the gasket or other safety parts replaced. If it’s too much of a bargain to resist, look on the bottom or elsewhere on the canner, find the manufacturer and model number and call/email/write the manufacturer to find out how old it is and how safe it is to use. If the manufacturer no longer exists – well, you can always plant flowers in it. Here is a great resource to identify Mirro pressure canners. Identifying a canner

d. Once you put the jars into the canner and close it…hang around for a while. Listen while the canner vents the air (it makes a real ‘shhhhhh’ shound) and arrange to do things in the kitchen. Don’t figure you can wander around the house, clean the bathroom, check on this or that. You are canning. You don’t have to watch the canner every second, but stay in the room.

More resources on canning and canners:
Used Canners

Uni. GA, using pressure canners
Canning 101

Creative Blog on Canning – this story is about the exploding pressure canner
Another Canning Blog

Now, Aunt Toby was wracking her brains after she posted about canning because for the life of me, I could not recall why exactly we chose the model of canner that we did. We did not get one of those with a dial. And then I read this, courtesy of Miss Vickie: “Most problems with pressure canners is a gauge that is not working properly or needs to be calibrated. If the gauge is out of calibration, it will need to be replaced, or in some cases it may be sent back to the manufacturer for re-calibration. Check with your manufacturer to see if they offer this service and the cost. Even newer canners should be tested to ensure the safety of the food being processed. Dial gauges should be tested annually or more often if used frequently.
Your local Cooperative Extension may perform this test for you or provide information on how to get this done. In some cases the manufacturer may be able to test their various models, or even cookers made be other manufacturers. Contact manufacturers directly and inquire if testing services are available and be prepared to pay a modest fee for this service, as well as shipping costs both ways. Often, especially in the case of large, old-fashioned canners, the costs of shipping out weigh the actual value of the vessel.” Testing Dial Canners

THAT’S WHY – I figured that anything that required that sort of maintenance, testing, calibration, and whoopdeedoo was not worth having if I could get something that just jiggled, never needed to be tested and could be maintained by checking the vent and replacing the gasket on a regular basis.
The other thing is this – let’s say for the sake of argument that you don’t know beans about canning. Nothing. At all. Even with what I’m saying here (and I am trying my best to be as encouraging as I possibly can be because I think canning stuff is a great way to have great food available to you especially during emergencies), I am going to recommend something: Call your county Cooperative Extension and ask if they have classes in canning. If they don’t – ask them to consider putting one together, even if it means that you have to gather up your friends, coworkers and your mother in law to fill up the class. This is a life skill that really pays off. You never know – your extension might even have a commercial type kitchen with really big time canning equipment so that you don’t have to go out and buy your own (though it’s great to have your own canner – trust me on that). Here is a link that will get you to a place where you can find any extension office anywhere in the US of A. How to Find Your Closest Cooperative Extension Office

OK..everyone feeling a little bit better about the whole pressure canning business now? Remember, your grandmother’s story about the exploding pressure canner … was just a story..that’s right…just a story…..

(Photo at the top courtesy of bookgrl)

Learn to do one thing really well. Make that a bunch of times…and then learn to make another thing really well and make THAT a bunch of times.

Example One: Men’s shirts. I make men’s shirts for the DH as an act of love (ok, I admit it), but also because he has a sort of shoebox shaped body and the tails are just not long enough. Men’s shirts, from a sewing and design aspect are like Japanese pen and ink drawings: the buffet of design opportunities is pretty narrow. The items that are usually seen when the man wears it with a suit or sportcoat are the collar, the cuffs and the band (and even then, with a tie an observer doesn’t get to see much, actually) . The only other place to do anything is the yoke in the back and the chest pocket and even then, there is this really thin line between “Oh, that’s nifty” and “Oh, you’re subbing for The Tumbleweed Boys” this evening?” THE item that separates a shirt that looks really good and professional and one that does not is the placket in the sleeve where the cuff opening is. I’ve made a bunch of shirts for the DH and I STILL have to open up David Paige Coffin’s book, Shirtmaking: Developing Skills for Fine Sewing to the section on this. Every…single….time. I literally have the book open on my ironing board while I’m flipping the pieces around, ironing them, pinning them and so on. I figure after three or four more shirts, I might feel slightly more competent. I’m a whole lot better at sewing up these shirts now, so I use my time in a more efficient way.

David Page Coffin’s Shirtmaking Book

Example Two: The TNT. For those of you who are not ‘sewists’ (that’s what we’re calling ourselves these days), “TNT” is not going to have a whole lot of meaning. It stands for ‘Tried and True’ and refers to a pattern that someone has gone to the trouble to work out all the fitting issues with, and then has made numerous times, in various permutations, until frankly they could cut it out, in the dark with only the light from the weeny bulb in the sewing machine to do it by ..and sew it the same way and still come out with something that looks fantastic. The two dresses above are the start of a TNT for me. The pattern is McCalls 5701. McCalls 5701

This dress is described as: Pullover dresses …have side front panel and pockets, back pleats and self faced bands; dress A has contrast bands; dress B has optional jewel trim; length for dresses is 2″ above mid-knee.
If you go to the link and then scroll down so that you see the line drawing of the front and back views you will see this is not a terribly complicated dress but it does have several redeeming qualities that have endeared it to me:

1) No zipper. Aunt Toby has, over the years, conquered many of her sewing fears: buttons and buttonholes, lapels, boning. She still hates putting in zippers. This dress has no zippers.
2) It’s got some seam interest in the front AND usable pockets.
3) It’s got some action going on in the back. There is actually too much fabric for someone as short as Aunt Toby is, so I’ve modified it but it is still interesting coming…and going.

What I can do to make this into a true TNT:
1) Redraft the pattern piece for the back and take all that extra fabric out.
2) Put a seam in the front that mimics the seam in the upper back that is in the back
3) Take out the pockets completely and just continue those seam lines that are in the front right down to the hemline.

My inspiration for making the commitment to a TNT is a wonderful sewing blogger with a great site called Diary of a Sewing Fanatic

Carolyn is the absolute queen of the TNT – actually, that is wrong. She is the Mozart and Beethoven of the TNT. Her ability to riff theme and variations on one pattern is truly phenomenal.

Carolyn’s TNT Dress, Episode I
Carolyn’s TNT Dress, Episode II

She saves a ton of time and money by using a pattern that she is extremely familiar with. She knows exactly how much fabric is necessary to do this pattern – no ‘well, just in case, I’ll get another half yard.” She knows exactly how much time this is going to take her to do it, lined and unlined. She knows how this pattern is going to behave if she makes it in various kinds of fabrics. She’s been ‘married’ to this pattern for ten years.

I can’t think of one sewer who has not fallen into the stash trap – after all, most of us fall in love with fabric even before we fall in love with a pattern. But one sure way to waste money is to whack away at pattern after pattern after pattern that just…doesn’t…work. There are a few companies that actually draft patterns well; Burda is famous for its pants for example. But all patterns can give you trouble, which is why a lot of sewers make a trial item in muslin first to work out the fit and any technical issues before they cut into the real stuff. Once you have that muslin, you can put the changes into the paper pattern and off you go. Once you’ve made something enough, you can let your imagination loose in terms of interpreting what is the latest ‘on-trend’ item from a top designer…using your TNT as a base. We all like to be in fashion (yes, I realize this is hard to believe that Aunt Toby is someone who loves ‘teh fashion’ but I do) and look well – one way to get the look AND have it fit, look smart, and save time and money is by having a TNT.

When you have a pattern that you’ve committed to – and have made several times and can see the possibilities with…ah….THAT’s a relationship that can last and can save you money in both the short term and the long haul.
(a note on those two dresses: the one on the left is made out of 100% wool gabardine and is lined; the one on the right is made from stretch cotton sateen and is not lined)

We’re back in the kitchen (because that is where the food, the heat and the good seats are). We’ve talked about (to review, in case anyone is taking notes here and no – there are no essay questions on the final) saving money, starting a garden, “doing one thing” to improve your situation, and finding out who your network is.

Today, we’re going to grasp the wriggly monster with both hands: The country is in the toilet. Really. The news gets worse every day. It looks as if we are “staring down the barrel of a gun” and “hitting the wall” – simultaneously. (Being able to do both at the same times is going to take the skills and physique of a contortionist, but I digress.)

And now Elliot Spitzer gets out there and basically says that all the money that has been used to bail out the banks and AIG was wasted – like we didn’t know that already.

But he did talk about something that we WILL talk about which is:
“government investment in the long-range competitiveness of our nation, not in a failed business model…”

What I want you to do, right now (and you know I am all about the “right now”) is to take that phrase “government investment in the long-range competitiveness of our nation” and replace a couple of words so that it reads like this:

“personal investment in the long-range competitiveness of ME” or “family investment in the long-range competitiveness of family members.”

Recently, I also wrote a diary about the cost of higher education and what it is doing to American competitiveness (you know the shorter version and frankly, our competitiveness is in the shitter too). How are you going to improve your and your family’s competitiveness with THAT?

I’d also like to remind folks about a couple of things from the Great Depression and from bad times more recent: Companies that invested, whether it was for advertising (during the Great Depression) or in developing new products (even when Corning, Inc.’s stock went straight into the toilet, landing finally at $1.80, they still invested in developing new products, which is what keeps them competitive), invariably come out the other end of an economic mess in better shape, more profitable, and more competitive than those who hunker down, cut spending, lay off staff and hope to still be there when the sun shines again.

So, what does this have to do with you, bucky? And your fam? You need to look at yourself and your family as your own little economic unit, your own little company, if you will. And we are in the bottom of all toilets right now. Time to cut costs to the bone? Hunker down? Hope things will get better later?

Mmmmmm, no.

Yes, you can cut your operating costs at home – plastic on the windows, more effective nutrition, not eating out. But you need to, like those successful companies from the Great Depression, invest and position yourselves for the future.

Advertising and Marketing:

Get out there. Let people know you guys are still around and about. Attend school functions; go to your local Chamber of Commerce “get togethers;” talk to the folks at church. Let people know who you are, what you do, how you can help THEM, too. Do good stuff. This goes triple if things at your work start to look shaky. Do not hide. Don’t let anyone hide.

New Product Development:

Companies look ahead and if they are smart, do the stuff that needs doing to position themselves for the next wave up. Corning pays the scientists and engineers to cast their minds into the river of the future and you and your family members can do that too. Talk to your kids – find out their dreams. I know people find it funny when I write: “Be a patriot: take a degree in accountancy,” but it’s true – have everyone think about what is good for the country AND for themselves and talk about ‘how do we get there?” If you have college or education benefits at work – USE them. If they will allow you to use them for other family members, then do so. Explore programs that might be available at your children’s schools – perhaps there is a tech high school and one of your kids is technically inclined. Don’t allow all the chitchat about college to get in your child’s way – go talk to the people and find out what they’ve got and how your kids can take advantage.

Be a creative thinker. CAD-based machinists in my area START at $40,000 a year and our local Vo-Tech high school trains for that. In some areas, they are so hungry for them, the companies will hire them and then pay for college for them to move on in the technical field.

Use the internet, books and tapes from the library and learn new stuff – invest in yourself and in members of your family. Perhaps you will make a mistake – perhaps learning some particular computer program will not help you when we come out of this, but the more you do it, the better your chances of having the products that will sell when we come out the other end of this tunnel. Every product development that Corning does is not a hit “out of the park” – think about this that way.

Another thing is – if you have a small business and need money, you need to look for money. I realize that the meme out there is “there is no money.” Here’s a story:

The DH and I were working on the house once when the kids were little. We’d just gotten started and had paid the first payment to the contractor when I lost my job. I remember coming home that day and realizing that the contractor had picked that day to rip the back of the house off and dig a 15 foot hole in the back for a new basement, which was now filled with water. I put my head on the steering wheel of the car and wept. At dinner that night, the DH and I were in a panic: How could we possibly get a loan from a bank now that I had no job? All that stood between us and the great outdoors was a big blue tarp.

A small voice from a chair next to us piped up, “Ask Grandma and Grandpa – they have money.” Our 5-year old had cut through the muck and mire to the nub of the issue – we just had to find someone with money. There are all sorts of people out there who have money and who have been getting shittier returns from the market for a long time.

Your job, if you need money for a new business, to expand your business, etc. is to find those people. Go back and see: Advertising and Marketing. You need to meet and find people who a) have money to invest, b) are willing to invest locally and c) are willing to invest in YOU and your family to do whatever it is you want to do. Don’t be shy and don’t think they aren’t out there because believe it or not, they are. Just go to the internet and do a search on “angels” – they are out there and they are looking for a better return and better control than they can find in the market. In your case, you need to find your local versions of angels – believe me, they are out there.

Above all – FDR and Frank Herbert (Dune)were right: FEAR IS the mind-killer. Now is not a time for fear: It is a time for thinking and planning and doing.

(originally published at Oxdown Gazette)

I’m here to point out something that tells me that it’s actually going to be worse for a lot of people.

There were major differences between where and how people lived in 1930 vs. how and where people live NOW, especially with regard to where we get food and how it is produced and how much access people have to actually producing food on their own. I will use the example of New Jersey and “rural” areas and populations as surrogates for having access to and being able to grow your own food.

On an overall basis, in the United States:
1930……………..43.8% of the population lived in rural areas
2000……………..21% of the population lives in rural areas

In New Jersey:
1930……………….3.2% of the population lived in rural areas
2000………………. .2% (That is right…two-tenths of a percent – 17,283 people out of the entire population of New Jersey, live in rural areas.)

Now, just living in a rural area does NOT mean that you either a) are working as a farmer now, nor does it mean that b) you have the skills to do so. But it DOES mean that you have access to land around you that you could either lease, buy, or use to grow food if you wanted to do so.

In terms of the amount of land in farms in New Jersey:
1930………….1,758,000 Acres (In case you are wondering, this IS where the name “The Garden State” comes from. New Jersey was the market garden for New York City for a very long time.) The average size of a farm was 69 Acres, which is an indicator that there were a heck of a lot of extremely small, individual farms.
2000……………805,682 Acres and the average size of a farm is 85 Acres..still a lot of small farms around.

In terms of the percentage of land in farms in New Jersey:
1930……..36.6% of land was in farms
2000……….17%

So, what happened to all the rest of that land? Think: Sprawl. Malls, parking lots, retail and housing development in all the counties that snuggle up to New York City, with all the rural activities going on in the counties much farther away.

Something else to think about is sheer “skills of living” – for the last 40 years, the American Consumer has been encouraged to…well, consume. Not “make,” “grow,” “fix,” “repair”…just go out and buy. In 1930, there were still several generations of adults around who knew how to do those “make,” “grow,” “fix,” “repair” activities, whether they lived in rural areas, or had learned them in their youth and had moved into the urbanized areas, but they still knew how to do those things and survive.

How many people who do not live on farms do you know who know how to do: carpentry, plumbing, welding, clothing repair, shoe repair, glass and window repair, electrical work, grow and process foods, etc.? If you had to sit down and write down ten things you know how to make, grow, or fix…how many could you write down? If you had to write down what would happen to you and your family if: you lost your job, lost the house…would you know what to do? Where to go? Who could help you? Who would be willing to help you?

It might be a good exercise to go through … sooner than later.

(originally published at Oxdown Gazette)

A lot of us are going to start feeling even more uncomfortable and insecure very soon, if we haven’t already done so. How to survive? For all the comparisons to The Great Depression, in my estimation, this is a whole new ballgame. Why? First and foremost: in 1929, people in the United States were not that far removed from subsistence living. Even people who lived in the largest urban areas still were doing many things for themselves, simply because the consumer economy behemoth did not exist the way it does today. The distance between farmers and other producers and consumers was not that far — consumers in New York City, for example, were buying their farm products from New Jersey and the counties in New York State within a couple of hours travel. No one was getting strawberries in January from California or Florida – that … did…not…exist. The whole economy of just going to a store and buying whatever you wanted/needed was much smaller than it is today; people many times had to make do, make over, or make their own.

My great aunties worked in the garment trade; one of them did put herself through secretarial school and graduated from the sewing machine to a typewriter at The American Tobacco Company. A real step up. Her sister sewed for a fancy ladies’ lingerie manufacturer her whole life. At home, they made their own clothing, were thrifty, and only indulged themselves on occasion. In the Depression, when their parents had to move out to Coney Island (because it was a lot cheaper than the Bronx), they all moved in together in a fifth floor walk up. They pulled together and reduced the entire family’s overhead. And they survived. The big book of the period was Five Acres and Independence (you can still get it from Amazon), aimed at people moving out of cities and surviving because they had a bit of land (actually, five acres is quite a chunk of property).

How are people going to survive the loss of major family income today — especially if they live someplace where either they don’t have a big yard or if they do, they might live where there are restrictive covenants (lawns of a certain size, planting of xx plants, no vegetable gardens where they can be seen, no hanging clothes on a clothesline outside and so on)? In a society where much of people’s image of themselves and their families revolves around financial resources rather than actual “do it for ourselves, thrift, etc.” skills, what are the possible outcomes for families who lose a big chunk of their income?

(originally published at Oxdown Gazette)