Advice for Parents

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4 decades later, I still remember my grandmother doing this to me.... and it was about buttering bread!

It Takes A Village...

Whether the Greeks realized it or not, they did not vote against austerity yesterday.  What they were really voting on was whether the terms of austerity would be dictated by outsiders.  The people in the village of Karataina, at least, knew what they were voting for: the austerity of self-reliance, something which they are prepared for.

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I Owe You One...

Many people see the problems with an economy where money is created as debt.  Some think we should go back to a system where money is backed by precious metals.  A few like Daniel Suelo think we should get rid of money altogether and go to a gift economy.  Either transition would be difficult, however.  Jeff W. had an interesting suggestion on Of Two Minds that would act as a bridge: informal credit.  Put simply, it's when you say "I owe you one" and mean it.  More broadly, it's being in a community where favors are reciprocated.  While the mindset is quite different from the gift economy, all that is really required to switch over is to drop the mental accounting.

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Common People

It's Indepedendence Day, and I want to celebrate Common People.

Hat Tip to Sixbears in the Woods to introducing me to the song... although the version he used was by William Shatner.

Worth A Hill of Beans

When I was younger, my parents and I would go to the New York state border to a restaurant that featured Amish style cooking.  Sadly, after a few years it closed, but Mavis Butterfield over at One Hundred Dollars A Month blog came across a Mennonite recipe for Baked Beans from scratch that looks like the kind I enjoyed so many years ago.  I will have to try making it myself.

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If I Could Keep Time In A Bottle...

Everyone has their own version of making a survival kit out of a small metal tin.  It is a fun challenge to see just how much functionality you can get into such a tiny space, and it has the advantage of being something you can carry around with you every day.  One function it decidedly lacks, however, is being able to carry significant quantities of liquids.  Tim MacWelch over at the Outdoor Life Survival Blog solved that by putting a survival kit in a water bottle.  While it's a little more difficult to carry on your person at all times, you can easily throw it in a briefcase, backpack, large purse, or bug out bag, and you can put a lot more stuff in it than a little metal tin.  I definitely think this is a challenge I will be working on in the near future.

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The Park Grill at Home

NCJeeper made a great post on the forum at The Survival Podcast on how to build a park-style grill at home.  It definitely requires some good metalworking skills like welding so it is beyond my capabilities, but it looks like it would be fairly simple to make if you had the right tools and materials.