About the Freaking Prepared author.

1. I am not freaking prepared.
2. I grew up being told I should be prepared.
3. I grew up believing something bad would happen.
4. I stopped believing that.
5. Now I am faced with science that implies something else bad will happen.
6. I wonder what a post-carbon world will look like.
7. I wonder how the McMansions and Hummers in my neighborhood will end up.
8. I don’t own a McMansion.
9. I don’t own a Hummer.
10. I don’t need either.
11. I have a small house, small car, small family, small income.
12. I am basically small.
13. I think small is beautiful.
14. I’ve read E.F. Schumacher.
15. I’ve read Murray Bookchin, too.
16. And Noam Chomsky.
17. I’ve read a lot more than I’m going to list here.
18. But I might talk about what else I’ve read.
19. I’m basically living in my mind.
20. Which is why I need to join my body in the real world and prepare.
21. I am preparing for several possibilities, like earthquake (important where I am) and basic emergencies.
22. I am also preparing for a few probabilities, like the world after peak oil and climate change.
23. I have learned some about disaster and emergency preparedness at neighborhood watch meetings.
24. Most people in my neighborhood rely on their church to tell them how to prepare.
25. I don’t.
26. I don’t know much about how they’re preparing because I don’t hear those conversations.
27. I do know the emergency morgue is going to be about 100 yards from my house.
28. Yay.
29. I’m not sure this is the house I want to live in when I meet a major disaster.
30. I’m not sure these are the neighbors I can rely on when I meet a major emergency.
31. So, I think I may need to move.
32. But I love my mountain view.
33. And I’m really thrilled to be living on a shelf of stable rock up above the earthquake soil-turns-to-jello line.
34. It might be better to go quickly.
35. Which is why I’m glad to be in the path of burning fallout from the Yellowstone Super Volcano.
36. I used to worry about how I personally would survive.
37. And I worried that my family would survive.
38. And I worried that my city and state and country would survive.
39. Now my concern is more focused on whether civilization (such as it is) will survive.
40. I wonder whether humanity will survive.
41. If it doesn’t, I’m OK with that.
42. But I think humanity and some version of civilization will survive.
43. I hope it isn’t patriarchal.
44. I think patriarchal structures of the past six thousand years or so have been a bit part of the problem.
45. I’m not a man
46. I don’t hate men.
47. I’m married to a man.
48. Men are OK.
49. It’s just partriarchy I’m not crazy about.
50. And accumulation.
51. Patriarchy and Accumulation is the title of a great book.
52. So is Grassroots Postmodernism.
53. Both have shaped my view of society on the largest and smallest scale.
54. So has Prophecy and Survival by John Mohawk.
55. I wrote about books again.
56. See, I live in my head.
57. It comes from decades of schooling.
58. I know about deschooling, too.
59. I’ve also read Escaping Education, by the same authors as Grassroots Postmodernism.
60. I’m still in my head.
61. I clearly need help.
62. Which is why I’m generally at the Freaking end of the scale.
63. I don’t want to be at the freaking end of my rope.
64. I don’t generally live in fear.
65. A life lived in fear is a life half lived.
66. Una vida en miedo es una vida de medias. (from Baz Luhman’s Strictly Ballroom–and a Spanish proverb).
67. Though I do live with too much stress.
68. Stress can kill you.
69. I don’t want to die.
70. At least not right away.
71. I would prefer to be Prepared and just go on with my little life.
72. Which would probably be in my mind most of the time.
73. But I might learn to live in my body and in the community of the world more.
74. That’s my goal.
75. Even though I tend to be a hermit.
76. And hermetic.
77. Tension holds in balance my desire for community with my desire to be the hell alone.
78. If there is a hell it is on this earth.
79. I want to protect the Earth.
80. But I don’t want to engage in violence to do it.
81. I think the Earth is quite capable of fighting her own violent battles.
82. Just watch her chew us up and spit us out.
83. Or watch her nurture us.
84. Have you noticed that people’s religions tend to take on the characteristics of the weather in their region?
85. Just as insurance, just in case, I prefer to make offerings to the Earth.
86. Those offerings aren’t really made with strings.
87. Whatever happens happens.
88. Even if I get spit out.
89. My daughter isn’t happy with that idea.
90. She objects to it vigorously.
91. She’s young.
92. She may know something I don’t.
93. I still don’t mind if I get spit out.
94. I’m happy to feel the joy of awesome powers in this world.
95. It won’t last long because life is short.
96. Life seems eternal when one is young.
97. I’m not so very young.
98. I’m probably halfway through my life.
99. That’s OK.
100. I like grey hair.
101. I like lists, too.

UPDATE

1. I’ve decided to shelter in place.
2. My husband is going out on neighborhood watch now at 12:05am with one of the other 40 people who volunteered.
3. Maybe these are OK neighbors with whom I can share a major disaster.
4. I guess I’ll find out.
5. It’s the earthquake-turns-the-benches-to-jello issue that makes me want to stay away from the east bench of the Salt Lake Valley.
6. So I sit on my contaminated rock wondering what to do.
7. I just turned 22, and I was wondering what to do.
8. I didn’t just turn 22.
9. I just had a Neil Young flashback.
10. I was 21 years when I wrote this song. I’m 22 now, but I won’t be for long.
11. I flashed back to Billy Bragg there.
12. I learned that song when I was 21.
13. It was a few years later when I met him.
14. Back in the 21st century, the news about climate and peak oil has sent me back to the freaking end of my scale.
15. Freaking makes my shingles tingle.
16. I alarmed my kids when I burst into tears when I watched a polar bear curl up to die on Planet Earth recently.
17. I burst into tears again when my friend who does air monitoring for the state told me the real state of the air that can never be clean again.
18. I don’t usually burst into tears.
19. I usually narrow my eyes and fight.
20. Anger is an energy.
21. That one was John Lydon.
22. Apart from the end of the world, everything is going really well. “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”