Guest posting for AWA today, I wanted to share Gretchen Wilson’s “Redneck Woman”.

AWA asked me, why this song? Well, part of the answer is that the song makes me think of a strong woman. I have never been a wilting flower. I’ve never been interested in Victoria’s Secret. As the song says, “I can get that same damn thing in Walmart on half price.” I’m not a huge country fan, but this song resonates with me.

I need to see strong woman in media. I love seeing Nikki Haley out there, kicking it up in politics. Gretchen Wilson does it in country music. In television, there’s Gina Torres (Zoe Washburn in Firefly), Caitriona Balfe (Claire Fraser in Outlander), and Ming-Na Wen (Melinda May of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), among others. This song evokes that strength, while still holding onto the facets of womanhood that stand out to me.

Women can do most things men can (we’re not equals on a physical level without a LOT of work, but very few jobs require that brute strength and there are tools that make us equal). But that’s not all we do. We work all day, then we come home and make dinner, clean house, care for the kids, do laundry, help with homework, and in too many cases, we also run after our spouse as if he’s another kid. So when I see a woman out mudding in a Jeep, it makes me happy. And when I see a strong man standing beside her, helping and supporting, that makes me damn proud.

B.L.U.F.: Texas Senate Bill 1515 is unconstitutional and therefore should be removed.

Here on GFZ, we look at the constitutionality of laws and bills. AWA does a fantastic job of working his way through the infringer suits that are working their way up the chain. I am not nearly so skilled, but there are issues which I take a more traditionally Leftist stance on, which I believe should be looked at with the same deep scrutiny and view of constitutionality as we do the gun bills, laws, and court cases.

Currently, Texas has a Bill going to their House which requires schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms, SB 1515. This is not an optional thing. Classrooms in elementary through secondary school will be required to post the Ten Commandments in each classroom, prominently. The version of the Commandments must be the one outlined in the Bill; no other version will be accepted.

This goes contrary to Stone v. Graham (see below), which ruled that Kentucky could not mandate the display of the Commandments in public school classrooms, because it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Read More

BLUF: There are a lot of things that I agree with the Liberals on, but their path to get there seems wrong.

Starting at the top left corner, and working my way clockwise…

Should people working 40 hours a week be living in poverty? The simple answer (and the leftist answer) is no. If you’re working full time, you should be able to afford to live. That seems like a no-brainer, right? The problem is that there are different levels of “working 40 hours a week.” We currently have a huge number of decent paying jobs available in this country, which do offer a “living wage”, but people simply don’t want to do them. At this point and time, the vast majority of jobs out there do pay enough for people to support themselves and their family. Leftists prefer to bring up the “extreme poor” end of the deal (and to be honest, the Right sometimes seems to only see the “extreme wealth” side of things), and ignore the vast majority of people in the middle. I would love to see the country in a position to pay everyone a “living wage”, but the bottom line is, not every job can afford to do that. If you want to earn more money, don’t work at a job that can’t pay you what you need. Of course, the Left wants to point out huge numbers of inner city people who are living in filthy, tiny apartments. Do they exist? Yes, they do. But frankly, a lot of the people who are living that way do have the ability to improve themselves. They simply choose not to.

Read More

There’s a lot of stuff going on with Trump these days. Multiple law suits, a presidential run, and of course the carnival row of his arraignment. I’ve been asked what the Left thinks of all this, because it’s hard to get information from The Other Side due to media bias. Well… okay then.

Caveats: I’m definitely not Republican, but I’m definitely not Democrat either. All opinions expressed are my own unless I’m linking to someone else, which will be properly indicated. And I don’t like Donald Trump, but don’t think he’s the “devil” that some on the Left paint him to be.

Right now, I’m seeing attacks on the judge in Trump’s NY case, both because he donated $15 or $20 to Biden in 2020, because he presided and some people think that’s a good reason to send death threats. People are reporting that there’s no way Trump will get a fair trial in NYC. Christopher Buckley likens the entire thing to Trump putting the citizens in jail. There’s a lot of crowing about how Trump is claiming to be not guilty of all 34 charges brought against him. There’s a fairly high level of apparent joy that Trump’s “sleaziness” is being brought into the public light.

Read More

FIRE!

Fire is one of those things that it’s important to know about in emergency situations. You want to know how to get it started, how to keep it going, how to bank it overnight, and how to use it to do various things. You also need to know more than one way to do each of those things.

Making fire is probably the one that stumps most people. There’s this tendency to fall back on “oh, I’ll use a lighter”. I’m guilty of it myself, to a certain extent, and I almost always have a lighter on me somewhere. But lighters run out of fuel, and they get wet, and they can get lost. So what happens then?

Knowing how to make and use char cloth is one path to fire. Having or knowing how to find dry tinder, even in went conditions is another. There’s also flint and steel. But what do you do once you have those ingredients?

This is a picture of the cheap striker I got through an online cheap-ass place called Temu. I think I paid $1.98 for it. It has a ferro rod, a striker, and a blow tube, all in a neat little kit with a neck strap.

Did you know that when most ferro rods arrive, they have a coating on them that you need to work through before you can get a decent spark? Something to know. Something I did NOT know until this afternoon. I learned.

Do you know how to get a spark from flint and steel, or ferro rod and striker? Do you know how to get the spark to be where you want it? It’s not nearly so easy as one might think, and it requires a bit of practice in optimal circumstances before you get into an emergency.

Luckily, it’s not expensive to practice. You can make char cloth out of any old cotton (denim jeans, old tee shirts, kids’ spit up cloths, you name it) or linen. Here’s a good video on making it, with some wonderful side info. And another website with good pics.

Okay, so now you have char cloth. What about tinder? Technically you don’t need both (char cloth IS tinder after all), but knowing how to find or make tinder is as important as knowing how to make char cloth. After all, if you have the means to make char cloth, but no fire, then what do you do? 🙂

Tinder can be anything that’s very small and very flammable. Tinder is smaller than the tiny sticks you use to get a fire built up. It’s fine and light and fluffy. As an example, even in wet climates, if you can find a cedar tree, you can scrape the underside of the bark for a feathery soft stuff that makes great tinder.

Tinder’s job is to catch your spark. That’s it. Now you have a spark, and it’s glowing, and you need to add more fuel to it. Larger pieces of tinder, such as very fine branches from pine trees, can be added. You can make feather sticks (thin, dry sticks that you ‘feather out’ with a sharp knife or axe) to help you make the spark into more. You blow on the ember in the fluff of tinder, and hopefully, the ember becomes smoke, and the smoke becomes fire. Take your tiny fire and add it to the previously laid base of your fire.

There are many ways to build that base, such as log cabin and tipi style. Practice, so you know what works best for you, in which conditions. I tend to use a log cabin style when building fires in dry weather, but I find tipi works better when it’s wet. Awa taught me how to use a military poncho as a cover while building a fire in the rain.

Being able to get your spark to the right spot differs depending on what method you’re using to make a spark. If you’re using a ferro rod, most people’s instinct is to hold the rod over the tinder, then push the scraper down it. Unfortunately, this can cause your spark to go wild. A better way is to hold the scraper in place, and pull the rod up along it. Give both a try, and see what happens. Practice!

When you’re using flint and steel, you want your tinder in your hand, and you spark toward that. And that takes a LOT of practice, and you’ll probably skin your knuckles a number of times in the process of learning. I’ve been doing flint and steel work for about five years, and I’m still terrible at it. I’m passably good with a ferro rod, but I can’t possibly know that I’ll have one on hand, so… I practice with flint and steel.

So, what if you don’t have a ferro rod, or flint and steel, or a lighter? It’s time to use friction. But friction is the least easy method for making fire, even though it can be effective. This is another one that really requires you to go and do it, practice it, and use it on a regular basis in order to perfect it. And all that practice must be done before the emergency, because when you’re in the midst of it, you won’t have time to be putzing around with learning new things.

This site discusses several methods of making fire using friction: bow drill, pump drill, hand drill, and fire plough. And then there’s this great article on Instructables, which adds more to the list: the two man friction drill, and a fire piston, in addition to instructions on the ones at the first site.

So… go add to your skill set! 🙂 Have fun in the process, and impress your friends. Stay warm, stay dry, and learn.

As some of you know, the area of the world where Awa, J.kb, and I live in got slammed by heavy snow recently. The official total snowfall for my spot was 40 inches. We got 40 inches of snow in less than 48 hours.

As a friend of mine said, there’s just no time when 40 inches of anything is enjoyable.

It was heavy, wet snow. Normally I’m out doing a lot of the work at moving snow, but I have a knee injury at the moment, and it was deemed unsafe for me to do so. Instead, I ran the house, which was kind of fun.

We lost power early on in the morning. That was good, because it gave me all day with natural light to get prepared for things. I brought out my lovely antique oil lamps, and brought down my solar camping lantern and my rechargeable bike lights (I don’t use them on a bike, but do have them for walking at night or for when I’m camping). My stove is a gas stove, so I can cook just fine without power (the oven shuts off for safety’s sake). I actually planned out a more complex dinner than usual, since I had the time, and the stove aided in heating the house.

The house will keep from freezing just fine with the wood stove alone. I admit, I prefer having at least some oil heat, because the heat from the wood stove is centered in an area of the house that the water pipes go under, to keep them from freezing. That means that the areas we sleep in tend to be REALLY cold. Still, we made do.

We moved snow. We cooked, and ate. Eventually, we moved all the stuff out of the fridge and into boxes in the snow. My deep freeze will keep fine in this kind of weather pretty much indefinitely, and for a week or two even in warmer weather, so I wasn’t worried there. I started a sewing project that I’d been putting off for months, to the joy of one of my kids (Viking hood trimmed with rabbit fur, great for storms like this).

So what’s so special about my house?

We prepare for power outages. We’ve always lived in areas that were prone to them, because we don’t like living in big cities. We live in suburban or rural areas, with one main line feeding dozens of farms or well spaced houses, and that line inevitably goes down because of accident, freezing rain, trees, snow, or what-have-you at least a couple of times a year.

What I don’t really talk so much to the kids about is that I also prepare for emergency outages of the longer variety. If power went down for several months, life would be more difficult, but not tremendously so. Having it happen right at this point and time is actually ideal, because I’d have plenty of time to grow my garden and raise a few clutches of chickens before the stored food ran out.

Electricity isn’t necessary to me. It’s a convenience, and I do love it, but it isn’t necessary. The only reason my phone went on at all during the whole snowpocalypse was because my boyfriend was checking in on me occasionally (he lives 30 minutes away) and because I have friends who might have needed help which I wanted to be able to render. I didn’t play games (though I did take some photos).

Our neighbors had their genset going about 5 minutes into the storm. It must have gobbled down a couple hundred dollars worth of fuel in the 36 hours it was running, and the noise announced to the entire neighborhood that they obviously had (literal) money to burn.

I have a genset. I could have dug it out and hooked it up. It would have kept the fridge and hot water heater going, allowing us to have hot showers more easily. That’s it’s main purpose, really, because everything else we can do just fine without electricity. I didn’t see a reason to dig through all that snow, though. Even if the power outage had lasted as long as Eversource suggested (’til that Friday 6pm), I wouldn’t have bothered. Only the threat of the deep freeze defrosting would have gotten me to turn it on. And maybe not even then. Still, when the kids whined about not being able to charge their devices, I suggested that if they wanted it that bad, THEY should dig out the genset. They decided reading by candlelight was the better option. I concur.

GFZ talks about “grey man” quite a bit. Don’t be noticed. Don’t stand out. Blend in with everyone in your surroundings. That’s why I don’t want to run my genset. It’s loud. It lets everyone know you have power, fuel, money, and probably tons of food. I don’t want that kind of thing advertised.

I don’t know if y’all have seen The Last Of Us yet, but there’s a scene in there with a prepper dude, waiting for the gov’t to clear out. He waits for FEMA to mark his door as empty, evacuated his town, and drove off. He waited a bit, came out cautious, cleared the area quite well, then quickly went about the business of getting everything he needed from locations that had obviously been previously selected and planned around. Then he went home and sat down to a lovely dinner of steak and potatoes, with nothing more on his mind than taking it easy.

That’s my goal. I don’t yet have a sub-basement set up, where we can hide from FEMA. It’s on the list.  But I’ve no problem quietly slipping off into the woods while our area is cleared out. We’ll come back when they’re done clearing, and settle back into comfort. I’m not interested in living out in the woods, dealing with cold, wet, bugs, and dirt. I plan on staying in my nice, comfortable home that works just fine without any electricity at all. I’ll sleep in my warm bed (which was ridiculously warm and comfy despite there being no heat at all upstairs during the storm, I might add), and sleep well.

Being prepared for the power to go out is the difference. If your preparations are “turn on the genset”, then you really aren’t prepared. Eventually, fuel runs out. It only works if the problem in question is very short-lived. It’s useless as a long-term survival strategy. Heck, it’s useless in any survival situation that lasts longer than the gas currently in the tank at your gas station. So learn how to do without.

If you’re in a house where you can run a wood stove, you’re basically set. It provides heat, a cooking surface, and a central place to congregate. If your home isn’t really set up for a wood stove, but you have a portable one on hand, you can always rig a board in a window, to allow you to run the chimney outside. It’s not a perfect answer, but it will do in an emergency.

If you’re in an apartment or rented dwelling, though, you may have no ability to do that at all. You have to get creative. A tent in your living room for sleeping in will help hold in heat at night, especially if you pile yourself and all your family, including pets, within. Dogs make great space heaters. Setting up one room as the “warm place” will also help. Use military poncho liners or quilts to block off all other rooms, keeping all the body heat in one place. It’s possible to get an indoor safe propane heater, but if you do, I highly recommend also picking up a carbon monoxide alarm that runs on batteries. It’s not likely you’d run into problems, but safety is important.

How do you cook, if you have no electricity and no gas stove? With the wood stove, it’s easy. It’s already hot; just use the heat to cook with. In that apartment, however, you probably don’t have that ability. A single burner butane camp stove is a wonderful answer, and the fuel keeps well from year to year (remember to use up older ones first). They’re safe to use indoors, and you can crack a window if you’re concerned. Propane camp stoves can also be used, but be aware that they are much more prone to leaking, and should not really be used indoors.

You can also cook outside. If you have a balcony, you can use charcoal to cook in cast iron safely enough, or even use a very small rocket stove for cooking. Of course, you can do that out on the lawn of your apartment, too, but I don’t suggest it. Advertising you have food, fuel, and knowledge is not a good thing.

Water is the other big issue for all of us. City water will usually continue to flow for quite a while, even in a power outage, so you can usually fill up containers from the tap if you feel like it’s going to drag on for a while. There are bags that you can put into your bathtub and fill, for instance, or you can pick up water cubes that stack (a better idea, as you can move them easily). If you’re on a well, it may stop providing water when the power goes out, but you should be able to get water manually. Be aware in advance, though, if it’s a modern well it may not take a bucket. You may need a special “skinny” container to pull water up from within.

What about light? Solar lights have come a long way. They’re small, efficient, and easy to charge. I have a compact solar lantern that I can use wastefully each day, because I know it will charge even when it’s only partially sunny. I have other lights that can be charged with electric, and I can use my solar array that I charge my phone from. Oh yes, I have a solar array that can charge my phone, my small emergency lights, a fan I use in my tent, and a handful of other things.

There are dozens of other things to talk about, when it comes to preparing for emergencies, long or short. I know I am always learning new things, adding to my knowledge base. I am not an expert. I’m just a curious and keen person who likes to learn stuff, especially when it’s useful. And there’s the rub: knowledge.

Knowledge is the one thing you may not have time to gain if something Really Bad [tm] happens. You can be unpracticed at something, and figure it out as you go along. But if you don’t know it at all? You’re screwed. So learn what you can. Test yourself. Turn the power off at the main junction to the house and go without for 48 hours. Find out where your holes are. Patch them as best you can, at the fastest speed you can safely and securely do. I recently decided that I don’t know enough about trapping, snaring, and foraging. I’m taking classes this summer from a master forager who lives in my area, in order to help fill that gap. I borrowed books from Awa about trapping and snaring, and I’m about to go practice.

This is what you can do, right now. Fill gaps. You won’t know where your gaps are until you actually put these skills to the test, however. So go camping with a light load. Turn off the power to your house. Go for a hike with only what you can carry, and see if you can forage enough food for a meal. PRACTICE.