Reply #47: Exactly!

[tavalon]

I'm working really hard learning to be self sufficient and yet interdependent. So is every one else in my community. The predominant questions I ask myself are, "Do I really need this?", "Can we share this?" "What do I have to offer?" which is creating the impetus for learning new things. This summer's new things are learning to garden in the Northwest (longtime gardener in Texas - a whole different beast), learning water bath canning and pressure canning and relearning how to quilt.

One of my friends knows how to hunt, another how to prepare a carcass and how to tan hides. Yet another is quite the woodworker. And so on. And we are coming together, preparing. And networking and becoming a more solid community in the process.

I know all of that sounds vaguely (or maybe not so vaguely) like militia for the Armageddon talk but even if the shit doesn't hit the fan, I think this is a much better way to be than the insular nuclear units most of us had during the 80s and 90s.