Wednesday, June 8th 2022
I am on the floor in the warm room. I’ve got the Giants game on the comp, I’ve just finished doing a light meditative workout and I’m thinking about what I want to do with myself today.
I’ve got two things to deal with in town. Also, if I’m visiting my ex partner, today would be the day. I watered yesterday so I probably don’t need to do that. It’s going to be hot and clear and so maybe today is a good day to figure out the last of my deals.
Technically, I need to go to the market and find some couplings and a hole driller to be able to join my water tanks together. I haven’t bought the new ones yet but this also could get taken care of today or at least the money for it. I’ve never done this operation but I’m pretty sure I understand how it’s done. I just need to find the couplings. I’m not sure if they have any in the market and I was not able to find anything perfect online. This is as much a learning trip there’s anything.
I also need to pick up some steel posts. I have five grape plants growing now. One of them is not looking so healthy but nevertheless, we have five and grape plants need to be trellised.
Many years ago when I first took a crack at Belarusian village Life I had a bunch of wooden posts and I could build pretty much any structure I wanted using them. This time around for some reason, getting wooden posts just doesn’t seem to be something I can do. I have asked and asked but no one seems to want to hook me up with this. I do have a neighbor who specializes in welding but I don’t really like using my neighbors. He has a bunch of logs lying on his property baking and basking under the sun but he never wants to let them go. I have no idea why he needs them but I can’t get any.
However, unless I use cement to hold a wooden post in place, it’s going to rot within 3 years. Great plants have a much longer life than that and in fact they will just be coming into maturity in 3 years. The wooden trellis that I built worked out fine. I just buried a couple of posts and strung bailing wire between them. This was an earlier time and it was before the drought. The plants grew unbelievably well and soon we had a natural gazebo with Bunches of grapes hanging down from the ceiling. This was by the third year. Nice? You bet. I don’t know if I believe in this kind of growth in this new modern and ever worsening climate but again, I like to dream.
As far as picking up food from town, my decisions are getting a little dim. For the longest time, I was happy to have access and in fact, most of my original plans included making a pilgrimage to town to pick up a bag of food a week. This is a bike messenger bag of food.
At that time, I was a bit snobbish about the local food store. They really didn’t have very many interesting things to sell. They only supply basics and really only the cheapest possible things. There’s nothing wrong with this, it’s just that there’s not really so much nutritional value in what they sell.
Desperate times however call for desperate measures and this year I have gone to that store more often simply because it’s only 2 km away and not at minimum a half day trip. They have cabbage and onions and some fruit. I can get dried peas and buckwheat. Of course I can get some white flour and of course some macaroni and cheap spaghetti sauce if that’s what I’m looking for. They are also a pretty good source of cheap raisins.
Yeah, and for about 2 weeks they sold vodka to me.
Now though I have so much food I don’t know what to do about it. I still have maybe 20 kilos of potatoes in the root cellar. These are not going to last forever but they will last another couple of months before they all have to get cleaned out and composted. I have all of the greens I could possibly handle. The boxes are providing me with tasty little tidbits of more delicate food. And pretty soon, I’m going to have all of the peas and beans I can use.
Okay, I’m being a little over romantic about this. It’s not 200 years ago. I’m not a fool and as of the moment in these days before the war actually comes here and closes down all of our functioning systems, it would not be beyond my budget to buy a bag of potatoes, and several boxes of tomatoes and veggies that I don’t grow and just take a cab home. I’m not completely destitute and we do have functioning markets. And even if I hate the politics and this is just a matter of personal survival, I can go to a supermarket. Go with the flow? Bite the bullet?
The point is though that I am eating my own food happily these days. I’m thinking about getting some breakfast right now but honestly, I probably don’t even need it. I had a beautiful dinner last night with way, way too many greens and this morning I just feel sharp and put together. I understand that I’m only a couple of days into this low fat / no fat diet. I understand that this will get old if I keep it going exactly as I am for up to two weeks.
All I’m saying is that we are in the season and this is exactly where I’m supposed to be. This is where all the food is. And with another small monetary investment to pick up some glass, I can be saving food all the time. It’s just another project I’m not exactly great at but need to get into.
In my history, I have always saved pickles in 3 l banks. I think in English these would be mason jars. My ex partner however grew up with pickle barrels and suggested that we pick up 30 or 40 L jugs, salt the water well and add in some local herbs for flavor and store our pickles there. Old school stuff for sure but who doesn’t like pickled pickles? I guess that would be pickled cucumbers.
At the moment though I’m wondering why I am not cooking down and saving a few jars of horseradish leaves. And really, I understand this is not anybody’s national dish but it’s growing all over the place here, absolutely my most abundant crop and I have not done a damn thing except make use of it.
What is the nutritional information for horseradish leaves?
Horseradish leaves contain potassium, magnesium, vitamin C, and calcium. They also contain glucosinolates, which are enzymes that give the leaves and root its spicy flavor.
(Also) Horseradish, like other members of the mustard plant family, contains a chemical compound called sinigrin. Sinigrin has been shown to help reduce inflammation by blocking or changing the parts of the immune system that cause inflammation.
Nice? Very nice.
So this is just where we are at. Again and again, I’m sure there is a lot more that I could be doing. I actually have an essay for this blog that I have been putting off all week. And all of the web work I could probably be doing if I had any motivation whatsoever to get to it. On the other hand, if I am ambivalent to all of these non-survival things, why do them? And this is especially true if I am ambivalent about even their success.
I don’t really know. Probably my biggest fight in writing these blogs is to get people to look at what I’m writing about instead of me. The last time my ex partner was here, I tried talking to her about something but she chose and said to stare at me. It’s a real problem getting people to focus their eyes on something that has mutual benefit instead of glomming on to the person offering the information. Metaphorically, you’re supposed to be listening to the teacher’s subject and not staring at his dick. Or her breasts depending on who your teacher is. Or his breasts depending on how fat your teacher is.
There are too many politics now. We are much too confused. There has been too much information probably since radio started for the human mind. Bring in television and movies and suddenly the world is just too full of shit. Bring advertising into the subject and it’s pretty easy to understand why we are so crazy. And now when we have jealous and vicious governments fighting all of the information storm just to remind us to hate each other more, you can see where the insanity comes from.
All I’m trying to say is that a simpler life is better for us and for the environment. I 100% agree with the speech that I published yesterday. A vegan diet is better for human health and is better for the environment.
I also agree that it is just simply common sense to ask people to have common sense instead of keeping them worked up into a place of insanity. Most of the misery in my life is caused by insane people glomming onto me because they believe either they have the right to do so or because they think I have something they want and therefore they have a right to try and get it.
The world is not supposed to be this way. I agree that no matter what happens to the system there are those who are going to be a little richer and those who are going to be a little poorer. But with this understanding, we can allow the talented people to help a bit more and we can find a way that everybody can get along and live well. We need to be a little bit more disciplined. We need to contain our feelings and find healthier outlets for our frustrations. And we need to keep the course and keep working to make sure that we are on the right track and going in the right direction. The operative and important word in those sentences is we. We don’t need to depend on anyone else to do anything for us, we all have to do our best and remember that we are also contributing to the common good.
What would the world look like if people listened to me? Most probably it would pretty much be the same. There would be more smiling faces. There would be more genuine conversations of importance. There would be more cooperation. There would be a lot less misery and a lot more friendship. Probably the parties would be a lot better and would end up being much, much more satisfying. Also, they would probably be more genuine reasons for parties. There would probably be a feeling of mutual success for having done something instead of just listening to a calendar tell us what day it is.
If I take that thought and I try to imagine it actually coming into practical effect and I juxtapose over it a list of faces I would be happy to be friends with again, I would be a millionaire. I probably wouldn’t have a million dollars but I would have a million friends and I’m quite sure this would feel like a million dollars.
They used to say that here. Не имей сто рублей, а имей сто друзей. Don’t have a hundred rubles but have a hundred friends. This is one of these things I would just love to believe is true and if the truth were told, it’s one of these things that everyone wishes were true.
Unfortunately, and you knew that was coming, even the Russians don’t believe in this anymore.
Its meaning was that friendly help is better than money. Unfortunately, friendship ceased to be in the eyes of people who were infected with commercialism and began to overvalue themselves and someone twisted the folk wisdom: “Do not have a hundred rubles, but have a hundred friends who will lend you three rubles.” This version of the proverb implied that friends are needed, only in order to have someone chip in for vodka.
For what it’s worth, the cost of vodka is now somewhere between 8 and 10 rubles, somewhere between three and four dollars. So you know, the math still works out pretty well. And yes, when Lena first showed up looking for an opportunity to clean my floors, she exactly asked me for four rubles just to help out.
***
It’s about 2:30 and I’m hanging out at my ex-partner’s apartment and waiting for my train to go back. I have picked up everything I need to tie seven water barrels together. One group of four and one group of three. I might want to go back in and set up one more group but I think this will be sufficient for what I have right now. The cost was not too much, about 30 bucks for all of the hardware. My ex partner made a call to the guy we buy our barrels from and my guess is he will show up sometime this week or at the latest on Sunday.
Finding the attachments was not that difficult and the guy at the market I talked to was definitely pretty helpful. I told him what I needed and what I was looking for and we actually put together a slightly better system than what I was thinking of. We not only get to attach the barrels together but there’s also going to be a cock that can be opened to fill water barrels or, if we end up elevating the barrel sometime in the future, we will even have enough water pressure to run the hose directly from the barrels themselves by gravity. Nice? You bet.
We are also picking up a 65 L barrel that I believe we’re going to use for pickles and we have started our planning for picking up some banks for saving food. We even found two recipes for holding on to horseradish leaves. Not exactly traditional but very easy to do and very very similar to kvashenaya kapusta, sauerkraut. Not German sauerkraut but simple salted leaves that are allowed to give off their own juice. Again, very nice.
I got a note from a friend of mine from California today and he was pretty nervous. It finally dawned on him that I live kind of close to a war zone and he decided to ask how I was doing. We talked live on Skype so it was kind of face to face and by the end of the conversation he asked me how I could be so calm about things.
My answer was that he was missing two basic points or even three. Firstly, as a California resident, I have no idea how he deals with the monstrous amount of bureaucracy and the pure cost of owning a home or trying to do anything to your home in terms of needing licensing and permissions. To do anything in the United States takes such a ridiculous amount of money. I have no idea how people can afford it other than by going into debt for the rest of their lives. Yet, life goes on.
I also pointed out that California is getting beaten to death by wildfires because of all the dry forest land caused by climate change. Of course, nobody ever gets out of their cars or starts asking people to make sacrifices and live a bit more organically and with a lighter carbon footprint for the sake of maintaining our habitat. That same economic system that relentlessly presses our face into the shit is actually the cause of our problem. But be that as it may, even if yours is one of the houses that gets burnt to a crisp, Life goes on.
The third thing is another video from president Zelinsky. What’s interesting about this one is it’s a little bit away from the usual cheering and positive propaganda. This one simply has him talking about preparations for winter. By this we’re talking about heating systems in people’s homes and maintaining the basic infrastructure that people need to live in a country where there is snow, Frost and freezing temperatures during the winter.
Life just goes on. And yes, this is whether or not the town has been blasted with missiles. This is for all the people that still live there and whose houses are still standing. This is for all the people who still have to go to work everyday. Just because there’s a war on doesn’t mean the money stops. I mean, you don’t have to believe me that the only reason for this war is economics and that people are making a lot of money and will be making a lot of money off of all this human misery. All you have to do is understand that nobody can afford not to work because everybody here also has that foot on the back of their head pressing their face into the shit to get some money.
I just do what I do. I have my own problems and if the truth be told, if the war actually came to my door, there’s not a lot I could do about it.
I’m just a writer. I’ve been a teacher for 20 years. Before that, I was a builder and for a little while I delivered packages by bicycle in New York City. In my life, I’ve been through a few severe moments and looking back, without intending to brag at all, I believe I have held myself together pretty well in times of trouble. I’m not saying I’m better than anyone else, I’m just saying that when the pressure comes, traditionally speaking, I’ve had a clear head and I have done my job.
This is a lot more than I can say about some family members or quite a few people who I know from here. I have never added drama when no drama was needed. When the chips are on the table, I like people who just do their job.
This is the story from around here. At the moment I am writing these words, my ex partner is at her office doing her thing. Out in the distance, I can hear someone cutting wood. I’m not a big fan of electric powered chainsaws but they are cutting up wood to prepare for winter. And though we’re not going to get a lot of rain this week, most probably before I take my day off and if my water buckets show up, I’ll be collecting water so that I can make sure that my trees and garden never go dry.
Or more basically said, I’m a big fan of Mr Zelinsky and I am not a fan whatsoever of Mr Putin. I like the guys who have Grace under pressure and I have no love whatsoever for people in power who do nothing but create pressure for other people. Or the deaths of tens of thousands of people for no good reason I can possibly understand at all.
***
10:15 p.m. and I’m back in the warm room again. I didn’t stay over in town. It was mutual agreement or at least a direct suggestion from my ex partner that I probably would not enjoy staying over. Her house, she told me, was much too warm and stuffy. I would never like it. I didn’t argue too much.
It seems like all of our plans are in motion. My ex partner is enthused about all of our plans. We are going to do what we can to save food. She has some local knowledge that she’s happy to share and I’m not completely without experience. I do not want to paint the picture that I know what I’m doing completely. I never do. But the basics of saving food are reasonable enough to understand. You need to make sure your glass is clean. You need to make sure that your ingredients will produce a reasonable result and you have to make sure that the food is clean. Other than that, serve it up, close the top and wait around until sometime when you really need something good to eat during the winter.
What I am doing is not in any way new here. It’s not new here and it’s not new anywhere. Perhaps now, most people would consider what we’re doing to be quaint or Old fashioned. The world has become much more convenient And old style arts of survival are just museum pieces. Well, maybe it’s true or maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s just something that the old people remember. Maybe I’m an old person.
Not that it means anything to this general discussion but my legs were great today. Handling the bike ride was not such a big deal. I also did quite a bit of walking around at the market and I was feeling pretty good while doing it. It’s been a bit painful for a long time but today it was much better. I’m grateful for this. It is good for a lot of optimism.
When I got back though, I really didn’t do much of anything. I cut some greens and put together a nice soup with some interesting lentils and some buckwheat. It wasn’t anything extraordinary or special but it tasted good and was feeling without being head destroying. It’s exactly what the doctor ordered. I’m lucky that I enjoy it.
Thinking about tomorrow, for sure, we’re not going to get any more rain. I will have to go out and water everything again. It’ll be the last water it gets until Sunday. The weather report says it will rain on Sunday but of course, I don’t really believe in that. I don’t believe the weather report knows what they’re talking about at all.
There is some weeding to do. I understand this. I could probably do something about mulching some plants that I never got around to last time. I could also cut the grass on the back part of my property and put together a compost pile. I have been fighting my body since this whole thing started this year. I’m not really completely free to do as much work with my body as I think of in my head. It’s hard for me to keep up with my own ideas. But these things need to get done. We are going to need the material.
About the only thing left to talk about though I don’t really want to talk about it very much is putting this business with my family to rest. I’ve been doing a good deal of thinking about it. I took a few steps towards fighting this whole thing one more time but unfortunately, I don’t seem to have any rights. It’s funny sometimes how they make laws in America and especially humorous in the state of Florida. They are very conservative in Florida. This means that they like playing games more than they like doing their job. They side with the parasites and not with the workers.
I don’t really know what to say. The actual work on my part to close up this deal is just a few keystrokes on the computer. I don’t know why I’m waiting. I’m just thinking about it. Maybe I’m dreaming too. I keep having thoughts that the world rights itself and somebody steps up and does the job for good old truth and justice. I have these thoughts. I don’t believe them when I have them but it’s amusing to dream sometimes. It’s amazing to think that the world actually functions and that good things actually happen. Unfortunately, I don’t see this happening. Americans just defend their insanity. There is no reasoning. It doesn’t matter what you believe in, you just can’t reason with alcoholics or drug addicts.
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