Allyson

I’ve talked in the past about how I didn’t feel that Trump was “presidential” in his first election bid and term. I stand by that. He lost his temper a number of times, was rude and unruly, and generally was not the sort of person I wanted to hold up proudly as “my country’s leader.” Whether he did good things or not, he did not act presidential nearly enough.

In the past month, I have been watching Trump. He has learned from his first term, in my opinion. He’s toned down a lot of the rhetoric. He isn’t being as rude, while continuing to be as strong and steadfast. I can stand behind that. I admit, I still don’t like listening to his campaign speeches, because they tend to ramble. But at least they’re in complete sentences and refer to actual things that happened or might happen, and aren’t fictions like Biden.

On the other hand, we have Harris. Harris has taken things to a WHOLE new level:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTNXjyMkF/

You will have to click it to see it, I believe. I am just blown away at even the idea of someone twerking at a presidential rally. Really? The bar has been lowered to the point where we’re all wearing snorkels to avoid drowning. I can’t even.

Trump has his moments. While I appreciated his humor at the Black Journalist interview he did, the commentary about Harris “becoming black” will come back to haunt him (and us). That’s the kind of humor you share at home, and not in a massive stadium. The zinger isn’t worth it. Other than that one-off, I thought Trump did very well at the interview, especially considering the venue. He was polite, he answered their questions even when they seemed to want to talk over him while he was doing so, and he largely kept on topic. I haven’t watched the entire thing, but I’ve seen about half of it in clips. I was impressed. It’s on YouTube in its entirety if you care to watch it.

Then there’s Harris. She’s going on national tv to tell people that she wants him to “say it to her face.” I personally think he probably isn’t debating her right now because she is not THE candidate. That won’t happen until the end of August, at the DNC. She’s running as if she is the choice, but that is not yet set in stone. Her presenting herself as the presumptive choice is bold.

I’m running out of steam. I’m sad at the circus going on. I’m sad to see people that I consider close friends, drinking the koolaid of the left and believing things that are outright lies.

I wanted to talk about fire, today, because it’s one of those ubiquitous things. It’s just there. We don’t really think about it, in our world of Bic disposable lighters and all-weather matches. But fire is one of the prime things that makes us human. We harnessed it. But if we lost access to our modern methods of starting fire tomorrow, I think most people would be shit out of luck. That means no heat, no ability to boil water for purification, nothing to cook over… It’s an “end of civilization” issue.

I have many levels of fire making tools in my personal kits. With my ren faire kit, I always keep disposable lighters for their ease of use. I also have strike-anywhere matches, just in case I have issues with the lighter, because it does happen. In my cutlery box, I keep a second disposable lighter, as a backup. I also have a tin that contains flint, steel, charcloth, and tinder. Back when I had a very old gas stove in my kitchen, I used to have a sparker, which looks like a giant safety pin.  You pull on the sides of it, and a metal bit goes over a flint, and you get a big spark every time. It’s much easier than flint and steel, for sure, but works best with gas of some kind.

Let’s look at the various types of fire making we have, starting with easiest.

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This past weekend was the end of Maine Renaissance Faire. It’s the last big fair that I’m involved in for the summer season, though I sometimes do short stints at others and I still have events at the Fort which are ongoing. Maine is a huge fair, and it’s a lot of fun to work it. It has two modes: flooding or choking on dust. The past two weekends, it was dust, and I was grateful. I have allergy pills, and I can wash myself. The flooding there is extreme when it happens, so I was thankful we didn’t need to deal with rain at all.

Ren Faires, as you may know, are chock full of people who lean to the Left, politically speaking. I heard a lot of people saying rude things about Trump and Vance, and I kept my mouth shut most of the time. I make my money at Ren Faires, and I cannot afford to bring politics into my job. It would sink me financially. Other people don’t feel the same, and spout their politics at every chance. There were several times that I really wanted to comment, but I pressed my lips together and either left or changed the subject.

A couple that I particularly like were camped near me, and caught my poorly hidden facial expressions during one such conversation that I couldn’t leave (it happened at my booth, and I can’t just up and leave that). The husband came over to visit with me as soon as the people left, to make sure I was alright. I did something I was worried I’d regret later; I told him the truth.

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My father’s side of the family is from Communist Hungary. I grew up on Hungarian foods, and learned several recipes that I have passed on to friends and family today. This recipe is straight from my Nagymama’s (that means “grandma” in Hungarian) kitchen, this recipe has the flavor of Hungary throughout it. The meat is tender, the broth tasty, and on a cold, winter day, nothing beats it! Remember that the delicate flavor of good, traditional goulash comes from a fine quality Hungarian paprika – look for the Szekezed label, which comes in a metal cannister in the spice sections of many grocery stores. There are usually two types available: hot and sweet. Both have a sweet flavor to them, but the hot one is QUITE hot. For this recipe you want the sweet one, although if you like your goulash to have a bit of bite, you can mix in some of the hot paprika, too!

Ingredients for goulash:

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I know that “taking heat” means something different to 2A people, but I’m talking about temperature heat today. I’ve heard a lot of people whining (and yes, I’m using that term on purpose) about the heat, of late, and I want to address it from a prepping perspective.

So, over the past several weekends, I’ve been at a variety of reenacting events. None of those events were “modern” or had A/C. Very few of those events had even an electric fan, never mind anything more cooling than that. During the events, temperatures have ranged from 86*F to 104*F, with humidity in the 75% or higher range. One particular day, on July 12th, it was 104*F and 95% humidity where I was. I had no modern means for dealing with that heat.

When talking about the heat, several people (not on here) have told me…

• I’m just better at dealing with the heat than most people (which is laughable considering I am sodium deficient at the BEST of times, which is a dangerous thing in high heat situations)
• the heat has killed people and I’m not taking it seriously enough
• some people require air conditioning just to live
• people in the past didn’t have heat like this

I do agree, the heat has killed some people. I am not the sympathetic ear most people expected when I was told that. I feel bad for the elderly or very young when intense heat happens, because they’re not cognitively able to do the things necessary to not suffer from it. Then again, we more able bodied folks can certainly do things to make their lives easier, and so I don’t consider it a big argument. It’s also a very small number of people. In a major disaster, those people are frankly going to die. I don’t like saying it, but it’s true. If you’re celiac, prone to medical issues, elderly or very young, the likelihood is that you’re going to die. While I work very hard to mitigate that fact in my own prepping, it’s still a fact, and I have dealt with it to the best of my ability. If I die, I die, and I’m not going to whine about it.

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I had an interesting interaction today (I wrote this on Tuesday, July 23). An acquaintance posted this:

Now, I don’t know that much about Vance. I knew he was a vet, and that he wrote a really popular book, and that he was very against Trump until relatively recently. Being me, I went and looked this up. Is Vance selling out American farmland to foreign investors?

The short answer is, sort of. The long answer is, not really. In my reading, I found out that there are a few properties in Ohio that have gone to foreign investors, but that those properties come with a price. It’s a real price – very high taxes which go to support US owned farmland in Ohio. Now, my understanding of what I was reading is that Vance wants to keep all American property American, and he’s suggested bills in that vein. But being unable to enact those bills NOW, he’s doing the next best thing and making foreign ownership of Ohio farmland very expensive, and lucrative for Ohio farmers.

I shared a couple of articles (one from DNT.com, and another from ocj.com) that explain Vance’s opinion on farmland, and what the Ohio people think of him (since he’s from there, and those are the people most likely to know him well). I got some fascinating responses. The original poster said that Vance was using AcreTrader to make millions of dollars off of foreign investors (untrue… AcreTrader doesn’t sell to foreign investors at all). Essentially, what I got from her responses was that if someone is making money off of something, then it doesn’t matter if it’s good for the environment, frees the slaves, or ends world hunger… it just doesn’t count.

Other people chimed in. The OP asked if I supported Vance, and I responded that I didn’t really know yet, as I hadn’t done due diligence in investigating him. I didn’t bother explaining that it doesn’t really matter if I support him or not, because I don’t get to dictate VP choices to the Republican party. I didn’t think it would matter. Check this out:

Money, power, hubris, and self interest. I found that one interesting. I don’t see the problem with money or power, and I have a health self interest myself, so I can’t really complain about it in others. I don’t know Vance well enough to say if he’s engaging in hubris, but that’s one of those things that usually takes care of itself over time. Then the random insert: Kyle Rittenhouse.

Now, I DO know about Kyle. I like the kid, and I feel like he had to go through an awful lot in a very short amount of time. He was underage, and he probably shouldn’t have been there. As a parent, I would not have allowed my kids to go to what I knew was going to be a riot. But that’s me, and his parents are doing their thing, and considering how polite and well spoken Kyle is, I guess they’re doing pretty well. The kid apparently was putting out dumpster fires and rendering first aid to people before he was attacked and forced to defend himself with deadly force. His attackers played stupid games, and won stupid prizes. *shrug* Regardless of everything else, Kyle was acquitted on all counts. He was found not guilty. The same court system found Trump guilty, and the Left is okay with that finding. But they’re not okay with Kyle’s finding. Me, I want to see more Kyle’s in the world. The kid had more calm and focus that night than most adults in that situation.

I was not about to explain why Kyle wasn’t a bad person to this group. I reported one comment and blocked the person who made it (it isn’t reflected in the above screenshot because I reported the comment for encouraging violence and I guess FB took it down). I realized this was not a place where I was going to convince anyone of anything, so I just walked out the door.

That’s when I discovered the secret to making Leftists go absolutely ape shit. I swear, guys, I didn’t do this on purpose, but here it is.

I left. I said “hey, we’re talking at cross purposes, I’m out of here.” No drama, no messing on other people’s walls. I think that’s crass and there’s no reason for it. If it had been grievous enough, I’d have moved over to my own wall to talk, because that’s *my* virtual living room, and I can say what I want. I don’t mess in other people’s virtual living rooms though. That last commenter in the screenshot above? He paged me because I didn’t answer him.

He asked in PM to explain what there was to like about Kyle. I encouraged him to do his own research and form his own opinions, and reiterated that I wasn’t there to attempt to change his mind. I had only gone there to present facts, not opinions. He started to get irritated because I wouldn’t engage. Apparently, my not pushing my opinion down his throat was me “being secretive” and “unsure of the basis of my own stance.” I returned to my original statement, that he was welcome to his opinion and that he should form it himself based on his own research, and stated I was not interested in political debate with anyone. It had nothing to do with secrecy and everything to do with not engaging in fruitless arguments that only leave people feeling grumpy.

I’ve been watching the little dot indicator that says he’s typing something. It’s been flickering on and off for a while now. I think maybe his (her?) brain is circling down the drain…

So, if you want to cause a Leftist to break, simply don’t engage. I’m actually kind of enjoying watching the internal meltdown. Does that make me a bad person?

AWA talked about cognitive dissonance (“…when two opposing thoughts reside in the same mind, generating inner conflicts and psychological distress…” — PC), but I want to talk about cognitive distortions (“Error in the thinking process, automatic thought, erroneous thought pattern. Different from logical fallacies.” — ibid) in relation to the Left.

So I was at a ren faire (Maine Ren Faire, in case anyone wants to visit me next weekend, as that’s where I’ll be then, too – look for me at the fire) when Biden decided to step down. I got the news from several sources, but mostly through word of mouth. Now Ren Faires are a bastion of the Left… everything is rainbows and glitter, men in dresses is a regular thing, and anyone can be anything they want. But Ren Faires also have a surprising number of conservative folk at them, albeit ones who are chill about gay and trans people. I have always been a wee bit more Right than the average faire person, and so I rarely talk politics. I was surprised to be hearing about Biden, as we actively avoid reading the news while at faire. Be that as it may, it was relayed to me as fact, not news, and people didn’t put a spin on it, for which I was grateful.

After hearing about it, I went and looked stuff up. I read some stuff on AP, pawed through a Washington Times article, and then went to FaceBook to see what other people were saying. Yes, I know, never go to FB for information, but part of the reason I DO, is because I write about things here. The people that I interact with on FB are friends and/or acquaintances, and so they aren’t random caricatures on social media, and I think I get much better information because of that.

Right now, the main things that are being bandied about are:

• positive memes about Harris
• a rounding chorus of “Vote blue no matter who!”
• “reminders” that if you say “ignorant things” about women, your daughters and wives hear you
• comments that it is “time for women to lead” (with disparaging remarks if someone suggests we pick the BEST candidate)
• a call for Obama to run (with a lot of very patient explanations about why he can’t… good grief that one hurts)
• a call for Obama to run as VP for Harris (which is a legally squishy area)
• a lovely note that if Biden had died instead of stepping down, Harris would already be president, so just vote for her already

That’s just a taste from a couple of friends’ timelines. There were more, but I deleted the people who called for violence or did fat shaming or name calling (that’s a thing for me every political season, and I do it for *everyone* who does it, not just one side). There’s this complete inability for the Left to see anything positive that Trump’s done, or to admit that Harris has done very little. Then there’s the whole part about how Harris will be good at the job because she’s been Joe’s VP for the last four years, and so she has “lots of experience.” At the same time, in the same paragraph, the person said Trump didn’t have enough experience to be President.

There is definitely a lot of “two opposing thoughts” in the Left’s rhetoric. Unfortunately, there’s also a ton of cognitive distortions. I think there may be MORE of the distortions than the dissonance, because the dissonance requires you to be uncomfortable with your two opposing thoughts. They (the people I know, at least) don’t seem to be in any discomfort whatsoever. They embrace it. It is the very definition of an “…error in the thinking process…”

It’s been very interesting watching some of my friends imploding because other friends suggested that the Dems as a whole were being dicks by not really allowing a choice to be made. Half of my Left friends are upset because Harris has now been forced on them, and they don’t get to actually pick a presidential candidate (though of course they don’t realize that they never had that choice anyhow because of how the Dems work their side of things, but that’s another article entirely). The other half of my Left friends are having melt downs because the other half are somehow causing the Left to lose because we all just have to vote for Harris or Trump will take away all women’s rights and force us to be sex slaves and incubators.

I can’t make this stuff up. It’s distressing to me.

It’s kind of terrifying, watching everyone Left of center picking up the same words, the same cadence, the same memes, the same phrasing. This is happening even among people that I consider *friends*, good friends who are otherwise thinking and rational human beings. It reminds me of what happened with kids a couple of years ago when you put on the song Ney Ney. It didn’t matter what they were doing, if the song came on they dropped it and just started doing the shuffle dance moves. Zombies, man… they’re training them early.

This time last election, I was upset over a lot of things. Yes, I disliked Trump enough that I wasn’t seeing any of his positive things. Yes, I was hopeful that Biden would do better. In that particular “hold my nose” scenario, I prayed that Biden would be the better choice. I am not afraid to admit that I was wrong. I’m not afraid to notice that Trump has changed, too, in the past four years.

All that aside, I am trying not to engage in cognitive distortions OR dissonance. I really think Nikki Haley was the better choice, not because she is female, but because she has a lot of the same thoughts as Trump but is a lot nicer to look at and has a much more professional stance… and she’s younger. Having presidential candidates who could conceivably die of old-age related diseases before the end of their tenure is HUGELY problematic to me. Yes, Trump is much healthier than Biden (mentally at least),  but he’s still 78 years old. He’s overweight, and that comes with a host of issues that I’m intimately familiar with, and it scares me that he could get into office and then have an aneurysm or heart attack and we’d be in another mess. I like Vance (so far, at least, but I need to do more investigation), but I don’t know that he’s truly ready to step up as President right now.

For people who I judge are thinking folks, I am pushing the narrative that “even if” Trump wins, he can’t just make up laws. That’s not how it works. We The People have choices, and when election time comes around for conservative folks doing unpopular things, they WILL get voted out. It’s my hope that they’ll be replaced with conservative folks who are doing “the right thing” while also listening to the People that they are beholden to. I suspect, however, that they’d be replaced by Leftists. That’s a message I want to send out to the conservative people currently in office, by the by. Don’t be so stupid that you’re going against  your populace, because you WILL get yourself tossed out, and that definitely isn’t going to help your party.

When we polarize, as we currently are, the checks and balances built into our government don’t work as well. I agree with the calls for unity, even if I disagree with a lot of the people who are doing the calls. I don’t want a divided states… I want the United States. We’re a grand experiment and I don’t want it to end on my watch.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTNu7YoQ5/

This made me laugh out loud and scare our bunny!

Bread is often called the “staff of life,” and that’s because a man can survive on bread and water. We think of this, in today’s world of Wonderbread and fake food, as a cruel punishment. In medieval times, bread and water was fairly standard fare for a person. In the 1750s, bread was 60% of the average colonist’s daily food intake. Today, that would be considered outrageous and possibly dangerous. Then, the wheat was whole, and even when finely ground (very doable along the many rivers in water-powered mills), it contained all of the natural protein and fat of the kernel.

This recipe is one that I’ve developed on my own. It’s a blend of several recipes that I’ve worked on over the years. It combines a pain de mie recipe, a no-knead recipe that I love, and the “beginner’s loaf”  from a book of Chris’s, Bread Alone. It’s the culmination of about 20 years of practice, learning, failures, successes, and surprises as I learned enough about bread baking to casually consider teaching myself to use a wood fired beehive oven at the Fort.

This is not an easy recipe. It is a simple recipe, however. The beginner bread recipe I mention above is the best place to go for instructions on how to bake bread. If you do what the authors tell you, you will eventually make amazing loaves of bread, every time. It will take a few years of practice, though, and you will probably make up new swear words as you go along. This recipe here, is not as difficult as the beginner loaf, but will not teach you as much about baking as you make it. I heartily encourage you to make it entirely by hand at least a half dozen to a dozen times before indulging in the use of a MixMaster or other bread making machine. Getting your hands onto fresh dough is good for you mentally, and the resulting bread will feed you physically and spiritually. There’s definitely something “more than human” about creating a loaf of bread.

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I posted about prepping a bit back on GFZ. I think it’s a topic that needs to be covered on a regular basis, and even if you have been doing it for a dog’s age, the reminders help get you in the right head space. Now, I don’t do the whole “deep state bunker prep” thing. First, I don’t believe the world will go into that much chaos, that quickly. It’s going to be a slow decline (and in my very strong opinion, the pandemic proved that). Second, and more importantly, bunker prep isn’t sustainable.

I don’t know if any of you have watched Love, Death, and Robots (it’s on Netflix if you haven’t, and it’s well worth the watch), but there’s a couple of fairly amazing shorts that cover prepping topics. The one I’m personally thinking of is in season 2, when the three robot friends are touring America after the death of all the humans. They walk around an area where a bunch of people lived in bunkers. They’re all dead, too. Another show, can’t remember the name of it, shows a couple who stays two years in their bunker, and when they open the door they find out that the entire Earth has been destroyed and they’re just floating around on a chunk of ground. These both illustrate the problem with bunker prep.

If you set up a bunker for short term emergencies, that’s fine. It is not, however, a solution for surviving TEOTWAWKI. Eventually, you run out of food, water, or air. And then you die. Bunkers, pre-pack food (like MREs or emergency buckets), and hoarding ammo and firearms are basically just a way to die painfully and slowly.

Real prepping (yes, I said what I said) is learning enough skills to survive after TEOTWAWKI. Real preppers don’t waste time figuring out ways to try and survive a planet buster bomb or other doomsday scenarios, because there’s no point. If the planet is destroyed, you’re just going to die. If a plague comes through and you catch it, you’re possibly going to die. If someone bombs your city, you may die. These are not things to prep FOR.

Prepping is what you do after you survive. Yes, have a bunch of food stores set up, because that’s important. There might not be a grocery store to go visit, or it might be empty, or being run by a despot (who isn’t the current government). You may need to shelter to avoid a firestorm or waves of nuclear fallout or insurgents or invaders. That’s short term stuff.

After the firestorm or fallout or aliens move on, you’ll come out of your hidey hole, and then the real work begins. Surviving is easy. Living is a lot more complex and difficult.

I’ve talked about it before, saving seeds, learning skills, putting food up that’s shelf stable, making short, medium, and long term plans for emergencies. But how to you go about it all? There’s no one answer for how to prep for surviving and thriving. You have to come up with your own plan, that fits your family and your part of the world. The emergencies that I plan for likely aren’t the ones that should be planned for in a big city like Boston or NYC, for instance. I live in the boonies, and there are other issues I’ll have to deal with. City people will have to deal with zombies (the name for those who wander about robbing and pillaging during emergencies) and rationing and figuring out how and when to escape. People near the equator will have to plan for hot weather, and people farther north will have to plan for cold winters, possibly without electricity or dinosaur squeezings.

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