Make it work
After a few months of retrenchment & deep stillness, I began a new offering for my close people this past week that centers around dialogue, which is not exactly easy or obvious for anyone who knows what paths “dialogue” can lead down in this economy, which is all of you. The initial topic was on the idea of adaptation that I set forth in our previous text.
Adaptation will touch most parts of my life, because the objects I bring into my space come from everywhere. This morning I used my blender, and in cleaning it I pulled out my bottle brush, which comes from Sweden. I will probably replace it with something cheaper, because even though that is made in Asia, we all know what’s coming.
Keeping in mind what’s likely about to happen to the American food system, and also keeping in mind that I routinely find myself cooking for lots of people, conversation turned to some of the things we can do to share skills. “Do you have any idea how few people know how to make stock?,” my chef friend asked. Everyone else looked on in silence. I have a chest freezer full of stock. Stock takes maybe, like, ten minutes to do. I may keep yelling “it’s so easy” when people marvel at something I’ve done, but I also don’t do anyone many favors in teaching why.
The idea of a skill share is not terribly novel, but eventually the six of us found ourselves filling the chalkboard with all of the stuff we can do. In 2020 we all briefly returned to homesteading, but in this house we never really stopped. Vinegar-based cleaning regimens, repairing the bike I built myself 16 years ago, pickling operations, making jam from scratch, a chest freezer full of stock. If we’re all going to get together, we may as well learn something in the process.
So I think I’m going to refine the offering around learning something and then processing the current moment. This will probably serve to get people reliably in the space and not exhaust them about the ongoing apocalypse. I should probably look into getting ball jars in bulk, eh?