A few weeks ago, the NY Times published an essay by a writer, Mira Ptacin, who has been researching a book on doomsday preppers. Believe me, I'll be all in on that one. I find these guys fascinating, in a weird way, and my husband I and I used to love watching the TV shows about these end-of-days folks. (Don't know if these shows are still on. It's been years...) They are, as Ptacin found, a predictable bunch: white conservative Second Amendment guys who are arming and dry-leguming it up in advance of civil unrest. Not surprisingly, they're Trump supporters, even though I don't believe that Donald Trump would last for a nano-second if he had to rely on his own devices. Seriously, can you imagine him digging a slit-trench latrine or shooting, skinning, disemboweling, cooking, and eating a squirrel?
Of course, I can't imagine myself doing any of this, either. (Okay, I could dig a latrine.) But, then again, I'm not a big old macho, macho man. (Neither, of course, is Donald.)
If the world gets so bad that we have to head for the hills and shoot-to-kill anyone who steps toe on our property in search of a sip of water or a bite to eat, I for one don't particularly care to live. If doomsday is upon us, count me in as an anti-survivalist.
Anyway, Ptacin was working away on her book when the pandemic struck.
Stuck in the house with the kids and the hubby who's income supported the family, putting her work on something of a hold for the duration, she decided that she'd become a prepper. But not a violent, gun-toting doomsday maniac. Rather, she was a survivalist who's there for the "homemaking and community resilience."
In her article, Ptacin doesn't mention Peaks Island - just an island off of Portland, Maine - but I'm guessing that's where she is.
Portland is a great little city, and Peaks Island, where I've been several times, is just lovely. There's very little there-there. It's been years since I've been to Peaks, but all that used to be there was a grocery/general store and a small hotel with a (quite good) restaurant near the ferry. (I just checked and there's a post office, a few more restaurants, a laundromat, a gas station, and a couple of churches.) Fewer than 900 folks live there year-round. In the summer, the population balloons to between 2,ooo and 4,000.
Not a bad place to be marooned during a pandemic, although I'd be sitting there waiting for my appendix to burst during a high-wind situation when the water taxis weren't running. Which is why I'll never live on an island, pretty much unless it's Manhattan.
Ptacin began resetting her definition of preppers when she came across one Lisa Bedford, housewife prepper extraordinaire, who runs an enterprise called Survival Mom. Bedford's not a cra survivalist, but a practical prepper who dispenses advice - via blog, handbook, and classes - on how to make sure your families have all the in-case-of-emergency needs (plus backups) on hand.
Nothing wrong with that.
Even though things aren't likely to get so dire that there's no access to food in Boston for weeks on end, a situation where rabid pangolins with dead bats in their mouths are marauding through the streets, I have enough food and toilet paper to last me a couple of months. And if I have to use our tiny little back yard as a toilet, well, that's not the end of the world until the typhus sets in.
Water might be a bit of a problema, as I don't have a bathtub to store it in, and there's really no place to store bottled water in my condo, what with all the room that my hoard of toilet paper and paper towels are taking up. Maybe I should get some water purifying pills? Just in case?
But I do have a couple of extra down comforters to pile on if the heat goes out. I also understand that falling asleep and dying of cold isn't a bad way to go.
Coming across Survival Mom unleashed Ptacin's inner prepper.
At some point it occurred to me that I might be going about this homemaker thing all wrong. Maybe instead of thinking of my new role as housewife, I should have been thinking of myself as a prepper. And instead of embracing my inner Mad Max, I could channel my own mother and grandmother [from a small town in Poland], and a bit of Survival Mom — to be a nurturing, resourceful and resilient homemaker ready for anything. If Mad Max is the yang of prep — the masculine, overt energy — then I wanted to tap into the yin of prep, the earthy, feminine energy. The yin of prep is about extending your network of neighbors and friends to build resilience in your household, your neighborhood and your community. The seemingly opposite forces contained in the yin-yang symbol are actually complementary. The pandemic shone a bright light on the fact that homemaking decisions and work reflect core values — and for me, they have nothing to do with matching linens or seasonal floral displays. (Source: NY Times)
So Ptacin started focusing on practical skills. And doing things like offering "homemade chicken soup to sick neighbors."
Well, that's nice, but how is it that she wasn't already doing this? Not that I'm Florence Nightingale-ing around the hood with a pot of chicken congee, but I have been known to bring sesame chicken, meat loaf, a pasta dish, fruit salad, and scratch brownies to friends in need. Isn't this just how most people roll?
Ptacin has also been:
...keeping a stockpile of food that our family has in case of emergency and can share with other people who know how to fix things.
Hmmm. Does this mean that she's only willing to share her food on a barter basis? So much for the 'always keep a pot of soup on the stove for lost travelers' she claims is her family ethos. Or maybe I'm misreading her.
Everyone in her family is learning basic first aid. A good thing. And:
Andy [her husband] rescued a couple of broken chain saws and now has them running — we will always have firewood if we need it.
Hmmmm. Maybe they're not on Peaks, but in a little house in the big woods. But what happens when Andy finishes cutting down all the trees on their property? Does he barter some of the stockpiled food for access to the trees of others?
She's also got a garden going, and the family's all learning first aid. The family is planning on chickens next year, "then perhaps bees."
Good for them. And good for realizing you don't need all the store-bought junk you've been acquiring over the years.
What bugs me about this middle-class suburban prepper-dom is how self-congratulatory and privileged it all is.
What about people who live paycheck-to-paycheck, and can't afford to invest in extras? Or who don't have basements, walk-in closets, garages, or she-sheds to store their stockpiles in?
What about city dwellers? Should we all follow Andy's path and get chainsaws for ourselves? Then what? What do we do for trees once we've stripped the public parks bare? And where do you burn the wood if you don't have a fireplace?
Where would we keep our chickens? Our bee hive?
Good that the Peaks Island Preppers are taking good care of themselves. It's just not an approach that's universally applicable.
Just sayin'.
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The order of nuns who taught in the schools of my childhood had a summer place on Peaks, and the nuns would always talk about the week they'd spend there each summer. I was an adult before I realized they were saying "Peaks Island" not "Pigs Island."
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