IWLSR5

Andy and I have gotten totally sucked in by the latest round of survivalist-themed shows on the History Channel and Discovery. Tonight on Man vs. Wild we learned how to estimate how much more daylight you have by using your outspread hand.

You can hold the palm of your hand perpendicular to the ground, and align your pinky with the horizon. With your fingers naturally spread (i.e., your hand is stiff, but you're not trying to stretch your fingers out as wide as they can go), you count up from your pinky until you hit the sun. Each finger is 15 min. So... if your pinky is at the horizon and the sun is roughly where your middle finger is, you've got about 30 more minutes of daylight left.

Here are 10 more things I want to learn how to do in the next 5 years:

1. How to can/preserve food.
2. How to find fresh water or purify water I can find that might be too dirty to drink.
3. How to find/forage food without picking something poisonous.
4. How to construct a shelter in a wooded area.
5. How to build a fire from scratch.
6. How to navigate without a compass.
7. How to clean a fish.
8. How to to stay as safe as possible in a tornado, hurricane, flood, earthquake, fire, or electrical storm (indoors, outdoors, in a car, etc.).
9. How to shoot a gun - well.
10. How to use grey water and other green techniques to be as off-grid as possible (should we decide to go that route).

I'm not sure what's going to happen in the coming years. I have no idea if Andy's and my sense of worry is unfounded... but I don't think it's a bad idea to prepare no matter what. If anything, the skills we pick up will be useful and empowering, and the more "green" we can live, the better our impact on the environment and our imprint upon the land.

My own bit of prognostication:

We happened upon a show about Edgar Cayce, the psychic, on the History channel tonight. I knew a bit about him already because my father and husband are both fans of his. But the special is very interesting and as I realized I had not yet written my blog for the night (I was working very late on a paper due next week), my husband suggested I write about a play I created and performed back in 2003 in Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. The play was later turned into a beautiful peice of art by my friend Noelle Krimm, who comissioned John Randall (a board member and resident set designer who had been an art teacher earlier in his life). She gave it to me at my baby shower.

My husband did not see the connection between the TV show we were watching and the suggestion he had made, but I thought it interesting enough to merit an entry, along with finding it oddly syncronistic.

The play (which reads better as a poem) kind of speaks for itself, but it's based on an event that took place while I was studying abroad in London back in 1994. Essentially, I was sitting in the living room of our flat, smoking a cigarette and drinking tea... and I spoke the name "Ariana" - immediately aware that this was my daughter-to-be. I sort of felt a ripple threw the room and got some goosebumps, along with a sharp, powerful sense of who she was, which led to this:

You are blond.
You have blue-green eyes, like your mother.
You are tiny and fast... my little elf-child.
A little Buddha with ancient knowing.
You get dirty when you play outside, your hands and face covered with

smudges of the outside world when you come home for dinner.
You don’t like peas, or cooked carrots.
Or maybe you love peas and cooked carrots and hate corn.
You eat Cheerios from the box when you watch tv.
You love fresh fruit and orange soda and being sung little songs.
You ask questions and point to the sky.
You make friends quickly.
You don’t understand why you can’t talk to strangers.
You adore your father.
You dance around the house to music only you can hear.
You give little bunny kisses before bed.
You assert your independence.
You demand to be heard.
You pet the dog gently, and ask if you can feed him.
You tell me you love me, and my heart feels

too small to contain the joy of loving you back.

(In case you are wondering about my accuracy - those of you who have never met Ari - she likes peas, cooked carrots, and corn; she tends to eat Cheerios in a bowl - even when watching TV; she's never had orange soda, so I have no idea about that; she doesn't yet ask why she can't talk to strangers, but that may yet come; and she has a tendency to be less than gentle with our dog, Simon, who we got in 2004. Otherwise, the rest of it is pretty darn accurate.)