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Tuesday, December 12, 2023

Here in the future, Let’s build a yurt!

I have to go to work soon, but I want to blog briefly first. I'm aiming to blog every day for the rest of December for the silly? reason that I want my year-end count to be a bit higher than last year's--and it almost is. I feel sad when I see declining numbers of yearly posts on blog sidebars.

For my last three years, my number of posts goes:
379 [Covid/George Floyd year, 2020]
277
267
This year (2023) I've published 262 posts, so I can certainly bump it past 267!

"And, Fresca, tell us, will it be all heavy stuff you blog about?"

Maybe, kinda, sorta? But I always want to focus on What Helps, though. That's kinda cheering, isn't it?

And really--I am not resigned to an apocalypse or anything like that!
Star Trek always held (holds) that some smart science is going to rescue us from ourselves, and that is certainly not inconceivable.
As a good Trekkie, I am going to choose to hope for that!


I was just emailing a friend about how I feel like I live in different worlds in my one life.

I was comforted to read the quote,
"The future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed"
––from William Gibson, whom the New Yorker called "the great prophet of the digital age."
(Author of Neuromancer, Gibson first used the word “cyberspace” in 1981.)

From where I stand, I could even say,
"The end [of empire] is here, it's just not evenly distributed yet."

And that's why I feel like I straddle different worlds, only a few miles apart---
from where people are living in tents to where people are living in luxury--because I literally am.
And it can make me feel a little crazy.

But really, I'm not crazy at all:
There ARE NO MAPS for this.
Of course there never are maps for the future, but in certain times you feel like you can see clearly ahead, even if that's an illusion, and other times, you're aware that every step is a step into the unknown.

Ya just gotta light out for the territory.

Mostly it helps if I focus on WHAT HELPS? here, wherever I am.
And, WHO HELPS?

Like Mr Rogers's mother said, "Look for the helpers".
Or rather, as grown ups, we should look to BE the helpers.
It helps to see others being that.

I was cheered to run into Abe at the store the other day--a young man who used to work at the store, he now works with a local Harm Reduction (HR) group.

Harm Reduction folks  are among my heroes---along with sanitation workers! Shit is happening, they acknowledge. Drugs, homelessness, mental illness, mass incarceration, climate crisis--the whole rodeo!
Let's keep it from killing us too much.
Like, Abe's group is our source for the store's free Narcan (for opioid overdoses).

[Harm Reduction Principles] "Your Life Matters"
Logo ^ from Texas HR Alliance.

I asked Abe what he's up to, and he showed me a photo of HR's project BUILDING YURTS on empty land, to shelter people who are forced to live outside this winter.

Yes, we here in the future are back to nomadic practices. They worked  for thousands of years, of course.

These yurts are heated with a barrel stove in the center.
"One of my Lefty kombucha-drinking coworkers got the barrels donated," Abe told me.

"You could make a lotta kombucha in one of those barrels," I said.
A throwaway comment, but he laughed, and that made me happy because this guy is always so sad.

He went on to say, "People are mammals--we should know how to handle ourselves out of doors." And he added, rather sweetly, to be inclusive of me I guess, "Even white people."

It was my turn to laugh.
Abe is mixed, and I think the default image of "people" in his work/world is not-white people--like on a film negative, the reverse image from the world I've always lived in, until this job.

People should know how to handle themselves out of doors. Yes.
I'd said to Em that the people on the street are getting a head jump on surviving without fossil fuels, should it come to that (say, that we run out or lose access, and can't produce the massive amounts of electricity we're used to--which is not inconceivable).

"They will all die," she said, "because they're addicts."

"Well, yeah, they're dying now," I said. "True. But people like Abe who are building yurts are getting a head start on the apocalypse."

She agreed.

But really, the cool thing about Harm Reduction practices is, if you don't need them--great! They won't hurt you.

Yurts, Not Hurt.

Meanwhile, here's a PDF: Build Your Own Yurt. Print it out, in case the power goes out.

11 comments:

  1. Those yurt instructions look complex. Luckily I know how to build a teepee (foraging my lodging locally?)… however I don’t think it will be as warm as I’d like without buffalo hides.

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  2. BINK: maybe with climate warming you won’t need buffalo robes!

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  3. Dragging folks up out of the quick sand is a no brainer. If they turn right around and leap back into it, well then….
    I have had friends back in the back to the land days, living in yurts that the built. One family even felted their own ! They
    are lovely,.
    When I return to my basement of wool, I may yurt the orphans.

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  4. LINDA SUE: I thought of that too--back-to-the-land "hippie" yurts!
    Old folks who have done this before could do it again. :)
    AND ORPHANS.

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  5. This is a brilliant idea, so much better than flimsy tents. I've stayed in yurts several times over the years and they are quick to warm up and secure feeling (although once in bear country I had a big worry about exactly how secure). Composting toilet addition perhaps?

    Number of posts are one easy measure but that doesn't touch the quality issue - yours are thought provoking in so many ways.

    Ceci

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  6. CECI: COMPOSTING TOILETS!!! Omg, yes!
    This is a huge concern of mine--the public health disaster waiting to happen because these camps have no sanitation.
    I must ask Abe what they're doing about that...

    Thanks for saying that about my posts being thought provoking...
    Nice to hear that you like reading them!
    I am floundering around, trying to understand and response to what I'm seeing.
    It's not really the mood on the current Blogger, but this is where I've been for 16 years and am reluctant to move.

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  7. PS. Ceci--the problem with sanitation is the City keeps taking the camps down, forcing people to relocate over and over.
    I think we should instead accept that there's a housing crisis--duh, obviously-- and consult with the United Nations on how to establish refugee-style camps with sanitation.

    (Of course addiction and mental illness factor in too, not just lack of housing stock, but people with addictions and mental illness need a place to live too.)

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  8. People should have access to basic hygiene - bathrooms/washing. Ideally also a laundromat but I tend to get carried away. There was a proposal in a near by city to require that portable toilets be placed by the city adjacent to places where people came - it didn't work out but there seems to be enthusiasm for revisiting the question. One concern was that it would give the city more motivation to do forced destruction of camps.

    FEMA knows how to do this; so does the US agency that sets up disaster/refugee housing overseas. That it doesn't happen here is a shame and a disgrace.

    That's the end of my rant for today.
    Ceci

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    Replies
    1. CECI: That’s my rant too, every day!
      I wrote to the city council—“You think Covid is bad? Try cholera.”

      Pope Francis established free laundromats (or one, anyway) for people on the streets.

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