Be Important To The World

Right now two things are being decided that will affect the whole earth, every person in the world, every person who will be born, and the future of us all.

You can be important to the world and our future. What you need to do to be that important is not even very hard. 

You need to tell the President of the United States, Barack Obama, not to use the XL Pipeline and tell the Washington representatives and senators from all of the USA not to vote for the TPP, or Trans Pacific Partnership. I think you should do this even if you are not a US citizen, or voter.  Public opinion matters a lot to him. If you are not a US voter and want to speak to a representative or senator, just pick the one you think it will do the most good for you to contact.
An example of ideas for this are: a state where you have a friend who lives there, or a state where you know someone from your area who does business there.

Here is a link to contact President Obama: 
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

Here is a link to contact US representatives and senators:
http://www.house.gov/

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

I will explain the basic reasons for this first, then I will go into more detail.

The reason why President Obama should not start up the XL Pipeline is that the Canadian oil that will go into that pipeline is especially dirty. It must be refined twice to even be usable. Each time that dirty oil is refined, it spews bad stuff into our air that makes climate change worse. It make even more climate change pollution when that dirty oil is used in cars, and power plants, etc.

There is a huge amount of that dirty XL Pipeline oil. There is so much that the head of the United States' weather service, quit his well payed and important job over it. He testified before the US Congress before he quit. He told the US congressmen that, "if the XL Pipeline is used, it is all over for climate change". 

In other words, if we use the dirty XL Pipeline oil it will be too much bad stuff in our air to fix and stop climate change from getting so bad that it will eventually make it very hard or impossible for people to stay alive on Earth any more.

The Trans Pacific Partnership is a sneaky scam by unscrupulous multinational corporations to get to do whatever they want even when it causes harm to the earth and all of the people and plants and animals on it.

If the TPP,  or Trans Pacific Parthership, goes into effect, it will allow corporations to sue any government on earth for anything the government does that hurt the profits of the corporation. The court where the suit will happen is picked by the corporation and the corporations will hire and pay the judges.

It does not take a genius to know what will happen in a court like that. The giant multinational corporations will always win. This will allow them to bankrupt governments and cause even more damage that leads to climate change. One of these damages is clear cutting forests that make our air we need to breathe. 

Another damages that giant corporations do to make climate change worse is strip mining. 

These are only small parts of the climate change-causing damage we can expect a lot more of, if the XLPipeline is fired up, and the TPP, or Trans Pacific Partnership is signed.

Be sure to use the links I gave you to contact President Obama and US congressmen and senators. Tell them to help stop making climate change a lot worse by voting against fast tracking the TPP and evading the US  Democratic process to get it signed, and tell them we don't want the XL Pipeline started. 

Tell them that you want to stop making climate change worse. Say that it matters a lot to you that we take our chance to do this now before it is too late to keep the earth a safe, healthy place to live on.

Please pass this message on so more people will know about our chance to stop making the earth and climate change worse and about our chance to start making them better instead.

Hard Times Come Here No More

One of the potential disasters I keep an eye out for is economic disasters. The USA is a sitting duck for that one. 

I am far from an economic expert, so I look at what the economic experts have to say about what the fiscal forecast is for the USA, and the rest of the world.

Many of the financial gurus who have a good track record of warning about past economic downturns are saying that we are due for a really bad one very soon. Some of them talk about 90% inflation that will hit suddenly. 

I am not just taking these guy's word for this stuff. They do provide facts and figures that back up their bad news predictions.

One of these bits of information that made me start paying more attention is about our national debt. The interest on what we owe has passed the amount of money that the whole country makes every year. The interest is now at 106-107% of the US GNP.

The coming financial bloodbath in the USA will make the Big Depression that my parents experience, look puny, according to the financial pundits.

Not being independently wealthy makes me think about food and being able to eat during very bad times. I am firmly attached to being able to have enough to eat at all times. I would like to be able to keep eating regardless of what the weather, the politics, or the economy is doing.

That means that part of my preparedness has to do with how to manage to keep eating if the economy heads for the basement. 

I have already mentioned that I think that being able to grow food is one of the best sources of security for most anyone. This is not something that can happen overnight. Even if you already have the knowhow and the supplies to grow enough food for yourself and your loved ones, it takes a while to get from seed to eating the produce from that seed.

Many of the people in the world, particularly those who have the wherewithal and knowhow to be reading this blog post, do not know squat about growing their own food. If you wish to keep on eating, you may want to get busy filling your knowledge gap in the growing food department.

I have previously posted on growing sprouts, microgreens, and small potted plants, even for apartment dwellers. I think it would be good for anyone, who is fond of eating, to get busy with these methods of learning through practice for growing your own food.

I have also previously posted on hydroponics for food production. I am planning to see if I can grow enough food to feed myself by using a vertical, or tower style, hydroponics system.

I sincerely hope that you, dear reader, will also investigate ways to feed yourself in emergencies, natural or otherwise.

















I am not just staking 

I am not just

Taking Care Of Yourself First Helps Everyone

I have a story that I often tell people. I do it so much that they get tired of hearing it. Now you get it.

If you have ever flown on a plane, you have experienced the obligatory safety lecture. The part that we need here is where they tell you about the oxygen masks.

During an emergency oxygen masks will drop down from the ceiling above each seat. The steward or stewardess giving the safety lecture will tell you to put your own oxygen mask on first, even if your child is sitting next to you gasping.

The reason they give for this is that if you are not breathing well, you can't help anyone else. 

You put your own oxygen mask on first, so that you will be healthy enough to help put someone else's oxygen mask on them. Even if they lose consciousness, you will still be able to get their oxygen mask on them. 

If you lose consciousness because you put their oxygen mask on first, they may not be able to help you. You may not even finish putting their oxygen mask on before you pass out, if you try to put their oxygen mask on first.

This lesson is very applicable to many emergency situations. You can not help anyone else unless you are okay. 

It applies even to daily life. Taking care of your personal health is very important at any time, but even more so when medical help is scarce during an emergency. 

The above is what I have been doing lately. I have been working on taking care of myself. I have had some serious health problems that have required a lot of my attention and energy. That didn't leave me much to keep writing on this blog. 

I think I can rest on my laurels a bit here since I have over 500 posts on this blog now. I think there is enough to help anyone who is interested in basic information on emergency preparedness to get a good start on finding out what they need to know.

I apologize for not having this blog better organized, but you can use Google searches to find subjects that interest you on this blog. I use tags for each post and that makes searches more efficient on many subjects. I expect I will write a post that goes into more detail on how to do this.

With climate change happening so fast, we all face many more and much more serious emergencies than have occurred in human history. It only makes good sense to be prepared for emergencies.

Evidence That You Will Probably Face Record Tornadoes And Hurricanes Because of Climate Change

It can be extremely difficult to get people to understand that climate change will affect their own lives. I notice people talking about how they need to stop climate change for the sake of their grandchildren. I also notice that most of the people who say things like this still drive around alone in their cars. Grandchildren dying when people are dead does not seem to be enough motivation to actually take effective steps to stop climate change.

I believe we will not get enough people acting to stop climate change before it is too late to do any good, unless people understand that their own comfort and maybe even their lives are at stake because of climate change. 

I want to use this blog post to show people some things that are happening that might help them to understand that they may die and certainly will have a miserable time surviving unless they make major changes in how they live, in order to slow and stop climate change from getting so out of control that it will not be possible to prevent the Earth from becoming difficult or impossible to keep humans alive here any more. 

Even if you can't get motivated enough to change your behaviors that are making climate change get rapidly worse and kill off the human race after you die, these links I intend to give you in this post should help you to understand that you may not be able to survive your normal life span, or will have a very hard time living as long as you are meant to, unless you make big changes in what you do now.

The first link is to a story about an enormous glacier, the biggest on Earth, that is breaking up much faster, than even the most pessimistic scientists expected it to. The reason that this matters to you is that this glacier is in the Antarctic. The polar regions affect weather all over the world. Such a large chunk of polar ice will affect your weather in a very bad way. It will make the storms that you get now, much worse and if you thought you did not need to worry about tornadoes and hurricanes in your area, you will soon get them.

Another bad thing about this glacier melting is what the amount of water in it will do to the oceans of the world. It will speed up the rise in sea levels. That will force more people than ever in history to move to keep from being drowned. 

When large numbers of people find themselves forced out of their homes, this usually causes wars. We already have plenty of wars, but this will mean a great many more of them. It is hard for any country to stay out of wars if they are nearby. Climate change means that so many people will be forced to run for their lives that it is unlikely that many countries will be able to avoid being drawn into wars.

Here is a link to information about the giant iceberg that broke off in Antarctica.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/02/26/us-antarctica-iceberg-idUSTRE61P15H20100226

Here is a link to an artist who uses altered photos to show what west coast cities will look like as the oceans rise. http://www.weather.com/news/science/environment/nickolay-lamm-west-coast-sea-level-rise-pictures-20130711

He already did illustrations of what the east coast will look like as sea levels rise. They say in the accompanying text, that these photos are what it will look like IF sea levels continue to rise. They only go up to 25 feet. Some scientists think sea levels can rise up to 50 feet. 

We can be quite certain that sea levels will go up over 5 feet no matter what we do, because it is already too late to prevent that much of a rise. All that we can manage, if we make serious changes overnight is to stop sea level rise from getting to the highest levels, like 25 feet or more.

Chances for an overnight change of behavior world-wide, don't look too good for now. The longer we wait to change what we are doing now, the worse the sea level rise will be.

I have already posted about how sea level rise is affecting the world right now. An example of this is what is happening where I live in Alaska. We have over 180 villages in Alaska that will be flooded by the currently expected rise in sea level. Two of them, Shismaref and Kivalina were already scheduled to be evacuated over two years ago. Some of their buildings have been falling into the ocean every time there is a big storm.

The villages in Shismaref and Kivalina have not evacuated because they want to save their villages by moving them to the mainland. The state of Alaska does not have enough money to move all of the threatened villages. The state wants to move the villagers to bigger towns on the mainland and let the villages die. If you want to know more about it, you can look at my posts about it. This is happening in other places in the world, but not as fast. Climate change is faster in Arctic regions like Alaska.

The next link is only a sample of what can be expected because of climate change. The link is to a tornado in Oregon. This has not been a normal occurrence in Oregon. It will, be though. There are lots of other places that are getting their first tornado and can expect to get more of them because of climate change. Places that are more used to tornadoes, can expect to get a lot more of them and worse ones as well. 
http://www.weather.com/news/tornado-central/oregon-tornado-mcminnville-jun2013-20130614

This post is already a bit longer than my old ones used to be and it would become a book if I put in a lot of examples of places that need to get used to tornadoes. I will probably do a post that is only on this subject. You need to look them up yourself, for now though. 

Scientists do not know exactly what weather will do because of climate change. They only know ideas of major trends that will happen. This is because having polar ice melt so much and so fast is already causing unpredictable weather. It will only get more unpredictable. 

An example of what could happen is that areas that are dry could become wet and vice versa. Oregon rainforests could become deserts and Florida swamps could become dry. The Mojave Desert could become wetter and so could the high plains desert in Nevada. If you live in areas of the world besides the USA, just think of the places that you know of that have extreme climates and imagine them going to the opposite extreme, or back and forth and in between.

Having schizophrenic weather will make it so much harder to raise enough food that millions more people will starve and even people who have comfortable incomes will feel the pain in their wallets. This will put more elderly people at risk of hunger, and as Baby Boomers retire, if that is you, you could be hungry too.

In the USA, elders are having to choose between paying for medicine or food. It will only get worse as climate change makes food production harder and more expensive. The increasing scarcity of fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal will cause power costs to increase which will make for an even larger jump in food prices along with everything else getting more expensive because of transport costs going up.

There are other problems that climate change will make worse in the near future, but they can be harder for an average person to understand. I will see if I can start explaining it here for anyone who want to know. I am a bit discouraged about doing this because so few people do want to know. The majority of the human race seems to prefer ignorance to understanding and working on our problems. We do not have long before this approach will prove fatal to the human race. We won't all die right away, but it will be as certain anyway. 

I posted a while back about a comparison of the human race treasuring it's ignorance, making us too much like a sheep that drowned in a creek that went through an alfalfa field that my family owned. The sheep died unnecessarily in spite of great efforts by me to save it. I am afraid the human race is preparing to die in the same way, through stubborn stupidity.

This blog is part of my efforts to try to keep the human race alive. My health problems are getting worse, so I don't know how much longer I can continue this part of my efforts, but I will do so as long as possible and I gather it will live on as long as Google does.  :-p I hope it helps. 

If you are reading this, you can be part of the solution to this problem of climate change. Learn to walk lightly on the Earth and take better care of it.

How To Adjust Spices In Recipes

 If you have read my posts about preparedness food you already know that I consider spices to be an important part of your preparedness food. A good selection and use of spices will allow you to keep eating the same things repeatedly without getting tired of it during an emergency.

I gather from my reading that many people do not know how to adjust their spices for cooking. This can be serious if you are depending on spices to give you a variety of tastes for your storage food both in your everyday diet as you use and replace your food storage and in emergency use.

This post is to help you learn how to adjust your spices to your personal tastes. The first part of this process is to examine what you like. Do you find yourself adding a lot of pepper and salt to your food when you use the recommended amount of spice in a recipe? If that is the case or if you think it is tasteless or bland, then you can probably increase the amount of spices called for in ordinary recipes.

Some exceptions to watch out for are Szechuan, or Sichuan Chinese food. That is the extra spicy Chinese food. They use the hottest peppers in the world. I believe  eating the Szechuan food could substitute for a tonsillectomy. When I go to a Chinese restaurant that serves Szechuan food, I ask them to go easy on the spices. I don't even use Szechuan recipes, but if you do, like most people, you will probably need to reduce the spices called for in the recipes. 

Some recipes have the taste of the spices in it as an important part of the entire recipe and in those you WANT to taste the spices. In other recipes the spices are meant to be subtle and you don't even want to be able to specifically notice a particular spice taste standing out from the background taste.

My pineapple/blueberry smoothie is one of those. If you taste the spices, I think you have too much spice in it. In that recipe, the spices should just give it a little bit of a wild berry taste so that you don't especially even notice that it has spices in it.

One of the problems with getting spices correct for a recipe is that there is a tremendous variation in how strong spices can be. If you get your spice from a grocery store, it can have been on the shelf for over a year. That will mean that spice will be weaker in taste than a fresher spice. You will need to use more of the grocery store spice to get the same amount of spice taste. That could mean doubling the amount of spice that you use to get the same taste.

I have been increasingly using bulk spices from health food stores instead of supermarket spices. The health food store spices are usually much fresher. I believe that this is healthier as well as more tasty. The variety in a health food store's bulk section may be less than is available in the grocery. This means that you will have to get some spices from the grocery.

If you think food is usually bland and tasteless, then you might want to start out a new recipe by increasing the spice called for in it. My personal preference is to use a recipe the first time, exactly as written. Once I know how the author meant it to come out, then I feel free to adjust it to my preferences. That is the point where I add or reduce the spices. I think that 1/8 teaspoon or less is a safer increment to adjust the amount of spices in a recipe. 1/8 teaspoon measuring spoons can be hard to find, but they are available. If this is too difficult you can take a 1/4 measuring spoon and estimate what half of that would be.

A pinch is an old measurement for spices. It is the amount of spice that can fit held between your index (pointer) finger and your thumb. The size of your hand can really make a difference in this measurement. If you have a very large hand you will probably do well to assume that it is best to go scant on your pinch for a standard recipe. A pinch can help you be consistent in adding spices to your recipes. I kind of use an eyeball method, which has its drawbacks. If you spice directly into the recipe, it can vary quite a bit and make your cooking unpredictable.

You can reduce this unpredictable element by shaking your spice into the lid of the spice container or the palm of your hand so you can control the amount before it hits your recipe.

Emergencies are kind of miserable to live through anyway. It could make you and everyone who eats your cooking during an emergency feel nibbled to death by ants if your cooking is wildly variable. It might be safer to learn to shake your spices into the container lid or palm of your hand before you actually put them into your recipe.

Basil is my favorite herb. I will use it as an example to explain what you are dealing with on herbs. You can take seeds from the same packet and grow them up into a plant to use for cooking. Each plant from that same packet can produce leaves that will taste noticeably different. The difference can include stronger or weaker basil taste. Each plant will taste different depending on whether you use the leaves dried or fresh.

How you dry the leaves and how you store them and how long you store them can all affect the taste and strength of the basil taste when you put it in your food.

When you have all of those variable and more affecting how your food tastes when you put basil on it, you can see that using spices can require more than automatically putting a half teaspoon of a spice or herb into your food.

You have to know how that spice you want to use tastes. I have learned to have a pretty good idea of how an herb will taste by smelling it. I don't believe that this ability is very common, but if you can develop it, it saves a lot of trouble. If not, then you will need to taste your herbs before you use them. If a dish turns out to be too strong tasting for a particular herb or spice, then you know to reduce that herb or spice a little the next time you cook. 

I dislike taking the chance that I will ruin an entire dish by really over-doing the spices in it. That means I make small adjustments each time I cook it until I get the spices where I want them. 1/4 to 1/8 teaspoon is about as fast as I like to go to adjust my herbs or spices in a recipe. I usually keep the herb or spice adjustment even smaller than that, though. Spices can really change a dish for better or for worse very fast. 

A post-it note or a pencilled-in notation on the recipe can help you to work out the change you need to make for that herb or spice the next time you use the recipe. Once I get the spice adjustment down to where I like it, I like to change it in my computer and on my hard copy recipe book.

Every person has different taste preferences. This is even more true for cooks. It is often possible to tell who cooked a dish by the herb or spice "signature". Every chef has a special palette of herbs and spices that they like best. Once you get used to adjusting herbs and spices to your own tastes, you too will develop your own herb and spice signature.

Save Money And The Earth By Keeping Cool Without Air Conditioning

There are lots of things you can do to keep cool during hot weather without using air conditioning. If you live in a very hot climate and are used to air conditioning, you may have to reduce your use of air conditioning gradually. I quit suddenly, with at least once a month  using air conditioning. 

This is because I rented a place that had an air conditioner along with it. If you don't run an air conditioner at least once a month, without special preparations, the seals can go bad and even ruin the air conditioner.

The thing that makes the most difference in coolness is a combination of plants grown in front of the window, a mister on the plants at night, and a double fan with one set to exhaust warm air on top and the bottom fan to intake cool air. I kept the window shut during the day time. I closed the window right before it became hot outside.

This combination was enough to lower the temperature inside my home enough to make it chilly and necessary to use warm blankets and warm clothes at night. Getting it this cool at night made the coolness inside my home last most of the day, with no other things done except running a few fans, and shutting windows to keep the coolness inside. 

Here is a link to a post about how to stay cool without air conditioning: http://www.energyconservationinfo.org/noacok.htm

There are a couple of things you can easily make that will help you to stay cool as well. They are known to me as, "Okie Air Conditioners". Both of them involve fans. 

I have not made the more complicated version, but I have made the easier one. That one involves an insulated ice chest. Styrofoam is cheapest, but unless you can find one made of  biodegradable styrofoam, it is not that environmental.

You also need a small fan, and something like a piece of pvc pipe with an elbow to direct the flow of cool air where you want it, like your face. I just taped a couple of used cardboard toilet paper rolls together at an angle, after trimming them to fit first.

You will also need ice for the inside of the chest to cool the air going out the elbow to your face. I get my ice by putting a plastic bucket with water into my freezer to make a large chunk of ice that doesn't melt too fast. If you live in a very hot place, you will probably want to have at least two plastic buckets so you can have an extra piece of ice ready when the first one melts. I refill my bucket as soon as I take out the chunk of ice and put it back in the freezer. It takes a while to freeze a big chunk of ice.

Ice cubes work also and seem to make cooler air come out the elbow, but they also melt faster.

I also wet a towel in cool water and wring it out pretty thoroughly. Then I put it on a hanger with built in clamps like a skirt or pants hanger or use a pin or clothespin. Then I hang the whole thing in front of a window that is open with a slight breeze coming through it. This does not work as well if a lot of sunlight is hitting the window. The air coming through the wet towel is cooler. 

If the window has a lot of sunlight on it, you will need to re-wet the towel much more often.

If no breeze is available, I put a fan near the window so the air is directed into the room to be cooled.

My cats can seem pretty miserable in hot weather, so I usually direct my air flow out of the okie cooler where the cats can lay in the cool air right where it comes out. They sit and wait for me to put fresh ice in it and turn the fan back on.

I cracked the bottom of one chest by letting the chunk of ice hit it too hard. Since then, I take the lid off of the ice container and set a large dinner plate on top of the container with the ice in it. Then I flip it all over so the ice slides out onto the plate. Sometimes it is necessary to run a little hot tap water on the outside of the ice container to loosen up the ice inside in order to get it out of the freezer container. I use a large plastic bulk ice cream bucket for my freezer container. There are a lot of other things that can also be used, but this is what I had handy.

Next I turn the ice chest on its side and position the plate with the ice on it next to the open top of the chest. I scoot the chunk of ice into the ice chest very gently to avoid breaking the styrofoam. Last, I gently turn the chest upright with the ice chunk in it and take it back to where I use it and put the lid on and turn the fan back on.

I also bathe my cats' ears, faces, and necks with cool water to help them stay comfortable. They objected at first, but now they come to me to get it done.

There are lots of other things you can do to stay comfortable in hot weather without using an air conditioner. Even if you feel you absolutely have to use an air conditioner, you can do these things to reduce how much you use it. This will save both your budget and the Earth. 

It is kind of ironic that we can be making the Earth get even warmer, by using an air conditioner to stay cool. lol. It seems a bit counter productive to me.

Explaining The Spiritual Gift Of Music To Christians

It seems a shame to me that many Christians are completely or largely ignorant of the existence of spiritual gifts. I believe our spiritual gifts and learning to use them are a large part of the reason why humans exist. That is why it is so bad that Christians should be unaware of this major connection to Gd.

Music is a very special spiritual gift, yet I have spoken to Christians who deny that it is even a spiritual gift. One reason for this is the narrow definition of spiritual gift accepted by many Christian religions. 

Here are a few Bible passages that are most commonly accepted by more Christian religions about spiritual gifts:

Romans 12:6-8
1 Corinthians 12:4-11
1 Corinthians 12:28-31
Ephesians 4:7-13
1 Peter 4:10

There are many more Bible verses that are accepted as describing other spiritual by smaller numbers of Christians. 

Music is not one of these. I believe that we are told rather clearly in the Bible, nevertheless, that Music is a spiritual gift, and a very important one to Gd, at that.

Here is a quote about what the Bible has to say about singing: The Bible contains over 400 references to singing and 50 direct commands to sing. We're commanded twice in the New Testament to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:16). This quote comes from here: http://www.christianity.com/newsletters/features/what-happens-when-we-sing-in-worship-11627945.html

Musicians were scheduled to play in the Jewish temple around the clock. The job of these musicians was to keep music going at all times. This happened when having enough laborers to grow food was important. During this time, a large number of people were taken away from raising food to make music instead. This demonstrates how important the music was. Gd told the Jewish people to have the musicians play in the Temple all of the time. That means it was important to Gd. 

One way to tell how important something was to Gd was to see how often it is mentioned in the Bible. We already saw that singing is mentioned in the Bible over 400 times. That is only one word about music. If you add in the mention of music and musical references, you can see how important music is to Gd from the Bible.

Another way to see how important music is to Gd is through scientific discoveries. One reason for my love of science is that it tells me about Gd. 

When you love someone, you want to know about them. One of the best ways to know about someone is to look at what they make. This is especially true of artists, including musicians. You only have to watch one sunrise or sunset to know that Gd is an artist.

The Bible also tells us that Gd is a musician. It talks quite a bit about inanimate objects singing. Psalms 19, for example, has things about hills being joyful and skipping. Some versions of the Bible equate this with singing.

I have a lot more to say on this subject, since it is especially dear to my heart and I have studied it quite a bit. I need to get something posted on my blog to avoid letting down my readers by a very late post, so this will have to do for now.

What Is A Diagram?

This question comes up in search queries for my blog often. Most readers will already know the answer to this, but since so many do not, I am going to answer it in an extra post. I am also going to refer you to other posts connected to it.

In case you wound up on this post without reading the title, the question is: "What is a diagram?" A diagram is a simple picture that helps to understand ideas more easily. That is my own definition of a diagram. I am going to give you a link to a dictionary definition of it also. I hope that you will be able to look up any words you don't understand after you read this. I have posts on how to use the internet to look things up. You might want to read those also.

Here is a dictionary definition in red:


di·a·gram
[dahy-uh-gram] Show IPA noun, verb, di·a·gramed or di·a·grammed, di·a·gram·ing or di·a·gram·ming.
noun
1.
a figure, usually consisting of a line drawing, made to accompany and illustrate a geometrical theorem, mathematical demonstration, etc.
2.
a drawing or plan that outlines and explains the parts, operation, etc., of something: a diagram of an engine.
3.
a chart, plan, or scheme.
verb (used with object)
4.
to represent by a diagram; make a diagram of.
Origin:

1610–20;  < Latin diagramma  < Greek:  that which is marked out by lines. See dia-, -gram1

The definition above comes from this link: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/diagram

You can use the dictionary or others online to look up other words you don't know. You can type the word you want to find out about into your search engine or browser with "def" after it (short for definition) and you will usually get a lot of different dictionaries with their version of the definition. I think it is good to try different dictionaries to see which ones you like the best.

I believe that the most important diagram among my posts on this blog is about what happens when a nuclear bomb explodes. My diagram is not that great, but it gives you some idea of what happens when a nuclear weapon explodes and makes it easier for readers to think about it. This makes it possible to make a plan to live through a nuclear war. I do not care what side anyone is on who reads this information. I think it will be hard to keep enough people alive to save the human race after a nuclear war starts, so the more people who live, the better.

Any survivors will be so busy trying to stay alive, that continuing a nuclear war will not be a priority. I think we will need all of the genetic diversity we can get. We certainly won't have enough people left to kill off more after a nuclear war. I hope that a few more people will do emergency preparedness, including for nuclear war because of my blog.

I have other diagrams on my blog for things like a cheap, easy-to-make solar oven and for a rocket stove that is basically a fancy hole in the ground, but takes very little fuel. If you look at these diagrams and study them a little, you will be able to take the ideas and make your own versions of a solar oven or a rocket stove with the materials you have available. I put lots of links into my posts to help you understand and use the information in my posts.

I started this blog as a public service to as much of the world as possible, to help more people live and thrive in spite of the damage that humans have done to the Earth. 

I believe that people are capable of behaving much better than we have so far and hope that this blog and all of its posts will help us to become better humans. First, we have to stay alive.

What Will Climate Change Do To You And Other People?

I am going to try to put this information into words that are easy to understand for normal people who are not rocket scientists. I think it is a bad idea to leave out most of the people on Earth from understanding this important stuff that affects all of us. 

I am not telling you this to discourage you. It is the opposite. I think that there are things we can all do about this problem. I am not saying it will be easy, or that we will like doing them. We need to do them anyway, in order to survive.

I got this information from my class on the Health Effects of Climate Change. It is taught by a Medical Doctor who takes care of children and a scientist who has been studying what is happening to our air for about 35 years. Both of them want more people to understand this stuff also. 

There is a problem with them doing this. They are very very smart and have a hard time putting things into language normal people can understand. I am having trouble myself, but I already knew a lot about it before, so that helps me out some.

This particular bit of information that sorts out what will happen to us because of climate change was written by another Doctor, Anthony J. McMichael. Here is a link to it in case you want to see it yourself: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra1109341

The part that I am basing this on is in a little part that you have to click to see in the article. It is in a table, that you can make full screen on your computer so that you can see it better. It is called, "Table 1. Categories of Climate-Change Risks to Health, According to Causal Pathway.

The table sorts the health problems that we will get from climate change into three areas. 

The first one is called, "Primary" health problems. This is things that climate change does that will get us and our health directly. His categories for this are: heat waves, extreme weather events, and temperature-enhanced levels of urban air pollutants.

Not everyone will understand about what heat waves do to your health. I have been in more than a couple of record-breaking heat events. If you have not, I can guarantee you won't like them. The first one I was in was in a town where we got a 30 day long triple digit or higher spell of hot weather. That means it was 100 degrees Farenheit for 30 days in a row with no cooling off.  (100 degree Fahrenheit = 37.7777778 degree Celsius).  As if that wasn't bad enough, the same place set another record for 40 days of triple digit heat while I was still there. I could not get out of there fast enough.

You may think you don't have to worry about this in your area. Wrong. Climate change is going to cause record heat all over the world. You are not likely to escape it, especially if we don't get busy and stop making climate change worse.

"Extreme weather events", means we will get more, and worse, of the kind of weather we already hate. These are weather events like hurricanes, tornadoes, storms, floods, etc. An example of the kind of "extremes" we will be dealing with are hurricanes like Sandy. 

Sandy set all kinds of unpleasant records for size. In case you don't already know, Sandy reached all the way from the East Coast of the USA to our far inland state of Ohio. This is an area bigger than many of the countries in the world.

I believe it was last year, 2012, where the USA set a world record for tornadoes. We had over 800 of them. We not only got more tornadoes, but they did more damage and covered a much bigger area than is usually affected by tornadoes. People got hit by tornadoes, who thought they would never see one.

Whatever weather we are used to is getting hotter, colder, wetter, bigger and worse in every way we can imagine and climate change will keep making this worse and worse for the rest of our lives.

"Temperature-enhanced levels of urban air pollutants means that if it is hotter, breathing polluted air in cities will make you sicker and kill more people than it already does. There was a woman who lived in that city with the triple digit heat records who was killed this way. 

She already had asthma and other health problems. She was the single parent of three little children, the oldest a toddler. She was found dead in her home with her children crying over her body. This one incident is almost enough to make me cry while I write about it. She is only one person and her children are only three more people. There are more like them and there will be a lot more. 

We need to stop climate change from getting worse so we don't get endless numbers of children crying over dead mother's and father's bodies or parents crying over dead children. We can work to stop this sadness from continuing and spreading.

The next "Causal Pathway", is the secondary risks that get us indirectly. The ones mentioned are, "food yields, water flows, infectious-disease vectors, and intermediate-host ecology". This means things like the drought that hit over 90% of all of the agricultural land in the USA last year. The USA normally exports food and feeds people in other parts of the world. The USA is not even doing a good job at feeding its own people because of that drought. That means people in other countries are going hungry because of our drought.

The drought in the USA also caused food prices to go up all over the world, because there was less food to go around.

Water flows does not mean only drinking water. It includes things like water for growing food, or cleaning,
or manufacture. 

"Disease vectors", means things that carry a disease to you. An example of this is the bubonic plague a long time ago in Europe. Rats were supposed to have carried fleas that carried the bubonic plague germs inside them. The rats took the fleas wherever they went. The fleas jumped off of the rats and bit the humans. When the fleas bit the humans, they gave bubonic plague to the humans. Vectors are the "middlemen" of disease. 

When climate change warms up places that used to be colder, it makes it possible for animals that could not live there before, to start living there. That can include disease-carrying vectors, like rats.

"Intermediate host ecology", Whoops. Sorry. The fleas are the prime vector and the rats that carried them were intermediate hosts. The fleas only stayed on the rats for a short while. The normal home of those fleas was another kind of rat. That short stay of the fleas on the European Roof Rats made them intermediate hosts.

The last category of bad things that climate change can do to your health and the health of everyone else, is called Tertiary. That means, "thirdly". The third group of bad climate change health effects can be things that are harder to pin on climate change, but still would not happen without it.

This third group of climate change bad health effects are things like, "mental health problems in failing farm communities, displaced groups, disadvantaged indigenous and minority ethnic groups". There is a subset of this third group, that I will cover next.

I get to see a lot of the mental health problems similar to the ones mentioned. Alaska still has a lot of people who live in small remote communities, who have never been to a big town and who live lives that are not a lot different than before Alaska was invaded by white people.

Over 180 communities in Alaska are being flooded out by rising ocean waters. Two island communities have already been scheduled to be evacuated. Their houses have been falling into the ocean every year when the winters storms hit them. 

Big chunks of their land disappear with the storms and even without the storms. These two islands will probably be completely underwater soon. These two island villages are called, "Kivalina", and "Shishmaref". I have already posted about them. Both are trying desperately to raise money to save their communities.

The government of Alaska just wants to move these people into the big cities. The people who live in these flooding villages mostly do not like this idea. Some of them speak their native languages as the main language in their villages. They are afraid that their languages, customs, and ways of life will be swallowed up by the big cites just like the ocean is swallowing their villages back home.

Some of the villagers who are being flooded, have already ended up in the city where I live. I see them on the bus, and at the bus stops and in the stores. 

They often have a dazed, lost look their faces. Some of them hide it better. Some have never seen a bus, let alone ridden one, or figured out how to do it. They can have the same sort of trouble shopping in a huge department store for the first time, or times, or even forever.

I believe this is culture shock. I have probably experienced a little of this sort of thing myself. It was not as bad for me as it is for the villagers. I had already moved around a lot when I was a child and seen lots of different things. It was easier for me than it is for them. It was enough so that I have some idea of how they feel. It is only a small reflection, though.

This same sort of thing is happening all over the world. Some Pacific islands have already gone under the ocean, and only have bits sticking up for a few months out of the year. The people were evacuated to New Zealand and other places. One of these islands was Tuvalu. I already posted about it, and the people I met in New Zealand.

The last part of the third group of health effects from climate change are called, "consequences of tension and conflict owing to climate change-related declines in basic resources (water, food, timber, living space). This is a fancy way of talking about war and the kinds of things that go along with it. 

Not many people are going to simply give up when they see their homes being gobbled up by the ocean, or they see their children going hungry and starving to death in front of their eyes. They will fight to get what they need. They will kill other people, or die trying to get what they need to stay alive.

It is something we have to expect from climate change. Lots of people will die fighting over what they need to survive. This will get worse and worse as climate change gets worse and takes away more of what more people need to survive.

You can try to hide from all of the bad health effects of climate change, but it will not work. If you want to have a decent life much longer, you will have to change what you do. 

Almost everyone on Earth is now making climate change worse. We are doing it very fast. Even the most pessimistic, depressing predictions of what climate change would do in the future have turned out to be too optimistic. We are wrecking our home, the Earth, very fast. It is happening much faster than even expected.

Because of the speed with which we are making climate change worse, we do not have much time to make our changes before it will be too late to fix it. We will all have to work together to do fix climate change. First we have to stop making it worse. 

The changes that we need to make in what we do are not Rocket Science. They will not all be changes that we will like, but we can't live without the changes. It is time for us to get busy making them.

Save Yourself fFom Starvation As You Age

As you grow older you will probably become less able to work and earn money. This is normal. This does not make it good or something for you to look forward to. There have been scandals in the USA where it was (re)discovered that elderly people were forced to buy dog food to eat themselves because of not being able to afford meat for humans.

Social safety nets, that give food to people who would have starved to death in the past, have increased worldwide. You may be depending on one of these safety nets to keep eating as you age.

This is not a good idea. Climate change is already making food prices go up all over the world. This will get much worse. As prices continue to rise, there will be more need for the food from social safety nets because of more poor people needing food, and less food and money to spare for social safety net programs.


When you do things to stop climate change you are protecting your own food supply, now and in the future. 



We need more people who understand, care about, and are willing to act to stop climate change. It is in your own best interests to be one of these people. Your own future depends on it.

Climate change is raising the average temperature of the whole Earth. One of the easily predictable results of a rise in the Earth's average temperature is drought. Your food supply will be harder to keep coming to you when there are more droughts.

Plants need water. If you want to eat plants or animals that eat plants, you need water for those plants. This is true even if your food does not come from your own area or country.

In 2012 the United States had a very bad drought. Ninety percent (90%) of the cropland in the USA had a drought last year. This used up all of the food stored up by the government to give to poor people. It was not replaced. Food banks all over the country are already running out of food to give poor people from only one year of drought.

Since the United States is a food exporting country, this has driven up food prices all over the world. This situation will last at least the rest of this year without another drought, because of limited supplies to food manufacturers in the United States. We can expect a continued rise in overall food prices for the rest of this year.

This is just a sample of what we face with our food supply as droughts occur
more often and in more places in the world. If you want to keep eating, you need to learn more and take action to stop making climate change worse.

Learn How To Stop Climate Change

There are realistic things that you can do about climate change. You do not need to try to hide from it. 

Climate change can be overwhelming because it is such a big problem. It is a vast relief to find things that give one hope about fixing the problem of climate change. We do not need to give in to despair over the size of the problem compared to our abilities.

I treasure any glimmer of light in our polluted darkness. One of these is a free online class. The awesome respectability of the class and its teachers is in itself a little overwhelming to me. 

The class is given at Harvard University, one of the finest colleges in the world. They have other classes available on many other subjects, of course. Some of the other classes are interesting, but none has the importance of this one. It is, "Human Health and Global Environmental Change". It starts today. It is not too late to be included in this ray of light.

If you want to consider taking this class, you can look it over here: https://www.edx.org/courses/HarvardX/PH278x/2013_Spring/about

One of the professors of the class is an MD, a pediatrician at a famous hospital. The other professor has been studying the "quality" of our air for many years. 

A book by one of the professors of the course, "Sustaining Life, How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity", is optional reading for students taking the course. The book is offered on Amazon, in both a hard copy and a digital, Kindle version. You can read these without even taking the course.

There are plenty of links to strong, useful information. There are lots of graphs and charts to make this information easier to understand and be able to explain to others.

The lectures are broken down into short video segments. You can use the materials at your own speed with a few exceptions. The course is broken down into sections and access is restricted to the current and past sections covered, to keep the eager beavers with the rest of the class. 

There is a lot of information to be covered in the course. I am definitely glad that I refrained from taking other courses simultaneously. This is all information that I want to understand very well, and it is clear that this will require a lot of time.

I hope that some of my readers will join this class, now or later on, as it is repeated. The Earth and the people and the rest of the life on the Earth, need your attention, interest and actions. 

We can not continue to exist in the face of indifference to climate change, and we need everyone who is willing, to get busy learning and acting to stop climate change.

Climate Change And Health

Many of you readers are interested in your health. This is a good thing to be interested in. It is hard to enjoy good health if you don't learn what is required to get good health and keep it.

Sometimes people do not make good sense in their choices for their health. An example of this is people who decide to lose weight by drinking diet soft drinks. I am not going into the hazards of this idea on this post. This is just an example that many people already know is not that great a choice for good health.

Another bad health choice that many people make is not paying attention to what is happening to the planet we live on. We need the earth for our health. If we destroy the earth, we get things happening like the effects of climate change. 

We agree that breathing bad air is unhealthy. Some of us take care of the bad air problem by buying an expensive air purifier. We may be doing this when we drive many miles every day in a gas guzzling vehicle that does a lot to make the air worse. 

We may make sure that our food is healthy and organic and buy a house on a piece of land that used to grow organic food. We might put in a tennis court or swimming pool on that land and our neighbors may do the same.

We may be concerned about climate change when we see enormous hurricanes killing people and doing record setting damages. We may take yoga and meditate to help stay calm and not worry that the next hurricane might hit our area. We may be doing this when we are part of the cause of the climate change that brought us these super storms.

Yes, it is not that fun to think about climate change. It is even less fun to think about what we, as individuals are doing to make climate change speed up and get worse. 

Sometimes we have to think about unpleasant things to avoid them. It can be scary to think about the consequences of poor nutrition choices, but it is necessary to learn what bad nutrition can do to us so that we can make better choices. The same is true for bad climate choices. 

We do not have very long before climate change is irreversible, and goes into an ever-worsening spiral. It is time to learn what bad climate choices we are making so that we can make better choices and protect our health. 

You can be the healthiest, fittest person on earth and not outrun a natural disaster. 

Change In Blog Posts

I have mentioned my plans to change this blog. I plan to split this blog into several different ones. I may leave this one intact and may or may not continue posting on it.

I believe I will stop posting here so frequently while I am working on the changes. I intend to drop down to once a week and see how that does. Wednesday seems like a good day for me at this time. I don't intend to post again on this particular blog until next Wednesday. If something arises that I believe requires a new post before then or between regular Wednesday posts, I will put one up as an extra post.

I will be working on some of the new blogs and if I am ready with any of them before next Wednesday, I will notify readers on here with links for those who are interested.

The most likely one to be posted first will be the one about my cats. Since one of them is 23 years old, I want to get the blog up while he is still around. I want to try to get videos of him up. He does lots of tricks and talks and is always doing cute things. The younger one does the same things, but not as much. He is just learning and doesn't like doing tricks as much. He learns fast when he wants to though.

I may try out different blog subjects for the split off blogs and see what happens.

I wish more of you would read my disaster preparedness posts. People who do not make any efforts at emergency preparedness have a much lower chance of being able to survive the more frequent, larger, and more widespread disasters that will be our new normal. 

I cherish some hope that some of you are getting your preparedness information elsewhere. It isn't a big hope, but I will take what I can get there.

Staying Alive Through Strokes

One of the problems that I have been dealing with lately is strokes. TIAs, to be more specific. "A transient ischemic attack (TIA) is when blood flow to a part of the brain stops for a brief period of time. A person will have stroke-like symptoms for up to 24 hours, but in most cases for 1 - 2 hours.

A TIA is felt to be a warning sign that a true stroke may happen in the future if something is not done to prevent it."

This quote came from the following link at the USA's Public Library of Medicine:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001743/

I have already had one regular stroke that I am sure of, so that probably increases my chances of having a regular stroke as well as the TIAs.

I have not just had a few TIAs, I have had swarms of them. There have been more than one a day at times. During such times I have had one or more strokes as day for as long as a week straight, as well.

I am not going to the hospital when I have a TIA because I can't afford to. I know a lot of other people are in the same situation. I am going to share what I do that I believe has kept me functioning in spite of the mini-strokes and is warding off another major stroke.
If you have any choice and can go to the hospital, I think you should do so.

I am posting about what I do that I believe is helping me survive strokes and prevent a major stroke because you can use it during a medical emergency when you can not get medical care.

The first thing to do it to learn the signs that mean you are having a stroke. 

"The symptoms of TIA are the same as the symptoms of a stroke, and include sudden:

    Abnormal feeling of movement (vertigo) or dizziness

    Change in alertness (sleepiness, less responsive, unconscious, or in a coma)

    Changes in feeling, including touch, pain, temperature, pressure, hearing, and taste

    Confusion or loss of memory

    Difficulty swallowing

    Difficulty writing or reading

    Drooping of the face

    Inability to recognize objects or people

    Lack of control over the bladder or bowels

    Lack of coordination and balance, clumsiness, or trouble walking

    Loss of vision in one or both eyes

    Numbness or tingling on one side of the body

    Personality, mood, or emotional changes

    Trouble saying or understanding words

    Weakness on one side of the body"

This quote came from the same site. 

The time that I had the regular stroke, I first became aware of it when I drank water. The water did not stay in my mouth. It ran out of one side. As soon as I realized that meant I was having a stroke, I went to the bathroom to do the smile test. The ways of telling that you may be having a stroke follow:

n the event of a possible stroke, use FAST to help remember warning signs.

    Face. Does the face droop on one side trying to smile?
    Arms. Is one arm lower when trying to raise both arms?
    Speech. Can a simple sentence be repeated? Is speech slurred or strange?
    Time. During a stroke every minute counts. If you observe any of these signs, call 911 or your local emergency number immediately

The above came from the Mayo Clinic site. It beats me why they left out something that seems important to me. It is on the last one, Time. Emergency personnel also need to know the time that symptoms started. You need to write down the time as soon as any symptoms are noticed and give that time to the emergency hospital staff. There is a medicine that can be given to stop strokes from doing permanent damage. The medicine can only be given within a time limit, so the emergency staff need to know how long ago the stroke started.

You need to learn the whole list of stroke symptoms, because some people don't have the more common ones. Numbness in my lips is the first thing that tells me I might be having a stroke. As soon as I feel anything like numbness in my lips, I immediately go into the bathroom and look in the mirror and smile. If I am having a stroke, the left side of my face does not work as well for smiling.

I also do the arm test. You raise both arms slowly in front of you and see if they rise evenly. Raising your arms from the sides also is a good idea.It is easier to do this if you use a mirror, since you can see both arms at the same time this way.

If I flunk the smile test or arm test, I get out a can of pineappe and a mug. I get pop-top cans of pineapple, so don't need a can opener.

I chew and swallow two baby aspirins with a lot of water before I open the pineapple. Once the pineapple is open, I pour off the juice into the mug and drink it. I use sliced pineapple because it is easier for me to eat fast, especially without a spoon handy.

 

The reasons for the above are that my doctor has me taking 4 chewable baby aspirins a day, two in the morning and two in the evening. They are chewable because chewable ones get into your system much faster than swallowing a regular aspirin whole.

The extra water is because the blood thinner, aspirin, needs something to thin my blood with. 

The pineapple is because pineapple stops brain inflammation. My particular problem with TIAs most likely comes from having small hemorrhages in my brain, so I think the pineapple can stop the hemorrhage and the inflammation that goes with it.

I hope that you will get medical attention if you are able to do so. If you cannot, then my stroke alert regimen may help you also. I am the only one I know of who does this so far, so we don't know if it will work for you also.

I have already taken care of any risk factors for cholesterol and stroke that are possible to change. If you have risk factors for stroke, you would do well to change those you can.

The link below is to a video on strokes.                                 

http://watchlearnlive.heart.org/CVML_Player.php?moduleSelect=tisatk

I think that anyone who is at risk for stroke or heart attack should drink extra water daily to help keep your blood moving along through your body. The rule of thumb I like for calculating how much water to drink, is to figure your weight in pounds and then take half of that number, and drink that many ounces of water daily. I already posted on this and the post has links to convert metrics to ounces, in case you need it.

I already mentioned the online brain training classes available and that I use one of them. I do the brain exercises almost daily. I believe that has kept my brain working in spite of this onslaught of swarms of strokes. If you had a stroke or have one, you might want to consider using one of the brain training sites also.

An additional advantage of using the brain training sites is that they can give you a normal baseline to make it easier to tell how a stroke has affected you. That makes it easier to know what areas of your brain need a workout.

I hope that this information will give you something to help yourself if you have a stroke during an emergency when you can not get medical care and even better, prevent a stroke from happening.

Earth Day Preparedness

In honor of Earth Day, I would like to remind you that if we don't take care of the Earth, it can't take care of us.

We depend on the Earth to provide us with air, water, food and all the other necessities of life. Playing Jackstraws, Pick-Up-Sticks, or Jenga with what we need to stay alive is not a good plan. Sure we can keep removing parts of the systems on Earth and see how long we can survive, but it is a pretty dangerous game. If things start collapsing in this game, they can land on our heads.

I don't feel like nagging. We already know we have a very bad problem with climate change. If you don't know this yet, you must be on another planet already and there is no use trying to talk to you about it.

In this post I want to encourage people who are discouraged about the immensity of the problems we face. 

We human beings may be obnoxious critters, but we can really move the Earth when we make up our minds to do so. This is fortunate since this is about what is required now. :-p

There is a fairly new organization that got their name from the center of the problem with our air and with climate change.Their name is 350. They are named after the 350 parts per million that scientists have agreed for some time to be about the upper limit of how much carbon is safe for us to have in our air.

350 was formed for the purpose of stopping and reversing climate change before it is too late to do anything about it. We already passed 350 parts per million a while back. If we do nothing, it is already too late to fix climate change and we are doomed. 350, however, tells us that not only can we stop adding more carbon to our air, but we can reverse the almost 400 parts per million we have in the air. 

We can get our air back down to 350 parts per million of carbon in our air. We can then keep going and make it even better than 350 parts per million and make our air better and reverse the trend of climate change.

This does not mean that this will be easy. It will mean we have to make big changes in how we live. It is something that gives us a chance to save our civilization and a lot of lives, human and other kinds of lives. These are changes we can live with. 

Please think about becoming part of a solution instead of part of the problem. One easy way to do this is to go to the site for 350.org and sign their petition to stop the XL pipeline. They will explain why we need to do this. It is very urgent, if we want to stop and reverse climate change. A few little clicks of your mouse can begin to make a difference. Go to 350.org and make yourself count.

Window Covers For Disaster Protection

For those who are very new to disaster preparedness, it is all a matter of getting and storing things for a disaster and when a disaster hits, you use them.

Unfortunately it is not as nice and simple as that. Most of your neighbors are not going to be prepared at all for a disaster. They will get to the grocery to find all the shelves empty and crowds of people fighting over a few packages of food at the cash registers. They probably won't even have any lights except for birthday candles that will be gone shortly.

If your hungry neighbors get home and smell cooking food odors coming out of your home and see lights in your windows, they will want light and food too. If your whole neighborhood is in the same boat except your home, guess what? You could be in deep doo doo. 

You may have enough food to last you for a month. How far would that last for your whole neighborhood? Some people do invite everyone in and share what they have until it runs out and then they all starve together.

Maybe you want to do that. If you don't, you might want to plan for being able to hold onto what you have stored. If you want 30 days of light for your home instead of 1 day for the whole neighborhood, you will probably need to hide your light under a bushel.

You will need to cover your windows and you will need to do it very well. One little beam of light could do you in. Pick whatever way you want to black out your windows for a disaster, but make sure it is thorough and won't leak light.

Blackout curtains are an option, but can be pricey. If you want to make your own window blackout covers, you would probably do well to do it ahead of time, and have them ready for when they are needed.

Make something that looks somewhat normal. This could be fabric coverings, reflective ones, paint or plain or colored paper. You can use cardboard or plywood and paint or cover it. 

If your windows are small enough you can store them against the wall in the back of your closet. If your windows are too big to do that with your window covers, you may have to make them so they will fold up for storage or you can assemble them quickly when needed. If you are an Alaskan, this is all easy. Just about everybody needs light blockers when the stops setting for most of the day and night. You can just leave your light blockers up all the time.

It is safer to check for light leaks ahead of time. The best is when they are in place on your windows. That way you can be certain they will work. 

Even better is having neighbors who are prepared for disasters so it does not matter whether they see your lights or not. There is only so much you can do that way though. 

I have already posted about deciding to share your preparedness items or not, and if so, with whom, and how much. You do need to think about this.

Apology

I am very sorry for being so erratic in my postings lately. I have been experiencing some severe difficulties and am afraid I may have more trouble being consistent in posting for a while. 

I hope that the large number of my previous posts will be helpful to you during this difficult period for me.

As I mentioned previously, I am planning to split this blog into several more niche types of blogs. I will probably not post on each one of those as often as I do here, but will probably post more often between all of them than I do here. I will provide plenty of easy links between the blogs so you can find them all if you are interested.

Most likely I will keep on doing a preparedness one or perhaps even split that into more than one segment of preparedness. If I do that, I will probably have a separate one on preparedness food and water.

I expect to do one on health in general instead of only health that is more related to preparedness. 

I will have to do one about my cats. Naturally I consider them to be especially beautiful and intelligent and like to share their wonderful qualities with others. :-) I also like to take lots of pictures of them and share those. I have exercised amazing restraint by not putting them all over this blog.

It is possible that I will do a blog about words. I happen to love words and collect them like some people do postage stamps or trading cards. Other people have the same fondness for them that I do and liked it when I had a blog on the subject a long time ago. I will have to see how that goes over. When I did the old one, there were very few word blogs. 
There are a lot more of them now, so that might thin out readers too much. Trial and error.

It is likely that this preparedness blog will go down to one post a week. I will probably make longer posts if I do that. This will allow me to cover subjects that can not be covered in the short posts that I usually do on this blog. I sometimes reject subjects because of that problem, so I already have a list of subjects like that.

My apologies again for my erratic posting lately on this blog. I will do the best I can to be as consistent as I can manage. It is fairly likely that I will drop back to one post a week a bit earlier than I had planned so that I can be more predictable with my posts.

Thank you for your patience.