April 6, 2022 · 12:23 pm

Let’s not forget Covid social mitigation extremes

Do you ever see news stories where you feel like there’s a gaping hole in the information presented? When the Covid-19 pandemic started our health and government officials and a compliant news media propelled many news stories that stoked fear among people and that led to a great deal of complacency among the American people. Most Americans, according to polls, initially bought into into an array of social mitigation efforts and went along with them without demanding more information.

For most of America, people have moved past Covid-19 and it’s not even on their radar as a concern, being replaced with rising gas prices, talk of war, and warnings of looming food shortages, but we should think about all those social mitigation efforts, which pushed actions that we were told were based on “science.” The scientific research does not support them, but many of our political leaders still will use that “unprecedented” pandemic emergency as a model for future emergencies.

The Canadian truckers protest and the Trudeau government’s extreme reaction, citing a national emergency as the justification to begin freezing Canadian citizens bank accounts, fell to the wayside as a major international news story when Russia invaded Ukraine.

Here’s another timeline to think about:

February 21, 2022 – Putin ordered troops to Ukraine and western countries began issuing sanctions.

February 23, 2022 – Canada lifted the freeze on truck protester bank accounts.

February 24, 2022 – Russia invades Ukraine

February 26, 2022 – Some countries remove Russia from SWIFT and begin targeting Russia’s Central Bank.

It seems certain the the international crisis with Russia invading Ukraine and the need for a response from the West to that crisis superseded draconian domestic measures intended to intimidate Canadians opposed to Trudeau’s new COVID vaccine mandate pertaining to truckers crossing the US-Canadian border – which was the reason those Canadian truckers were protesting.

While the news media here in America has become all about Ukraine 24/7, Covid-19 and the social mitigation craziness aren’t gone. Even more concerning is too many Americans seem happy to just forget all about the government actions and even corporations acting as a surrogate White House enforcement force to impose social mitigation rules on millions of Americans. No one seems to want to look back, study what worked, what didn’t work, and more importantly why these policies were imposed on Americans.

Certainly it’s understandable that Russia invading Ukraine raised the specter of world war and even nuclear war, when Russia ventured into nuclear saber-rattling, but the pandemic craziness isn’t gone and it’s important to start seriously thinking about what happened, to prevent media-generated mass panic disarming our ability to resist government overreach again.

I bring this up because the lockdown idea was touted in 2020 by many prominent US health officials as an effective social mitigation strategy based on hyping that China was doing it and it was working. Let’s look back to 2020:

As COVID-19 spread rapidly across China, authorities took an aggressive stance to fight the coronavirus. They were slow to respond to the outbreak—at first suppressing information and denying that it could spread between humans even as it did just that. But, as case numbers skyrocketed, Beijing went to extraordinary lengths to fight the virus, identified at COVID-19, in a campaign Chinese President Xi Jinping has described as a “people’s war.”

The most dramatic, and controversial, of the measures was the lockdown of of tens of millions of people in what is believed to be the largest quasi-quarantine in human history.

Less than two months after the lockdown went into effect, it appears to be working, at least according to Chinese health officials, who announced on Thursday that the country had passed the peak of the coronavirus epidemic. They reported just eight new cases of the virus the same day, the lowest number since they began publicly releasing numbers. At the same time, cases of COVID-19 across the world are skyrocketing.

https://time.com/5796425/china-coronavirus-lockdown/

Let’s move from China’s 2020 lockdown/Covid Zero approach to right now in China:

From the 2020 Time story I quoted the most important line is: “Less than two months after the lockdown went into effect, it appears to be working, at least according to Chinese health officials, who announced on Thursday that the country had passed the peak of the coronavirus epidemic.”

What’s not known is how many people in China really died from the initial COVID-19 outbreak and how many have died since then. That’s been one of those gaping holes in the reporting since the beginning. The larger question now is why on earth did our government and health officials embrace a social mitigation policy trusting in “according to Chinese health officials” in the first place? Can it happen again in America?

With the war in Ukraine, it may move from a 24/7 news story that galvanizes new media time and resources to a regional conflict, as Americans lose interest in the story and other domestic news attracts more attention, plus as we move closer to fall, national elections, with control of Congress in the balance, partisan political news will dominate in our news media. Covid, showing every sign of being a virus that spreads in waves, will likely hit again and there will be American government and health officials clamoring for more social mitigation efforts and assuredly our American news media can shift on a dime to inciting Covid-panic once more.

Instead of just going along with this politically expedient “time to move on” effort to put Covid out of our minds, I feel certain, the same officials, pundits and media who pushed the Covid hysteria since 2020 will reemerge when another Covid wave hits in the US and they’ll be repackaging all of their made in China social mitigation lockdown ideas again.

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April 6, 2022 · 2:11 am

Will Biden get the boot?

Just a short politics post here. I became suspicious as soon as the Washington Post and New York Times began hyping the Hunter Biden laptop story recently and it’s now news that Hunter Biden is under investigation in Delaware by Justice Department investigators. Andrew C. McCarthy wrote a piece at National Review about this investigation the other day: The New York Times Suddenly Discovers Hunter Biden Laptop and Corruption Investigations Are Real

Back at the end of February, Devon Archer, a Hunter Biden friend, who also sat on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma, was sentenced in a different matter involving fraud: Hunter Biden’s pal sentenced to prison for role in fraud scheme. After this news, media stories began to trickle out about this ongoing investigation into Hunter Biden in Delaware. Assuredly, the mainstream liberal media hacks who carry water for Dems constantly and prominent Democrats knew about this ongoing investigation, but somehow Hunter Biden’s laptop story was off-limits in the mainstream liberal media since October 2020, when the laptop story broke and Twitter banned even mentioning the laptop story.

For that same media to now start hyping the Hunter Biden laptop was a red flag to me. I tweeted;

I saw this Tucker Carlson video tonight:

Yes, I believe Tucker has this right, but what remains to be seen is whether Dems push Biden out before 2024 and then have to contend with a President Kamala Harris or if they wait until the 2024 presidential election draws closer and pressure Biden to announce he won’t be seeking reelection.

To be sure Hillary Clinton is busily hitting the liberal media news and late night TV talk show circuit to try to sell herself as the Ukraine foreign policy guru and president-in-waiting. Bill Clinton revved up the Clinton Foundation recently too, so you know the Clintons are actively grifting for more money.

Whenever the mainstream liberal media runs negative stories about Dems now, there’s an ulterior partisan political motive, because the liberal media is really just a Democrat political messaging operation at this point, just like FOX News and right-wing media carries water for former President Trump. The liberal media suddenly talking about the Hunter Biden laptop story they deliberately buried for over a year evoked a lot of angry responses from the Trump-supporter pundit circle, but I was waiting to hear them begin questioning, “Why now?”

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Filed under 2020 Election, General Interest, Politics

March 26, 2022 · 4:44 pm

K.I.S.S works, especially when SHTF

The sanctions on Russia are impacting ordinary Russians, but it remains to be seen how it impacts Putin’s war in Ukraine. I saw a YouTube video of a Russian guy shopping for groceries and he said a lot of the prices have doubled in one week:

Also, President Biden said food shortages are going to be real and he blathered on about how the sanctions on Russia will impact Europe and the US too, but truthfully Biden made some very disastrous decisions from the moment he took office that are exacerbating economic problems here at home. Fall-out from the sanctions will just add to the economic chaos.

If the continuing shortage issues and escalating inflation in the grocery store haven’t motivated you to stock up on food, water, necessities and try to grow some of your own food, well, I don’t know what will. Anyway, there you have it from President Biden – food shortages are going to be real. Of course, if you watched this White House’s handling of any crisis, don’t count on them having any sort of plan to deal with this one either.

Information can be a blessing or a curse, especially when we’re inundated with so much and trying to sift through it all. There’s a very sound principle that’s commonly used around the military and my husband said it often – K.I.S.S., which means Keep it simple stupid:

“The acronym was reportedly coined by Kelly Johnson, lead engineer at the Lockheed Skunk Works (creators of the Lockheed U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird spy planes, among many others).[3]

While popular usage has translated it for decades as, ‘Keep it simple, stupid’, Johnson translated it as, ‘Keep it simple stupid’ (no comma), and this reading is still used by many authors.[7] There was no implicit meaning that an engineer was stupid; just the opposite.[3]

The principle is best exemplified by the story of Johnson handing a team of design engineers a handful of tools, with the challenge that the jet aircraft they were designing must be repairable by an average mechanic in the field under combat conditions with only these tools. Hence, the ‘stupid’ refers to the relationship between the way things break and the sophistication available to fix them. The acronym has been used by many in the United States Air Force and the field of software development.” https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/KISS_principle

When large (global) complex systems fail (which is what’s happening now) there is no way to prepare for all the chaos and misery likely to follow, but if you simplify your finances and your lifestyle, you’re way more likely to weather the chaos. I mention the Amish frequently, because their belief system is centered on simple living and community, which allows them to thrive even in bad times.

I’ve fallen prey to letting information overload, when googling or watching YouTube videos on “how to” do various things, make me overthink things or believe that I need all the fancy doodads and equipment before embarking on new projects. It’s easy to think you need to buy all the “right” fancy equipment before trying new things, but I know my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother didn’t have all of that and they managed to do all sorts of stuff, from preserving food, making home medicinal remedies to sewing beautiful needlework and quilting, etc. The K.I.S.S principle can be applied to almost every aspect of preparedness too. By simplifying how you approach tasks, it can save you time, money and a whole lot of stress worrying about not having all the “right” prepper stuff.

How to manage personal finances advice abounds, especially with the economic chaos roiling now. I’ve seen online recommendations from take all your money out of the bank to various investment options and I’ve got no advice there, except I believe it’s good to have some cash on hand, in case the electronic banking system goes down for a while. The federal government has been warning about cyberattacks, so it’s not just me fearmongering. Being debt-free and mortgage free were my high priorities and having emergency savings, so that’s been my simplified living plan and how I choose to live. I do think a lot of people will be moving into a time crunch period as the economy worsens quickly and they didn’t make any efforts to streamline their lifestyle or finances, didn’t stock up on basics, and where they’ll end up making rash decisions, as inflation and shortages get much worse.

If you can pay off even one credit card or debt in the next few months, that will free up the money you were using for that monthly payment. That extra could help off-set the extra costs of inflation or be a little to put aside in savings or use for stocking up basics. There’s still time to work on paying off debt and stocking up.

I’m a list person, because often when I’m shopping I forget items that I intended to buy, but I also pick up a lot of extra things, especially since 2020. Certainly as more people become concerned about the worsening economic situation a lot more people will be stocking up and also panic-buying. There’s no perfect prepping process, but even now staying calm and thinking through your own financial situation and seriously looking through your fridge, freezer and pantry and making a list is a good idea. I prefer to stock up mostly on basics that I can use as building blocks for many meals. I’m working at growing some of my own vegetables and herbs, but store-bought canned goods are also good to have. Frozen vegetables are still cheap where I live and I continue to dehydrate frozen vegetables, because they will last much longer dehydrated than frozen and it clears up freezer space.

One thing I’ve noticed over the years with the rise of foodie culture (especially things like Food TV and the growing interest in becoming a chef) is a lot of people begin to buy into a lot of “trendy” things, like now it’s “pink Himalayan salt” or eating only “non-GMO” foods. Look, canning salt, which is a fine, plain salt with no anti-caking agents or potassium iodide added is important in home canning, but for general cooking and baking – any kind of salt will work – from fancy, expensive salt to cheap iodized salt that’s under a dollar a canister. Iodized salt is often recommended, because we don’t get iodine (potassium iodide) in our diets. Stocking up on salt is important, because beyond making food taste good, salt is vital for our health. Salt also has a lot of uses beyond cooking – from medicinal to cleaning.

There is no scientific evidence that GMO foods are less safe to eat than non-GMO foods. When the choice becomes eating or not eating – no one’s going to be fussing over whether the food is non-GMO. If you’re planting a garden, well, then I can see people being a bit choosier, because of the difference between heirloom and hybrid seeds, if you plan to collect seeds. However, here again, there are some benefits to hybrid seeds as many of them have been developed to produce plants that grow better in some climates and are resistant to plant diseases. I did buy some hybrid tomato seeds that are supposed to be good for my growing zone, because years ago before my husband became ill, when I used to plant a vegetable garden here, I struggled with getting tomato plants to thrive in my backyard.

I’m not very picky about brands and will buy store brands, except I am very partial to Heinz ketchup and have stocked up quite a bit, lol. However, if the choice came to some other brand or no ketchup, I would certainly buy the other brand. I also have plenty of cookbooks and think I can make a passable ketchup substitute, if push came to shove. And that reminds me ketchup requires vinegar and vinegar should be on a basic food supply list too and it has uses way beyond cooking and food preservation.

Hopefully, grocery costs here don’t rise like the video above with the Russian man talking about prices in his grocery store, but the craziness seems likely to hit everyone around the world, so trying to prepare however you can now is just common sense. Although common sense isn’t really that common these days, but I believe if you’re able to type in “how to” in Google or YouTube, you can probably come up with some usable information to get you started toward learning how to do millions of things. If you’re really ambitious you can hunt down some books about those topics or find someone who knows how to do those things and acquire even more skill sets.

The one thing we should all be learning from seeing what’s happening in Ukraine, is that when SHTF, most people still work hard to persevere and they focus on the basics each day. The K.I.S.S principle can be applied to almost every aspect of your life and even complex or arduous undertakings will be more achievable if you simplify as much as possible and take things one step at a time – especially in a crisis.

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Filed under Emergency Preparedness, General Interest, Ukraine

March 24, 2022 · 12:23 pm

More on Ukraine reports

A couple days ago I posted two YouTube videos by an Estonian soldier, whose commentary (and accent) is quite interesting. He’s definitely very pro-Ukrainian. Here’s another YouTube channel by Nicholas Moran, whose bio link states he is Wargaming America’s resident tanker and amateur historian. Along with interesting points about the war videos we’re all seeing, he raises questions about what all we’re not seeing in these videos and sounds some cautionary notes about drawing large conclusions from edited snapshots we see in videos. He also has a very charming accent:

Moran mentions a Russian truck tire analysis in this video and that analysis was in a Twitter thread on March 2nd:

Telenko’s Twitter commentary is also very interesting.

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Filed under General Interest, Ukraine

March 23, 2022 · 9:55 pm

Where are our American leaders?

It’s hard to keep a positive attitude if you follow the news about what’s happening here in the US with our political dramas and the economic problems compounding almost daily and then look beyond our shores to the crises swirling abroad. Everywhere you turn there’s another looming situation that’s like a flashing warning sign that major system failures are moving closer and inevitably going to impact all of us.

Yesterday I saw this report from Ukraine that made me think about the importance of carrying on, as best you can, no matter how terrible a situation you find yourself in:

None of the decisions I have made with personal preparedness come anywhere close to Ukrainian farmers making a decision to plant crops in a war zone. At 1:27 in this video the sound of a military jet flying overhead catches the farmer and reporter’s attention and they both look up at the sky, neither knowing if it’s a Ukrainian or Russian jet. That moment made me think how small my problems are compared to millions of other people in the world.

It feels surreal that we’re now seeing world leaders talking about nuclear war, looming global food and gas shortages, inflation climbing daily, talk of major economic collapses, oh, and warnings of likely major cyberattacks too, in the news these days. While things seem very likely to get much worse and chaotic in ways none of us ever thought possible in America, at the same time I believe there are millions of Americans, in communities all over our great country, who will show every bit as much courage, determination, resourcefulness, and resiliency as the Ukrainians have mustered with their country being invaded by Russia. I have a lot of faith in the American spirit.

However, I wonder where our leaders are in America, where both political parties flit from one media sideshow to the next and none of them seem focused on coming up with real solutions for any of the looming crises that keep hitting the news. It’s rather bizarre that nowhere in America are leaders standing up and offering leadership, advice or offering any coherent direction for any of these problems. It’s all talking points and gimmicks (usually more grandstanding pushing pointless legislation & government spending that doesn’t address the problems).

The government of Ukraine is urging their farmers to stay and plant their crops this spring. Where is our government on figuring out solutions for the sky-rocketing cost of fertilizer and looming fertilizer shortages? Do our states and federal government have food reserves to feed America in a crisis? What’s the state of government fuel and food reserves? What about the escalating inflation, the growing shortage problems, the gas prices?

Less than 8% of Americans are on Twitter, but I can guarantee you most of our American political leaders, the journalists and political pundits who try to rile up people in the news are on Twitter every single day – trying to outdo each other with the clever hot takes and driving spin cycles. President Biden likely doesn’t tweet, but he has a Twitter account where someone posts tweets and former President Trump has spent the past 14 months fuming that he’s not on Twitter and trying to come up with a social media platform that can compete with Twitter. That’s what our leaders are concerned about – owning spin cycles.

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March 22, 2022 · 1:11 pm

War reporting in the internet age

I came across Ukraine/Russia analysis on a YouTube channel by an Estonian soldier, that is highly entertaining and interesting. I’ve got no idea how accurate his information is and he is definitely cheering for the Ukrainians, but that said, I found his videos offering a lot of information that is days ahead of what the US Defense Dept. is reporting.

For instance, today a WaPo reporter tweeted out information from a Defense Dept. briefing and this was one bit of information:

This Estonian soldier reported that frostbite was likely in a March 10th video:

Here’s another video from a few days ago:

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March 20, 2022 · 1:08 pm

Some Ukraine thoughts

Although Ukraine has dominated the news the past month, there’s a lot of important news here in America that’s not getting nearly the same attention – especially in Washington. The emotional and rash ways in which Washington politicians talk about sending weapons system and aid to Ukraine with no concern about the price tag, the sensitivity of handing over advanced technology on a battlefield we have no control over or thinking about the “post-war” ramifications of all that weaponry (another likely international weapons open market bazaar forming) disturbs me. I do support sending more military aid to Ukraine, but I wish more thought went into decision-making, especially in light of the vast amount of military equipment we abandoned in Afghanistan and the 20-year US foreign policy failure of regime-change/democracy-building.

Even more disturbing has been the ways in which our politicians are like lemmings, who mindlessly rush to fall in line with the latest hot talking point. First it was the hysteria about the US and NATO establishing a no-fly zone, which alarmed the heck out of me, because that means being at war with Russia and being willing to shoot down Russian aircraft and taking out Russian anti-aircraft assets. The past week or so, it’s been hyperventilating about sending Ukraine MiG jets. It seems certain there will be more military hardware items that will fuel endless media hysteria with the situation in Ukraine.

The absolute most disturbing hot takes in American political and media circles have been the hysterical politicians and pundits demanding we stop the war immediately, as if there’s some magic off-button to make Putin stop his war of aggression. I have no idea what Putin’s going to do and presently what he does certainly determines how long this war drags on.

Some of the same politicians who called for more and more military action during the past 20 years of our “Global War On Terror/Building Democracy Project” now seem overly eager to beat their war drums about Russia. Senator Lindsey Graham, who gets a whole lot of air time on FOX News, has been saber-rattling about “regime change” in Moscow now and while many people may embrace the idea of Putin being gone, they’re missing the reality that Russia has a vast nuclear arsenal and a coup or uncertain control of a nation/state nuclear arsenal of that size would be a very dire world crisis situation. I remember when the Soviet Union collapsed (we were living in Germany at the time) and there were serious concerns about loose nukes within the US foreign policy and military communities, but it seems a lot of people in Washington, who are old enough to remember that, seem to have forgotten. A country with a vast nuclear arsenal that collapses or where there’s no clear governmental structure poses a huge global crisis, but Graham is always rushing on TV to beat his war drum and sound tough.

With all eyes focused on Ukraine, our own domestic problems have been shoved aside and the people who react emotionally aren’t just liberals who run from one cause to the next to virtue-signal, from masks to wrapping themselves in the Ukrainian flag, it’s Republicans in Washington too.

Yes, I see the seriousness of the situation in Ukraine, but when it comes to deciding how much military aid to send or how America responds, well, I prefer calmer heads to prevail and instead, there are a lot of overly emotional politicians reacting instantly to pleas from President Zelensky and a video intended to pull at our heartstrings. Here’s the reality – we need calm people making carefully thought out decisions, especially when it comes to such a serious decision as war and our elected officials should be weighing America’s national interests over any other interests. Zelensky, understandably, wants every possible means to save his country, but America has national interests here at home and around the globe and those need to be weighed carefully too.

At some point the politicians and pundit crowd in Washington need to seriously look back over our post-9/11 foreign policy military adventures and do some deep soul-searching. We left train wrecks all over the Middle East and beyond with this regime change/democracy-building pipedream and in the process squandered trillions of dollars, military equipment, humanitarian aid, and most of all American lives. There is little to show for any of it. And that’s why I am hoping we think more about how much and what kinds of aid we pour into Ukraine and if we have even thought about what happens down the road.

In our present media-driven, hot takes, political culture another important assessment tool that seems to have disappeared is a lessons learned approach, where after-action reports are compiled, analyzed and studied, looking for things that worked and things that didn’t work, then drilling down to see at which levels in an organization the failures occurred and why. Our military and intel agencies seem to skate by the lessons learned approach now and behave just like the politicians in Washington, using deceptive language and sliding on by, as if the debacles never happened.

I hope the military aid to Ukraine is done in close consultation with US military officials and NATO officials and designed to be things the Ukrainian fighters know how to use and that’s it’s weapons & assets that will bolster the type of battles they’re actually fighting. That means I’m hoping there’s strategic and tactical advice accompanying all of this military aid too.

One last comment about the war in Ukraine – the modernized Russian army sure seems to be way less impressive than advertised. The news keeps reporting high-ranking Russian officers (think it’s five generals so far) killed on the battlefield. I saw someone online posted a link to this story at a news site in Estonia: 12 March 2022 – Estonian expert: Russia is losing generals in Ukraine due to its communication failures. Here’s a quote from that short piece:

“Kunnas says the reason to that is that the Russian encrypted communication system had failed. “In today’s militaries, it’s a standard that communications are encrypted,” he says. “The Russian army uses a system called Era. It’s a very smart solution – all communication relies on 4G and 3G networks. What happened in Ukraine was, the Russians themselves destroyed the communication towers – to cut the Ukrainians off from being able to communicate. But the result is, the messages of the Russian army went into the air openly. Even British radio amateurs have been able to listen to Russia’s ‘secret’ messages.””

I haven’t heard any American military analysts mention this yet, so I’m awaiting more information.

Update 3/20/2022, 5:21 pm – I came across another article about the Russian army communication problems:

Russian troops can’t use Era encrypted phone system in Ukraine after destroying 4G masts, suggests expert

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Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Military

March 11, 2022 · 5:13 pm

We can still control our own actions and hearts

Image from: https://thegraphicsfairy.com/vintage-daisy-image/

We are entering uncharted financial territory with the present situation we’re all facing – economic chaos is going to hit us all hard and none of us will be able to escape the fall-out. That’s the reality. All of these massive sanctions on Russia will impact us too. It’s already in motion, yet millions of people continue to walk around unaware and making no effort to prepare their finances, stocking up on basic supplies and thinking about how to survive escalating inflation, increasing shortage situations and the steep rise in gas prices. I can’t predict what’s going to happen with the conflict in Ukraine, but this spilling over into a larger world war is quite possible. While I hope this war in Ukraine ends soon, no one knows how this is going to turn out.

The steep gas prices are going to drive up the food prices and everything else even more. President Biden announced he’s stopping Russian oil imports and he also has not undone any of the green measures he put in place immediately when he came into office, intent on decreasing American oil and gas dependence. Most of us can’t just instantly switch to an electric car or go green. Russia may initiate major cyber-attacks , our own government is warning as this crisis with Russia invading Ukraine escalates.

Here’s a good video laying out the situation from Chris at City Prepping:

One thing Chris mentions in this video is normalcy bias, which is a cognitive bias where people tend to disbelieve and minimize threat warnings. I’ve seen this myself with people dismissing severe weather warnings even with our modern Doppler radar, where storms can be tracked in real time. Many people still dismiss tornado warnings, even when tornados have been spotted in their area.

We live in a culture where personal responsibility doesn’t weigh highly in our values anymore and that worries me with this current situation. I’ve talked to family members about becoming more prepared and the reactions I encounter when trying to mention being prepared is mostly complete dismissal or acting like I am being too alarmist from my four adult kids. I have other family members who have been preparing. I mentioned stocking up on more groceries with these shortages increasing, when I ran into one of my dearest friends recently at the grocery store of all places, as we were commenting on the empty shelf spaces. She told me she knows she probably should, but hasn’t and she said her pastor has been urging them to prepare.

I write about preparedness here on my blog and I mentioned it on Twitter a few times, but I’m pretty much convinced a whole lot of people won’t take any proactive efforts to prepare and will be left reacting as the economic problems escalate. I’ve been trying to stock up extra on basics, as I can afford, so I can hopefully help my family and others some, if things get really bad. I figure if things don’t get bad, I can always donate extra canned goods and things to my local food pantry or people in need.

Mostly, I’m trying to keep a positive attitude and be grateful for each day. I’m also trying to learn more about the history of Ukraine and the relationships with Russia. I started with reading, Ukraine and the Art of Strategy by Lawrence Freedman and I bought Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum. I have a few other books about Ukraine and Russia on my list that I will probably buy later. Reading more about situations happening in the world helps me understand more about what’s going on in the news now. I had some general knowledge about the Ukraine/Russia controversies and have been following those happenings for years, but I wanted to read more background history considering the events unfolding now.

Whenever I feel discouraged or let fear begin to creep in (and that’s usually when reading news online), I look at a small wooden plaque I bought at Walmart a few years ago and hung above my desk where I sit at my PC:

We still have control over our own actions and our own hearts. We can all choose to be kind to others, no matter how much terrible stuff is going on in the world.

Be Kind.

Pray.

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Filed under Emergency Preparedness, General Interest

March 10, 2022 · 7:20 am

A great idea

One of my favorite YouTube prepper channels just put out a WWIII Victory Garden Challenge video, with some great ideas on how to increase your personal food security:

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Filed under Food for Thought, General Interest

March 7, 2022 · 11:24 am

Short blog note

I will leave comments open on my blog, but I will no longer respond to any comments. Something I’ve wondered about since 2013 has become clear. The only comments I will block are ones with a lot of foul language or ones to porn sites and that sort of spamming.

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