Women and Collapse; Or, One Bad Day

It's always interesting to me that people talk about collapse as though it's in the far off future, and as if it will hit everyone, everywhere, at the same moment. That there will be a universal SHTF moment. 


If one defines "Societal Collapse" as:  The coupled breakdown of economic, cultural and social institutions. 


Detroit has been collapsing my whole life. New Orleans had a fast collapse after Katrina. California is well on its way to collapse


I think that "Personal Collapse" can be defined as: The coupled breakdown of economic, cultural and social institutions within people's lives. 


Many, many people are already living in a state of collapse. It doesn't matter if the rest of the world is going merrily on when you've been evicted, your kids are hungry, you have an infected tooth you can't take care of, and you're trying not to let anyone know the family's been sleeping in the minivan.


Years ago, I worked in a family homeless shelter in Southeastern Michigan. Most of the families there were headed by single women. Most of these single women had been married when their children were born. Most of these women had had what seemed like adequate resources to raise their children. Due to divorce, widowhood or job loss, those resources were slowly whittled away. By the time these women reached the homeless shelter, all of them were at the end of their resources.


Women and children live much closer to collapse than either men or childless women. Children limit the work you can do, the places you can live, the people you associate with.


The myth of the welfare mama who's sitting fat and happy is just that...A myth. Yes, you might get food stamps, Federal lunches and Medicaid, but you can't put gas in the car to get to work, even if you can find a job that works around your kid's school schedule. None of the doctors around you take Medicaid, the nearest grocery store is twenty miles away, and the lunches at school are the only thing you kids eat, some days


I had once had a woman, who was bringing donations to the shelter, ask me, "How do women end up here?"


My reply, "One bad day."


My mom and I had a bad day, once.  Oh, there was years of difficult days before that, but she had always worked through them as best she could. 


My parents were solid, upper middle class people, with a home in Suburbia. My brothers and I attended private school. We took trips to Florida every winter and trips to the UK almost every year.


The bad day was the day I told my mom that my dad had a girlfriend. My mom's carefully wrought denial came crashing down around her ears. She then found out that my dad had drained the various savings accounts. She filed for divorce the next day. In the space of a very few days, we went from upper middle class to poor. Just like that.


There were other days, probably, but that's the one I remember, the day my world collapsed.


In short order, we went from the sort of people who gave to charity, to being the sort of people who had to choose between eating and paying the light bill.  


We got through it, obviously, but my mother never enjoyed upper-middle-classdom again. I am left with a fear of empty cupboards and a clear understanding that, at any moment, the bottom could drop out of my world.


Recently, I have been bearing witness to the collapse of other people's lives. Mostly women, some with kids, some without. 


One friend has been left disabled and is now navigating the Byzantine world of Medicaid and State Assistance. That's a full time job, even without a traumatic brain injury. This is an incredibly talented writer and professional woman who, right on the heels of escaping an abusive marriage, sustained brain damage from carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning. Where did she get CO poisoning? From the furnace of her home which was never inspected properly by the landlords. Her world has ended and she's trying to figure out the new normal. Of course, she hasn't been able to find a doctor who's competent to deal with her complicated medical history who also takes Medicaid.


Another friend just escaped from crazy ex with her kids. He left her high and dry ten years ago, is in arrears for an ungodly amount of child support, and now is making demands. Mostly he wanted the kids to live with him through 2012, because the world's ending. She's afraid of what he might do if the world doesn't end on schedule, in bright, fiery 'splosions. 


Another brilliant woman who had to learn to be resourceful to keep herself and her kids fed.   


Another woman recently confided to me that her world ended in the form of her husband leaving. She's been a stay at home mom their whole marriage because he had vowed to take care of her.


A woman I met lost her husband of ten years. Sudden cardiac arrest. He had no insurance and she'd just lost her job. They were scrambling for the money to have him cremated.


The list just goes on. Most of these women are hanging on to their housing, but by a thread in some cases. 


The best preparations are in your own head. Someone's world collapses every day.


I've been laughed at, often, over the years. I've been called a paranoid many times. However, I am not worried about the end of THE world, just my world.


I'm preparing for that One Bad Day.

Life with part-time electricity

What would it be like to live with eight hours of electrical power per day, in a first world country?
John Robb is thinking about it, especially in terms of national decline and collapse scenarios.

What would it mean for us, up on our little mountain?

So much of our life, even the way we homestead, is based on steady access to electricity.  Our water supply is a well, and its pump draws on household current.  Electrical light is crucial to doing work and being relatively sane during our long, dark winters.  And so many appliances require Edison's trickle: the clotheswasher, the refrigerator, and of course the modern world of digital communications: laptops, modems, X-box, etc.

One hopes that the eight hours of electricity are predictable and they coincide with the evening need for electricity. Say 3:00 PM until 11:00PM or 4:00 until Midnight. This way, the dark days of autumn and winter wouldn't become completely intolerable.

A brief peek into an unspecified future, as imagined by Ceredwyn:

So, winter: Electricity turns on in the afternoon, after the kids come back from school. Which is good, because it gets dark at 4:00. Husband has been running his computer (and the all important Internet connection) from battery power. The batteries were the best we could afford, deep cycle marine batteries that charge on a small solar panel. Failing that, we charge the Lithium batteries on our devices from the wall sockets at 4:00.

The gas stove usually works without electricity, but the oven does not, because it has an electric ignition. If we want to bake, now's the time.

It's also the time for showers and filling up our water containers. Fortunately for us, our septic is downslope from the house, thus we only have to pour greywater into the toilet to flush it. If the septic required an electric pump, we'd have quite a predicament.

We heat with wood, so we're pretty cozy. It's tough for the neighbors who have electric or gas heat. They both require electricity to run.  The fire dept has more alarms these days for people using makeshift heat sources.

The refrigerator gets plugged in, the melted snow that's been keeping it cold gets replaced. Of course, the food that needs to be frozen is in a locked freezer out back, packed with snow.

With the power being off 16 hours out of 24, I'm more inclined to can things than freeze them, and, of course, there's the stuff in the root cellar. Not telling you where we built that, it's well covered to discourage the casual thief.

In the evening, we indulge ourselves in those 20th Century pleasures, movies, music that we don't make ourselves or video games. The lights also make reading much easier. We power up whatever devices have rechargeable batteries.

Clothes are washed in the washer and hung to dry. Dishes for the day are done, no leaving anything for the next morning.

11:00 comes all too soon, and there's no real point to staying up once the power's off.

Summer's a little different because we don't rely so much on the electric lightbulb. There's also the fridge and freezers to consider. Basically, we use the freezer and fridge like one might use an ice box. When the electric comes on, we put the cold packs (We have quite a few large ones, we used to use for camping) in the freezer to freeze. Before bed, we put them back in the fridge.

Bedtime is when the electric shuts off. The electricity turns on at 3, the hottest part of the day, and shuts down at 10:00.

This is when living up north in a rural area pays off, our house doesn't need much in the way of air conditioning. We also moved our bedroom to the basement from the top floor. I'd like to install a sleeping porch if we ever get the money.

If one is lucky, one has some sort of solar panel or wind power set up. This can often supply electricity for the 16 hours of the day when the grid is off, but solar and wind are both prohibitively expensive to get started. One can also use gasoline generators, but again, very expensive, especially if the gas is expensive.

Expense is a problem in another way; the electricity we do get isn't  $0.11/KWh anymore. And it just keeps going up.

"Please, Missus...I'm 'ungry"

Had something of a Port Au Prince  flashback yesterday, when a woman came up to me, panhandling in the local grocery store parking lot.  Asked for a couple of bucks for dinner.

Years ago, I worked in a few different homeless shelters, so I got pretty good at spotting the different types of panhandlers.  Women tend to be of two types--either mentally ill and/or druggies or so far down on their luck that everything looks up.

She looked too good to be a meth head or a crack addict, so I was curious about her.  And to be honest, it was cold enough that I might have given her a couple of dollars even if she had told me she was going to go find her dealer.  Whatever gets her through the night, you know?

I asked her about her situation. She told me her husband was out of work and she had a couple kids.  She wanted a few dollars to make it to the end of the week.  She said they'd applied for food stamps, but they hadn't been approved yet. Possible, since I don't know the availability of emergency food stamps at the moment.

I told her I didn't have much cash left.  She was alone, and I hate to say it, being approached like that makes me suspicious.  On the other hand, she approached me in the middle of the parking lot, in daylight, so I could see she didn't have any nefarious companions.  If it had been a couple, I would have been more wary, I think.

I asked her if she wanted the extra gallon of milk I had just bought and her face lit up.  So, she really was asking for food rather than drug money.  I fished a couple of dollar bills out of my pocket to go with it and drove away wondering how long it would be before one of our good citizens complained to the manager of the store and the local cops asked her to move on.

As I drove away, I saw her take the gallon of milk back to her car, where a girl about the same age as my daughter sat, looking cold.

The last time I was approached by a beggar like this was in Port Au Prince.  It was very common for both women and children to come up to anyone white,  "Scuse me, missus. " they'd say, "I'm 'ungry." This was, more often than not, the only English they had.  It was not safe to give them anything. There were so many, one risked being mobbed.  I'd hold up open hands and say, "No, I got nothing."

The same sort of thing is common in many cities in the world, that children and women are seen begging.  But it is unusual in the States.  At least in my lifetime.  This woman was a strange sort to be begging, here. Clean, neatly dressed in jeans.  Her coat a few winters old.  No makeup, in her thirties.

As I said, normally, women panhandlers are mentally ill or have drug habits. You might see buskers in some places, but they're generally teens...runaways without any skills to get work.  Prostitutes, of course, but again, teens. Women tend to have different reasons than men for becoming homeless and they will put up with far worse conditions to remain in a "home"`than men will.  They will stay in hideously abusive situations to mantain a roof over their heads and their children's heads.

And normally, a woman will generally turn first to family and friends.  Go shopping in mom's cupboard, maybe.  Next choice would be Welfare, food pantry or maybe church.  They're all pretty tapped out this years.

More than likely, she's subsisting on Snickers. She's probably got the kids eating at school, so they at least, get two meals a day during the week.    Naturally, Sunday afternoon would suck for everyone. No community dinners that I know of anywhere around here.  Do church services still do coffee and donuts?

I was visiting my friend in Virginia not too long ago, when her neighbor who's down on her luck came by, asking to borrow a few dollars to buy a sack of groceries.  My friend doesn't keep cash in the house and was also a little nonplussed.  She gave the woman a bag of groceries out of her own cupboards instead.

My mom and I never did welfare.  I don't think she knew we could have qualified.  I did have Federal lunches and I ate at my friends houses a lot.  The Christmas after my dad left (I was 16) my mom gave us a choice.  We could have presents, or we could have Christmas dinner.  We decided we'd rather have Christmas dinner and my brother found a tree somewhere for five dollars.  It was like some movie of the week thing.  My family never exchanged Christmas presents much after that.  We always just tried to help out when anyone needed it.  My mom liked to throw big holiday meals, although I'm not so inclined.

Wondering if there's going to be a lot more families at the free church meals this year, rather than just the old people and homeless.

Wondering if walking through any American city is going to become like walking through Port Au Prince, everywhere you look, a woman or a child saying, "Ma'am, can you spare something?"

Winter is coming

Last week was Indian summer, here in Vermont.  Those amazing autumn days where the temperature can get up to 70 or 80.  The light falls at an angle now, so the red hues in the sunlight are more visible.  The angle of light is very important to us here.

The wood is stacked.  I am working on getting the house ready for winter.  I put in new insulation in the crawlspace last summer and I can already feel the difference.

We slaughtered chickens last weekend.  I still have cabbage in the garden and I brought in the last of the tomatoes and made them into pasta sauce.

Autumn in New England is a sweet time of year, made more so by it's brevity.  Six weeks or less and we'll be sunk into winter.

This year, winter comes after the damage of Irene.  It's going to be a tough winter for many.

There's more rain falling on the saturated ground and the rain would turn to sleet if it had its' way.

New England winters are always tough, to be sure, and this one will be no different.  The state government is assuring tourists that the leaf peeping is as good as it ever has been, but farms and businesses are devastated. The mood here since Irene ranges from sad and scared to desperate.

The End of The World, Again.

I keep saying that I'm not prepping for the end of the world, just the end of my world

Here in Vermont, many people's safe ordered worlds have ended.  Property damage is bad in many areas.  A friend in  Upstate New York tells the story of a co worker who now has nothing left but the scrubs in her car and the pajama's she was wearing when the Sheriff banged on her door, yelling "You have to evacuate now!  Not ten minutes from now!  NOW!"

I read a statistic that said that, after a major disaster, 40% of small businesses fail.  I see farms that just won't be able to make it past the crop failure this year,  business that will just have to shut their doors and be done with it.

I also see homeowners who, without flood insurance, will just say "screw it" and  never return to their home, maybe moving in with family or friends.  The saddest part is that some of these people TRIED to buy flood insurance but were told, "No.  Your house came through the 1927 flood.  No way it's going to flood now."

Perhaps I'm being overly pessimistic, but all I have to do is talk to my friends in Louisiana to feel that I am not.  An area with no road access is called a "wilderness".  Going by this, we've got more a bit more wilderness today than two weeks ago.

The political bullshitting has already started, with Congress creatures from both sides wondering where the money is coming from.  I got an idea...How about we start means testing Congress creatures?  Like we do with other government program?  If you are worth more than $1 million, how about you donate your Congressional salary to a fund for recovery, rather than taking it out of Medicaid funds? And if you're a pauper, living just on your Congressional salary? How about you donate 100K out of it.  I'm sure you can get by on 50% (roughly) more than what the median US income is (median income is 42K.  Congress creatures make about 175K).  That'll give us 5 to 7 million to get started with.

Better yet, let's go back to taxing the rich at 90%.  That's how we built all those freeways in the first place.

I'm just ranting because I'm frustrated.  In the end, it isn't even about how much money there is or is not.  This is the new normal. I keep hearing that phrase.  Usually with a shrug and a "What are you gonna do?" sort of gesture. Disasters will happen, because they always happen.  People will get on with their lives, doing what they have to do.   In three days time, we're on to the next news item.  If CNN's really lucky, some celebrity will do something egregiously embarrassing, and they can stop talking about disasters for a while.

When that palls, they'll move on to the end of someone else's world.

Dress Rehearsal for Collapse

Our power went out last night. We had a pretty serious windstorm and a lot of the county went without power. I always treat power outages as dress rehearsals for the proverbial Shit Hitting Fan.

As always we had water, food and flashlights. We heat with wood, so that's never a problem. Our well pump is electric so I always store enough water to cook with and some to flush the toilet.

One of the preparations we're intending to buy in the next year is a hand pump that drops in next to our electrical pump. Ostensibly for emergency use. Not looking like a crazy survivalist is all in the way you frame things to your neighbors.

This is the first outage this winter to last more than a few minutes. In fact, my husband just got off the phone and it appears we'll be out of power for at least the next twenty four hours. As I type this, I am currently taking advantage of the public library which is still firmly in the 21st Century; complete with lights, internet and access to coffee shops.

I must wonder though if, say two years ago, the lights would have been repaired sooner. We were out of electricity for only a day after a similiar 2006 storm. I seem to remember news items last year talking of lay-offs. Maybe there are just not as many electrical repair crews. Perhaps I am in error, or perhaps I'm merely paranoid.

In 2003 after the big blackout, NM governor Bill Richardson said the U.S. was "a superpower with a third-world electricity grid." Seven years on, this is even more true. Worse yet, we don't have the resources to reverse this trend.

Our next round of prep buying will also include a couple deep cycle batteries and some more canning materials. Freezing is an ok option because we have a large chest freezer (they tend to stay frozen through blackouts), but I find that my canned goods are more reliable.

Every power outage is a learning experience. It also seems that we might need to become accustomed to these becoming longer as the power companies struggle to pay the wages and fuel costs for their crews.

Third World America

Just having visited Haiti, a Third World country in a state of absolute collapse, I am urgently reminded that I am living in a Third World country with delusions of First Worldom.

I don't mean to say that people are starving (yet) nor are in the midst of any public health crises that come anywhere near the scale of the ones that plague Haiti.

Of course, we have roads, clean water, free schools, food that is somewhat affordable and can be nutritious, and topsoil.

Those things make us infinitely better off than the actual Third World, I agree, but we are sliding down the same slope

To illustrate:

A neighbor of mine had to go to three different pharmacies to fill a prescription of a fairly common drug.

A friend with a chronic condition finds herself waiting six weeks to get an appointment with her primary care physician (PCP), for routine care. He's always swamped.

Earlier this year, my husband had to have a complicated dance with our insurance company to remain on a medication that has stabilized his asthma for the past five years. In the end it was changed to a different one because of cost (never mind that the other one worked just fine.)

In fact we had a complicated little dance happening over getting insurance in the first place. For no other reason than my husband's employer changed who was administering his paycheck. So we were able to get a policy through Byzantine Cafkaesque B*** S*** of Vermont after weeks of trying to find out if we could legally do so. We sent so far as to talk to our state senators office trying to find out what to do.

Another friend of mine is searching for a therapist for her daughter who is in need of counseling for some pretty serious trauma. She has insurance AND she has the $$ to pay out of pocket, there's just no therapists taking new patients at the moment.

A friend in Michigan has just been denied insurance because she is "high risk" due to blood pressure issues that respond quite well to a $4.00 blood pressure medication.

I wouldn't be so irritated with all of this, if it wasn't for the fact that I live in what is ostensibly a First World Country.

In Haiti, it is common to see children begging on the street.

In Vermont, we don't have children begging on the street. We do have 86,244 people on food stamps. In a state with 621,000 or so people. We had in 2009, 55,000 children receiving federal school lunches. In a school system that has less that 100,000 students.

So, most (something like 60% !)of the children in Vermont are at or near poverty.

In Haiti, there is a shortage of mental health professionals. Of pharmacueticals. Of scanning machines. Of PCP's (so they're always swamped).

Hmm. Here in Vermont, we have a shortage of mental health professionals, pharmacueticals and PCP's. We have the scanning machines, but they're so prohibitively expensive and apparently so esoteric that it takes a week of consideration to even consider ordering one.

The French are rioting because they see their government as breaking their social contract with the people and looking out for the interest of corporations.

Here in Vermont, there is much contempt among the people who have even heard of the riots. As if paying your taxes and then expecting your government to actually provide those services said taxes are supposed to pay for is somehow suspect.

In Haiti, the expectation is that the government (and any service it provides) is for the rich people.

Meanwhile, it appears that corporations that were bailed out by the US governement have been committing widespread fraud. And we've yet to see any arrests.

Americans are not rioting in the streets over any of this and I have no idea why.