The anarchist’s shoes
By Amanda Kovattana, Amanda Kovattana blog
What better way to upset the paradigm than to make one's own shoes? A village cobbler could help turn a community away from exclusive designer brands to unique one-of-kind efforts in a locally made product.
Slow Medicine in San Francisco: review of “God’s Hotel”
By Amanda Kovattana, Energy Bulletin
A generous memoir full of intriguing cases of healing by a doctor who discovers slow medicine. Sustenance for the caretaker. Make that a life raft. I was sorry when I got to the end.
Review: “The Geography of Thought”
By Amanda Kovattana, Energy Bulletin
It was suggested that I read this book because I was looking for a Western proclivity for apocalypse fever. My conclusion after reading it is that change is simply scarier for the Westerner, while in Asia, change is so much the expected norm that it is taken in stride. I would add that Americans tend to spin out their horror far into the future or, as one therapist I know puts it, to awful-ize a situation. Watching Bangkok friends and family face the recent flood crisis with a remarkable amount of equanimity confirmed this for me.
Review: “The Wealth of Nature” by John Michael Greer
By Amanda Kovattana, Energy Bulletin
John Michael Greer takes on economics, a subject in desperate need of his characteristic, level-headed analysis. The usual growth oriented fantastical notions that have plagued the subject over the last half century were in particular need of such cool headed dispatching.
Reviews: “When All Hell Breaks Loose” and “Organize for Disaster”
By Amanda Kovattana, Energy Bulletin
Cody Lundin imparts details that often pester my mind when thinking about emergency scenarios and in so doing makes me far less cavalier about the more grim possibilities. A great deal of this information would be useful right now for my family in Thailand as they suffer through the flood. Indeed there is a very third world flavor to Cody's frugal, homemade approaches that speaks to me.
Occupying Myself
By Amanda Kovattana, Energy Bulletin
Sometime last year I read an article by a psychologist about the historical impact of a recession job market on college graduates and how the government needed to do something about jobs now because otherwise we would create a whole generation of young people who would break off from the mainstream and stop believing in the system. My first thought was "Why on earth do we want yet another batch of young people who believe in the system when things are so bad already. This, after all, is the exploitive, growth oriented system that was fleecing us all for every last dollar and natural resource."
Apocalypse chow pantry
By Amanda Kovattana, Energy Bulletin
The authors of Apocalypse Chow have combined skills and with their experience weathering Florida hurricanes, put together a book on emergency prep that is a real find. Since most people have not acquired the long haul skills of canning their own home-grown produce or cooking dried beans in a solar oven, this book most replicates the resources of your average urban household.
Review: “The Windup Girl”
By Amanda Kovattana, Energy Bulletin
Fabulous feast of apocalypse storytelling set in Thailand. Peak oil, climate change, genetically modified seeds gone bad, new plant diseases, new plagues. ... worth reading because of the quality of the writing and that is rare in the apocalypse camp.