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Amanda Kovattana

Amanda Kovattana's book, The Girls Guide To Off-Grid Living, is available from Amazon in both hard copy and as an ebook. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1093980893?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860 As might be expected, the book is self-published - yet another off-grid adventure as she learned to format and work with this new publishing technology. In her previous book, Diamonds In My Pocket, Kovattana came to terms with her mixed race heritage and  the three cultures that formed her: England, the country of  her birth; Thailand, the country of her childhood; and finally the U.S., the country of her coming of age and journey to resilience. (Reviewed at Resilience.)

tiny house and garden

Journey to resilience

By Amanda Kovattana, Resilence.org

I came to the topic of Peak Oil in 2005 at a workshop given by Richard Heinberg in Palo Alto. The information had a profound affect on how I would view the future going forward.

  • July 9, 2022
Society

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.

  • February 13, 2014
Society

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.

  • March 5, 2012

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.

  • December 30, 2011
Society

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.

  • November 21, 2011
Society

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."

  • November 17, 2011
Society

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.

  • March 30, 2011
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