!Offline life
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agk's diary 
24 January 2022 @ 13:30
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written on GPD Win 1
at kitchen table with hot coffee and radio
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A couple geminauts are writing about offline-first 
computing. I'm into it. This is me throwing my own 
dead cat over that fence: Anna's thoughts on stuff 
for quality offline solarpunk living.

1. Water

   Running out of water's the worst. In residential 
    and industrial ruins, I loved my three 5-gallon 
    plastic jugs. Restaurants use fryer oil, and 
    toss the jugs. Fifteen gallons is plenty for a 
    week if you live alone or have guests over a 
    few times a week.

   I lived with a family in a modern house with the
    water off. We caught buckets of roof rain run-
    off to do dishes, bathe, and flush the toilet. 
    Friends from the hills get water from a spring. 
    Some filter it through a big Burkee.

   It's nice to have something with a tap to keep 
    full of water. I had a 4-gallon collapsible 
    plastic cube from Campmor. Burkees have a tap. 
    So do hot water samovars.

2. Heat and light

   I cooked on a one-burner propane hotplate. Pro-
    pane cost more a week than the hotplate. I 
    might have done better with a heavy-duty char-
    coal-burning rocket stove. It would have set me 
    back more than $100, though.
    
   A burner, teakettle, and iron skillet make a 
    fine kitchen. If life's about not running out 
    of fuel, my fav additional gadgets are a 2-
    liter hard-anodized Hawkins pressure cooker and 
    1.5-liter Thermos non-electric slow-cooker. 
    I saved for them. They're worth every penny.

   The little pressure cooker makes it easy to live
    off dry beans with limited fuel. It sterilized
    my surgical instruments and rendered safe meat 
    that went 'off'. The vacuum-bottle cooks food 
    for 12 hours after it comes off the burner.

   Heating your body's easier than the room. Tea, 
    hot cocoa, hot water bottles everywhere, warm 
    clothes, and blankets make life nice. Hot cocoa 
    with butter or coconut oil warms thermally and 
    metabolically (sugar 'kindling'; saturated fat 
    'logs').

   I had stoves homemade of 55-gallon drums twice. 
    Bricks in the firebox store heat. I put plastic 
    over windows; insulated drafty old floors with 
    corrugated cardboard and plastic covered with 
    curb-scored old Persian rugs.

   On a hot day nothing beats sitting on the roof 
    under shadecloth. Drink mint water. Mist with a 
    spraybottle. Let it evaporate in the breeze.

   Coal oil (kerosene) lamps are easy to come by 
    but dim, and burn expensive coal oil. Fumes 
    gave me headaches. Better are d.Light's $18 
    solar LED lanterns. Mine withstood 10 years of 
    heavy use so far.

3. Sanitation

   A washbasin and pitcher are essential for baths.
    Washboard makes it easier to get clothes clean
    in the basin. I poured scalding water from my 
    kettle, cooler hot water from the pitcher.

   5-gallon bucket toilet under a bedside commode 
    seat. Sawdust or woodchips to dump on it. Cat-
    food or sidewalk salt container to pee in 
    (dump pee down a drain or outside).

4. Happiness

   Wristwatch. Calendar. Books for slow learning. 
    The kind you read for years: Readers Digest Do-
    It-Yourself Manual, Soncino Chumash and Cotton 
    Patch Version of the gospel, a few volumes of 
    the Cambridge History of Africa, a good dict-
    ionary, Common Simple Emergencies, meteorology 
    textbook, the Muqadimmah.

   I loved my battery-powered worldband radio. I 
    listened to music, BBC World Service, Fidel 
    Castro's long speeches, and Chinese "learn 
    English" programs. I sang a lot. Still do.

   Lots of happiness happens over tea or dinner, 
    while keeping warm, cooling off, helping each
    other with practicalities of life.

   A library card. Paper, pen, envelopes, postage 
    stamps. Cut wildflowers in a vase. Bright paint
    for murals. Friends. A little garden. Chickens
    and ducks. A diary. Comfy walking shoes.

What's so solarpunk about plastic, coal oil, and 
propane? Nothing if they're cheap and unlimited. 
For me solarpunk and intentionally offline life are
about bringing physical constraints home. 

Compare a book to a feed. The book ends. You see 
its end approach. After the last page, if it was 
good, you sit and savor it. Offline and solarpunk
are about repairing, maintaining, and running out; 
the pleasure and richness of less, slower.