WEBVTT - DIY Skills 0:00:04.800 --> 0:00:11.760 What spicy Pumpkins? From Robert Kevins. No, it was where 0:00:12.160 --> 0:00:14.280 it's not clipping. You just don't like me saying, what's 0:00:14.280 --> 0:00:16.880 spicy my pumpkins? But I said it and it can't 0:00:16.880 --> 0:00:19.520 be unsaid. It was because this is it could happen 0:00:19.600 --> 0:00:22.960 here a daily podcast about the end of some things 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:26.400 and the beginning of other things. And right now it's 0:00:26.520 --> 0:00:28.880 an episode about the beginning of fall. Because it's officially 0:00:28.880 --> 0:00:32.479 fall and I'm drinking a pumpkin spice black coffee. It's 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:35.240 also not officially fall yet, it may it may be 0:00:35.320 --> 0:00:38.320 officially fall by the time that podcast. It is legally fall. 0:00:38.360 --> 0:00:40.720 When I have my first pumpkin spice black coffee of 0:00:40.760 --> 0:00:43.479 the year and it's cool outside. That's because you're a monster. 0:00:43.960 --> 0:00:46.680 That's because I'm a happy man who is enjoying a 0:00:46.720 --> 0:00:50.200 fault beverage. On this episode today, we have, of course 0:00:50.240 --> 0:00:54.400 Garrison Garrison. Hello, I Garrison, are you doing I'm doing 0:00:54.440 --> 0:00:58.400 fine great. We also have my friends be in a 0:00:58.480 --> 0:01:01.040 Lane b E Lane you you you are on the 0:01:01.040 --> 0:01:05.520 show recently to talk about terrorism a year ago. Yeah, 0:01:06.880 --> 0:01:10.200 everything before yesterday is a year ago. And uh and 0:01:10.280 --> 0:01:14.440 now you're on to talk about surviving yeah, yeah, like 0:01:14.560 --> 0:01:19.319 crafty surviving punk. Yeah, I know, we we brought made 0:01:19.360 --> 0:01:21.479 it this far. You on because you were like two 0:01:21.520 --> 0:01:24.240 of the most useful skill filled people that I know. 0:01:24.760 --> 0:01:28.960 You're both wilderness survival instructors primitive skill instructors for a while, 0:01:29.360 --> 0:01:32.000 and you have a small farm in a town that 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:34.039 I won't name, and you do all sorts of cool 0:01:34.080 --> 0:01:37.880 ship like storing food and making arrows and other things 0:01:37.959 --> 0:01:41.039 that are alleged. And what I like about that is that, 0:01:41.120 --> 0:01:44.120 you know, we talk about like collapse and things falling apart, 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:46.600 there's this kind of like I don't know, almost like 0:01:46.680 --> 0:01:49.160 mimetic obsession with like I want to get out into 0:01:49.200 --> 0:01:50.800 the woods and away from the city, and that's the 0:01:50.800 --> 0:01:53.680 only way to survive, and like the reality of the situations, 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:56.640 that's a terrible way to survive. There's nobody in the wood. 0:01:56.680 --> 0:02:00.880 There's nobody in the woods, and it's you know, there's 0:02:00.960 --> 0:02:03.440 there are there are a small chunk of the human 0:02:03.560 --> 0:02:06.840 race that is capable with with just themselves of like 0:02:07.040 --> 0:02:10.960 surviving in the middle of nowhere with nobody. But there's 0:02:11.000 --> 0:02:13.800 even among that population, there's a small fraction who are 0:02:13.840 --> 0:02:16.640 capable of doing that and not shooting themselves after a 0:02:16.680 --> 0:02:19.000 long enough period of time, and you wouldn't want to 0:02:19.040 --> 0:02:21.440 meet that person generally. Well, and I think the other 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:23.640 the other thing about that is like the sort of 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:30.800 fetishization of of you know, individualists. Survival skills is based 0:02:30.840 --> 0:02:33.800 on this idea that what people when people were like 0:02:33.880 --> 0:02:37.079 living off the land, that they were doing it by 0:02:37.160 --> 0:02:42.359 themselves alone, which is community. There's very few people that 0:02:42.480 --> 0:02:45.440 survived alone for a long time, and even of the 0:02:45.440 --> 0:02:48.600 people that had the skills, like even I she wandered 0:02:48.600 --> 0:02:51.320 out of the woods after I think eight years of 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:57.679 being by himself and was finally like fuck it. He 0:02:57.880 --> 0:03:02.360 was the last of a indigenous group in California, where 0:03:02.480 --> 0:03:06.440 everyone else in his tribe had been basically withen genocided 0:03:06.560 --> 0:03:11.399 and him and like the last like five people went 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:14.320 off and hid for very good reason um. And then 0:03:14.360 --> 0:03:17.400 after disease and stuff, then it was just him and 0:03:17.440 --> 0:03:20.560 he spent I forget how many years by himself, and 0:03:20.639 --> 0:03:24.079 after a while he finally was like fuck it, being 0:03:24.120 --> 0:03:25.760 by myself is not worth it, and he came out. 0:03:25.800 --> 0:03:28.000 And it was just after the turn of the century, 0:03:28.400 --> 0:03:31.920 and so he ended up being adopted by a bunch 0:03:31.960 --> 0:03:34.200 of anthropologists and spending the rest of his time in 0:03:34.240 --> 0:03:36.640 San Francisco. It's actually where we get most of a 0:03:36.680 --> 0:03:39.680 lot of like the anthropological knowledge of how to make arrows, 0:03:39.720 --> 0:03:42.360 because he was very much like, I'm the last of 0:03:42.400 --> 0:03:44.800 my group, so I will actually show people how to 0:03:44.960 --> 0:03:47.360 do flint napping and how I make arrows and how 0:03:47.440 --> 0:03:50.640 I hunt and yeah, and that's but I mean, and 0:03:50.840 --> 0:03:53.200 that's there's kind of the point there that like, with 0:03:53.240 --> 0:03:55.200 all of those skills, being one of that very small 0:03:55.280 --> 0:03:57.400 number of people who could you dropped that guy alone 0:03:57.440 --> 0:03:59.360 with nothing in the woods and he'll figure it out. 0:03:59.640 --> 0:04:04.280 He didn't want to do that because it's miserable. Yeah. Uh. 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:08.000 He in fact went into San Francisco and was like, well, 0:04:08.040 --> 0:04:13.480 white people wiped out my entire I go make friends 0:04:13.560 --> 0:04:15.920 with these anthropologists that live with them and teach them 0:04:15.960 --> 0:04:18.560 what I know. Yeah. Again, a lot of the folks 0:04:18.560 --> 0:04:20.280 who are kind of reaching out online being like, hey, 0:04:20.320 --> 0:04:21.520 I don't have a lot in the way of money. 0:04:21.640 --> 0:04:23.560 I'm never gonna be able to move to the woods 0:04:23.640 --> 0:04:25.880 and buy a farm or something, well you don't, you 0:04:25.920 --> 0:04:27.839 don't really need to. And like if shi it really 0:04:27.839 --> 0:04:30.560 does hit the fan where you live, there's probably parks 0:04:30.640 --> 0:04:35.599 unless it's Detroit UM, in which case there's abandoned Walmart's 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:38.039 like you can make it work like there's it's so 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:40.120 so this is an episode about kind of the skills 0:04:40.160 --> 0:04:42.680 that you can acquire and build for not a lot 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:45.839 of money, more or less wherever you live that will 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:49.640 help you build resiliency UM, but also build resiliency is 0:04:49.680 --> 0:04:51.960 part of a community, as opposed to living in the 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:55.839 woods with a knife, sleeping under mud. There's a great 0:04:55.880 --> 0:04:58.520 short story that y'all turned me onto by Cory Doctor 0:04:58.680 --> 0:05:01.160 in a book of short stories called Radicalize that was 0:05:01.160 --> 0:05:02.719 was it just called The Mask of the Red Death? 0:05:02.760 --> 0:05:06.200 I mean that's that's yeah. The original Mask of the 0:05:06.240 --> 0:05:09.080 Red Death is set obviously during UM. I'm sure everybody 0:05:09.120 --> 0:05:11.200 read it in high school, like right. It's is set 0:05:11.279 --> 0:05:14.080 during the Bubonic plague with these rich people who like 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:16.120 decided to just hold up in party to escape the 0:05:16.120 --> 0:05:20.000 plague and they all die of the plague. And Doctors 0:05:20.080 --> 0:05:23.760 is a bunch of like libertarians, survivalist crypto bros who 0:05:24.000 --> 0:05:26.640 build a fortress in the desert in order to survive 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:28.960 the end of days. And it turns out that like 0:05:29.000 --> 0:05:31.559 a bunch of bad stuff happens like there's disease in 0:05:31.560 --> 0:05:34.320 in in civil conflict, but like people figure it out 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:36.839 and all of the crypto bros die shooting themselves to 0:05:36.880 --> 0:05:42.279 death because the water system. It's obvious from the start 0:05:42.320 --> 0:05:45.200 what's going on, and everybody who comes along to help them, 0:05:45.360 --> 0:05:48.840 they start shooting at you will just wait until you're 0:05:48.880 --> 0:05:51.400 dead because you're shooting yourself because your water is bad. 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:53.719 I think we all have, we all have elements of 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:56.839 some libertarian tendencies in US, which you know, it's not 0:05:56.920 --> 0:05:59.400 bad to learn self reliance, and it's certainly not not 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:02.400 even bad to want to like live outside of the city. 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:05.480 But in a lot of ways living in a living 0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:08.680 in an urban environment surrounded by a community, depending on 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:11.960 the situation, can be even more resilient because like, yeah, 0:06:11.960 --> 0:06:15.320 an isolated farmstead there's benefits to but also it's really 0:06:15.360 --> 0:06:17.720 easy to surround and just shoot people who were living 0:06:17.720 --> 0:06:19.520 on their farm in the middle of nowhere. If ship 0:06:19.640 --> 0:06:22.560 really does hit the fan, it happens all the time. 0:06:22.600 --> 0:06:24.520 It happened in like Al Salvador and ship when they 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:26.920 had their economic crash. So I don't know, where do 0:06:26.960 --> 0:06:28.239 you want to Where do you guys want to start? 0:06:29.120 --> 0:06:31.200 I know you had a couple of different things that 0:06:31.240 --> 0:06:33.719 you want that I want to talk about, Like preserving 0:06:33.720 --> 0:06:38.320 food is a big one, and then I mean making 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:41.000 stuff and doing things is kind of they're sort of different. 0:06:41.000 --> 0:06:42.800 Where would you like to actually start with that? I 0:06:42.800 --> 0:06:44.279 think we can start with kind of the d I 0:06:44.440 --> 0:06:47.960 Y element, branching off of our original discussion on primitive skills, 0:06:48.240 --> 0:06:50.440 and then in like parts two, we can go born 0:06:50.520 --> 0:06:53.560 to like food and like like like foraging, um and 0:06:53.600 --> 0:06:58.840 preservation and stuff. Cool. I mean, so d I why um? 0:06:58.880 --> 0:07:02.200 I guess now there's a lot of stuff about like 0:07:02.640 --> 0:07:06.000 there's I don't know, there's all this stuff of like 0:07:06.200 --> 0:07:09.320 survival skills and all this stuff, and both of us 0:07:09.400 --> 0:07:12.400 kind of came into the idea of making stuff and 0:07:12.440 --> 0:07:16.320 doing things by being punks, um, and it's kind of yeah, 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:20.120 having no money, but also just their d I Y 0:07:20.280 --> 0:07:23.680 like do it yourself was a very like kind of 0:07:24.040 --> 0:07:27.120 nineties punk thing that came into the mainstream. Like I 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:29.080 actually was pulling out some of my old books and 0:07:29.120 --> 0:07:32.000 I think it's funny to see the like progression because 0:07:32.040 --> 0:07:35.320 I have you know, the really lovely like food not 0:07:35.440 --> 0:07:39.080 lawns that goes into a whole pile of really fantastic 0:07:39.160 --> 0:07:43.160 things that came out that I don't know, the first 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:45.160 food not lawns House I saw at the town as 0:07:45.240 --> 0:07:49.560 in was in like two thousand five or six, but 0:07:49.640 --> 0:07:51.040 this book came out in two thousand and six. But 0:07:51.080 --> 0:07:54.440 this was this entire movement of like making community and 0:07:54.480 --> 0:07:58.000 doing and like how to do stuff yourself on your 0:07:58.000 --> 0:08:02.280 front lawn. Yeah, and then of from eleven the bus 0:08:02.360 --> 0:08:05.160 d i Y Guide to Life that includes everything from 0:08:05.200 --> 0:08:07.400 like how to do worm composting to how to make 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:10.600 your own makeup and like finance House and that's that's 0:08:10.800 --> 0:08:13.960 like the magazine. Yes, So it's kind of interesting because 0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:17.120 it definitely like was the thing that I watched come 0:08:17.240 --> 0:08:22.640 into the mainstream. But you know, it started as a 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:25.840 lot of punks trying to figure out how to do 0:08:25.920 --> 0:08:30.120 things because they had no money. And but also different 0:08:30.160 --> 0:08:32.360 from a lot of you know, like woodworking or craft 0:08:32.440 --> 0:08:35.480 books that really are you know by these seven thousand 0:08:35.520 --> 0:08:40.800 dollars worth of tools and now you too can learn, Yes, 0:08:41.200 --> 0:08:43.959 And there's also there's also an ethos behind it, right 0:08:44.040 --> 0:08:47.640 that like before I was, I came at it first 0:08:47.679 --> 0:08:50.520 and foremost through being like a bike punk in the 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:53.360 in the late nineties, early two thousands being a bike 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:56.200 punk and the idea of like the d I y 0:08:56.440 --> 0:09:00.959 ethos was less about the grid is going to collapse 0:09:01.240 --> 0:09:03.720 and like everything is going to fall apart and you're 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:05.920 gonna need to survive by the skin of your teeth. 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:08.560 And it was a lot more you know, at the 0:09:08.600 --> 0:09:11.880 tail end of the nineties and like the sort of 0:09:12.080 --> 0:09:16.040 golden era of neoliberal capitalism and office space and that 0:09:16.080 --> 0:09:21.000 whole cultural moment, the idea that life was alienated and 0:09:21.120 --> 0:09:24.360 shitty and it felt better to know how to do 0:09:24.520 --> 0:09:26.640 things that you needed in your day to day life 0:09:26.679 --> 0:09:30.040 for yourself, using stuff you had made yourself or gotten 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:34.000 from your community members. Um. Yeah, resiliency is less about 0:09:34.040 --> 0:09:36.000 knowing you have a pile of dried food in the 0:09:36.000 --> 0:09:38.640 house and know more about looking at fresh food and knowing, 0:09:38.720 --> 0:09:40.680 I know how to make that last the winter. Yeah. 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:42.600 And it's been interesting to see the way that like 0:09:42.880 --> 0:09:46.880 as that has gotten kind of mainstreamed into like, you know, 0:09:47.480 --> 0:09:52.040 the the what is it primitive. There's a bunch of 0:09:52.040 --> 0:09:55.400 different like Primitive x y Z YouTube channels that get 0:09:55.440 --> 0:09:58.280 lots of show and ship and as that all gets mainstreamed, 0:09:58.520 --> 0:10:01.320 there's this idea of like expert teath that creeps back 0:10:01.360 --> 0:10:04.600 into it, and d I Y was like firmly committed 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:09.960 to the idea that everybody could learn stuff and listening 0:10:10.080 --> 0:10:12.559 to somebody who said they were an expert was a trap. 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:14.120 And a lot of that was coming out of like 0:10:14.160 --> 0:10:16.400 the seventies when there was all of the like you know, 0:10:16.720 --> 0:10:20.320 CULTI lifestyle ship that was like, hey, look we're going 0:10:20.360 --> 0:10:22.920 to teach you how to change your life, and yeah, 0:10:23.000 --> 0:10:26.040 we're gonna we're gonna buy up all this land and Antelope, Oregon, 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:29.960 and so d I Y was emphatically not that. It 0:10:30.040 --> 0:10:32.760 was like, there's skills, and you can learn skills, and 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:35.360 the internet doesn't really exist yet or not really, so 0:10:35.440 --> 0:10:37.240 you can read books about it and you can have 0:10:37.320 --> 0:10:40.000 skill share because there wasn't Twitter. We also all had 0:10:40.000 --> 0:10:42.320 a lot more time on our hands and like each 0:10:42.360 --> 0:10:49.240 other more. But there's also expertise was something that was 0:10:49.280 --> 0:10:51.679 handy to have, you know, like if I needed to 0:10:52.320 --> 0:10:57.280 rebuild my wheel on my bike and respoke, it wanted 0:10:57.280 --> 0:10:59.240 someone who knew how to do it. And so it's 0:10:59.240 --> 0:11:02.880 good to have a people who had really intense, deep 0:11:02.960 --> 0:11:05.720 knowledge of skills. But the idea that you would ask 0:11:05.800 --> 0:11:08.560 someone like I need to change my bike tire two 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:10.920 because I popped it with everyone would have been kind 0:11:10.920 --> 0:11:13.920 of like really really like everyone should know how to 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:17.040 do basic stuff and it's and it's okay. Like the 0:11:17.080 --> 0:11:21.280 whole you know, Jack of All Trades was is as 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:24.800 a desirable goal, like it's okay to dabble in a 0:11:24.880 --> 0:11:27.840 million little things and be kind of mediocre but have 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:30.880 a sort of baseline understanding of a bunch of stuff. Now, 0:11:31.640 --> 0:11:33.920 you know, there's places that I kind of think that 0:11:33.960 --> 0:11:37.800 we went too far, but also, you know, before the 0:11:37.800 --> 0:11:41.680 American Healthcare Act, we all definitely did a lot of 0:11:42.120 --> 0:11:45.720 at home medcare that we should not have. But there's 0:11:45.720 --> 0:11:48.560 also a lot of low stakes places that I think 0:11:48.600 --> 0:11:52.760 people have gotten away from just practicing and trying all 0:11:52.760 --> 0:11:55.480 sorts of crafty stuff as an ethos that is actually 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:58.400 really good and there's no harm to learning things like that. 0:11:58.679 --> 0:12:00.480 You're not going to afford anything, and the only thing 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:02.720 that's going to happen is you will have more skills 0:12:02.760 --> 0:12:17.360 and more to offer the people around. There's this idea 0:12:17.480 --> 0:12:20.200 under capitalism that we should all specialize because that is 0:12:20.240 --> 0:12:22.920 like the most profit generating thing to do is just 0:12:22.960 --> 0:12:25.080 specialize anything that makes you the most money, but it's like, 0:12:25.880 --> 0:12:28.719 not only is it like not the best in a 0:12:29.440 --> 0:12:32.240 dangerous situation to only know how to do one thing 0:12:32.240 --> 0:12:34.160 that makes you money, but it's like it's not particularly 0:12:34.240 --> 0:12:37.960 good for your soul either. And there's also lots of 0:12:38.000 --> 0:12:44.280 different behavioral psychology, like group analysis of if you present 0:12:44.320 --> 0:12:48.600 people with a situation that they feel unprepared for and 0:12:48.640 --> 0:12:51.440 there's a person that they identify as an expert in 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:54.520 a group who they can defer to pretty much every time, 0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:57.240 the group that's like, oh, we'll defer to this one 0:12:57.320 --> 0:13:01.439 expert because they know everything and we'll just do whatever 0:13:01.480 --> 0:13:05.000 they say ends up making worse decisions. Then if you 0:13:05.080 --> 0:13:08.040 have a group where everybody feels like, oh, well, I 0:13:08.120 --> 0:13:11.120 like I can at least get a handle on what's 0:13:11.160 --> 0:13:13.319 going on and we can all talk through it and 0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:20.000 like make make calls, deferring to experts doesn't necessarily help you. 0:13:20.040 --> 0:13:24.240 Know that, there's obviously cases we've mentioned medical care already 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:28.720 where like there's actually knowledge is very important. Skill sets 0:13:28.760 --> 0:13:31.079 are very important, But the idea that there's people who 0:13:31.120 --> 0:13:35.040 are just like yeah, inherently more knowledgeable of things that 0:13:35.120 --> 0:13:41.280 you couldn't possibly understand is so where where do you 0:13:41.320 --> 0:13:44.120 recommend Like people start with like, like, you've got a 0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:45.920 bunch of books right now, and obviously, if you can 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:49.920 afford books, that's a good call or libraries. A lot 0:13:49.920 --> 0:13:53.720 of these books on a preserving food and like growing 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:55.320 stuff on your law, and but even if you don't 0:13:55.360 --> 0:13:57.840 have a law and you can still like there's certain 0:13:58.120 --> 0:14:00.079 like one thing that strikes me because we've been canning 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:04.120 and pickling a bunch lately, is you know, different vegetables 0:14:04.320 --> 0:14:06.720 and fruits and whatnot are cheaper at different points in 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:08.920 the year. And even if you live in an apartment 0:14:09.080 --> 0:14:11.400 in the inner city and will never have more than 0:14:11.400 --> 0:14:14.360 a garden box at best, you can buy food when 0:14:14.360 --> 0:14:18.320 it's cheap and preserve it um and not only save 0:14:18.360 --> 0:14:21.160 yourself a little bit of money, but you can like also, uh, 0:14:22.480 --> 0:14:25.960 you'll you'll understand every time you encounter preserved food, and 0:14:26.000 --> 0:14:27.880 like a grocery store, you'll be looking at a thing 0:14:27.920 --> 0:14:30.000 that you know where it comes from. It's not just 0:14:30.040 --> 0:14:32.760 like a mystery jar of preserved food that was made 0:14:32.760 --> 0:14:37.240 by some process of science. So I don't know, I'm 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:40.760 interested in Like where you guys someone coming in having 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:44.320 only uh specialized in whatever it is allowed them to 0:14:44.320 --> 0:14:47.800 pay the rent. Where where where's your where's your recommended 0:14:47.840 --> 0:14:51.800 start point for people? UM, I think it's picking something 0:14:51.840 --> 0:14:57.040 that is low stakes that you enjoy. Like, honestly, one 0:14:57.080 --> 0:15:00.800 of my friends, UM, her entry in to doing d 0:15:00.920 --> 0:15:03.840 I Y stuff was, you know, she had lots of 0:15:03.840 --> 0:15:05.360 makeup and everything, and she was like, I'm going to 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:08.120 make body scrubs? How do I do that? And you know, 0:15:08.200 --> 0:15:11.400 looked up how to make body scrubs, how to make 0:15:12.000 --> 0:15:14.080 you know, a lot of it is, oh, getting salt 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:18.200 and grinding up rosemary that she found in someone's front 0:15:18.240 --> 0:15:21.120 yard and putting it together, you know, But just something 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:25.400 simple that you enjoy, that you would love to be 0:15:25.480 --> 0:15:28.840 able to, you know, have a little bit more say 0:15:28.920 --> 0:15:32.320 over because it's most basic. A lot of the d 0:15:32.400 --> 0:15:34.760 I Y stuff is you can make something very specific 0:15:34.840 --> 0:15:38.720 to what you like. So for myself, actually, one of 0:15:38.760 --> 0:15:40.560 the first things I ever started doing was in high 0:15:40.600 --> 0:15:46.240 school just altering clothing. I had an old I had 0:15:46.280 --> 0:15:51.920 an old thirty dollar junk practice uh like kids sewing 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:55.400 machine and just the cheapest one that Sears used to sell, 0:15:55.680 --> 0:16:02.200 and could definitely just take that and start putting scenes 0:16:02.200 --> 0:16:04.480 in an altar clothing and like this shirt is now 0:16:04.520 --> 0:16:07.320 a T shirt. It was long sleep before and that 0:16:07.400 --> 0:16:10.000 also ties in with you know, d I I just 0:16:10.080 --> 0:16:12.080 to sound like old punks for a minute. That d 0:16:12.120 --> 0:16:14.600 I I definitely also came out of things like the 0:16:14.680 --> 0:16:17.000 riot girl scene in a big way, and like the 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:22.240 attention to like body awareness and like moving away from 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:26.760 body negativity and the recognition that as a general rule, 0:16:26.840 --> 0:16:31.680 off the rack clothes are not and certainly twenty years 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:37.000 ago were extra not actually designed to fit most people's bodies, 0:16:37.040 --> 0:16:39.720 and it was hard to find clothes that fit you right. 0:16:39.880 --> 0:16:43.480 And yeah, so like sewing was a big one. Um 0:16:43.720 --> 0:16:46.840 bikes because we were broke and didn't have cars, so 0:16:46.960 --> 0:16:49.400 figuring out how to fix bikes and you know, everything 0:16:49.440 --> 0:16:52.440 that mechanically happens on a bike is right there and 0:16:52.480 --> 0:16:54.760 you can see it happen, and it maybe requires a 0:16:54.800 --> 0:16:57.760 screwdriver and then eventually maybe some other tools. But there's 0:16:57.800 --> 0:17:01.200 lots of free resources. A lot most cities I've spent 0:17:01.200 --> 0:17:03.680 any amount of time and you can find like you 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:05.879 can find like a community bike shop where if you 0:17:05.920 --> 0:17:08.000 have to pay anything, it's very minimal, and a lot 0:17:08.040 --> 0:17:09.879 of cases are just sort of like show up and 0:17:10.520 --> 0:17:15.639 you know there's space to use. Yeah, when um, like, 0:17:15.720 --> 0:17:17.600 I know in Santa Cruz there was the bike Church. 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:20.480 In Portland there's the bike Farm, and yeah, in Philly 0:17:20.520 --> 0:17:22.560 there was also a bike church because it turns out 0:17:22.600 --> 0:17:25.240 the basements of churches are There were a couple of 0:17:25.280 --> 0:17:28.320 spots like that in Dallas, and it's uh yeah, And 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:30.840 I think it is like this mix of, like with 0:17:30.880 --> 0:17:33.040 the body script stuff, like what is something that appeals 0:17:33.080 --> 0:17:35.119 to you that you you're interested in, and also what 0:17:35.280 --> 0:17:37.520 is with the bike stuff, what is something that's like 0:17:38.080 --> 0:17:40.760 just doggedly practical, Like you get a bike, you need 0:17:40.800 --> 0:17:42.520 a bike to get around, you should probably know how 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:45.040 to fix it on it. I think the reason I 0:17:45.080 --> 0:17:47.919 say you should pick saying that appeals to you especially 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:53.480 is because a big thing with d I Y was 0:17:53.560 --> 0:17:57.080 that you're doing it yourself. And there are so many 0:17:57.119 --> 0:17:59.639 skills that are valuable to learn from other people. It 0:17:59.760 --> 0:18:02.679 is wonderful to craft in community. It is wonderful to 0:18:02.760 --> 0:18:05.679 work with other people in community. It's wonderful to teach 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:10.400 skills and gain them. But also I've seen this growing 0:18:10.440 --> 0:18:15.760 idea with the as specialization for so many things, especially 0:18:15.840 --> 0:18:20.760 services comes in that people are always like, oh wow, knitting. 0:18:20.920 --> 0:18:22.520 I've always wanted to learn I need to take a 0:18:22.520 --> 0:18:25.520 class in that, or I need to And it's really important, 0:18:25.560 --> 0:18:29.720 I think, for people to realize that you can learn things. 0:18:30.040 --> 0:18:32.200 We are very good at learning things, and you don't 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:35.520 necessarily need a teacher for more complex things you do. 0:18:35.600 --> 0:18:38.520 But starting with something that you really like and that 0:18:38.600 --> 0:18:42.679 you find really interesting, you've already thought about it. So 0:18:42.720 --> 0:18:44.760 when you start with you know, for my friends, starting 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:47.679 with making bath salts and face masks and stuff, it 0:18:47.760 --> 0:18:50.080 was something she had already been thinking about quite a 0:18:50.080 --> 0:18:53.000 bit and thinking about stuff. So when she started looking 0:18:53.000 --> 0:18:56.119 at recipes to mix and looking on the internet and 0:18:56.160 --> 0:18:58.480 looking at ingredients, it was saying she already cared about. 0:18:58.560 --> 0:19:02.639 So it's easier to learn something that you are interested in, 0:19:02.720 --> 0:19:05.720 and it's easier to learn something that you want to do. 0:19:05.800 --> 0:19:10.959 But we are all capable of learning for ourselves, not 0:19:11.080 --> 0:19:14.199 every single thing, but especially just for craft projects. And 0:19:14.240 --> 0:19:16.399 so starting with that so that you can pick up 0:19:16.400 --> 0:19:18.399 a book, or you can read an article, or you 0:19:18.400 --> 0:19:20.879 can watch a YouTube video and you don't need to 0:19:21.040 --> 0:19:24.800 take some like hundred and fifty dollar a weekend class 0:19:24.920 --> 0:19:28.000 before you can. It's you know, a big part of 0:19:28.040 --> 0:19:31.080 the resiliency building like something you may scoff like when 0:19:31.080 --> 0:19:35.360 you're thinking about survivalism and talking about like making bath scrubs, 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:37.879 But a lot of the skills you would learn putting 0:19:37.920 --> 0:19:41.080 that together are useful in making like a salve or 0:19:41.119 --> 0:19:45.200 making like a soap, making soap things that you actually need. 0:19:45.280 --> 0:19:47.200 Like when I was traveling, I lived on the road, 0:19:47.600 --> 0:19:49.520 like out of a car and out of backpacks for 0:19:49.680 --> 0:19:51.080 off and on all over the world for years, and 0:19:51.080 --> 0:19:53.000 I would make my own medicated because we would get 0:19:53.160 --> 0:19:55.680 would get cuts and scrapes and rashes, and we were 0:19:55.880 --> 0:19:58.280 poor as ship and often there weren't doctors where we were. 0:19:58.320 --> 0:20:00.600 So I learned how to use things like plantain and 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:03.320 comfrey and yarrow and like bees wax and stuff in 0:20:03.400 --> 0:20:06.880 order to make medicated sabs and it it was something 0:20:06.920 --> 0:20:09.080 that interested me. But like there's also a lot of 0:20:09.560 --> 0:20:12.639 like there's there's a number of roots into learning that 0:20:12.760 --> 0:20:14.240 sort of thing. And if you're learning how to make 0:20:14.280 --> 0:20:17.320 again something as simple as like a face scrub, learning 0:20:17.600 --> 0:20:20.439 where to find that information for free learning some of 0:20:20.600 --> 0:20:24.879 the basic techniques in order to do that. That learning 0:20:24.960 --> 0:20:28.760 how to learn is is applicable in a wider variety 0:20:28.800 --> 0:20:32.080 of skill sets, and it I think it's so important 0:20:32.119 --> 0:20:35.360 to focus on what are you what are you interested 0:20:35.400 --> 0:20:37.359 in first, as as opposed to just being like okay 0:20:37.480 --> 0:20:38.919 at first. Now I have to learn how to like 0:20:38.960 --> 0:20:41.760 splint a broken arm, because like ship is gonna hit 0:20:41.800 --> 0:20:44.160 the fans, like, well, maybe focus on something that's more 0:20:44.280 --> 0:20:46.960 exciting to you first, and and and and build time 0:20:47.000 --> 0:20:50.000 in your life to learn things. That's an enjoyable process. 0:20:50.000 --> 0:20:52.000 One of the first things I did, like years ago, 0:20:52.280 --> 0:20:54.800 was I learned to so specifically to make a cause 0:20:54.880 --> 0:20:57.720 play because you know, so I would just I would 0:20:57.760 --> 0:21:00.639 make me and my whole family to an outfits for 0:21:00.680 --> 0:21:02.680 comic Con. So every year I would, I would sew 0:21:02.760 --> 0:21:05.000 us whole whole new things. But then not only taught 0:21:05.040 --> 0:21:07.320 me sewing, it taught me how to do like like 0:21:07.520 --> 0:21:10.880 vacuum forming, to molding, how to use like a heat gun, 0:21:10.960 --> 0:21:13.880 how to use like all these other types of tools. Um, 0:21:14.280 --> 0:21:16.000 how do you like molding and castings, Like all of 0:21:16.000 --> 0:21:19.399 these types of things. I learned just wanting to make 0:21:19.480 --> 0:21:21.800 silly costumes. But now they're like, you know, useful in 0:21:21.840 --> 0:21:23.679