AMANDA KOVATTANA

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

As I entered the Fred Flinstone structure that characterizes the convention center in Palm Springs, I was intensely curious about what kind of people would come to The Prophet's Conference on 2012. It was odd enough that I was there. Such an expedition into the high dessert for a weekend of lectures by speakers dispensing insight into the Mayan prophecy required serious wu wu credentials.

I did have a journalist's curiosity and, having reported mostly from the doomer's corner concerning planetary demise, I thought there might be interesting parallels in the prophecy corner.

Would my closet be in danger of unsustainable growth headed for collapse? I could not tell yet whether my new obsession, despite having been a doorway to my intuitive self, would prove to be a distraction from serious spiritual work or money making endeavors. Sometimes you just get what you need.

Novels are good ways to impart information and put it into a social context. This one covers all the basics relating to our current predicament concerning peak oil without getting into an apocalyptic futuristic vision that has tempted so many writers.

In which I uncover the most compelling reason to stay put in my California home, track my about face from a knowledge driven quest for truth to an intuitively informed one, and contact the dead. ...
California is the most conducive place for believing, as Lewis Carroll put it, six impossible things before breakfast.

Having grown tired of the competitiveness of peak oil writers pushing their various grim visions as the most likely to unfold, I am happy to go with this New Age takeover of the geeks' techno collapsing world simply because it is the more empowering vision.