Heat - Readiness series

Ureka! I’ve Discovered Warmth …

I kept it under glass on my desk for years… a newspaper comic featuring two cavemen, both dancing around a flaming log.

   The first was proclaiming: “I’ve discovered fire!”

   The other was shouting as loudly: “I’ve discovered insurance!”

  

Perhaps only insurance agents find that funny…

… which may explain why my search online was unsuccessful, seeking an approved publication to link. Found the actual clipping in an old paper file; so here is a partial image and thumbnail for reference. Appears to be dated 1992.  Maybe Dan Piraro has republished this one in a print book collection.
See http://www.bizarro.com/ for more information.

Anyway, I begin this category with the basic need for warmth, as that would be (after light and water) one essential of wilderness or urban survival, even before making a fire for cooking.  Of course, if one is using a flame for light, there is also potential for resolving several concerns—warmth, pasteurized water and meat, even some defense against wild intruders. But let me start with warmth, assuming you can ignite a candle or oil lamp at the least. (Fire starting is subject for later posting.)

First problem with a flame, large or small, is that the heat escapes upward right readily. Attempting to contain the heat inside a cozy enclosure creates a worse problem: toxic fumes. Never use a gas, wood or charcoal grill inside without generous ventilation (which also carries out the heat); else Mr. Sandman—wielding heavy doses of CO (carbon monoxide)—will be lulling your family to a permanent sleep. This is one reason I advocate burning olive oil… very little of smoke or fume. Even paraffin candles require an open window.

How your fireplace chimney works

Your living room fireplace is actually one giant heat sink (pulls warmth away) whether burning or not. Net result of firing a hearth for an hour is a colder, never a warmer house. Sure, it feels nice sitting round the crackling Yule log. But walk down the hall and actually measure temperature difference, or try sitting tight in a frigid back room from whence the chimney draws its ventilation. (This is probably why the pioneer family cabin was a single room, with beds made close to the cooking hearth.) Even inserts and reflectors never help much. And no, they don’t recommend hooking your fireplace into the forced air system to carry heat back to bedrooms… Why?

You guessed it: First it’s that tell-tale headache; then parents hardly care to watch as the insidious Mr. Carbon-O sneaks in upon safely sleeping babes. So how might a household benefit, heat-wise, from a flame… at least until the sun rises? In other words, how do you insure against a certain, though comfortable, death?

  

There is a way to use fireplace heat more efficiently.* Make a fast and very hot blaze of dry, relatively smokeless fuel. (Pieces of that cast-off end table outside would be perfect.) Soon as it all burns out, leaving few coals and less smoke—shut the flu tight. This flash fire enables firebox bricks (stone or metal) to absorb maximum heat. Closing the chimney stops it from sucking away precious warmth from the house where it is wanted; also cuts the draft through windows and door cracks. Then your family can sleep safe and warm, in the living room at least.

Lower heating bills…

Bedrooms? For that you need some method to carry the heat (and only heat) to the bed or bathroom space. Interestingly, many solutions found online are based upon the very same principle as your super-heated firebox. If only one could detach the fireplace from its chimney and wheel it elsewhere.  With a little advance planning, you can do something like that. Secret is the material composing said firebox.  Ceramic, stone and iron are especially good at storing and dispensing heat… Nature’s energy battery.

If your patio barbeque is already on wheels, you could super-charge bricks or rocks outside on the grill, shut off the gas and drag the whole thing into your bedroom. (Again, one should never use a grill fire to actively heat inside space.)

Another answer is the cast-iron Dutch oven; you know, that heavy thing stored unused with your camping equipment. Actually any covered iron pot will do. Grab some bricks, stones or ceramic tiles. Set some down on your bedroom floor as a base.  Cook the others thoroughly on all sides in a fast hot fire (outside or in your fireplace). Warm up the pot as well. Then use tongs or thick asbestos mittens to pack your pot with hot rocks.

Then it’s simply the same idea as that Swedish sauna you always dreamed about building. Except these rocks are carried to the bedroom in their pot to set down safely upon the base prepared. One small bucket of scalding stone will keep a small room from freezing overnight. 

Want more heat? Lift the pot’s lid. 

Need moister heat? Splash some water on the rocks.

Just make certain that Baby can’t crawl too close—but that goes for any heat source after all. You know… Insurance.

One more warning: Make sure your rocks or bricks were not soaked through before heating, as water trapped in hidden cracks turns to steam with great combustive potential. (That would be your inner insurance analyst speaking yet again.)

For warming bed sheets or chilly hands, drop a rock (not too hot) into a woolen sock for easy carrying:

Happy Rock

And next for your enrichment, further methods of harvesting heat from inert material: Stay tuned for more McGyver-styled space heaters constructed of stuff scrounged from about the house. 

 __________

*Of course, a wood stove can be an efficient though less romantic home heater. But it must be installed away from walls so that air is heated all around. Then the house forced-air system needs intake vents in the main room, in order to deliver heated air throughout.

Never Judge a Package by its Product

Insurance Ad Review series: Progressive

How could anyone not like Flo? She's quirky and sweet, even if lacking a certain professionalism about insurance. But that serves only to endear her more to the indiscriminate insurance buyer. Nothing creepy or insulting about Flo’s presentation; just a pleasant greeting and...

   “Oh yeah, we've got that!”

And she jumps to retrieve the boxed product from its shelf.

Product? Insurance, a product... like a loaf of gluten-free bread or replacement wiper blades for your car?

This is one case where promotion of insurance service disserves the public. May as well speak of your doctor's care as a commodity; another medical product warehoused for distribution by retailers of health. There may be certain parallels or similarities in good business practice and ethics. But properly speaking,   one's relationship to a consultant–whether for health or financial well-being– is as the client not consumer of goods. We're talking about a contract, even a partnership... at every stage of the insurance agreement, from shopping to application and purchase, to claim settlement and policy replacement.

Pretending simply to grab a package from the shelf... No, that concept of insurance is just wrong from the start. And Progressive company marketeers must know better. Full disclosure: I used to represent this insurer as agent (for commercial and recreational vehicles mostly), so I certainly know better of Progressive. But it's an error perpetuated by the whole insurance industry, ever since Allstate proposed to skip standard agency distribution and sell insurance like hats or umbrellas from behind a counter at the Sears Department Store. They were successful enough that others followed –20^th Century, Colonial Penn, Wawanesa–eventually even skipping the local store or office: so that all a client ever knows of his insurer is a different voice on the telephone whenever daring to call and wait yet again for a turn at the virtual phone desk or service center. Finally, agency-based insurers aimed to join the fray, urging neighborhood agents to relinquish policy service to national phone centers so they could peddle pre-packaged programs instead.

Lately, the Progressive Insurance Company ad campaign has taken a turn away from Flo as their human face to the public, substituting an utterly fake persona-- one very annoying cartoon character in the form of...

No! Say it isn't so. Sweet Flo is replaced by a box:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-Eri57Kx38

The Box

See also Boxed Wedding

Hey, they even let you make your own Progressive Auto box

Somehow, it was inevitable, I suppose– rather like the Fairy Tale Princess turned cruelly into a toad or worse, a frozen TV dinner package. Makes about as much sense as boxed insurance. 

Compare yet another opinion: Flo Gets More Company

You too can make yourself up to look like Flo’s bobblehead doll:

Flo Insurance Girl Costume

Food – Readiness series

Nature’s buffet – adding foraged food to the menu

The common raven is heard to use up to 30 distinct vocalizations; some researchers dare to compare it with language. The bird even mimics human speech. Raven migrations may fly to altitudes over 20,000 feet. They will eat almost anything, including bugs… though not the monarch butterfly. Milkweed –the monarch’s favorite food—renders the insect poisonous to predators, and bright wing colors serve to warn them off. Monarchs can migrate from eastern America all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, even as far as England.

Yup, I have a good memory for detail about animals that live with me –birds and bugs. But plants in my environment? Forget it. My brain finds botany unfriendly as foreign speech. Now, poison oak… I can spot that, usually. It can prove very painful when I don’t. Indeed, the subject of herb lore fascinates me. But I can’t quite be sure about which shrubs, trees and weeds are edible or useful in other ways.

I tried printed field guides.  Pictures never really match the season or locale where I wander. Videos are better. Best reference– my own drawings or photos and notes.

What I really require is a local foraging expert as hands-on guide to different settings, and return trips at different times of the year. Give me a personal trainer, then maybe I could remember something… or not. Some make a living publishing videos and teaching classes, hosting trips to the wild or a neighborhood’s urban garden. What guides do nowadays is make the survival apprentice get down and dirty at subsistence tasks of searching and gathering, then preparing and eating one’s very own wild salad. Yum!

Now… why am I suddenly so itchy?

One renowned forager in Florida keeps up a blog online, with searchable detail archived: 

Eat the Weeds, by Green Deane

Only problem is that his plant descriptions may not be 100 percent reliable for areas where I live and play in southwestern states. So he also maintains a page listing regional experts to consult:

Foraging Instructors

So what happens when crisis hits and the grocery stores are all locked shut or looted?  You will need to supplement your own pantry store with fresh greens. There is surely more to your yard and garden than crab grass. I propose that every household compile their own list of edible (and non-edible) plants, emergency food growing (literally) in your own back yard, free and readily accessible. Start with produce found in your garden; then generalize to public areas of your neighborhood, parks and surrounding wilderness.

Next, fire up your favorite spreadsheet program and design a paper cheat sheet.  That’s right, do it on old-fashioned paper! Or print index cards to file in a separate shoebox catalogue for ready reference when internet access fails. Here follows starting entries in my own data collection.

Try to enjoy the quest.  Make it an adventure.  And there is nothing like the feeling of empowerment that comes of knowing how to feed your loved ones in a pinch. Birds and butterflies do it. Just cuz we’re human, does it mean that we can’t?

Nut grass, aka nut sedge or java grass

Other interesting resources:

http://fallingfruit.org/

http://edibleschoolyard.org/

http://www.judyofthewoods.net/forage/forage.html

http://www.hedgerowharvest.org.uk/foraging

http://www.eattheweeds.com/moringa-oleifera-monster-almost-2/

http://www.eattheweeds.com/edible-katuk-sauropus-androgynus-2/

 

Edible tuber on the root of nut grass

Government Employees Insurance Co sells Laughs… sort of

Insurance Ad Review series: GEICO

Click image to view video...

I recently posted the above video for readers to review.  A longtime customer used to visit my office regularly.  He would often start the conversation exclaiming:
“Have you seen the GEICO television ads lately?” Then shaking his head sadly, he declared, “I would never trust one of those companies with my insurance business.”

My customer’s impression was that the tone and content of TV commercials prove they aren’t really serious about protecting policyholders (which is what one assumes they should intend). He wasn’t objecting to attempts at entertainment, per se. But he did experience the barrage of silliness, excluding all else, as attacks upon his intelligence and ability to manage real-life risks.

Yes, he felt offended.  Sure, I bet he did find himself chuckling at moments, despite his better judgment.  But the funniness grew old and tired… fast. So that even the newest release-of-the-week’s attempt to tickle his attention once again—it had become more annoying than entertaining.

Me thinks I agree. Name Recognition may be god when it comes to big-money branding.  However, sometimes I find myself unable to recall which company was promoting itself, let alone what product or service. Nor can I repeat their key message –namely, why one should actually choose them over others—lost yet again amongst the silly, quirky, creepy antics of their latest cartoonish mascot.


GEICO’s Maxwell the piggy series continued to tread unapologetically upon societal boundaries, proposing yet again to sell insurance by offending, annoying and even disgusting potential shoppers.

That has to be a mistake. Who can resist the assessment that it’s a big waste of policyholder’s hard-earned premium dollars? But GEICO execs must know better, right? This company won the award long ago for simple mass of material aired… even if it ain’t really funny all the time (never pretends to be informative.) They don’t expect you, the consumer and risk manager, to know anything about what you are buying. They don’t expect you to understand about various costs of risk or coverage options, instruments for transferring or limiting exposure to loss. When, for instance, does it make sense to quit spending on insurance and resort instead to other measures?  What is required in addition to insurance for one’s household or business to recover from accident or casualty? When it comes to cars or home insurance or securing a business loan, the consumer is usually forced to buy per contract or government fiat. So, it’s a public of ‘shotgun shoppers’ dragged kicking and screaming to the checkout counter. Why not make the insurance shopping experience fun… sort of?

At least GEICO seems able to laugh at their own folly, judging by the gecko’s disappointment with a caricature of his image. Progress I suppose for a program originally reserved for that most exacting and exclusive societal class— government employees. Indeed, that’s about the only positive message I can take away from their latest appeal to my wallet… as well as my trust.