THE Y2K SOIREE

We observed Y2K Practice Day Friday and Saturday. Friday evening we had an open house, and 15 of our neighbors showed up. The kids played with the windup toys and the flashlights and the adults played with the Baygen radio and the windup flashlight. One of our guests was Chinese and she was fascinated to get a Chinese program on the shortwave; another found a program in Swedish, which her family spoke.

People were interested in the soft but bright light of the Aladdin lamps, and the fact that the lamps were providing the only heat in our admittedly tiny apartment. Flushing the toilet with a bucket was a novelty,as was trying out the nonelectric carpet sweeper. The cooks in the group loved the three-burner low- pressure propane stove borrowed from our old pop-up camper.

At one point most everyone piled out of our place and went over to another neighbors to see how he had cleverly set up his kitchen. (He was the one who arrived carrying a Dietz lantern to light the way.) He had set up a gravity feed filter for drinking water, and a seven gallon plastic water container with a faucet for wash water. The light from the Baygen radio has a magnet on the back and he showed us how it could be affixed to the metal range hood to shine on the stove.

After the kids had been taken home and put to bed, some of us sat around at our place, sipping tea or sparkling cider and reminiscing about our experiences of growing up. Everyone had memories of evenings by kerosene lamp with a grandparent, or camping, or trips to low-tech countries. There was a lot of knowledge in that small group, and it was relaxing to sit quietly and talk and laugh together...

It was one of the best parties we ever had.

Best,

Seraphima

-- seraphima (seraphima@aol.com), May 26, 1999

Answers

Love this post. I felt very unprepared after reading it, but I got a lot of good ideas, just in case. We keep threatening to have a practice weekend. However, I haven't quite got our non-practice weedends organized, or up to par, so I know we're in for lots of glitches in the practice weekend without all the amenities.

-- gilda (jess @listbot.com), May 26, 1999.

Seraphima,

I loved that post. Made me long for the Sunday afternoons when all the relatives would get together for a meal, the kids would run through the corn fields, and we didn't have all this high tech crap going on in our lives.

Thanks

-- GeeGee (GeeGee@madtown.com), May 26, 1999.

Thanks for some good ideas. I have considered myself to be fairly well prepared, but I realize I haven't really given enough thought to how I would utilize my kitchen. Got everything I need, but I need to consider how it could be set up so it be easy to use and efficient (i.e., less time-consuming).

-- Shelia (Shelia@active-stream.com), May 26, 1999.