The climate is changing, the population is exploding and humans will need a little re-education if extinction isn’t their cup of tea. The third Santa Cruz Reskilling Expo is backtracking to the beginning of the consumer chain and introducing the DIY spirit into modern skill sets, adding production knowledge to the repertoire of the can-opening masses. At this Sunday’s day-long event, lectures about the future of resources will be interspersed with practical knowledge about things like beekeeping and home canning.
“’Reskilling’ is basically an attempt to show people how to navigate a changing world, a changing climate,” says Nicola Wagner, an advisor for this autumn’s expo. “People are realizing that their food sources are coming from corporate sources, that their water is corporate-controlled… It’s how to build resiliency by knowing how to look after yourself. To teach you how to keep a few chickens, store food, store energy. We’re showing skills that reduce your impact on the environment.”
Racing against resource shortages and the upcoming apocalypse, the expo of forgotten skills is designed to boost awareness of issues and provide ways to be immediately sustainable.
“It’s a way to simplify our lives and not be so wasteful,” says past Reskilling attendee Barry Antler. “From a survivalist point of view, if a major earthquake were to hit, most of us wouldn’t know what to do, how to make a compost toilet or anything like that.”
Compost toilets are worlds without waste, and since urea, a byproduct of urine, is full of the plant and soil nutrient nitrogen, a future without plumbing would make compost simultaneously a disposal system and a fertilizer. Although the compost toilet hasn’t made an entrance into Antler’s daily life, post expo finds him making his own sauerkraut and bread, bypassing grocery stores and farmer’s markets in favor of recipes easy enough to use for a thousand more years.
“For me there’s just something about relearning these skills our grandparents used to know,” Antler says. “You get intimidated by cooking bread, but then you realize how simple it is, that these things are usually combinations of skills we already know.”
THE RESKILLING EXPO will take place on Sunday, Sept. 26, 10am-4pm at Temple Beth El, 3055 Porter Gulch Rd, Aptos. Classes are a half-hour each. The Expo is free, but donations up to $25 are encouraged.
