Back in February 2012, at the Sustainable Living Festival in Melbourne, I was challenged by a colleague about wearing a pocket knife, which he pointed out was illegal (without a genuine reason). This was news to me and intensified my feelings of alienation as a country person visiting the centre of a large city.
What was the world coming to? But it also stimulated thought about what my genuine reasons for carrying a pocket knife in public might be and how that question was intimately connected to permaculture.
In April 2012 I penned an essay, Permaculture Pocket Knives, to explore the issue but it sat unpublished until now. I offer it here as providing an insight into permaculture as a social sub-culture that stands in contrast to many of the dysfunctional normalities that characterise modern living in an affluent society.
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10 thoughts on “Permaculture Pocket Knives”
I think it was Ian MacFarlane, or similar Nationals MP who had the same issue taking his knife into parliament in Canberra a few years ago. Even tho’ he said he’d cleaned it up well after castrating some lambs.
Hi David,
I was warned by Police at the Tecoma picket line for having a knife I was using for basket weaving, as a weapon!!!
Slightly different circumstances but I’m with you on the “alien”-ation of us practical folk!
Great to see you at the doco opening last week – my PDC students loved meeting you.
Cheers,
Tamara and Ducky
Back in the 1990’s (i.e. pre 9-11), while my wife & I were living/working in Mexico, we flew to Connecticut for the graduation of our daughter-in-law. Security people would not let me board with my Swiss Army Knife. They put it into a taped-shut box, which they kindly returned to me at the Hartford airport. Amusingly, I could not open the box without my knife, but that evening our always-prepared daughter-in-law pulled hers from her purse and opened that box.
That knife was essential in Mexico, where people are always having folks over for dinner. On the rare occasions when we had Sunday dinner at home, we were hosting a dozen or two people. When we went, my wife always insisted on taking a couple of bottles of wine. Wine is not a part of Mexican culture, so nobody had a corkscrew. At first I would open the bottle with a screw, screwdriver and vice-grip pliers (everybody had those), a hassle. But eventually I took to always having my modest Swiss Army Knife with me. It did emergency repairs on Carousel and Overhead projectors, helped assemble furniture, helped serve “road food” etc. Like you mentioned.
Never once used it to decapitate drug thugs, Vietcong, etc.
Back in the 1960’s, Uncle Sam taught some of us how to kill folks with certain handholds. (I never got to put it into practice, which was fine with me.) It takes a moment longer than with a knife or firearm, but it works. A pocketknife? Too time consuming to get out, open a blade, etc. and I’d need both hands.
Separately, when the Gestapo “investigated” Einstein’s Sommerhaus in Caputh, they reported finding numerous weapons. Kitchen knives.
Thank Ian, Tamara and David for the comments. The more these stories are part of the public discourse, the great the chance of diffusing the culture of disability and fear that we find so absurd.
Hi David, Would you be interested in putting this up over on the Permaculture Research Institute website ?
Yours Abundantly
Carolyn Payne-Gemmell
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I travelled to a number of countries with a small pocket knife attached to my key ring. That was in the mid 1990’s before the advent of airport security, linking every blade to a sadistic, psychopathic, blood-thirsty terrorist. Back in the real world, the pocket knife was used for so many things, especially when my other tools were not available. Now I am forced to live without it when I am out and about. Fortunately, no one seems to mind what sharp devices are in my fishing bucket when I go fishing.
Exactly Mark. Well noted.
My favorite edc so far is the Leatherman Skeletool. It’s light (5+ oz) and has the two main tools I need most, a small plier and a knife, with a close third being the screwdrivers for fixes on the fly. The plier comes in handy for many things, but nothing nearly as often as popping ticks… yes, during peak tick season it pops many ticks each day–some from the animals, but mostly found crawling their ticky crawl on my body.
Someone really should design a permaculture edc, but when you do, please make sure to include the needle nose plier or else I’ll be crawling with ticks.
As a pro Permaculture gardener and a pro kite maker/repairer, I use a Leatherman Skeletool and Victorinox Swisstool Spirit on a daily basis. . I started with an original Gerber Multitool 30 years ago, but when I couldn’t get replacement serrated knife blades anymore for my favorite old tool, I moved on. I find multitools handy for most quick fixes, but carry a back up tool box with more tools in the car as well. Many times the multitools have saved the day, so I recommend them.