The following recipe for Storage Peanut Butter Bread is from SurvivalBlog reader D.G., who says:  “This is a great way to use some of your storage food staple ingredients. This recipe makes one loaf.” Ingredients 2 Cups Flour 4 Teaspoons Baking Powder 1 Teaspoon Salt ½ Cup Sugar 1 Cup Milk (fresh or reconstituted powdered milk.) ⅔ Cup Peanut Butter (fresh or reconstituted peanut butter powder.) Directions Pre-heat your oven to 425 F. Grease a loaf pan, set aside Sift flour, baking powder, and salt in medium bowl. Stir in the sugar. Add peanut butter, working it into the dry … The post Recipe of the Week: Storage Peanut Butter Bread appeared first on SurvivalBlog.com.

Big Idea Design makes some high-quality pieces of gear out of titanium. The strength and light weight of that metal make it well suited to items for everyday carry (EDC). The Big Idea EDC item that I like the most is their Ti Field Watch. It is rugged, light-weight, and accurate. With a price at the time of this writing of $499.99 at BigIDesign.com , it is definitely not inexpensive. But it is by far the best watch that I have ever owned. If you can afford a watch in the mid-price range, this one would be an excellent choice. … The post Big Idea Design Ti Field Watch, by Thomas Christianson appeared first on SurvivalBlog.com.

On June 16, 1487: Battle of Stoke Field, Nottinghamshire. English Tudor King Henry VII defeated the remaining Yorkists led by John de la Pole and Lord Lovell in the last battle of the Wars of the Roses. (Pictured is a print titled: “The Last Stand of Schwarz and His Germans, Stoke Field.”) — Today is the birthday of pioneering economist Adam Smith, in 1723. He was born in Kirkaldy, County Fife, Scotland. He died July 17, 1790. — The big Mauser sale ends tonight! We have been running a two-week-long sale on all of the pre-1899 Mauser rifles in our … The post Preparedness Notes for Monday — June 16, 2025 appeared first on SurvivalBlog.com.

"Major influences on my musical life."

Behind rows of cookie-cutter tract homes in Hesperia, California, at the southern edge of the Mojave Desert, hides what looks like a playground for grown-up hobbits. Arches, perfectly round dome-shaped structures and emergency shelters sprout from the sand.  Among these fanciful-looking constructions is a fully permitted 2,300-square-foot three-bedroom house, with a two-car garage and two bathrooms that are hooked up to the city’s sewer and electricity. The bedrooms and living rooms are painted in earthy tones. Arched ceilings and curved walls lend a coziness to the dwelling, which features modern amenities like an oversized closet and a conventional kitchen.  This home — called Earth One — and the surrounding structures were created by the California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture, better known as CalEarth. The institute is at the heart of a growing movement grounded in the belief that the future of housing lies in the oldest material on Earth: the earth itself. Arched ceilings and curved walls lend a coziness to Earth One. Credit: Michaela Haas At first glance, the structures resemble adobe, the traditional mud brick homes in desert communities for centuries. But they are what their late founder, Nader Khalili, calls SuperAdobe. Unlike their sundried ancestors, these homes are constructed by filling sandbags with earth, coiling them into layers and reinforcing each row with barbed wire. The result is a series of strong, curved and fire-resistant structures — plastered for waterproofing, but humble in composition: dirt, sandbags, wire and water. “This whole village was built using this earth. We dug this courtyard from material right here, under our feet,” explains the founder’s daughter, Sheefteh Khalili, now CalEarth’s CFO. “That’s the beauty of it. You’re building with what’s already there.”  On a recent Saturday morning, more than a hundred people made the trek to remote Hesperia for the monthly open house to get a first-hand look at the unique structures. Several of them were wildfire survivors or contractors from Los Angeles on a mission to find fire-resistant, cost-effective alternatives for clients who lost everything in this year’s megafires. “I read that these SuperAdobes survived 7.2 [magnitude] earthquakes and fires and Hurricane Maria,” explained a grey-haired contractor who wants to check if his research pans out. “And they cost about a third of what traditional homes do.”

Colin Meloy’s band were raised on Roxy Music, British folk and concept albums. He isn’t big on Jethro Tull, but he’s in awe of Rick Wakeman’s King Arthur ice show

When I was a child, the story of Jesus miraculously healing the leper in Mark 1:40–45 made me thankful for two things: that Jesus had power over all diseases and that I didn’t have leprosy. The story didn’t seem relevant to me, a nonleper, beyond teaching me about Jesus’s amazing power to heal even the vilest of diseases—diseases that I probably wouldn’t have to worry about thanks to modern medicine. But is there more to the miracle? This brief article will explore the biblical-theological significance of the leper’s cleansing. Leprosy, the Priesthood, and the Need for Cleansing The focus of Mark 1:40–45 is on cleansing, not healing, though the two are related. The words “clean” or “cleanse” appear four times in the span of five verses (vv. 40, 41, 42, 44). Leprosy, which refers to various skin diseases in the Old Testament (Lev. 13), rendered people ritually unclean according to the Mosaic law. Anyone who touched a leper would’ve also become ceremonially unclean (see vv. 45–46). As a matter of uncleanness, leprosy’s significance is more theological and symbolic than biological and medicinal. Lepers needed a priest to pronounce them clean, not a doctor to prescribe them medicine. According to Leviticus 14:19, the priest had to offer a “sin offering” to “make atonement” for the leper as part of the leper’s cleansing process. Without the sin offering, the leper would remain unfit to worship God at the tabernacle. He was cut off from God’s presence—a dead man walking, much like Adam outside the garden. The law provided atonement and cleansing for the leper, but it was merely an external and ceremonial cleansing. It is, after all, what comes out of the heart that ultimately defiles a person (Mark 7:20). Mark recorded the miracle of the leper’s cleansing because he wanted us to see that Jesus is a superior priest who offers a cleansing that runs deeper than the skin. A few verses earlier in 1:24, a man with an unclean spirit identified Jesus as the “Holy One of God,” a title attributed to Aaron in Psalm 106:16 (cf. Num. 16:1–3). The Aaronic priests of the old covenant could pronounce a leper clean, but they couldn’t make anyone clean. Jesus was able to do both. Jesus’s priestly cleansing and his instruction to the leper to go to show himself to the priest set the stage for Jesus’s conflict with Israel’s religious leaders in the narrative that follows (Mark 2:1–3:6) and anticipates his confrontation with the high priest in 14:53–65. Mark wants his readers to ask, “Who is the true priest?” The Aaronic priests of the old covenant could pronounce a leper clean, but they couldn’t make anyone clean. The shocking nature of Jesus’s miracle is that he touched the leper without becoming contaminated. Perhaps Jesus’s touch symbolizes that he identifies himself with sinners to secure their salvation. He takes our stain; we get his holiness. The cleansing this priest provides runs deeper than the skin’s surface; it cleanses the body and the heart. Leprosy as Exile and Death The Old Testament associates leprosy with death. When Aaron and Miriam sinned against Moses, God struck Miriam with leprosy (Num. 12:1–15). She became as “one dead” and as a stillborn infant (v. 12). Lepers were to assume a posture of mourning—as though they were mourning the dead—by wearing torn clothes, letting their hair hang loose, and covering their upper lip as they cried out “Unclean, unclean” (Lev. 13:45; cf. 10:6; Ezek. 24:17, 22–23). They lived outside the camp in their leprous condition, where they experienced their own deathlike exile, cut off from God’s life-giving presence. As a symbol of death, leprosy was also associated with Egypt. God afflicted the Egyptians with boils when Pharaoh refused to let Israel go (Ex. 9:8–12). Boils are among the skin diseases associated with leprosy in Leviticus 13. After God delivered Israel from Egypt, he warned them that if they failed to keep the covenant, he’d strike them with the “boils of Egypt” and with “scabs and itch” of which they wouldn’t be healed (Deut. 28:27). Leprosy’s association with Egypt and death suggests lepers needed a cleansing that would follow the exodus pattern. God delivered his people out of the tomb of Egypt through blood (Passover) and water (sea) and brought them to his life-giving presence at Sinai to make them a kingdom of priests (Ex. 19:6). A cleansed leper followed the same exodus movement from the place of death outside the camp to life with God in Israel’s camp after being sprinkled with blood and oil and washed with water (Lev. 14:1–14). As part of his cleansing, a leper was restored to the covenant community the same way that priests were consecrated to God. He had sacrificial blood applied to the lobe of his right ear, the thumb of his right hand, and the big toe of his right foot (Lev. 14:14; Ex. 29:20). He regained his place among the kingdom of priests to serve the living God. Leper’s Exodus and Ours The leper in Mark 1:40–45 is a man under the sentence of death and a symbol of exile. He has Egypt’s disease. He’s a microcosm of Israel. Israel may have been in the land when Jesus came to them, but they remained in spiritual exile, alienated from God. They needed deliverance not from the bondage of Egypt or Rome but from the tyranny of sin, Satan, and death. Perhaps Jesus’s touch symbolizes that he identifies himself with sinners to secure their salvation. He takes our stain; we get his holiness. Mark wants us to understand the leper’s cleansing as part of the new exodus that Jesus came to lead in fulfillment of Isaiah 40:3: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight’” (Mark 1:3). Isaiah anticipated a day when God would make a highway in the wilderness to lead an exodus out of exile and back to Jerusalem (Isa. 35:8–10; 40:3). On that highway—the “Way of Holiness” (35:8)—no “unclean” person will journey (35:8), and in the restored Zion, the “unclean” will not dwell (52:1, 11). When Jesus “stretched out his hand” to touch the leper, he imitated God’s action in leading the first exodus out of Egypt (Mark 1:41; Ex. 3:20; 7:5). Indeed, Jesus didn’t merely imitate God; he’s the same God who saved Israel from Egypt and the same God who promised through the prophet Isaiah to redeem his people from exile. Jesus cleansed the leper to make him part of the end-time Israel—a new class of cleansed and consecrated priests. Far from being merely a man with an awful skin condition that we don’t have to worry about thanks to modern medicine, the leper is a mirror to our own plight. The leper reminds us we too must cry out to Jesus for cleansing from sin’s defilement and the sentence of death. The good news of the gospel is that what Jesus said to the leper, he says to everyone who comes to him in faith: “I will; be clean.”