Reputed economic genius and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, whose pronouncements affected our pocketbooks for years though we weren’t quite sure how, said recently by telelink to South Africa that the U.S. was “on the brink” of a recession.

According to Greenspan, “It’s going to be very difficult.”

So, where’s he been?

I could have clued him in a little earlier. Though no economic genius, I noticed the country was in the midst of a difficult recession a few weeks ago. All it took for me to make a pronouncement was a hit close to home: I lost my job. (Again!) Retail sales tanked and, as the last-hired, there wasn’t any work for me to do.

If I’d had Greenspan’s cell phone number, I could’ve cued him in earlier this spring. I’d trotted around to five stores to find beet seed, which had disappeared off the racks. Everybody’s putting in a garden. Everybody’s worried.

Though unemployed, I’ve been working hard. My garden’s expanded, I have my winter’s supply of firewood split and stacked in the backyard. I’m getting out the old canning jars. When we were out of power for 18 hours a couple of weeks ago after that first big storm, I engaged in dreamy speculation about a winter evening under kerosene lights. I read next to the window, and wondered about generations of women who did handwork by firelight.

I call it “going into survival mode.” It’s a kind of going backward to go forward.

Both my parents grew up on farms in the Midwest during the Great Depression. My grandparents also grew up on farms, as did my great-grandparents before them.

What that means, in part, is that I grew up observing many old-fashioned skills put to use: my father loved to garden, my mother canned and sewed and “made do.” I honed and practiced similar skills when I first came to Maine, glad to meet many tried-and-true Mainers who knew all kinds of secrets for being practical and stretching a budget.

I admit I never had to take things as far as they. For instance, I’ve never had to “turn” a dress or skirt – rip out all the seams and re-sew it inside-out to take advantage of the less worn and faded side of the cloth. I never lined up to take my turn bathing in the same tin tub of hot water in the middle of the kitchen floor, or stored my butter in a bucket down the well.

These old ways are time-consuming, and most of my practices disappeared when I undertook full-time employment. And, I’ve learned to consider the computer and the cell phone as necessities.

These days, I talk to many friends who believe along with Alan Greenspan that things are going to be “very difficult.” America is dependent upon fossil fuels. We are 300 million profligate Americans who suddenly find ourselves in competition with 3 billion smart and energetic Chinese and another billion Indians. Per capita, China and India consume a lot less of the world’s resources than we do, but there are now about 13 times as many of them. It’s not our market anymore. Within the lifetime of my newborn nephew, the world’s petroleum resources will be used up, gone, the oil barrel empty.

We aren’t making this change very willingly. Gas may be $4 dollars a gallon, going up to $5, but we’ll keep driving cars as long as we can because that’s the way the system works. Every aspect of our public and private economies, as well as our personal expectations, depends on getting where we want to go when we want to get there. We are in the habit of conserving time, not energy.

Our faith must be in new technologies, but the country isn’t nearly ready and time is short. We have nothing to replace petroleum on the massive scale we need – soon – to avert suffering. We haven’t figured out how to harvest the sun or the wind in a way that can sustain cities. Cars powered by hydrogen drawn from the air are still a dream.

So are we going to go backward or forward? Both, I suppose. We may end up again with families lining up for a turn on the weekly bath night, but those who are waiting will be on the Internet.

Maybe this “difficult” recession that Greenspan acknowledges will finally spur the major changes we have to create as a culture if we are to survive. In the meantime, I am grateful to know a few old-fashioned tricks for getting by.