Author: jennynazak

This editorial in my hometown newspaper echoes my stance on Thanksgiving visits, and I’m sticking to it for all holidays, and for socializing in general, til there’s a very compelling reason not to.

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendation for safety this Thanksgiving is straightforward: Limit gatherings to the people you live with, or already see frequently. Connect with everyone else via phone or through online platforms like Zoom. In the weeks following Thanksgiving, take extra care whenever you are out in public, with the understanding that many people who didn’t take precautions could be visiting the same stores, offices and restaurants as you – and could be contagious even without symptoms.”

Yep. That there.

I’m not trying to tell others what they should do or believe. (That’d be futile anyway.) I have spent some time and energy finessing how to state my own choices though. It’s been tricky to the point of being agonizing at times, but I hope I’m getting better at stating my parameters without hurting people’s feelings.

This is similar to the conflicted feelings I get when defending my eco choices. Refusing unnecessary rides in cars, refusing single-use plastic, etc. But, this is part of my work. Learning to do state my choices in a calm, matter-of-fact way (when it’s necessary to state them at all, which it isn’t always), while conveying to people that I love them, I value our relationship, I’m not rejecting their love or whatever.

Happy Thanksgiving, to all of you who celebrate. Gratitude is never out of season.

Further Exploration:

Thanksgiving Day, 11/26/2020: Speaking of gratitude, Today’s inspiration piece from DailyOM is “An Experiment in Gratitude.”

A trusty friend and fellow activist is acting as a test “edu-vacay intern” at my place this week. We are defining and refining social-distancing measures, and I am also devising more ideas for maximizing my beachside urban micro-homestead as a space to nurture my guests’ learning and creativity. Watch this blog for updates. Depending on how Covid situation progresses, deep-green education via my home may remain a strictly virtual experience for a while to come. Safety first!

As part of the above-described research project, I’m sharing some notes from this morning. The following is the kind of stuff I do on an everyday basis, and usually don’t take time to document. Enjoy!

Waste (reuse; landfill diversion):

As a city-dweller, dealing with the urban waste-stream, I am particularly fond of the Permaculture design principle known as “Catch, store, & use energy.”

I was impressed with what I saw this morning in my nextdoor neighbor’s recycling bin. The company that painted their house appears to have taken the trouble to cut the bottoms off of, and clean out, these plastic squeeze applicator bottles of painter’s acrylic latex caulk, so they’d be clean for recycling.

I have taken the bottles into my recycling bin for now. I use my bin as a storage buffer for steel cans and other containers that I might end up finding a re-use/upcycle use for. Thus capturing more of their embodied energy than would otherwise be captured. And diverting them from the need to undergo a higher-energy process such as being melted down etc.

If it ends up I can’t use them, I’ll just send them on out to the curbside recycling collection. See photos here.

Energy (solar cooking): Solar oven today. It’s breezy and partly cloudy, both of which influence the temperature the oven is able to attain and sustain. The easier task I had in mind for the ovens today was toasting some honeydew melon seeds that I started last night in a little toaster oven (it was left by some past housemate or guest; I use it occasionally).

Toaster ovens are a fairly high-watt appliance but they can be great for baking mini loaves of bread, small batches of cookies etc. The oven made a good start on the melon seeds. But, they toasted much faster after I spread them out in a wide black solar cookpot in the sun oven this morning.

The second task I had in mind, making hardboiled eggs, may not be do-able today, as the cloud cover seems to be increasing. The oven temp has reached 275 F but I really like it to be around 350 if I’m going to do a half-dozen eggs, especially if I’m starting with cold water.

I do have some warm/hottish water stored in the big old-school Stanley thermos ($5, thrift shop), because I boiled extra when making coffee this morning. So, it wouldn’t be as much of a temperature leap as starting with eggs in a pot of cold water.

Still, experience has shown that on a day like today, it’s better to use a stovetop or fire-based cooking method.

On the stovetop, I hardboil 6 eggs by bringing them to a boil for a minute or two, then turning off the stove, covering the top of the pot with potholders to trap heat in the pot, and let the eggs finish cooking in the hot water. This technique significantly saves fuel by reducing the amount of time needed for cooking eggs, soups, stews, and other boiled foods.

I call this technique my “modified” haybox method.

Haybox cooking, otherwise known as “retained-heat cooking,” is an energy-saving technique I learned via Aprovecho and the Kerr-Cole Sustainability Center. (Aprovecho’s series of booklets on “Capturing Heat” is excellent. As is Kerr-Cole’s booklet “The Sustainable Kitchen.”)

In brief: Haybox cooking involves bringing food to a boil for some minutes (duration depends on what you are cooking), then placing the whole pot in a towel-lined cooler, hay-lined box, or other insulated container. My modification simplifies things by not needing a container, just being able to keep the pot on stovetop. I have found that (presumably because heat rises) just covering the top of the pot seems to be good enough for hardboiled eggs, or rice or pasta.

Photos (see photos here):
1) oven #1 toasting melon seeds (tasty nutritious snack). Oven #1’s thermometer is broken but I can judge the approximate temp by sun conditions etc.

2) Oven #2’s thermometer, which reads accurately. This pic shows 175F. A little while later it had risen to 275. (3) And is holding steady there.

You’ve all heard me talk about my mission to spark a #GrassrootsGreenMobilization .
As I have written in my book and blog, I discovered that mobilization is well under way. And here is one manifestation of it! I hope you’ll join me in attending this online talk/event on Tuesday Nov 24.

In my experience and extensive observation, some of the biggest obstacles hindering people in making a living doing what they love, while helping the planet, are financial/economic. Permaculture design offers a framework that can very effectively be applied to navigating those obstacles and creating abundance for ourselves, while regenerating ecosystems and communities.

The organizer of the event is a colleague of mine, a permaculture teacher/designer named Mike Hoag, who is dedicated to helping people find livelihoods that are financially viable and right for them, while also helping to restore ecosystems and rebuild strong communities.

Writes Mike, “Here’s the event where you can find out about our plans to support a DIY Green New Deal. I hope you’ll join us! 💚”

This free online event is titled, Opportunity: Become a Community Transformation Leader, and you can go here to register. This will be a general introductory meeting, where you’ll also get to hear information about an upcoming permaculture design course and get your questions answered.

If you want to build real wealth while being the change you want to see, attending this virtual meetup is a great step. I’ve been active in the permaculture movement since 2005; have taken several Permaculture Design Certificate courses — and I’m still really excited about this event; expect to learn a lot. I hope to see you there!

This article today in my local paper, offering tips for Thanksgiving family gatherings “apart, but together,” made me happy.

These tips are great not just for Thanksgiving but for any other holiday or family gathering, or just hanging out whenever. From creating screen backgrounds of family photo montages; to playing board games by video-conference; to cooking the same menu items apart together — using technology in inventive ways is what humans do, and now more than ever is a time when we really need to bring out that inventiveness.

One sister and brother who live far apart even figured out how to position their electronic devices to create the appearance of sitting together at one long family table!!

It occurred to me that remote technology might even make for better gatherings, as multiple clusters of extended family can gather virtually — with no space limitation; no travel expense; freedom from complicated logistics. And consider this: Even in loving families, differences in lifestyle and beliefs can lead to stress on holiday visits. If everyone gets to be in their own houses — “together apart” — that stress is greatly reduced.

Caution: Getting too tangled up in fussing with technology can lead to its own kind of stress. I think it’s OK for families just to text each other a photo or two of the holiday festivities. We do that a lot in my family, and I feel the love coming through even a still photo.

Board games do sound like fun, though!

Zoom holidays take the load off of Mother Earth too. All that holiday travel has a huge footprint.

I don’t want to minimize the pain of missing one’s family. If it felt safe, I’d definitely want to visit my family up north for either Thanksgiving or Christmas. It doesn’t feel safe though.

Speaking of that, friends and family members can have differing ideas of what feels “safe.” Some people barely seem to acknowledge there’s a pandemic going on. Others barely feel safe leaving their houses at all. In my family we’re fortunate; we have generally similar ideas about safety, and we’re also able to respect each other’s slightly differing ideas. Most of my friends are pretty respectful of differences too.

That said, even though we’re respectful, some of my friends have markedly different ideas of what’s safe. Me, I pretty much just want to stay outdoors and I’m fine. If I had to for a family emergency, I’d risk going into an airport and getting on a plane. Otherwise, no way. Air travel was already miserable even before Covid.

Bus or train travel are my favorites but don’t feel safe to me now either. They would if we could ride with the windows open.

With some friends, who seem to be back into indoor gatherings as if nothing had happened, I’ve got FOMO. Fear Of Missing Out. Fear that, because I’m refusing invitations, I’ll never be invited again. But, just as I can’t tell other people how to act, I also don’t want to put others or myself at unnecessary risk.

Some of my friends who had been among the most cautious (wearing masks everywhere, even indoors) are now going completely in the opposite direction. I attribute it to a certain fatalism. Many of these friends work on the bleeding-edge front lines, forced to put themselves at risk every day so people can buy groceries or eat waffles or whatever. Many of these same friends have buried many friends and relatives over the past few months. In their shoes, I could imagine myself saying, “Screw it, might as well enjoy ourselves!”

I don’t know if that’s actually what’s at play with this group of friends, but it would make sense.

I get that some people are feeling lonely and burnt-out. But insisting on hugs, in-person meetings, postponing events “until we can get back to normal” (instead of just holding them outdoors or virtually, or cancelling them entirely) — all of that strikes me as a refusal to adapt to circumstances. And creatures who don’t adapt to circumstances don’t survive. That thought really struck me this morning. It’s true of species, and it’s true of individuals.

Anyway. I’m rooting for Zoom holidays. “Appropriate Technology,” we call it in permaculture when technology is used in a manner that helps shift things in a more sustainable direction. Telecommunication apps are a great example of appropriate technology right now. I think they actually have the potential to bring us closer to one another than we’ve ever been.

Speaking of togetherness, I’ve been hearing about a card game called Vertellis. I hear it was originally developed to spark more meaningful conversation among family members at holiday gatherings. (But it can be used anytime by any group of people.) The game sounds pretty neat. And it looks totally do-able by Zoom.

Today I celebrate a mini milestone in my financial planning. I am lending a neighbor a bit of money to help them buy the house they’ve been renting! This, for me, is so exciting. It’s a win for my neighborhood (good neighbor becoming a homeowner) as well as for my longterm financial plan (shifting my monetary assets from large financial institutions to what I consider to be solid investments in my local community).

This shift is something I’ve been working on for a long time. I have erred on the side of slowness to avoid putting all my eggs in one basket or investing in endeavors that are well-intentioned but turn out to be unstable.

My finance story is something I’ll be posting about more soon.

For today, my “Scooby Snack” for you is a wonderful piece written by someone else. “Financial Resilience: Lessons from the Peace Corps.” This is a guest post on Laura Oldanie’s blog “Rich and Resilient Living,” which I often link to in my posts, and which you’ll find in my permalinks as well.

Today’s guest post is by Sara Bruya, a friend of Laura’s who was in the Peace Corps in Gabon. Sara’s post is full of valuable insights, and echoes a lot of the advice I have repeatedly shared here, such as the value of building neighborly ties, and the importance of reducing our dependence on government and other large centralized systems. Here’s just a short quote from this juicy post to tantalize you:

Looking around me in Gabon, I saw a different way of living—one that included modern conveniences (internet access, local and international TV channels, supermarkets, cell phones) and innovations (including a very convenient circulating, shared taxi system) but was also resourceful and resilient in the face of adversity and the shifting availability of basic necessities.

I saw a much closer relationship between people and the natural world, from which they were adept at sourcing what they needed to offset the costs of buying staples in farmers’ markets and supermarkets, using skills transmitted through the generations.

We are too removed from the sources of what we depend on in the States. That is probably the single greatest thing I appreciate about living in Gabon. People are the source of their own sustenance.

And:

In the midst of restrictions resulting from the current pandemic, I have realized that my Peace Corps experience prepared me, in many ways, to cope with new social paradigms, prolonged uncertainty, distance from friends and loved ones, disruption to the flow of resources, and limited control over circumstances.

Go read the rest! You don’t want to miss it! It’s another voice, highly articulate and rooted in experience, backing up all the stuff I’m always preaching to you about!

Oh, and if you’re looking for a freelance editor, Sara is one, and here is her business page.

An article I’m in the middle of reading referred to books as “non-essential” goods that people can’t afford to pay full price for right now.

Books are in fact essential, be they in paper or in digital form. The written word is a low-bandwidth durable medium for preserving and transmitting essential knowledge and skills. (Even fiction is essential; it transmits knowledge, skills, cultural values. It can also serve as a lifeline to people, by letting them know they are not alone in what they’re going through. Speaking from experience here!)

Last week I shelled out $200 (including the $80 shipping from Australia) to order Bill Mollison’s books Introduction to Permaculture and the Permaculture Design Manual. I was happy to be able to order directly from the publisher, Tagari. (The books have become difficult to impossible to get from any seller in the USA.)

Postage is what it is. I regret having years ago donated my first copies of those two books (which only cost me a total of $100 at the time). This time I will keep them; they are essential tools for my teaching — and for my ongoing learning.

Even with what I just paid, I feel I’m getting great value. If I needed to, I’d be happy to skip a month of electricity or a month of dinners or whatever to afford those books. (Well, more like a year of electricity in my case!) I am fortunate at this point of my life not to have to, but I would gladly.

Books are gold. Books are ESSENTIAL. So are authors and publishers of quality books. They deserve to get paid full price for their hard work. Add indie booksellers to that list as well.

Laundry is a subject I often revisit, in my own life as well as in this blog. Why? I think because optimizing this task offers so many opportunities for households to save water, money, and time. (Dishwashing is another operation that keeps me engaged for this reason.)

Manufacturing shutdowns from the pandemic are causing people to have to wait longer for delivery of new appliances such as clothes-washers. People are having to wait for weeks, even a month. This news just gives me one more reason to be glad I don’t own a washer or dryer.

In my book and elsewhere on this blog, I give hand-laundering tips. I’m not saying everyone needs to do laundry by hand and forgo washing-machine ownership. But I will say, knowing how to hand-launder in a resource-efficient manner is incredibly liberating. It means you don’t have to freak out if your machine breaks down (or if your new one is going to take weeks to arrive).

“Resource-efficient” is an important qualifier. If not done mindfully, hand-laundering can use a lot more water and other resources than a washing machine.

Appliances are convenient; no doubt about it. But if we get so we think we can’t function without them, they’re ultimately a source of stress.

Are you without a washing machine but really don’t want to hand-launder? Or have no laundromat nearby? In that case I suggest a laundry service. Many of them offer various eco options. And since they’re a business, they are oftentimes quite resource-efficient. When I’ve had massive piles of other people’s laundry to do, a laundry service has been a lifesaver. And I like supporting a local person’s livelihood.

I do encourage you to also try hand-laundering though. I’ve got lots of tips in my book and elsewhere on this blog.

Here’s a new tip I just made up today. I usually wash clothes with plain bar-soap and sometimes a touch of baking soda. The bar of soap gets wet (of course). Today, before putting that wet bar of soap back in its resting place, I wiped it off with a DRY hand-towel that was my last item that needed to be washed today. That allowed me to put back the bar of soap in a DRY state rather than wet. (Fussy detail maybe, but I don’t like the goop that forms when a wet bar of soap is returned to the soap dish. Also I think the soap lasts longer if it’s put away dry.)

To wash that last hand-towel, which now had soap in its fibers, I simply dunked it into the washtub, rubbed it, swished it around.