Author: jennynazak

From a news article about how people in Kyiv are in survival mode after having their water and power knocked out by Russian missile strikes: “In scenes hard to believe in a sophisticated city of 3 million, some Kyiv residents resorted to collecting rainwater from drainpipes, as repair teams labored to reconnect supplies.”

I get what the writers mean: that collecting rainwater via drainpipes isn’t “modern.” It’s kind of “primitive” or “old-fashioned.” And obviously the residents of Kyiv and the rest of Ukraine are dealing with a horrific situation. But I would actually say the residents of Kyiv, by collecting rainwater, are being quite sophisticated here by finding a low-tech workaround to a system failure.

Resourcefulness is sophisticated.

Considering where dependence on “modern” systems has brought us, I think we need to change our definition of modern and sophisticated.

A lot of what we call modern systems are fragile. Having backup is sophisticated. Redundancy is one of the principles of permaculture design.

Examples of applying this design principle to human environments: Cities having manual backup for electric water pumps. Cities having a network of rainwater collection barrels and tubs.

I would argue that having these things in place is more sophisticated and more modern. I think every city needs to have these things. After all the wars and natural disasters we’ve seen, it seems clear. Time to get more sophisticated and modern, by designing our systems to be more like nature.

Redundancy abounds in nature. We’d be smart to reintroduce more redundancy into our everyday living environments.

Where I live, in storm-prone Florida, it’d be really smart, modern, and sophisticated for cities to have citywide rainwater-collection systems.

Thoughts from a permaculture perspective, on how we solve our perennial flooding. This is a micro presentation i had planned on making during citizen comment time at Daytona Beach City Commission last night but decided to hold off, as so many citizens were there needing to share their harrowing experiences from the flooding and start to discuss solutions.
I’m posting my comments here now in written form instead, to spark discussion about creative solutions and working with nature rather than against her. And about how we will come together to care for each other. Daytona Beach is one city!!! We stand together!! 💚🌏🦋 (This sentiment applies to Volusia County countywide too of course.)

Good evening, fellow citizens of the year 2022. This is future Jenny Nazak visiting you from the year 2027. I still live at 501 Harvey Avenue.

Please pardon my appearance; the holographic time-transmission technology is still a bit wonky. I must say I like that I turned out green though!

After the deadly storms and flooding of 2022, we as a city knew we had to figure out some real solutions.

As one element of the solutions, we finally faced the fact that the beachside is a barrier island of shifting sands, and needs to be as natural as possible.

We faced up to the science, that seawalls are not only extremely expensive and unable to protect oceanfront properties, but are actually worsening the erosion of our sandy beaches. We decided to build no more seawalls, and instead use living shoreline techniques, which are much more effective and much less expensive.

We also decided to have no more new building construction or new paved parking lots east of the A1A. (We were able to use federal grants to buy out those property owners and rewild the dunes.)

Additionally, we stopped using high-maintenance nonnative landscaping on public land on the beachside, and instead allowed the natural dune vegetation to take over. We also finally realized that fallen leaves are best left on the ground to nourish the trees and make the ground more able to absorb stormwater.

These decisions instantly freed up tens of millions of dollars and countless labor hours, which were then redirected to address the chronic flooding and other major issues affecting residents of Midtown, the historic and cultural heartbeat of our city.

We built new housing on higher ground, and relocated residents out of the flood-prone areas.

Furthermore, the freed-up funds (together with EPA green infrastructure grants and other funding), were used to create WaterWorld Daytona, a comprehensive stormwater stewardship program that encompasses wetland parks, food forest gardens, networked rainwater cisterns, fishing ponds, several miles of linear swimming pools, and thousands of nature-based business opportunities in Midtown and citywide.

WaterWorld has created many jobs and a huge network of local restaurants, local food trucks, herbalists, and local growers and foragers of edible plants.

Our city has become a hot destination for tourists and a cool paradise for residents.

Amazingly, not a single building in our city has flooded since the storms of 2022.

The rewilding of beachside has been good for redevelopment on the beachside too! Main Street now has every storefront filled with year-round businesses, with apartments on all the upper floors. There are some new buildings but a surprising amount of redevelopment was accomplished by repurposing old buildings. It turns out that tourists love the plain natural beach.

We thought the new building restrictions would kill the beachside hotels and condos, but creative eco-friendly developers and renovation experts have risen to the occasion.

Transportation has evolved to be more sustainable too. We added a citywide car-sharing program, a beach trolley, and multiple small river-crossing boat operators. For thrill-seekers, there are even ziplines going across the river.

Our population is so fit and happy, and our built environment is so integrated with nature, that anyone visiting Daytona Beach 2027 could be forgiven for thinking they’ve landed on the movie set of Avatar or Black Panther.

Nature has become a prominent feature of our city even while the various core downtown areas have become more vibrant. From Seabreeze to Main St., to Beach St., Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune Avenue to Martin Luther King, Ridgewood and ISB, all now have every storefront occupied year round, with shops on the first floor and apartments or hotels on the upper floors.

Historically in our city, water has often divided us and sometimes destroyed lives. Now, our beautiful world of water connects us and brings us new life.

The time-travel technology only allows me to visit you for three minutes. But I’ll be back to check on you. And of course 2022 Jenny Nazak will be here to keep pestering you to tap into the power of nature, and work with nature rather than fighting her.

Dear friends, Mother Nature is NOT our enemy. She has been trying for a long time to send us humans a wakeup call to change our ways of violence against her, but we humans keep on abusing her, fighting her, disrespecting her — and now she is having the natural reaction.

A written version of these comments, with additional details about how we transformed problems into solutions, will be emailed to anyone upon request.

Our kitchen window looks out on one of the chambers of our big main compost bin. I decided I wanted to make the view pretty, so I painted a quick painting this morn (with old landfill-diverted paint and landfill-diverted picture frame as the materials) and stuck it at the back of the bin! (I’ll probably hang it up properly on the fence with a nail or something later.) And I stuck this cute blue floral-patterned ceramic pitcher (another curbside find) in front of it.

Also I tidied up the pile a bit, as it had gotten kind of sprawly and uneven-looking (not that I need a perfectly level compost pile LOL, but I definitely feel a bit of satisfaction looking out at a pile that is not super crazy messy with sticks sticking out every which way)!

Here’s a photo!

Originally I embarked on this “bin beautification” because I wanted to do something nice for my housemates. But it turns out I too am really enjoying it!!

Art and beauty in our everyday lives are an essential part of building a sustainable, nurturing culture where all beings can thrive.

What are some ways that you have added a touch of extra beauty and sweetness to your everyday world?

A timely question as the season comes around when many people will be sitting down for holiday meals with people who might not feel the same as us regarding climate change, societal collapse, and so on.

“Does anyone else feel as though they want talk about climate change and collapse preparation to friends and family, but don’t know how to approach it in a way that will generate any real discussion? I feel like the people who know me understand that I am concerned about the future, but none of them are genuinely concerned and can’t connect with me on this one.”

My thoughts:

One thing I have found helpful is to focus on extreme weather — and other disasters (pandemic etc) — as opposed to climate change per se.

Pretty much everyone I know, of all political stripes and right up to the very wealthy economic levels, has been affected by one or more extreme weather events or other disasters. Many have been affected to a catastrophic degree. This includes financial hardship.

Accordingly, I find it helpful to talk about preps & resilience for such circumstances, and how we make ourselves better able to weather whatever comes. Finances is a big one, I have realized.

Of course WE in here know the events are pretty much all linked to climate change, but since the preps and resilience paths for all of these circumstances pretty much overlap, that’s OK.

We should be doing this anyway: checking up on how people fared in the storm; checking to see if they need help w prepping & household resilience; being a model and source of support for our communities and neighborhoods etc.

* Added later: Oh! And how could I forget. A HUGE area for tapping into common ground is “extreme dependence on centralized, industrialized systems to get our very most basic needs met.” Banks/finance, water/sewer utilities, transportation, household energy, food etc. … almost ALL of us by now, even the wealthy and otherwise cushioned of the USA, have experienced a failure of one or more of these big systems and are willing to talk about how we reduce our household & community’s vulnerability, build resilience & antifragility. And bingo, there’s the conversation entry point.

Starting a list of thoughts; please feel free to message me to add yours!

• Treat our barrier island as a nature park, where visitors and residents are ecological stewards, and agree to support & protect the natural environment we are fortunate to call home.

• Mangroves yes!! Also seagrape, sea oats, saw palmetto, hardy dune wildflowers, & other tough coastal native plants w strong root systems. That will also increase the beauty of our place!

• Personally I would support a moratorium on building east of A1A. Allow existing intact buildings to stand til they crumble but no more new stuff.

• We should also reduce pavement; possibly de-pave some asphalt parking lots etc and have them be sand or crushed shell instead.

(I started this list in response to a good post by a fellow citizen in our county’s grassroots FB group. Here is her post below.)

Further Exploration:

• “Coastal Erosion” (YouTube video.) Interesting science segment on possible solutions for coastal erosion: sea walls; bulkheads; revetments; groins; breakwaters; mangrove forests; beach nourishment; retreat.”

A friend on FB asked if there were photos of me from an earlier time in my life (a time I had just shared some non-me photos of: pics of buildings, autumn leaves etc.)

There is a part of me (even tho I have come a long way in terms of developing self-esteem independent from looks) that has some hangups about this & that related to posting photos of my younger selves.

For most of my young life, I guess from my tweens right up til my mid-40s, I was very invested in the idea of myself as “beautiful” in the very harshly strictly societally defined way. And I invested my energies accordingly, much to my own detriment.

Fortunately the part of me that insisted on devoting more energy to the inner path, education, personal growth, being in service, making a better world, has won out.

But when I look at photos of my younger selves the memories are bittersweet. Like, OK, I got some major kind of buzz out of being pretty and skinny. But also, I remember how I FELT inside … and I feel a lot better now let me tell you!

Still I feel shy about people’s judgment if I were to post photos of younger me. “Wow, she has really let herself go hasn’t she!” “Oh poor thing, she lost her looks and her skinny figure.”

Even though I actually on the inside feel so much stronger, genuinely happy, less brittle, not hanging by a thread, not caught up in drama. And even though I have become MILITANT about standing up to “skinny culture,” and defending women from fat-shaming.

I go about my day feeling happy in my self, happy in my body, comfortable in my skin. But once in a while I catch a glimpse at myself in a shop window reflection or something and I get a horrified backlash reaction that’s like a message coming forward in time from my young, vain, super-skinny self (who never thought she was pretty enough or thin enough).

Sometimes I tell her, “It’s OK though! We are SO happy now!! And I think we are probably a lot nicer to the world!”

This year I turned 60 and am so grateful. So yes I might sometime post photos of my younger self … but don’t be surprised if I don’t.

Freedom has many dimensions. So does beauty.

I would love to see some affordable apartments & houses built in my neighborhood on the beachside. We have a number of city-owned vacant lots, and the need is definitely there!!

I will keep advocating for truly affordably priced housing, and do whatever I can to promote it. I’m just one citizen, but there are many others advocating too. On that note, I did not realize that $1200 rent is being defined as “affordable” now and I hate that people are having to deal w that.

Even a few years ago, it was pretty easy to find apartments in my neighborhood for $500 or $600, but those are pretty much gone. We need apartments in the $500-600 range and we need them in all parts of town.

We also need to make it so more people can own their own homes.

When someone on a thread today mentioned $1200, I commented in response:

Wow that’s a lot. Hopefully that’s for a 2 or 3 bedroom??? When I first moved here from Texas, I was able to find cheap 1brs and split them with a roommate by making myself an extra “bedroom” out of tall bookcases. But, the supply of cheap apartments pretty much dried up.

If circumstances had not allowed me to buy a house (which I share with housemates), I might not have been able to stay in Daytona Beach even though I fell in love w this city and want to stay and make a difference.

Someone posted figures for the average monthly cost of living for just one person here in my city:

Rent: $1000
Electricity: $200
Water: $100
Phone: $50
Food: $400
Transportation: $300

Total: $2,050 per month

Average pay: $15/hr
40 hours: $600
4 weeks: $2400
Taxes: -$400
Total: $2,000

No room for recreation, medical expenses, or savings. I have totally been there, and would be still.

I am self-employed and my monthly income is about 700-800 before taxes. If I had to try to find an apartment now, I would either need to get multiple roommates or it would just never work.

The housing market used to naturally have more of a variety of options (all over the USA, not just here), but those are pretty much disappeared. Even mobile home parks/RV parks, which used to be one of the old reliable standbys, are getting bought up by corporations that then jack up the rent. And the old-fashioned Single Room Occupancy type buildings that a lot of people used to be able to rely on have just about gone extinct. Same with old-school landlords that did not require all sorts of credit checks, 3x income etc.

Increasing income disparity and wealth disparity is, I think, definitely a major problem and culprit of the housing crunch and homelessness throughout the USA. When I was a kid, the rich families just had bigger houses than the rest of us. Now we have people with two, three, four or more houses, which they can afford to leave sitting empty. The wealth snowballs and gets hoarded.

There are also stricter building codes and zoning nowadays, some of which may be legitimately necessary but a lot of which just jacks up the cost of construction and suppresses the market’s natural mechanisms for supplying housing. There used to be less restriction on renting out garage apartments, backyard cottages, and other naturally affordable housing options.

The lifestyle I call “deep green,” which I originally embarked on for ecological reasons, quickly showed itself to be very practical for saving money. For example:

Rent: $1000 — me, $250-300 by sharing w apartment mates (and now housemates)
Electricity: $200 — us, $35-38 split three ways
Water: $100 — us, $60 split three ways
Phone: $50 — I pay $50 for my phone also, which is also my internet
Food: $400 — me about $300, or more if I’m splurging in restaurants a lot
Transportation: $300 — my average is about $50 which includes bicycle repairs, a bit of gasoline, and the occasional cab ride

Total $2,050 — me about 700-800 (not including treats, and recent big-ticket items such as cataract surgery, glasses, new mattress)