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A friend/colleague in Texas just posted that they have hit the road in search of places to cool off. Typically for people that tends to mean the mountains – Colorado etc. — Or at least someplace that’s not 900,000,000% humidity.

So in a little bit of a spirit of impishness, as well as fully legitimate red carpet of friendship and wish to show off my gem of an adopted hometown, I’ve offered the below comment. (I also belatedly noticed that I offered this in the spirit of bioregionalism, wanting to help my fellow hot-climate-dwellers find ways to cool off and get a change of scenery without having to escape the basic prevailing summer essence of heat.)

Well I wouldn’t call it cool exactly, temperature-wise, but you’re welcome to cruise out here to Daytona Beach; our house and low-footprint living lab has a little guest bedroom.

And the ocean just a couple minutes walk down the road is a cooling dip, and you can check out our passive cooling measures at the house, and explore some really cool history and architecture and cultural attractions in this very cool groovy adopted city of mine! You’d be most welcome! ✌️☕️🌊🌊🌊

This was prompted by a new friend showing me some of her daughter’s artworks. They are utterly spectacular. (This new friend somehow feels like a long-lost additional twin sister to me, even though she’s like 20 years younger and we just met! I say “additional,” because I have another “non-biological twin sister”; she lives on the other side of the country and is my same age.)

Also, one of my own nieces — a daughter of my biological, birth-family sister — is an incredibly talented artist (as well as being very gifted in science) and could probably benefit from the same peptalk (although this channel probably won’t reach her). Side note: My other biological niece is amazing and brilliant too. And they both have such deep kind hearts.

I’ve spoken before to my fellow Boomers about the ecological damage caused by steering our youth toward the conventional extractive-economy occupations in the name of “stability.”

But there is also deep-seated personal emotional damage, as well as a planetary opportunity cost, for not explicitly encouraging and nurturing and fueling a young person’s passion for the arts if that is where their calling lies.

Anyway, this is what I said to my new friend:

“I feel this so strongly I can’t really fit it into a text but I have to try — [Daughter’s name]’s artwork is absolutely spectacular and I do believe she and others will change the world by sticking with their art and considering it a valid occupational path. Too many young people have been talked out of being who they were meant to be. People your age and my age as well. I was one of the lucky ones who managed to escape although it came at a penalty.

For what it’s worth, my art is nowhere near as good as your daughter’s or my biological niece’s (my main thing is really writing) — and yet it has paid my rent in some years!

I want to encourage the precious young people to trust their art as a livelihood and a tool of liberation. Personal and planetary.

Just a mini glimpse inside the house to show the atmosphere from passive cooling techniques such as shades on the windows. The rain over the past few days has cooled down the house a lot, it was like 73° inside of here last night. But I’m afraid our rain chances are getting burned away, i see the thick clouds from this morning are burning off — BUT im still hoping & praying! I hope we still have our rain window today — there is some chance according to my app.
Anyway! If your house or apartment doesn’t have awnings or fancy shutters, never fear, there’s all sorts of DIY stuff like what I have at our house. Most of this fabric wasn’t even purchased at the thrift shop, it was free. Because people are always throwing stuff away.

For more extended content like this, including super high-quality shares from the top experts around the world, Please follow my public page DEEP GREEN book by Jenny Nazak. And to those of you who have already been following, my heartfelt thanks and appreciation!

There is a wide range of content posted there and yes some of it is very political but it’s really easy to scroll to the posts that you want to focus on. The posts on flood control, restoring the hydrological cycle, growing food in cities, building sponge cities, co-creating neighborhood resilience and so on are pretty obvious and stand out. The scroll function is our friend as always! Love you guys and have a great day.

PS. I don’t know why these darn things always end up starting with my face, I try to show pretty trees and books to start the video but it always ends up starting with some dorky expression frozen on my face lol. Oh well, hopefully this will motivate more people to navigate their shyness and put out their message to the world.

PPS. In the video I said sorry for my ugly wrinkly face. But I actually don’t believe that in real life. I quite honestly am happy with how I look! But some thing about seeing myself on video just brings out some other squicky reaction in me. I think it’s probably the feeling that one is obligated to self-monitor one’s facial expression and the angle of the light — an obligation which is very counterproductive to spontaneity and flow and sharing information. The same thing comes up when I am trying to give a public talk via zoom as opposed to in person. And I’m only doing them by zoom now for various reasons so it does come up.

PPS. Update 11:30 AM: it actually ended up starting to sprinkle and then the raindrops got fatter and it’s now fat gentle rain. Very nice and sweet on this Monday morning! Keeping the house cool down and that will be possibly a fourth totally sweat-free night even under my extreme “low-footprint living test laboratory” conditions of zero air-conditioning and zero electric fans!! (The housemates & guests can use electric fans in summer, and little space heaters in winter, if they choose.)

Unfortunately I posted this video on my personal page which I don’t share publicly. And I don’t seem to be able to download it and then re-upload it to my public page. If I do, I will post the link here so you can watch the actual video.

Exciting news at the tiny tiny dune wildflower gardenette that is both the smallest and yet the most high-profile landscape on my route.

Last night’s transplant of several blanket-flower babies (Gaillardia pulchella) that sprouted up from cracks in the sidewalk in front of my house has been successful! There’s a certain watering technique for nurturing these gorgeous hardy wildflowers through the transplant stage (thanks Amy for teaching me!) and it has been helped by some additional rain!

One of the blanket-flower plants was in bloom when I carefully eased it up from the sidewalk crack and brought it to this micro-site down the block, and When I stopped by this morning for follow up, I see the beauty has remained in bloom this morning!

The other, smaller babies look healthy too and will probably be producing buds and blooms in a matter of weeks.

#BeachsidePride #PuffyLandscaping #DuneVegetation #SpongeCity #OceanFriendlyRiverFriendlyYards #MakeBeachsidePuffyAgain

PS. Social media technique note: The final image is a montage that I made by screenshotting these shots in my iPhone app. There was one image I didn’t want to include in there so I put the green heart over it. See the post with photos on my deep green Facebook page here.

YES YES YES YES YES!!!!!! Woooooottttt!!!
Mega score today at JoAnne’s little unofficial “members club” produce market!
Yes it is that ever so rare (nowadays) of delicacies, the venerable and delectable seeded watermelon!

Later I will scatter the seeds in the yard so they can stay out in the wild and maybe make baby watermelons! 🤣🤣🤣

And yes Even in the very unlikely event that I manage to grow an actual watermelon in my own yard, which I have never managed to do, I will still always keep buying seeded watermelons from watermelon truck guys, farm market vendors, and other local people who sell them, because we need all the watermelons we can get!

Not only do we need delicious juicy watermelon to sustain us all summer long, but then (if we have extra) dried to enjoy as a fluffy melt-in-mouth candy in the winter!

And — in my humble opinion, and in the opinions of many other people I’ve heard — seedless watermelons just do NOT taste the same. Plus if we get to a point where all the watermelons are seedless, how will we grow any more watermelons? 🤣🤣🤣😯😲

In the event of a military siege by our own rogue government, watermelon has many strategic uses 😀
Just being silly w that last sentence there, but OTOH maybe it does! 🤔💚🍉🍉🍉

Sometimes Murphy’s Law works backwards in a good way! As a last-ditch effort to promote rain, I put some fish and potatoes and veggies out to cook in the solar oven before I set out for my noontime cold delicious beverage break at my neighborhood pub.

When I walked out of the pub it was raining! Woooootttt!! It has continued to rain! The air feels so yummy right now.

And Contrary to usual Murphy’s Law operation, when I got home from the pub, my fish and potatoes and vegetables were fully and deliciously cooked! This is what I mean by Murphy’s Law reversed ha ha

Snapshot from a few days ago, cooked a big stack of waffles in my little outdoor micro kitchen.

Never thought of getting a waffle maker, this just got dropped off on top of my little free library a while back (not something I encourage — and actually i have had signs up asking ppl to please only drop off books please, and ONLY on the shelves — but inevitably items other than books get dropped off there), in a boxed set with a book on how to make waffles! I’ve been having a lot of fun.

I wasn’t going to keep the fancy boxed set at first, I was going to take it to the church as a donation — but then I realized it could help me gain some additional cooking skills that I could share w the community. I’ve learned and practiced and improvised all sorts of fun variations on waffle mix.

And sure enough, the other morning I got to cook a stack of waffles for a hungry passer-by!

Now that I’ve ramped up my skills, I may purchase a larger waffle maker in order to serve the community better, and pass the cute little single waffle maker on to someone who needs it. And will add the book to the little free library shelves. It was a great book for getting started!

PS. I have been unintentionally receiving a lot of lentils and other beans from the food donation industrial complex waste stream (way more than i and my household can ever eat), so those fabulous protein units will be going to make more high protein waffles to nourish the community. 🥰🥰🥰🥰