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jenny’s corner October 2024

As I cannot attend City Commission this Wednesday, I’m writing what would be my comments. I’ll keep it within the citizens’ comment time of 3 minutes.

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Good evening everyone!

First, let’s talk about Flooding. As I’ve said repeatedly over the years, our landscaping practices are directly undermining stormwater absorption and heat mitigation!!!

For brevity’s sake I’ll share just two examples.

One: Leave the leaves. We need to leave the leaves under the oak trees (and other trees). A tree is a powerhouse stormwater pump, and heat mitigator. Protect their root systems, and the soil, by leaving the leaves and not mowing under the trees.

On that note: The standard for an empty lot needs to be trees and shrubs, or a tallgrass-and-wildflower meadow, not buzzcut turfgrass. There are ways to keep people from trespassing on empty lots without turning them into denuded moonscapes that can’t absorb stormwater.

And two, the Sabal palm, our state tree. We need to stop mutilating the Sabal palm tree. This is a costly and unnecessary practice. Sabal palms in their natural state provide massive canopy and stormwater diffusion.

Mayor Henry, I’m grateful that your father was able to earn a good livelihood and raise such wonderful citizens by being a palm tree trimmer.

But our knowledge has evolved over the decades, as has the severity of heat and flooding. Our landscaping practices need to evolve accordingly.

We can’t point to one culprit of heat and flooding. It’s a worldwide result of the first world’s relentless consumerism. But what we can do, here, is prioritize tree canopy and lush vegetation. Every square inch counts! It’s a matter of life or death.

Our city and region can either be a healthy sponge, or a clogged bathtub. Drains can only accomplish so much. We also need pumps. Trees are great pumps because they pump water back up into the air and help restore a healthy rain cycle.

As part of becoming a sponge city, we need to prioritize expanding our knowledge base of arborculture and horticulture.

Landscaping is green infrastructure. It’s a lucrative career path, with many opportunities for local people to feed their families and lead a fulfilling life of service in partnership with nature.

We need people to be more than just grass-cutters, tree-cutters, and leaf-blowers. And we need to invest in their training accordingly.

Regarding homelessness. We won’t solve homelessness by being heartless. For example, preventing people from sleeping in public places. If a person can’t sleep in a public park or on the public beach, where can they sleep???

While we keep steadily working to solve homelessness, we at least need to let people sleep.

Public toilets are an issue as well. We need public restrooms all around town, open 24-7, with paid attendants. This helps all of us. After all, even rich people have to use the bathroom.

This is a city where we invest in human services, and it’s a city where we practice our spiritual faith. Let’s do this.

This is a post I made just now to my Permaculture community. I’m sharing it here as well because it’s relevant to my DEEP GREEN community as well. And because it may be helpful to others who are experiencing similar.

#CareOfPeople #ZoneZeroZero #InnerLandscape

Dear Florida permies,

The other day, right after the hurricane, I said something awful to someone in our permaculture community.

I responded to a post they made on their personal page, and gave advice that was totally out of place, presumptuous, shaming, and rude, and not knowing anything about their circumstances. My advice was supposedly coming from care of the earth, but I showed zero care for this fellow human being.

The person was understandably angry and messaged me calling me out. Subsequently, my apology was horrible as well, and just added insult to injury. And my apology was understandably not accepted.

My inappropriate comment was part of a stubborn pattern that I’ve been working on in myself. Giving advice that’s supposedly about care of the earth (permaculture design ethic #1), but fails to show care for people’s circumstances or emotions (care of people and all other living beings, permaculture design ethic #2).

Not only do I feel regret for speaking out of turn at a person who’s a fellow permie and a truly beautiful soul, but just in general for treating a fellow human being unkindly.

I have reflected deeply and processed this incident so as to avoid causing this kind of harm again to anyone.

I am keeping this post general and anonymous on purpose. Just wanted to confirm that I am accountable to this community and will always strive to make amends and do better.

If I ever hurt any of you, in any way, I will do my best to take ownership and make amends.

With love for all of you, and for Mother Earth and all of Her creatures! I hope you are all hanging in there after the storm. Please post in this group any time if you need some help or support. Even if it’s simply a listening ear.

You may have heard the phrase “Leave the leaves!” It’s become very popular in the past few years, as this awareness is spreading.

After a hurricane is a perfect time to start putting this into practice! If you have an oak tree or other tree in your yard, please just let the leaves stay!

If you’d like, you can rake them into a nice neat circle under the tree. And then for extra definition, you can add a border around the circle of leaves, using bricks or rocks if you have them, or else make a rustic circular border using the downed branches of the tree. It’s a beautiful way to keep valuable organic matter on site.

it’s really sad to walk around after a storm seeing bags and bags and bags of leaves lined up on the sidewalk as far as the eye can see. All those big plastic bags going into landfill, ugh!

And then on the other side of the sidewalk, some poor tree has the ground scraped bare under it. It’s better for the tree if we leave a circle around it, that has the leaves remaining and is free of mowing.

A tree’s own leaves are the best mulch for a tree! Totally cost-free, how cool is that!

Also, as we’ve been learning from the “leave the leaves” memes, leaf litter supports insects such as caterpillars that are an essential protein source for baby birds. And of course, the caterpillars that don’t get eaten grow up to be butterflies! Win win!

Also, when we don’t scrape the ground and mow it super tight, the ground has a much higher capacity for absorbing stormwater.

Be lazy! Slack off for Mother Earth! Leave the leaves!

Taming your #HouseholdWaste !!!
Video duration 6:33
mini workshop about minimizing household trash

I turned a typical USA American single person one or two days’ worth of trash into basically zero trash! (Thank you to the friend who allowed me to use their trash as an example of what’s possible.)

The practices I mentioned here are not only helpful for the planet, but also great for your household for numerous reasons. For a couple of examples, it keeps food out of the trash which reduces smells, reduces the weight, and reduces the bulk.

This becomes valuable in a whole other way in the wake of a hurricane or other disaster, when landfills can be closed and trash removal services can be suspended. It’s helpful emotionally, not just physically. Because if we don’t feel dependent on someone to come deal with our trash, we don’t feel so vulnerable and helpless.

This works for many other things as well. Please stay tuned for other installments in this series.

#PermacultureHomeEc #ZombieApocalypseWatchParty #DoomerBoomerDomesticScience #DEEPGREENresilience #RiotForAusterity #HouseholdWaste #DisasterPreparedness

Excerpt from my upcoming book CONSTRUCTIVE LAZINESS: How to help Mother Earth and all Her creatures by slacking off and doing as little as possible:

“People who feel like they URGENTLY have to clean up hurricane debris from their yards, when the wind hasn’t even died down all the way; and furthermore, who side-eye their neighbors for not jumping to it fast enough … I think those people seriously need a new hobby.

“The whole compulsion to start ‘cleaning up’ right away, it’s so uptight and Puritan. A bit of wholesome laziness is surely in order!!”

What the throwback memory is about:

This morning after a night of vivid dreams (like I hear a lot of you have been having vivid dreams as well), I woke up with a memory from 2006.

From March thru September 2006, I attended a six-month eco school in New Mexico. (I was living in Austin at the time, in a little travel trailer at a beautiful urban paradise of an RV park. I rented out my trailer to a friend while I was in Santa Fe.)

The application form for the school, one of the questions was an essay question asking applicants to project into the future, and what we envisioned our role would be regarding climate change, community and so on.

In my essay, I was running an emotional support center for people struggling to cope with climate change and biospheric collapse.

Services included: Emotional support, physical resources, permaculture education, practical training, mutual aid. And games, and crafts. And just being there for people.

And this morning when i woke up with that memory in my heart, I was like, oh yeah, that’s this house! That’s what this house is all about. Now, I’ve always known that’s what this house is all about. And furthermore that’s the main reason why I even came to Daytona Beach. From Austin, a place where I also was able to contribute to the permaculture/resilience knowledge base & community before being called here.

But, I had forgotten all about that old future projection essay from 2006, and it was sort of comforting and validating to remember it this morning around 5 when I got up.

I am here to serve! I wish I were a better version of me, but I will keep striving to be that. I get that we are all works in progress.

That said, I really really want us to get very serious and step up our game to do some simple things to help mitigate the stress we are putting on the planet.

I’m going to become more vocal in the wider community; I have struggled with my messaging and all that. Sometimes bad messaging can totally undermine an effort. But I just have to keep working on it.

I am sad sometimes and angry with myself, because I have not been communicating the urgency of things as effectively as I would have liked. And nowhere near as effectively as the level of crisis calls for.

Love you guys always! It is an honor to serve both locally and globally.

If you want to support my efforts to get the word out, please like and follow my Facebook page DEEP GREEN book by Jenny Nazak and blog www.jennynazak.com

Note, not all of the posts are for a civilian audience, so if a post seems too extreme, just know that it’s probably not meant for you, and please just feel free to take what you need and leave the rest.

I am always trying different ways of expressing things so that I can reach more people. My goal is to help the planet — our spaceship & life-support system — but also to help people be more secure and less vulnerable (emotionally, spiritually, and economically).

— jenny nazak, eco educator and community activist, community servant, earth soldier

Stirring up xenophobia, racism, transphobia, homophobia is straight out of the fascist playbook.

Hitler rose to power when people felt economically threatened. And when people feel economically threatened, many people (particularly people who don’t have strong community and/or have not learned ways to process their fear and other emotions) seek scapegoats and authoritarian strongman rule.

Sound familiar? Sounds like we’re living a repeat of that.

It would be good if people could take a deep breath and acknowledge their economic anxiety and we could work together on policies that will reduce extreme income inequality and extreme wealth inequality, address the housing affordability crisis, and address other factors that are causing people to be in such economically dire straits.

I’ve heard it said that fear is the mind-killer. (I searched, and it turns out this is a quote from Frank Herbert’s science-fiction novel Dune.)

But, fear is nonetheless a normal and healthy human emotion. In some cases a lack of fear can actually be pathological and lead us into danger.

I have found that it’s good to acknowledge my fear. Speak it out loud and-or write it down as needed.

And then, use the mind-centering techniques I have learned and practiced over the years. I highly recommend that everyone develop a toolkit of simple, quick mind-centering and grounding techniques. There are lots of good ones out there. If you want some suggestions, feel free to get in touch.