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Sometime back around 2012, I started to use the phrase “The New American Revolution” to refer to the local food-sovereignty movement. At the time, I knew of several farmers who had faced excessive government intrusion into their efforts to supply their customers with fresh local food, so the need for a “revolution” was and is real.

Recently, I have begun thinking of the “New American Revolution” in two additional areas as well: 1) household and community energy independence; and 2) the movement to dismantle systemic racism.

That’s all for the moment. Just a seed. I have just now moved my American Revolution flag to a more prominent location in my front yard.

Have you been feeling the need for a revolution? If so, are there any particular areas of life and “the system” that spark your revolutionary sentiments?

Trying to organize my thoughts for Jeff Brower’s County-level town hall this evening. My thoughts are long and rambley but I aspire to have a short sweet to-the-point message if I speak. Thank you so much Jeff (our County Council chairman) for organizing these forums!!

If any of the following is useful to you in your own communication with public officials, fellow citizens etc., please feel free to use it.

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We are all worried about water quality and water supply. One MAJOR leverage point for water protection is our landscaping norms and practices.

If we are serious about protecting our water supply, waterways, fish, manatees, other wildlife, and recreation, we URGENTLY need to halt our destructive, invasive landscaping practices.

I’m not attacking anyone’s private lawn or garden; I’m talking about what we do and the norms we promote on the OFFICIAL level, in our public spaces, with our tax dollars. (What we normalize sets a visual tone that then tends to naturally spread to homeowners and landscaping companies.)

People will always have differing aesthetic tastes (in landscaping, as in clothing and haircuts). But, what we do on an official level, with our tax dollars, needs to be grounded in scientific knowledge and ecological soundness, as opposed to just promoting a certain “look” that has no such grounding.

We have disrupted the natural water cycle, affecting rainfall patterns and aquifer recharge. We need to shift our landscaping emphasis from a sterile “neatness” to essential functions of heat mitigation, water infiltration, protection of soil, protection of wildlife. And we need to do this as a REGION.

The following simple things will make big improvements:

– Stop the Spray! (our soil and waterways are being poisoned by entities within our city, county, and state govts) (and yet it is an oversimplification to point the finger at these entities; the culprit ultimately is a more diffuse societal phenomenon — I often speak about the power of culturally defined aesthetic norms)

– Leave the Leaves! And stop with the cartoon orange mulch – use the fallen leaves themselves, pine straw, or other natural mulch (people are visual, and what we see in public spaces shapes our perception of what’s a normal healthy landscape)

– Cut Back on Cutting! (grass, palm fronds, other trees & shrubs). Except on areas in active use for ballfields, parking, picnic areas, etc., we should back off on mowing and allow large areas of what is now buzzcut turfgrass to revert to coastal meadow.

– Dim the Brights! (look into gentler lighting; bright-white LEDs can actually impair visibility as well as being disruptive to human sleep patterns, to wildlife, and to beautiful night skies (Dark Sky tourism is a thing!!) )

In terms of native landscaping: There are some nice exceptions such as here at Sunsplash Park, at the Kemp Street beach approach, and at Romano Park up in Ormond, but on the whole: Our public landscaping practices are self-destructive, fiscally insane, and aesthetically unappealing.

On City Island, as just one example, we spray herbicides around trees and on the rocks right next to the river. Creating ugly patches of brown, while poisoning the river. And we pay people to do this!!

Our neighborhoods and public spaces are being assaulted by chemicals and loud, fumey landscaping machinery. There’s a truck that literally goes through my beachside neighborhood spraying the sidewalks with a HOSE, just to kill plants that sprout up in the sidewalk cracks! The plants grow back quickly, but the chemicals go into our waterways and wreak longterm havoc.

Ocean Center’s landscaping is largely an embarrassment, with scalped palm trees and dyed orange mulch, and wide bland carpets of buzzcut turfgrass. (Except, The parking lot immediately behind Ocean Center isn’t bad; the little islands of trees & other vegetation have a natural feel.) Ocean Center is high-profile, needs to set a visual example of authentic landscaping.

Rather than city-by-city, or just county alone, We could really use a REGIONAL coordinated effort. We need a regional consciousness. The bioregional movement, which puts natural boundaries such as forests, wetlands, and watersheds before manmade political boundaries, offers one possible framework for us to use.

Regarding regional consciousness, a bit of a digression from landscaping: Re Ortona and Osceola elementaries: Shame on the county school board for pitting two neighboring cities against each other to create one huge school where half the kids will be forced to endure a long commute. And shame on us, citizens, for buying into this competition mentality where nobody was really the winner. One community loses its close-by school, while another gets a mega-school with an oversized eco footprint that’s going to cause all sorts of problems. Neighboring cities are not rivals; we are neighbors and our fates are bound up with one another. On what planet did we decide that elementary-school kids don’t deserve to go to school near their homes?

In conclusion, to emphasize: We need a regional consciousness, regional approach. And: Prioritize water. Without water, we have nothing else.

Those of you who know me, know that I usually tend to keep my comments positive. But, it gets frustrating to see people being paid and officially sanctioned to trash the natural environment we are fighting so hard to save! I get sick at heart seeing the trucks of the contractors, with their cute little logos that show pictures of the frogs and birds and other wildlife that are being killed by the chemicals we are putting into our waterways.

We all live downstream from somewhere, and we all live upstream from somewhere. We are all connected.

Through our human-centric landscaping practices, we are actually increasing the danger to OURSELVES as well as other life forms.

People. We humans are actually CHANGING THE RAINFALL AND TEMPERATURE PATTERNS. Stop and really let that sink in. If this isn’t insanity I don’t know what is. The extreme weather is a worldwide thing but we have to take charge of our regional part of it. The local water cycle in each place typically accounts for an estimated 40% of rainfall. If worldwide headlines about 120-degree temps in Canada; shellfish cooking in their shells in Vancouver; wildfires all over; the crazy snowpocalypse last year in Texas; a 200-mile tornado path in Kentucky; and so many other things I can’t even keep track of them let alone list them all — If all these headlines don’t wake us up, then we could just look out our own back doors, and talk to our local farmers and fishers and ranchers, and realize it. Individually we are mostly good and sane, but collectively I fear we have gone psychopathic.

I think that a really good focus for a taxpayers’ revolt (besides our continued subsidies for runaway sprawl) would be our intrusive landscaping practices. Like, we could just BACK OFF, and the air & water quality would probably improve overnight, and the manatees and fish would stand a much better chance.

(I hope someday to see our public spaces from parks to median strips covered with lush carpets of fallen leaves, a healthy tree canopy, and/or a multicolored blanket of wildflowers and tall coastal grasses!! Authentic landscaping creates a unique visual “signature” for a place. A visual identity that we don’t have to pay some marketing company to design! This unique visual signature can itself be a tourist draw, along with our waterways and wildlife.)

Photos show examples of a softer more natural approach to landscaping. (Except the final photo, which shows what excessive mowing and leaf removal is doing to the historic Pinewood Cemetery, one of the last remaining stands of oak and palmetto dune forest on the beachside.

“BOIL-WATER NOTICE, CITY-WIDE. NEXT 48 HOURS.”
“WATER SHUTOFF FOR UTILITY REPAIRS ON YOUR STREET.”

How many of us have seen announcements like these in the places where we live? Most of us, probably, at one time or another. Whether from the inevitable water-main breaks that happen in a city’s water system, or from natural disasters or maintenance needs or other causes, no town or city is immune to the potential for contamination or shut-off of its water system. Not even a city like mine, where I consider the utilities and public-works departments to be highly competent.

In my city right now, the boil-water notice was announced for 48 hours starting this past Monday afternoon. A water-main break had introduced air into the system, opening the way for potential pathogens to get in.

My city’s instructions call for bringing the water to a rolling boil for 2 full minutes, as a precaution to destroy potential pathogens.

Boiling sufficient water to meet a household’s drinking needs is a bit of an effort. As a rough rule of thumb, I allow a gallon a day per person for drinking and tooth-brushing:

1. “8 x 8” (eight, eight-ounce glasses of water per day for drinking — that is a half-gallon)(in summer, in hot climates, more may be needed especially by people working outdoors)

2. Use the remaining half-gallon per person per day for cooking, brushing teeth, making ice if you choose to make ice during a boil-water notice.

Electric kettles speed up the task of boiling. And, whether it’s in an electric kettle or a pot or kettle on the stovetop, those of us living in the rich industrialized world are fortunate to have access to quick means of boiling water and cooking food.

(In countries where people have to gather firewood for this task, and countries where access to safe drinking water is an ONGOING problem rather than just a temporary glitch, you can only imagine how difficult it must be for people. More about that has been mentioned in my book and on this blog.)

But although our fossil-powered appliances make it easy, boiling water in large enough amounts to meet a household’s needs still requires significant time and care. And waiting for the water to cool down enough to drink takes time also.

And buying bottled water is expensive, as well as supporting corporations that are pumping out our aquifers and generating mountains of plastic trash. I recommend never buying or drinking storebought bottled water unless you absolutely have to. The only bottled water I drink is bottles filled from my tap.

Water shut-offs and boil-water notices can happen anytime! My recommendation is for ALL citizens to be prepared, 24-7, for a water-supply disruption. Here are my suggestions:

• My NUMBER ONE easiest and cheapest suggestion, and my own number-one go-to!!! If you do NOTHING else, do this!!! Keep drinking water on hand at all times, stored in bottles such as large glass jugs, used wine-bottles, stainless-steel water bottles, etc. that you fill from your tap. Also for this purpose you can fill the large jugs that are used for water coolers; they hold 5 or 6 gallons. To prevent growth of algae (which according to my understanding is not toxic but it can be unappealing), keep this backup water stash stored in a dark location such as a closet, or cover the bottles with a towel, etc. As (I hope) you do with the canned goods in your pantry, use up the stored water periodically and refill the bottles with fresh water, to ensure you will always have fresh drinking water on hand. I always try to keep on hand a week’s supply for each fulltime resident of my household. At this moment we have 20 gallons on hand (not counting our stored rainwater which right now is at 400 gallons), which could be stretched to cover three people’s drinking and tooth-brushing needs for a week.

*Make sure all roommates/housemates and guests know where the backup drinking water is stored. Encourage your neighbors to adopt a simple drinking-water storage method as well.

*Extra Tip: If you cook vegetables in water during a boil-water notice, save the cooking water for use as a nourishing “vegetable tea” which can go toward meeting your drinking-water needs.

• More-expensive ($300ish?) suggestion but highly recommended and a great investment: Get your household a Big Berkey filter or equivalent. According to my understanding, they remove pathogens to the same degree as does boiling water. Do your own research by visiting the manufacturer website, calling them directly etc. But I personally know many people who use and trust the Berkey, and I myself trust it as well though I do not have one.

• Another more-expensive ($300ish) suggestion: Invest in a solar oven, which can be used not only for cooking food but also for pasteurizing water. My personal top choice which I have used since 2006 is the Global Sunoven, but many other brands exist and you can also build your own. Unlike a stovetop or electric kettle or wood/charcoal fire, a solar oven can be left unattended for hours or even days with no danger of fire, kettle/pot melting from being forgotten and boiled dry, etc. It’s nice to be able to walk away and attend to other chores and errands, knowing that Mr. Sun is beaming down all those fat, sunny, free photons for you pasteurizing your drinking water.

• Another higher-end measure is to collect rainwater in barrels. I use my collected rainwater for irrigation and showers, but would not hesitate to use it as backup drinking water in times of emergency (actually have done that for periods of weeks at a time as an experiment).

• Global Sunoven also sells a Water Pasteurization Indicator, WAPI ($12). This is a small, sealed, reusable tube filled with a waxy substance designed to melt when water has been heated to a sufficient combination of temperature plus duration for pasteurization (killing of pathogens) to occur.

• If you don’t have a WAPI, you can still use the duration + temperature method by using a thermometer such as a candy thermometer. The WAPI or candy thermometer method works whether you are heating water using a solar oven, stovetop, regular oven, wood cookfire, pot on your charcoal grilll, or whatever.

Temperature Plus Duration example times:
*Rolling boil 2 min
*150 degrees F (65 degrees C) 6 min

(A rolling-boil advisory is used because it gives people an easy way to see if the water is boiling, and stand there and time the two minutes. BUT, pasteurization can also be done at lower temps — you just have to allow more time!)

• SODIS: Solar Disinfection method. Put water into bottles and put it outside; UV exposure will pasteurize the water in a few hours. I once did this with raw river-water in Austin TX on a cloudy day just to test it out; I drank the water and was fine though I am not recommending that other people go to this extreme except in event of actual emergency with no alternative. But the info is good to have!! (I am looking up the time duration + sun combo info for you and will post it here)

For detailed info – visit a water pasteurization info page (see links below) or contact me directly; I have been doing household drills and teaching community classes with these methods and tools for years as part of everyday household & neighborhood preparedness.

Water is life! Keep your household and community safe with redundant water supplies and a low-tech, low-fuel pasteurization method.

Photos from my corresponding Facebook post: 1) stovetop kettle; 2) electric kettle (left); and emergency household water supply that is always on hand: tapwater stored in large glass bottles and stainless-steel bottle (right); (3 & 4) Global Sunoven being used to pasteurize drinking water at my home, which is also the headquarters of my grassroots community-servant organization Permaculture Daytona.

And, on my art page: This pretty trio of bottles decorates one corner of my office/studio-bedroom, while also serving as measuring devices that, together, contain about a one-day supply of drinking water plus a little extra for tooth-brushing.

Safety and sustainability is a community thing, and low-tech simple preparedness methods are our friend! Reliable, central city water supply is a great blessing, but supply disruptions happen even in the most well-managed systems run by the most caring and competent staff as we have in my city. Let’s all reduce our vulnerability to disruption of centralized supply systems, look out for each other and keep each other safe and healthy!! I offer talks and workshops on this and other essential topics for your congregation, neighborhood group, or other community. Any questions, please contact me anytime. I am here for you!

Added 12/19/21: Bonus fun water storage tips: Have different pretty bottles in each room. (In my bedroom I have a set of differently shaped wine & liquor bottles in shades of pale blue, to go with an oceanic theme.) Each household member could choose their own bottles to suit them. For young kids, use stainless steel or other non-shattering bottles rather than glass. Also for kids, you could turn the water storage operation into a fun practical math activity, including liter-to-ounce conversions, figuring how many 8-ounce glasses in a bottle, etc.

LINKS

• The WAPI: https://www.sunoven.com/product/water-pasteurization-indicator-wapi/

• A Summary of Water Pasteurization Techniques, paper by Dale Andreatta, Ph. D., P. E. A treasure trove of DIY info: https://sswm.info/sites/default/files/reference_attachments/ANDREATTA%202007%20A%20Summary%20of%20Water%20Pasteurization%20Techniques.pdf

• The SODIS method – info from CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/safewater/solardisinfection.html

As a child long ago, I loved fall leaves; loved how they looked on the sidewalk and how they carpeted the yards; loved how they whirled in the wind; loved their crunch underfoot. Loved their smell!

I loved them, but I also took them as an annual given.

Little did I know that I would one day come to live in a world where fallen leaves left on the sidewalks and yards would become a thing of the past — casualties of the “manicured landscaping” aesthetic. Or as I call it, BLAND-scaping, or land-SCRAPING.

An “aesthetic” that is turning the world sterile and ugly. An “aesthetic” that has people constantly expending labor and fossil fuels in a compulsive effort to “tidy up” the entire great outdoors as if it were their own living-room carpet! A “cleanup” compulsion that is dirtying our air and our waterways; destroying our peace and quiet; depriving us of curves and softness that would buffer the relentless hard straight-edges of asphalt and concrete; killing our leisure time; destroying the magic of the seasons.

Oh, and by the way, killing biodiversity and destroying the entire frickin’ biosphere. But, for purposes of this post, I’ll keep it simple and just stick with the beauty aspect.

Oh sure, we raked leaves back then. But we also always seemed to leave enough of them that sights like this were a defining visual of the fall season.

Today, in my seaside neighborhood in Daytona Beach, Florida, I came upon this magnificent sight. A SIDEWALK WITH FALL LEAVES LEFT IN PLACE!!!

WOW! I could not have been more surprised and delighted if I had encountered a carpet of rose-petals! I will never take the beauty of fallen leaves for granted again.

You can see photos by visiting the corresponding post on my DEEP GREEN Facebook page.

Photos 1 & 2: sidewalk in my neighborhood today when I was walking to the mini mart.

Photos 3 & 4: Micanopy Cemetery (Micanopy, FL), carpeted with fallen live-oak leaves. Feel the soft quiet beauty. (These photos I screenshot off of Google search results; these photos are by Ben Prepelka. I googled Ben Prepelka just now and found that he has a website where you can see more of his work and order prints. https://scenicusa.pixels.com )

Got a favorite fallen leaf story or image? Please share in the comments on the Facebook post if you like!

Any of you folks with a blog ever receive these emails from random people/websites? I used to find them annoying but have devised a happy new way of responding! This is about the fifth or sixth time now that I have responded in similar manner to such an email.

Who knows, maybe someday someone will take me up on it and pony up some cash! In the meantime, I feel I am finally standing up and defending my honor <wink>. Random Blog-groupie spammers, make an honest woman of me or begone! <gleeful laughter> #CrossMyPalmWithSilver

The letter

2021/12/14 12:14、Helen —- <last name left out as a courtesy; email addy and URL left out to avoid giving free publicity to random stranger asking me to link her content for free>

Dear Jenny,

Just following up one last time to make sure we don’t get missed in your inbox.

Is there anything preventing you from citing our guide to streaming services here on your page your page your page at Jenny Nazak?

I’m always interested in actionable feedback so please feel free to be candid.

Best wishes,

Helen
Helen —–
Outreach Manager

Don’t want emails from us anymore? Reply to this email with the word “UNSUBSCRIBE” in the subject line.
Incognito Mode LLC, 1013 Centre Road, Suite 403S, Wilmington, New Castle, Delaware, 19805, United States

My reply:

Dear Helen,

My current rate for advertising on my blog (I categorize link-sharing as a form of advertising) is $100 per week.

If my asking you to pay for a presence on my site sounds audacious to you, consider this: You were drawn to my blog for some reason! You found me, and you somehow find value in the idea of being mentioned on my site.

If this interests you, I can accept payment by PayPal at this email address, or I can take your credit-card number over the phone. (I can accept Zelle and CashApp too, but for security reasons I don’t make those available to strangers over the internet unless we have a realtime phone conversation first.)

Thank you for your persistent interest in my blog. I must say I have worked hard to build it thus far, and I plan to keep up my hard work, as I keep hearing from readers that it is making a difference in their lives.

Happy Holidays and all the best to you!

Jenny Nazak
DEEP GREEN book & blog
www.jennynazak.com

Itty bitty ZW project success!! I needed additional space to hang posters, cards, etc. in my adorable tiny bedroom/studio/office. My cabinets are not magnetic.

And my walls are made of impenetrable stuff that you can’t drive a nail or screw into (without masonry bit, power drill and other stuff I did not want to buy).

So … Awhile back I hit upon the idea of taking the tops of steel cans (from used-up cans of veggies — also the bottoms from Pringles potato chip tubes), mounting them onto the cabinet doors (by punching 2 holes in them and screwing them onto the cabinet w short screws), and then using a magnet to hold the desired paper or fabric object in place. Today I finally got around to it! Am loving my functional extra “wall space”!

Sometimes an itty bitty improvement like this can bring such a huge smile to my face!

Here’s a photo of what I did.

You could also do this by screwing the steel can parts or other magnetic metal directly into the wall, if you have walls that you’re able to drive nails or screws into.

Do you love tips like this? To get other practical creative ZW tips from people all over the world, check out the Facebook group Zero Waste, Zero Judgement.

Q: HELP: My kid is majoring in digital marketing and visual media! (Or art, or English etc. — insert “major that seems unstable from a parent’s perspective” here.)

A: Oh wow!! Visual arts and digital marketing can actually be a wonderful major right now!! — among the top skillsets for communicating the urgency of world problems and helping to effect change, help people and the planet.

Spoken as someone whose supposedly “useless” English Lit major and Sociology minor, and psych & marketing courses, and associate’s degree in commercial art back in the 80s, have all turned out to be PERFECT and exactly what I need for my work as an activist and permaculture teacher/speaker!!

And also, ask yourself: Is there a particular subject you would rather your child study? If so, what is it and why?