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I have a bad habit of scribbling notes on paper and then not remembering whether I typed them up or not. I kinda think that in this case I didn’t!

If you are on social media a lot, and especially if you are the admin of a group, you might get a lot of requests from people to share stuff. It could be a post about their own business thing, or it could be a post for the greater good such as an article about seed-saving, or protecting wildlife.

The natural inclination is to want to help the person, or people, or humanitarian cause, by sharing. But the volume of requests in your inbox (be it email, messenger, phone text or whatever) can get exhausting. A lot of the time it’s just a naked link, such as a link to a video with no explanation, so you’re supposed to click on the video and sit through it to find out what it’s even about.

Here are some tips I scribbled out one day when I was feeling overwhelmed by things in my inboxes that other people wanted me to share.

I. For those times you feel willing and able to share the content, you can streamline the process and make less work for yourself. Here are some tricks I’ve picked up over the years.

• Screen-shot and copy-paste for the win: Those fancy HTML/rich text newsletters we get in our inboxes from eco organizations and other worthy causes look nice, but can be a pain to try and share on Facebook or Twitter. Ditto for event invites that people send to your Messenger or phone text. My hack is to 1) take a screenshot, or screenshots, of the most powerful image from the email or message. (I usually don’t worry about taking the extra effort to crop the image; if it says TMobile and my phone battery capacity at the top, so be it.) Then 2) copy from the body of the email a short excerpt of what you see as the most essential text, plus (very important) the link to their website or event or whatever. 3) Open a post in Facebook or Twitter or wherever, and first paste the screenshot image you took, then paste the text and link. (If you paste the text and link first, Facebook or Twitter will end up displaying something that may not be the most powerful image from the email newsletter, and in fact may not be an image at all — might be just a line of ugly grey text. Keep visual control of the post and circumvent “default ugly link syndrome” by pasting the screenshot before you paste the text. If you forget and do it in the wrong order, as I often have, don’t worry, just scrap the Facebook post and start over.)

• Look for corresponding online presence: Sometimes it’s easier to just go directly to the person or org’s website and screenshot/copy-paste share from there, rather than trying to work with the email.

• Phone-text-to-self is your friend! This tip is for bloggers. When I’m copy-pasting an excerpt from a great article or email newsletter to this blog, I have learned to first paste the quote into a phone text to myself. Otherwise the 48-point font, yellow highlighting, and whatever other fancy HTML/rich text formatting the authors put into the website or email newsletter gets imported into my blog post and I can’t figure out how to get rid of it. Plain text is necessary, and I have found that the only reliable way to strip out formatting is by first phone-texting the excerpt to myself, and then copy-pasting from the phone-text to this blog. (Sssh, keep it quiet, or next thing you know we’ll have an “improvement” from the cellphone OS designers, allowing rich text formatting to be retained in SMS messages!)

• Note to people who send out email newsletters: Consider using just the default plain text of your email app, rather than all kinds of different font sizes, colors, etc. It’s actually a refreshing look! Author, speaker, entrepreneur Jeff Goins’ newsletter is my favorite example of an email newletter I always enjoy receiving, that uses plain text, often without even images. (You can still include photos and other images in a plain-text newsletter though. Of those who use photos/images, my favorites have only one or maybe two. Simplicity is so refreshing!)

II. For those times when you are not willing/able to take on the free labor of sharing:

• Message the other person back, “This is great stuff, really important and people need to know this! Please share it to the groups, not just to me!” (Sometimes fellow activists do this private-message thing; sometimes they just have a case of the shy’s and need a bit of encouragement to know that what they are sharing in your inbox deserves a much wider audience.)

• Don’t accept “naked links.” If someone sends you a link with no explanation, ask them to write a few words telling you their takeaways from it. I particularly do this a lot with video links. I’m not going to sit through a video just to get the main points to see if it’s worth sharing or not.

• Heads-up, if you are on social media a lot and dedicate a lot of your waking hours to activism, people might assume you are RETIRED or living a life of leisure. This has happened to me. I realized it’s on me to be more clear with people that I work fulltime and am not Richie Rich or Lola Leisure. Freelance yes, at-home (mostly) yes, but nonetheless I work fulltime. And even if I did not, my time and labor have value. As do yours! A good way of conveying our professional/occupational status is via our Facebook profiles, email signature lines, and so on.

• Share skills: If you come across any good online classes, magazine articles, TikTok videos, or other resources about how to post effectively on social media, share them on your page and in your activist groups. Same goes for basic computer classes and articles, if it seems like a lot of people in your network might just not know the basic nuts and bolts of a keyboard and operating system such as how to copy-paste, take a screenshot etc. Also I have found if I don’t know how to do something, google is my friend. I just type “screen shot ios” or whatever.

• Recognize the value of publicity: Social-media marketing, and writing, are two task categories that for whatever reason have become incredibly devalued. It’s ironic, because 1) these tasks are difficult and time-consuming to do well; and 2) I see so many good works and events and movements not getting the attendance or other awareness they deserve. Or people and organizations who should so totally know about each other and be working together have no clue about each other’s existence. Why? Because the owners/organizers didn’t take even the most basic steps to get the word out. If an event organizer doesn’t bother to do publicity, who should?

• Ask to get paid: If you find people turning to you a lot for help with publicity, you could consider becoming a social-media marketing firm and offering paid packages of services. I have sometimes thought of doing this but I’m pretty well occupied with other stuff.

• Ask for reciprocity: If you’ve gone out of your way to help someone get the word out about their thing, you could ask them to support your thing, be it by sharing your posts or donating money or signing up for your class or buying your product or Liking your page or whatever.

• (To use a permaculture design term): “Obtain a yield!” It’s OK to get something for your efforts other than just the warm fuzzy feeling of helping someone. So, for example, I’ll share someone’s link, quote their content, etc., on DEEP GREEN book’s Facebook page, Permaculture Daytona’s Facebook page, or my other pages. Their content is adding value to my page, and I am helping them by bringing their sweet juicy content to an additional audience. It feels like a fair trade! Also, people like recognition. I tag people or magazines or farms or whatever and praise their work (only if I sincerely mean it, of course), and often as not, the tagged person/org will stop by my page and say thanks, and sometimes also Like my page. Again, it feels like a fair trade.

Social-media sharing and other forms of publicity are more laborious than they might seem. By being more aware of this, and of how important publicity is, maybe we can shift the consciousness around this and share the publicity workload, to the benefit of us all!

These are just my tips; got any tips you’d like to share on this subject? If so, drop me a line, and also let me know if you’d like me to include your name, website, book title, etc. along with your tip. A bit of extra publicity never hurts, right?

As I write this, it is the Winter Solstice. The shortest day and longest night of the year. Rich, fertile time.

Also rich and fertile is my inbox (which I define broadly to include my newsfeed and the various periodicals I subscribe to). This week I’m trying something new: just posting links to some of the best articles I’ve read over the past week or so, rather than trying to do a different post on each very worthwhile topic I’ve come across. Just an experiment! If I like it, and/or if you my dear reader find it useful, I may do it again.

• Quote: “The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.” — Alfred Adler, via Inspiring Quotes email newsletter. Commentary from IQ: “Austrian psychiatrist Alfred Adler was among the early pioneers of family and group counseling. One reason for his 1911 break with compatriot Sigmund Freud was that Adler believed external factors, such as adult relationships and employment, should be accounted for when treating patients (whereas Freud thought behavior was largely fueled by biology and childhood events). While listening to people reflect on their place in society, Adler heard lots of trepidation. This motivated him to help individuals grow comfortable with risks, because adventures and unforeseen joys await those who say yes.”

• The other week I was among a dozen or so citizens who got to visit my city’s wastewater treatment plant for a tour of their demonstration testing system for direct potable reuse. This was a two-year pilot program to purify wastewater effluent through an advanced purification system. It was only a test, for preparedness purposes, but there has been a lot of public misunderstanding, amplified by people referring to it as “toilet to tap” and “poopy water.” Never mind that it was only a test; that the water was never actually sent out to the public and there are no plans to do so. Also, this technology is actually in widespread use, and has been for years, in many parts of the world including drought-prone areas of Australia and the Western US. My take on this is that it falls under the heading of civil preparedness, and that if we don’t want to have to rely on direct potable reuse, we need to stop wasting water. I also agree with what my friend the environmental-sciences professor, soil & water conservation official, and all-around superwoman said: Anyone who is living with a well and a septic is already drinking poopy water! (though we count on the few vertical feet of soil to be enough distance for adequate filtration, so ideally it is NOT poopy). And everyone who’s living on planet earth is already drinking recycled wastewater! But the fear and resentment about the direct potable reuse demonstration test persists. To provide more information on the subject, I searched and found this great article by Jacques Leslie at yale.edu: “Where Water is Scarce, Communities Turn to Reusing Wastewater.” Finally, if we don’t want to drink poopy water, we could … stop pooping into water! In other words, instead of crapping into the world’s very limited supply of potable water in the first place, we could use compost toilets, the waterless receptacles that are the starting point in a humanure composting system. It’s a low-cost, low-risk approach that’s in common use in many places. (See Joseph Jenkins’ The Humanure Handbook, the definitive manual on this topic.)

• “Why 1,320 Therapists Are Worried About Mental Health in America Right Now“
(Tara Parker-Pope, Christina Caron, and Mónica Cordero Sancho; nytimes.com). “As Americans head into a third year of pandemic living, therapists around the country are finding themselves on the front lines of a mental health crisis. Social workers, psychologists and counselors from every state say they can’t keep up with an unrelenting demand for their services, and many must turn away patients — including children — who are desperate for support.” (I see this mental-health crisis as one symptom of our societal brittleness and anti-resilience; our hyper-individualist society doesn’t really teach people good skills for navigating emotions or for coexisting in close quarters with other people. The pandemic was maybe just a very large straw that broke the camel’s back. Good article; I read it as a call to cultivate nurturing communities.)

• “SEED KEEPING ‘AN IMPORTANT PIECE OF RESISTANCE’: Philadelphia woman starting a Black heirloom seed farm” (Stephanie Farr; Philadelphia Inquirer TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE, published in Daytona Beach News-Journal). “‘A lot of my peers, their immediate thought was that Black people farming is just like slavery …’ But Mitchell’s mother also taught her that their people’s history didn’t begin with oppression and enslavement, that it had far deeper roots than that. I saw farming as an ancestral African practice that was exploited and this was a way to connect with those farmers even before they were enslaved and oppressed for it … And my instinct was correct – many Africans were enslaved purposely because of their agricultural knowledge and skill.’ For Mitchell, working with the land became a way to repair that trauma and to reframe farming as a ‘strategy of liberation.’ As she became more deeply involved in agriculture, Mitchell felt particularly called to seed keeping, the practice of not only saving seeds, but also preserving and passing down the stories of the cultures from which those seeds came. It’s an important piece of resistance.”

• “Flowing Towards Abundance” (Toby Hemenway, resilience.org; originally published on tobyhemenway.com). In permaculture design class when we learned about “stocks and flows,” I immediately realized why no amount of stockpiled money makes people feel secure. It’s the flow, the knowingness of nature’s flow, that brings real security. Article by the acclaimed author of Gaia’s Garden gives an excellent overview of stocks and flows.

• “Winter Storm Uri … What Went Wrong?” (Amy Stansbury; austincommon.org). Reflections on last winter’s deadly cold spell in central Texas offer lessons in energy preparedness, community resilience. Nice, highly readable graphic summary, with link to detailed report.

The most “micro” improvements in my space put the biggest smile on my face! Today, I suddenly realized that this little plywood tabletop (photo 1) could be set on top of my landscaping cart to turn it into into an instant easel for painting large signs and posters.

The plywood tabletop was made lovingly — look at the rounded edges! — by my Dad in the 1960s or 70s; and given a protective and decorative coat of paint by me a couple of years ago. The tabletop, together with a folding base of metal legs, were among the treasures that came my way from Mom & Dad’s house. Dad obviously made the tabletop to go with the foldable metal base, which may originally have been the base of a metal camp tabletop that broke or something. The tabletop and foldable base are very useful: easy to pack up for craft fairs, Earth Day events, and such.

The base of folding metal legs is narrow and makes the table sit pretty high, so it’s awkward for painting heavy, large-format items (though great for miniatures and other small projects I do). Which is why for large projects I hit on the idea of setting it on top of the landscaping cart which provides a lower wider base.

It’s funny how stuff can just sit around in my house or garage, fairly efficiently stowed (because that’s one of my obsessions), but then suddenly I’m struck by an idea for further optimization of space and uses.

To the right of the landscaping cart is my little bucket of landscaping tools, instantly at the ready to load into the cart for visits to my clients who are all in my immediate neighborhood.

I lived in Tokyo for five years, and lived in a 19-foot travel trailer for 10 years; those experiences have strongly influenced my design approach. An even deeper influence was my childhood, which included a rich diet of camping, travel (military family!), and learning how to be super portable and organized, and pare down to just the things that mattered most, and derive genuine joy from all that.

Other pics show:

• the latest in my ongoing efforts at finding a good way to hang up my bicycle (may not be a good longterm solution because even tho my little single-speed fixie is very lightweight, it might end up bending the garage door too much despite the fact that I put a “ground support” underneath it by stacking pallets).
• someone’s discarded, surprisingly new-looking fence that I use as a hanging wall for bicycle tire pump, helmet, mini artworks and other stuff.
• my various American flags, including both the regular one and a “76” one. Yes, I believe in my country, and I believe we can regain the DIY thrift, resourcefulness, and other sound attributes we were known for in the past. (Many of you have never stopped having those attributes!) (UPDATE: Flag images have been removed because 1) they ended up taking over a post that was intended to be about space design and personal expression; and 2) regardless of what I want our flag to stand for, the image is triggering to many people for good reason. The flag pics prompted a discussion that has formed the seed for a future post about why I display the flag. My reasons are complex, as the flag has been misappropriated in recent years by groups and causes that espouse attitudes and behaviors I consider anti-American and anti-human. When I say I believe in my country it includes a belief in our willingness to self-reflect and evolve.)
• my motorcycle, a little 2006 Honda Rebel 250 that I bought from a nice young man on Facebook marketplace. I have had it a couple of months since passing the mandatory FDOT course, and have derived much pleasure and a surprising lot of transferable skills from learning to ride.

Eco note: I have used about 2 gallons of gas so far; I expect to use about 25 gallons per year; and I account for this recreational hobby in my carbon budget. (If you are still feeling guilty or defiant or hopeless about your hobbies or other lifestyle aspects that don’t seem “eco-friendly,” you are missing one of the key points of my book and blog. Namely: We are allowed to have enjoyments! We don’t have to be pure and perfect! In fact, if we put out a “have to be pure and perfect” vibe, nobody is going to want to do low-footprint living!! The best way to get more people interested in radical reduction is to do it your way!! We need to show the world many examples of how it can be done without sacrificing pleasure and self-expression. In fact, I find in many cases that it INCREASES my pleasure and self-expression!

Deep-Green troops, thank you for your companionship on this challenging and exciting path! I am always here for you.

PS. If you like this post and want to support my work, please share it and check out my other content! Thank you.

Yesterday, on a street corner on a rural edge of my county, there was a Nazi demonstration. Yes, an actual Nazi demonstration. (I heard about it via a post by a fellow admin of one of the groups I co-admin; she in turn heard about it from a friend who took the pictures.)

After sitting with this for awhile, wondering what to do, I wrote an email to our county Sheriff, and CCed several local leaders and media organizations. The letter:

Subject: Nazi demonstration in Deland

Dear Sheriff Chitwood:

Thank you always for your dedication to rooting out evil in the world. You may already be aware of this Nazi white supremacist demonstration that happened yesterday in north Deland (corner of 17 and 15), but I’m alerting you just in case.

As you can see, along with the swastika, there are messages promoting white supremacy. Particularly disturbing is the one saying that “the only real Americans are white”!

I consider this an attack on our citizenry, including our own police force and city/county leaders. Historically, this kind of speech has been considered a gray area, with some court cases ruling that it is covered by the First Amendment, but others such as the landmark Skokie case of 1977 have ruled it “fighting words” and therefore not protected speech.

But even if it is legally allowed, is this who we are? Perhaps our various divisions of law enforcement and government would want to issue public statements deploring this kind of demonstration.

To me, this demonstration is an incitement. It creates an unsafe and putrid climate in our multi-racial, multi-cultural county and all the cities within it.

There may be nothing law enforcement can do to stop this kind of thing, but I wanted you all to have it on your radar. It is deeply disturbing to see on our very own streets this visual evidence of the same moral ill that our country fought against in World War II. It is even, dare I say, an insult to World War II veterans.

Thank you, and peaceful Happy Holidays to you and your department.

Jenny Nazak

Daytona Beach, Volusia County
(A city and county filled with, and proudly led by, many outstanding Black citizens and people of numerous other non-“white” categories of ancestry as well!)

The Sheriff responded:

We were well aware of this and had plenty of resources out there. While this is despicable and not who we are it is protected speech under the 1st Amend. It should be noted that with the exception of one person all participants were not from this County.

Hope this helps,
Sheriff Chitwood

And I replied:

Thank you Sheriff Chitwood; I am glad to hear you were aware and had resources deployed out there. Regardless of which county the participants were from, this happened on our soil, and we must stay vigilant.

And he replied to that:

WITHOUT A DOUBT.

*******

When something like this happens, one naturally feels at a loss for what to do about it; how to respond. It’s tempting to leave it for “someone else” to take care of; assume that “someone else” is already on it. But, if my fellow admin’s friend had not sent her the text and pictures, and if my fellow admin had not then posted them in our group, I might never have found out about this. So I realized that my letter was part of the “what to do about it and how to respond.”

My ancestry is whitey McWhiteface with an extra double supersized order of whiteness (I checked, and turned out to be even more “white” than I had thought.) If someone like me doesn’t speak up, I am allowing our public spaces to become more dangerous for all.

And finally, a note about “whiteness”:

A little while back, after the Black Lives Matter protests, I took some anti-racism trainings and did some readings. I read in “People’s History of the United States,” a bestselling and highly regarded book by Howard Zinn, that “white” is not actually a real race!

It was a construct created by wealthy land-owners in order to bust up the natural affinity that formed between the plantation workers (Anglo-European immigrant indentured servants, and the African people that the land-owning classes had kidnapped and enslaved).

Basically, as I understand it, the overlords fostered a “white” identity among the Scotch-Irish, English, and other indentured servants of Anglo-European ancestry, and gave them just enough petty little privileges to make them feel like a “superior” class to the enslaved Africans they had previously formed close associations with.

When I read that about the deliberate plot by the plantation owners to create division among the two groups of working people they ruled over, it really made a lot of sense and explained a lot! And resonated with my own observations and some other things I’d read.

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.

*******

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