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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?

Question I saw today in one of the food-forest groups: If you were given a plot of flat land (2 acres in zone 9B) to build a food forest, what would you do first?? Step 1, uno, very first plan of action.

My answer: What I would do, and what I have always advised my clients with this much land or more to do: Leave 90% (in this case 1.8 acres of it) wild and tree-covered. “Zone 5” as we say in permaculture design terminology.

Fit the house and mini orchard / food forest on 10 percent of the land — in this case 0.2 acres. Trellises, espaliered fruit trees, and other multi-functional use of vertical space, leaving most of the space for wildlife and native trees/plants.

(If the land was cleared and flattened and mowed by the previous owner already (ugh!), my condolences but all is not lost: Simply allow that 90% to revert to meadow. Assuming the land has not been doused with chemicals for years: Shrubs and trees, mainly native, will grow in succession more rapidly than you might think possible.)

Also: If the site is really dry & barren, or even just super flat and cleared/mowed, my “numero uno” step would be Bill Mollison’s advice on the first three things to do with a degraded piece of land: “Mulch it, Mulch it, Mulch it!”

The mulch can be any combo of wood chips, leaves, twigs. And even logs! All of which will break down and nourish the site and build back the soil biota. (In some permaculture design circles we refer to logs used in this manner as “nurse logs,” also known as the “poor man’s mulch”!)

I am deeply grateful to Ruth Friddle, a fellow permaculturist and fellow member of Transformative Adventures, for allowing me to run this gem as a “copy-paste guest post.” Thanks and much love to you Ruth! And, dear readers, I hope you enjoy this post as much as I do!

“Recently I listened to someone share their utter despair of the life they were experiencing: life-threatening illness, break-up of 20+years relationship. Another person shared their debilitating addiction to prescription meds and alcohol and the trickle-down effects those were having on their life. Someone else talked about the depth of loneliness and despair they were feeling from all the isolation and distancing they’ve been enduring for the past year and a half. They all said they were at rock bottom.

“The dreaded rock bottom, where all seems lost, all options gone, where everything seems to teeter on the edge of life and death. Physical pain. Mental and emotional anguish. Spiritual hell. I suspect we’ve all been to those places in varying degrees of intensity at different times in our lives. I certainly have.

“Hitting rock bottom sucks. There is no pleasure or joy in that fall, no moon-beams or unicorns as a booby prize once we’ve arrived. There is just this endless unknown that, more often than not, we fill with every worst-case scenario our thoughts can dredge up. Sometimes those scenarios playout. Sometimes they don’t. No guarantees.

“I’m not sure there are any answers, but lately, I’ve been wondering if maybe befriending the rock bottom we keep hitting might hold the relief we seek. Rocks have a lot to teach us: to listen, to be still, to wait in silence, to trust the solidity and strength the rock offers when we’re lying there, on our back, with no where to look but up.

“While hitting rock bottom is a terrifying and miserable fall, maybe rock bottom itself, is the safest place to be. Maybe being on that rock solid foundation makes everything else just clouds in the sky, coming and going. Clouds that may demand our attention but can only be wisely dealt with from the position of rock bottom. Everything is much clearer when you’re at rock bottom. You’re not lost in the clouds of thoughts, trying to figure it all out. You’re resting on that unchangeable place that allows for complete surrender because there’s no where else to go.

“However horrifying it might be to sometimes suddenly find ourselves there, I wonder….could it be that the dreaded rock bottom, once we’re there, is actually the best seat in the house?”

And my comment: Yes Ruth. My experience concurs with your observations. I hit an extreme rock bottom some years back that further turned out to be a trap-door to a cascading series of rock-bottoms. At one point when I really thought I was well and truly done for, I took a deep breath and decided to try to befriend it, and the relief came almost immediately — and always thereafter when I was willing to befriend it and learn from the rocks. It has ended up bringing me so many riches. I now know how to surf or navigate the rocks, so when it hits again as I am sure it will, I will be ready. This is one example of anti-fragility. Thank you Ruth for this deeply insightful and beautifully written post.

‪Ummmm … Yeah … this bathroom is BIG, all right! What IS the vast cavernous space in the middle supposed to be used for, I can’t imagine. Pre-bath ballroom dancing lessons or yoga classes, maybe? Or a helicopter landing pad (if you opened up the ceiling)???

Sometimes I feel like an alien in my own country. USA – we do things big! ‬

Building choices are a huge factor in the eco footprint of modern industrialized humans. Not only do the materials themselves have a footprint, but the finished building itself has an ongoing energy footprint (for heating and cooling of air, mostly).

Note, I’m not saying big houses can’t be eco-friendly! One of the most eco-friendly ways to live is to have a multigenerational household, or share a house with several friends. (“Golden Girls” style.)

What I am saying is that we shouldn’t build huge spaces just because they convey an image of opulence. And we need to be deliberate in our design; avoid needless use of space and materials.

When I was growing up (in the 1960s and 70s), my Mom had a phrase “wretched excess” that she’d use for extravagant displays of wealth. The things she labeled with that phrase were a lot less wretchedly excess than a lot of the bathrooms and kitchens I see advertised nowadays for middle-class homes!

And an afterthought on the mega-bathroom: Another thought I had was that maybe this huge space is deliberately designed for maneuvering a wheelchair or hospital-style bed into the bath area? Although the narrow entry door would seem to preclude that.

Tough talk for fellow environmentalists: If we want a society powered by clean renewables, WE as individuals must take the lead; we must demonstrate via our own lifestyles that it is possible to live on little enough energy to not need fossil fuels or nuclear. Not only possible, but liberating and life-enriching.

If we don’t do this, we have no business being outraged or even surprised to see fracking & pipelines desecrating the land; government and corporations exercising deadly determination to mine fossil fuels. We “greens” need to take leadership via our own lifestyles. Make Ultra-Low Footprint Cool!

How low can we go?