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Response to a post by a fellow activist celebrating their acquisition of an E350 camper van as mobile affordable dwelling.

Mobile affordable housing! On this subject of affordable, I bet there are some ways to tweak the engine to optimize gas mileage, although I am not familiar with that terrain. Maybe the 350s already are pretty affordable to run.?

I always say to myself that if I’m going to live in a van, I would try to find a strip down one of those E150 basic contractor vans. Not sure what their mileage is either.

Anyway, always love your posts, and happy new year to you. May massive growth in the affordable housing ecosystem be a part of 2025!

Another piece of the picture can be, how do we find/create more places where people can park without being hassled by law enforcement?

Normalize legal, safe, by-right parking for van dwellers and other mobile dwellers!

Even if I look at it from a hard-core ruthless fiscal-conservative standpoint, it makes sense. Seems like it’s a lot more fiscally prudent to provide bathrooms and showers and a safe parking area, than the over-policing alternative which brings in all sorts of costs and messy problems.

But then again if we legitimize that this is a real valid need that society, municipal govts etc can easily accommodate, the “respectable citizens brigade” doesn’t get to wield its toxic shaming social norms against mobile-dwelling people, and the prison-industrial complex doesn’t get to make massive amounts of money.

So … that is another obstacle for likeminded people to dismantle!

I talk with my neighborhood group and city about this kind of thing a lot, and I’m hoping we may be building a little bit of support. At least a couple of my neighbors agree that we should be setting up safe, free (or super cheap like $2-5 a night, or pay what u can) campgrounds in every neighborhood.

The perimeter of the parking areas could be planted lushly with fruit trees and vegetables. Etc.!

It could even be a fixed address, with a mail kiosk: little mailboxes for each parking spot.

Just a few thoughts. I would love to hear more. I picture it being a flourishing part of the local economy and society. A hotbed of teaching, skill sharing, etc. I definitely see the housed population getting involved in mutual sharing of resources.

BTW there is a very big group on Facebook called Car Camping. Pretty sure it started out just as people recreational camping, but a lot of people living in their vehicles have joined the group as well. It’s mostly a very productive exchange, but there is some definite class warfare in there, and a lot of the conversations offer opportunities to reset the social norms.

Photo: New Year’s sunrise on the beach down the street from my house. Which is beautiful, but very lacking in public toilets. They have either been taken away, or have restricted hours.

(On this note, I would like to never have to teach a workshop on how to pee in public without getting arrested. And how to poop in public in a sanitary manner without getting arrested. Right up there with how to sleep in public without getting arrested. But at the rate things are going, I don’t hold out much hope that I won’t someday sooner rather than later feel compelled to give such workshops. It shouldn’t come to this though.)

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I am inspired by Caitlin Johnstone, The Grateful Dead, and others who have happily and generously shared their creative and cognitive abundance. But I recognize that this level of sharing is not an option for everyone.

When I say content, I refer to all of my writing, as well as my artwork (drawings, paintings, photos etc.).

You are free to share my work electronically, or in print form. This means you can print out my stuff, be it writing or art. Not only for your own use, but you are also welcome to sell it. Please just include the attribution of using my name, jenny nazak.

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If somehow you end up making a squillion kabillion dollars on my content, well, congratulations! That’s a lot more than I’ve been able to do. While it’s beyond my control how you would use that money, I trust you to use it in ethical ways. Don’t be buying up houses and hoarding them. Don’t be gentrifying places. Don’t be oppressing your business partners or employees. Don’t be doing a jet-set cruise lifestyle. Use the money to finance your activist and creative endeavors, with the intent to create a compassionate and abundant world for all humans and all other species.

I wish you a happy end of the old year and start of the new!

“Lights” has often been used as a popular shorthand term for electricity. Illustrating the value and importance that people place on illumination when no natural light is available.

In some countries, schoolchildren don’t even have lights to study by.

Personally, I think that kids shouldn’t be forced to stay up late like that, because kids learn much more quickly than we give them credit for, if we get out of their way.

And many studies have shown that staying up late with artificial lighting isn’t good for human bodies in general.

But, the fact remains that people need lighting in various situations.

As I wrote in my book, lighting need not have a high energy footprint, if we use it with discernment. Even a plain old incandescent bulb 100 W doesn’t have to add up to much, if we minimize its use to the bare essential. A lot of times in the rich Global North, we use lights when we actually don’t need to have lights on. It’s a social norm mainly.

(This does not apply to people living in apartments or other dwellings that simply do not have adequate natural light even in the daytime in some cases.)

For me, one of the major benefits of minimizing use of electric lighting is aesthetic, as I prefer natural light. Minimizing use of lightbulbs doesn’t make much of a difference on our electric bill.

another benefit is reduced sense of vulnerability. I simply don’t care about lights when there’s a power outage. I’ve been doing it for so long and I’m very used to it, but for some people, it can be very scary when there are no lights available.

The usual ways to deal with this unnerving situation are to have candles, and back-up battery-powered lamps. Nowadays there are lots of cool rechargeable lanterns, some of them rechargeable by the sun.

I also recommend oil lamps. I have a little collection of vintage ones. (SAFETY NOTE: If you are new to oil lamps, please read the label of the fuel container very carefully. Some lamps and fuels are not suitable for use in enclosed spaces. I use a specialized lamp oil for indoors.)

Some other ways to reduce dependency on electric lighting include going to bed when it gets dark (not an option for everyone’s work or school schedule); and using night time for phone visits with friends, watching TV, or other things that don’t require light. Again, it’s a social norm. People don’t usually think about it, but we don’t need to have the lights on when we’re just having a phone chat with a friend. Or sitting out on the porch with a neighbor. Or watching TV or videos, whether on our phone or computer or a regular TV.

If you have kids or grandkids, you could even do a camp-out, either outside or in the living room! I’ve heard lots of people enjoy pitching a tent in the living room.

Lights at night are a thing that humans have always valued. The original version was probably the good old campfire. Not only for safety, but also for community. I doubt that I will ever do without lights, especially at night, but there’s a certain freedom from being able to think of electric lighting as optional.

Of course, an environmental-justice aspect of this is that we need to make it a priority that all dwellings have adequate natural lighting. Many do not, and thus the residents depend on electric lighting even in the daytime. This jacks up people’s electric bills and also is just not very pleasant.

It’s always painful for me to see people in such distress during the power outages that inevitably accompany hurricanes and other storms. Minimizing our dependency on electric lighting is something that can benefit us all.

during and after last summer’s storms here, I became more keenly aware of how we the public have given the electric power company a huge blank check. It’s like we’ll pay them anything just to turn the lights back on. Hundreds of electric power workers were even brought in from out of state. This had to cost a fortune, and ultimately the ones footing the bill will be us.

It’s not a secure or safe position to be in. The power companies can jack up the rates anytime, and most people are all too willing to go along with it. Maybe if enough of us are able to reduce our dependency, they won’t feel so free to constantly jack up our base rates, tack on “storm recovery fees,” etc.

Response to an invitation from a reader/listener, to visit their rural land “if you’re wanting a little time to yourself in the Wild”:

Thank you for the invitation. I’m not big on solo venturing into the wild these days, and also I’m not likely to make it out there unless the public-transportation infrastructure changes radically. But I appreciate your kind hospitable offer just the same.

It would be nice if rural areas in Florida felt a bit safer for people on foot and bicycle, but they really don’t.

Also, maybe Amtrak or Greyhound would consider adding a stop in {tiny rural Florida town on a river}. However, the trend seems to be in the reverse direction these days, as many towns are losing their stops.

Even St. Augustine, a sizable city and tourist destination, lost its Greyhound stop at some point while I wasn’t looking. Very disheartening. Maybe if more of our fellow environmentalists over the years had supported public transportation instead of accepting the relentless creep of suburbanization and car-dominance, we wouldn’t be in such dire straits.

We don’t have a time machine at our disposal, alas, but we can all use our influence to de-normalize the idea that everyone must own a private car that they can just casually hop into and drive anywhere.

Energy-intensive transport is a huge part of what’s heating up the planet. During the Covid shutdown, as I mentioned in my talk, we saw noticeable improvements in various planetary indices.

The “Ramble On” film on WaterBear is very inspiring. I love that these British everyday people pushed so hard to gain the right to walk freely around the countryside, across private land. I love that they so value walking in their own bioregion. I also love that they can take the bus from the city out to the country to do their walks.

PS. Thanks for this conversation! Conversation ongoing, and I will let you know if I get enough interest to set up a zoom chat. So we can all cross-pollinate ideas and resources.

(Photo: Urban meadow mini-wilderness about 10 minutes’ walk from my house.)

Time to start building real resiliency. The missing link tends to be the community scale / neighborhood scale / district scale of infrastructure. When I was studying and interning in New Mexico some years back, I met a guy who was involved in promoting a project for district heating with biomass. The biomass was locally gathered deadwood.

* The above is a comment I made in regard to a fellow permaculture activist’s post (it was not public or I would’ve shared it). But basically he was commenting on various infrastructure outages that have happened over the years. From pipeline spills to telecomms cables breaking and what have you.

People in permie circles often offer “off-grid living” as a solution to this infrastructure vulnerability, as well as to the rising cost of water and energy bills, but that’s a hyperindividualistic solution and leaves many people behind, as well as chewing up a lot of land and resources.

As I have pointed out in my book and on this blog, the most ethical and economical way I have found to be sort of de facto off-grid (-ish) without leaving people behind, is to live in an existing dwelling that’s connected to infrastructure, but minimize my own use of water, electric etc. Also I don’t cable service; just use basic phone cellular data plan to get online.

Photo: Beautiful little oak tree tucked away in an empty lot in my neighborhood. It’s a whole community in and under that tree, largely unseen and unnoticed by humans.

On elders’ fears of “Having to give up the car keys”:

I dream of a world where elders don’t have to be forced to give up their car keys, because they can live rich full lives without cars. When all people (elders, kids, families) aren’t basically forced, by bad govt policy and corporate greed, to own a car in order to get their needs met. Other countries have this, why shouldn’t we? Not driving a car should not mean loss of independence.

Whenever I hear someone say some typical USA culture elder-praise thing like, “my mom is such a pistol, she’s 97 years old and still driving!” I totally cringe.

If I’m blessed to live into old age, I don’t plan to be the “pistol” by being the special one who is still driving. I plan on being the one who is agitating for a shuttle service for nursing-home residents, pushing for safer sidewalks, extended city bus service etc.

I’m only in my early 60s, but if I never have to drive again, I’ll be pretty happy. It’s going to take considerable activist muscle to make that happen though. We’re building some critical mass in my city, probably in large part because we have a large population of elders.

I can think of worse things for us elder activists to do than band together and make the big push for public transportation that is long overdue. And / or, fixing the zoning and coding restrictions that make it virtually impossible to have a lively urban village these days.

Photo taken at a restaurant that I walk to in my neighborhood. With great outdoor seating.

Bookmarking this podcast. No relation to me or my book! I haven’t listened yet but I am eager to.

Two of the episodes that grab me right away are the one about the climate impact of office furniture; and the value of rehabbing old apartment buildings instead of building new. Listening to these is on my list of homework!

From their page:

“Deep Green is a show about how the built environment impacts climate change and equity. Buildings are some of the biggest things we make as human beings. In these bi-weekly episodes, we explore how through understanding buildings, cities, and all the things that go into them, we can do better for the environment and all life on this planet.”

Lots of really enticing content here: https://surroundpodcasts.com/deep-green/

Metropolis Deep Green