Category: low-footprint living

The unused utility-type pole on the sidewalk in front of my house has become a new art project. I am wrapping the pole with sparkly threads, starting near the bottom.

And voilà, just like that, I find a fun use for a huge amount of metallic thread (that came to me via a lavish stockpile of unused sewing supplies I inherited from multiple generations of stitchy women on both sides of my family). So much fun to do this, and maybe other people will even participate.

There’s a lot of untreated mental health stuff going on in the community, and I know that messing with thread helps my mental health so maybe it will bring others increased sense of peace as well. And maybe joy too, hope so!

At the corner of my house nearest the pole, is what I call “porous property.” (Not visible in the photos but I’m just mentioning it here in case you’re not yet familiar with my porous-property experiments.) It’s a corner of my yard that I open to the public. With benches, Little Free Library, blackboard w chalk, etc. I’ve posted about it repeatedly here and on my DEEP GREEN facebook page, so you can see photos etc.

By encroaching on the utility pole with my arty activities, I’ve started opening the door to an interesting experiment. We’ll see if any authoritarian figure claims responsibility for the pole by immediately removing the bootleg craft project ha ha Meanwhile I want it to light up people’s day as we move into the new year.

PS. In this very humid coastal climate, pretty much everything is perishable. That means you use it or lose it. And often “losing it” means it gets infested by bugs and mold and all sorts of other stuff you don’t want in your house. Beachside Florida for me is like one big “carpe diem / smoke em if you’ve got em” billboard!

Pix here.

Below is a synopsis and bio for a talk that I have been giving about climate action. I tailor it slightly for each group and for any major news of the moment.

The past couple of my talks, in my opinion, I have severely flopped. And, if I look honestly, my talks had been going downhill for awhile. This is not any kind of humble-bragging perfectionism. And also it’s nothing that I have heard from any audience feedback. In my experience, audiences don’t typically give feedback when a talk is bad.

No, I actually just have not measured up to the quality standards that I endeavor to provide. And which I feel that people who are looking to me for guidance (and futhermore paying me!) have a right to expect.

Accordingly, I am currently involved in a troubleshooting process. This may at some point include posting five-minute segments on my YouTube channel for anyone to access.

For more than a minute, I took the failures as a sign that I just need to step down from speaking. Which still might be true. Honestly, I feel a lot more comfortable writing. However, speaking reaches some audiences that writing might not reach. And, if not many others are offering these kinds of talks, maybe stepping down is not a public service.

An approach I had been using for years to structure my talks no longer seems to work very well. I used to write out five general “header” points, or maybe seven at the most. It was easy to remember such a relatively small number of points. (And they would be written in big letters on a note page in front of me.) And I could remember a few key things to say about each point. But somehow that’s breaking down. I don’t know if my heart’s not in it, or if my short-term memory is getting worse, or my tendency to ramble is getting worse, or what. Maybe it’s always been bad and I’ve just been waking up to it more. There could also be some Covid brain effects.

For the time being, I am just doing some reflecting and restructuring. One thing I have always said is that if someone hears me give a talk and they think I did a crappy job, I would love for them to take it as a sign that they themselves should get out there and start speaking. Throw your hat in the ring!The world always needs more speakers who help people get motivated and show up more authentically in the world.

PS. This post is not seeking public-speaking advice. I am connected with all sorts of resources and am incorporating them into my troubleshooting. This is more of an inner thing. Another reason for posting this is in case any of you are involved in public speaking or other public appearances, and are starting to face this kind of situation. Questioning your quality control. I’m here to just let you know that you’re not alone, and whatever you decide, I know you will keep finding the best channels for you to serve the people / causes you serve.

Here is the summary and bio FYI:

Convenient truths: Climate action leverage points for everyday people

Contrary to popular belief, everyday people do have the power. And we cannot afford to wait on government or corporations. Distant centralized entities don’t have sufficient vested interest in really attacking climate change. We, the everyday people do, as climate change is destroying our homes and communities and hitting us in the wallet. In this talk I will be sharing some very large, very accessible leverage points that are typically overlooked. And I’ll be talking about the real secret weapon, which is the stories we tell ourselves.

jenny nazak is an eco educator and community activist based in Daytona Beach. She is author of the self-published practical guidebook DEEP GREEN; and a contributing author to Growing FREE: Building Regenerative Wealth without Losing Your Soul or Destroying the Planet. Her ongoing writings, and more about her background, can be found at jennynazak.com. Her eco Facebook page is “DEEP GREEN book by jenny nazak.” You can see video content on her YouTube and TikTok channels.

Further Exploration:

• Joshua Spodek’s website has several of his TEDx talks. This professor, who lives in Manhattan, is supposedly now currently living at a 1.0-ton carbon footprint. He and I have in common, among other things, focus on intrinsic motivation; and the fact that we have voluntarily lived without refrigeration for multiyear periods.

I aspire to his virtuouso level of waste reduction; he has not had to take out his trash since like 2018 or something! Also, I love the video where he gives his uncompromising stance on air travel. Similar to my approach, he has found ways to get all of the benefits that people typically use as reasons they need to engage in longdistance/overseas travel.

• OK, I finally got online and braved watching my talk. And actually I was surprised to find that it was nowhere near as bad as I had thought! Not superstellar, but not really terrible, and I did cover most of the main points I wanted to cover. If you would like to hear my talk, visit this link and look for December 22, 2024.

The audience was absolutely wonderful, by the way. I always offer Q&A after my talks, and this group was exceptionally lively. Unfortunately the Q&A usually isn’t included on the recording. One thing I forgot to cover in my talk (that I mentioned in the Q&A) was that we have had a “green mobilization” already, even though it wasn’t called that. It was the pandemic shutdown, and I’ve written about it before in this blog. We saw improvements in numerous aspects of planetary/biospheric health. Including some key aspects of human happiness and emotional well-being. A re-set of priorities, social and economic as well as ecological.

Enjoying some winter holiday warmth & charm while catching up on some writing, public-talk-troubleshooting, & other work tasks in my little office / sleeping room. I’m burning a red candle and a green candle. (See photo here for as long as the will of zucc shall allow.)

The gentle rainy day outside — we are getting an unusually wet dry season, which I welcome because I love rainy winter days –is a nice complement to the scene in my little room, where the red and the green candles in their glass jars burn against a backdrop of wintry-themed holiday cards and cookie tins and decorative bags.

The green candle on the left was purchased from Books and Reverie, a lovely woman-owned business on TikTok. Other candles I purchased years ago at thrift shops for $.50 or something.

I usually leave the decorative bags and cards that I use for Christmas decor, usually leave it up for a few days after Yule/Solstice/Christmas. Sometimes up until New Year.

Then it all folds compactly into a tightly lidded plastic tub. (Box made of plastic etc. rather than cardboard is particularly important for keeping the bugs away as I live in Florida and don’t use AC.)

(I seem to recall as a kid, that people would leave their Christmas trees & other holiday decor on display till January 2. After which it was considered bad luck to leave them up. Nowadays I often see trees and other holiday decorations at the curbside the day after, which I think is kind of sad. And possibly fuels the retail practice of starting in on the Valentine decorations right away.)

A word about candles from thrift stores. Over the years I have purchased some absolutely gorgeous candles never taken out of their packaging. I get them for $.25, $.50, a dollar. It seems likely to me that whoever purchased them knew kept putting off burning them because they were too pretty to burn. They probably paid 10 or $20 for them and then never burned them. Maybe even died without burning them, and then the candles got donated to thrift shops when the house was cleaned out. (I know a thing or two about house clean-out jobs; they have been a part of my occupational mix for some years.)

No, there’s nothing wrong with using candles just as decor and not burning them! But I have derived immense pleasure from burning the candles. A deep-green lifestyle version of “smoke em if you’ve got em.” This year I expanded to lighting candles and oil-lanterns out on the porch at night for passersby to enjoy.

A member of my community asked me about how to conduct a butterfly release in an ethical & eco-friendly manner for an event. I did not know anything about the subject, so I did some searching and found this helpful article on how to host an ethical and eco-friendly butterfly release.

It’s from a butterfly farm in Florida, and they do seem to know what they’re talking about. https://www.clearwaterbutterfly.com/blog/how-to-host-an-ethical-eco-friendly-butterfly-release/

Any of you who know about this topic, please also feel free to chime in in the comments. Thank you!

PS. Even though this article goes into more respectful ways of dealing with a butterfly release, including most importantly using farm raised butterflies rather than grabbing butterflies from the wild, I personally would choose a different way to honor my event. Something that would not involve other living beings. Maybe an eco-friendly balloon release, for example. It seems to me that using the bodies of other living beings for entertainment in this manner is just colonizer entitlement.

Unless, perhaps, the butterflies are being released into an area that has traditionally had a population of that species, and the environment is favorable to their survival and thriving. Then also an educational component could be included in the event, letting people know about the goals and circumstances of the release.

But if you have your heart set on a butterfly release, I say go with Clearwater Butterfly or another provider who is well-versed in the ethical and ecological aspects.

Or: A person could instead maybe have their wedding or other celebration at a butterfly sanctuary or botanical garden. Or at local field or meadow. Places that naturally attract a lot of butterflies.

(This is an upcoming talk I’ll be giving for a UU congregation by Zoom. It will likely be recorded and become available on their public YouTube channel; I will share the link.)

Contrary to popular belief, everyday people do have the power. And we cannot afford to wait on government or corporations. Distant centralized entities don’t have sufficient vested interest in really attacking climate change. We, the everyday people do, as climate change is destroying our homes and communities and hitting us in the wallet.

In this talk I will be sharing some very large, very accessible leverage points that are typically overlooked. And I’ll be talking about the real secret weapon, which is the stories we tell ourselves.

jenny nazak is an eco educator and community activist based in Daytona Beach. She is author of the self-published practical guidebook DEEP GREEN; and a contributing author to Growing FREE: Building Regenerative Wealth without Losing Your Soul or Destroying the Planet.

Her ongoing writings, and more about her background, can be found at jennynazak.com. Her eco Facebook page is “DEEP GREEN book by jenny nazak.” You can see video content on her YouTube and TikTok channels.

(By me, this privileged Boomer who started out her adult life as an Ayn Rand libertarian and academic snob, dropped out of the middle class 25 years ago, and morphed into an extreme lefty anarchist via lived experience.)

Those of us who identify as members of the working classes need to cultivate our class solidarity/consciousness.

Any of us who already feel like we have that mind-set, then we need to expand out into those of our circles who identify as “liberal” but do not quite have class solidarity-consciousness.

Also we need to collect & support those of our fellow working-class folks who are truly inhabiting the most socio / economically marginalized rungs but are still trauma-identifying with the oligarchish class.

topics include: rich blight; urban disinvestment; hollowed-out tourist economy

Seeing a mow & blow landscaping crew leaf-blow the entire parking lot of a building that’s been left vacant for years is like watching a cleaning crew swab the decks on the sinking Titanic.

The noise is offensive on such a high level, because it’s not just about the actual noise, which is bad enough.

The sheer staggering economics of a society where some people are so filthy rich that they can leave an entire oceanfront commercial building sitting. For YEARS.

In my 2015 talk for the inaugural Elevate conference (a sort of annual mini Ted talk -style event for Daytona Beach), I referred to this phenomenon as “rich blight.” You can still see it either on my YouTube channel or on the Elevate youtube channel or both.

It’s possible to look up a property “owner” (=hoarder)’s identity on the county tax website but seems like it’s always some shady-sounding “mysterious jibber-jabber name LLC” , based in Offshore Evadia with no phone number and just a PO Box.

I used to occasionally look up these land-hoarders and write them postal mail, politely asking them to rent out or free up their buildings, and sometimes even offering them information & free marketing assistance (which I felt i had a vested interest in doing because I live here and we need to build a real community here), but of course I never heard back.

The sad thing is, this Starbucks was a super successful location. The employees liked it here (not in small part because they could see the ocean out the takeout window, and breathe in fresh sea breeze) and they earned good money, and there was generally a robust line of customers (among others, a lot of students from the local universities came all the way over the bridge to study and collaborate here), and a nice vibe in there considering it was a corporate establishment.

”Successful” obviously means something different on a corporate level than it does on an employee and customer level. Maybe shareholders supersede store profits in terms of importance? I don’t know enough about it to know for sure. Can only imagine.

But by golly they have the time and attention to leaf blow an entire parking lot that is always going to have sand on it, because hello, we live next to the Atlantic Ocean.

(Side note: What is it with men and needing to vacuum up the entire great outdoors, I always wonder. And actually, it’s not the men’s fault, I think it’s a thing in wyt soupremasee culture / respectability politics.)

If you are interested in the topic of urban vacancy/disinvestment, I recommend you check out the following pages:

Strong Towns
Planning Peeps

Also, I’m going to be pasting a link to an article about land banks. Land banks can be a great tool for communities to take back ownership of their places, and put it in the hands of locals who actually lives there and care. Of course, enough of the elected officials and other PTB in a place have to be on board that that’s a priority.

This might sound strong to some of you, but I think that buy and hold landlords are engaging in parasitic behavior. I’m not gonna lie, I have often sympathized with people squatting a building.

(Altho, squatting seems to have become less of a thing over the years, as surveillance techniques and punishment have become more extreme. And furthermore, the overlords have persuaded members of the working classes to rat each other out to code & cops instead of feeling solidarity. I’m not saying squatters are necessarily great neighbors, but I will be honest, I have felt safer and more community next to houses of squatters than right across the street from a police station.)

Parasitic owners: Free up your damn buildings if you’re not going to use them! The empty lots too! And in the meantime, quit the stupid leaf blowing. It’s noisy and smelly and obnoxious. It’s the wrong combination of too much life and not enough life. Intrusive landscaping fussbudgetry plus vacant building equals double bad.

Further reading:

“Why Land Banks Matter“
(communityprogress.org; October 28, 2024): “For neighborhoods burdened by systemic disinvestment; vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated properties often become symbols of neglect. They pose social, economic, health, and environmental hazards to communities and residents. Addressing these properties requires intervention at multiple points and systems—and one powerful tool many communities use to address vacancy and promote equitable development is the land bank.”