Author: jennynazak

The title of this post sounds like it would refer to a list of reference books for evacuation in the event of a zombie apocalypse. That could be a useful thing too! But that’s not what this particular thing is.

This particular thing is a snapshot of my bookshelf. Photos of each section of shelf, accompanied by an inventory list. To me, from my perspective, it’s very pared down. Over the years I have owned thousands of books. But my downsizing impulses, together with time and tide, have prompted me over the years to pare my personal library down to a lean core.

The other day the protagonist in one of my fiction stories (a novel that I have been writing for a long time and am getting ready to share with you later this spring) was making a bug-out list. Her list of books that she would simply have to carry with her even if she had to evac alone on foot. Her list is almost the same as mine, go figure. Unfortunately we would both have to be very selective, because books are heavy.

I love my bookshelf not just for the truth and beauty in the books it contains, but also for its visual appeal. The arrangements of books and a few little knickknacks. If I bugged out, I would have to leave it behind. To floods or fires or fascists or whatever destructive force was driving us to bug out. The sadness of that prospect (even though it’s probably a scenario in my head that comes from reading too many TEOTWAWKI novels) motivated me to at least sort of give my bookshelf a little chance to make a difference by sharing it online.

That gave me the idea to make a little booklet depicting my library visually and as a list. A sort of “these fragments I have shored against my ruins” kind of thing.

This is my indoor, personal library. Not the same as the Little Free Library that I have been stewarding in front of my home for almost 12 years now.

My library does not claim to be all-encompassing. Not even within the specialty fields represented. It doesn’t claim to have all the definitive tomes in each genre. Some of the books, like Skipping Christmas and Colgate’s Basic Sailing, were inherited rather than chosen by me. And yet they are every bit as much a reflection of what I’m about at the core.

(Weird that a person so prone to motion-sickness that she even gets seasick at the movies would have books on sailing, but the ocean is part of me and I love traveling it by armchair.)

There is a book, just one book, that I consider to be missing from this collection. I really need a copy of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, because that would be one of the books that would go in my bug out bag for sure. (How foolish I was to give my old copy away. Always thinking I could find another that had the same familiar cover.) Another for sure would be the very slim volume of TS Eliot’s poems.

List of books, left to right top to bottom.

By the way, I once heard that a child who grows up in a “bookish” household with 80 books or more, is much more likely to develop a lifetime love of learning.

Sadly, many households don’t even have one book, let alone five or 10. When I was growing up, we had multiple rooms that contained densely packed bookcases. I can’t say for sure but I estimate the number of books at roughly 500 to 1000. And that was in a military household where we had to move every couple of years! My parents were absolutely passionate about education, and they believed we learned as much in our travels and extracurricular reading as we learned in school. What was great for my siblings and me is that our parents were always learning with us.

My parents were fairly strict, and exercise close control over the most aspects of our daily life. My father would unapologetically refer to our family as a “benevolent dictatorship” (with his characteristic warm laugh).

But one area where they were extremely permissive was in our exposure to ideas via reading. That should tell you something. I think they realized that there was no idea in a book that could harm us kids as much as remaining in ignorance. Even though there were certain subjects that I didn’t necessarily feel free to voice out loud, my freedom to pursue them via reading was unassailed. I can remember at eight or nine years old bringing home a stack of seven or more books from the public library, and novels for adult audiences were always included in my selection. Obviously no librarian at that time (late 1960s, early 70s) felt like I would be harmed by exposure to these topics. They probably figured that either I would completely not understand, or I was old enough to handle it. It pretty much turned out they were right either way. Bonus, I also learned how to look up more information when I didn’t understand something. This should really tell us something as well.

We shouldn’t be so afraid of exposure to unfamiliar ideas and experiences. Either as kids, or as adults. What’s really scary is when some topic becomes a “no-fly zone,” not able to be discussed.

Again, this inventory of my bookcase isn’t anything that claims to be definitive. I’m not saying what books you need to read. This is more like a fingerprint of myself. A book-fingerprint, if you will. That said, I do consider the sustainability-related section to be a fairly nice little core library for that subject area.

The pine cones, old spools of thread, Maine souvenir pillow (from Acadia National Park ca. 1977!), old familiar board games, and other objects are absolutely interwoven with the content of my beloved books. It’s like a thematic collage of the core of my life, or main strands of it, or something.

As for literature, I make no bones about it. I am completely enamored of early 20th century British literature. I have read and loved many books from all over the world and love them as well. But at my core, I’m crazy about Virginia Woolf, TS Eliot, DH Lawrence, Dylan Thomas, and a few select other old friends.

When I traveled to England in the 1980s, a couple years after graduating from college, I felt like all of the books I loved had come to life. Later in life, via the popularization of DNA testing, I would come to find out that I had a lot more English and Scottish ancestry than I ever suspected. So I guess it’s hardly a surprise that I would be drawn to England, Scotland, and Wales, and feel quite at home there, despite my sort of loud and not very British personality.

(I do also have Eastern European heritage which I strongly love and identify with. But for some reason have not yet learned Slovak or any other Eastern European language, or read all that many books from Eastern Europe, other than the obvious Russian literature we were assigned in school.)

As for how I reconcile my awareness of the ravages of settler colonialism with my unrelenting love of its mother tongue, English, let’s just say language is a deep thing.

By the way, in college, those of us who got into 20th century literature were teased by our peers. They called the genre “Suicide Lit.” I mean, for sure, the stories got into some terrain that could be depressing, let’s say. But, for me, the bringing of these themes out into the open was more like “anti-suicide lit.” Help you know you are not alone in the world lit. Give you instant deep companionship lit. (The fact that I would never get to meet those companions in person did not make them any less close to my heart.)

What I love about literature, and reading in general, is how it allows us to transmit human knowledge and experience across space and time. Such a high density of information at quite low bandwidth.

What I love about reading and language is that it really is for everyone. What I hate is when people try to set up little fiefdoms of gatekeeping and elitism. Which unfortunately is all too common in the academic field known as literature.

I’m not going to lie, I probably never once wrote a very good paper about a book. I never was much good at dissecting stories. Rather, I was — and AM — just ever-hungry to take in experiences from around the world and throughout time.

But, of course, long before the printed word existed, oral storytelling traditions accomplished this feat of transmitting knowledge and experience with even lower bandwidth — and obviously a much lower ecological footprint, since no printing or shipping (or electrons and servers) was involved.

Who knows what my role might have been in a culture where writing did not exist. I am not going to lie, my memory for detail has never been great, so I might just have been sitting in the audience. Then again, up to this point in my life, I have mainly been a consumer of writing rather than a producer of books, articles, and other publications.

The great thing about writing is that we can do it at any age. We’re never too old to start. Fiction or nonfiction, the field is always wide open. Everyone: Your readers are always waiting. (I am writing this as much to encourage and remind myself, as to encourage and remind you.)

I read about 80 or 100 books a year. I don’t try to; it just happens. Ends up being about half and half between books related to my field (permaculture design/sustainability); and fiction.

And now here is the list of my bookshelf. I may write some notes next to some of the titles. Hope you enjoy the list and my photos. And thank you for reading this far!

(Stay tuned. I’m going to be making the list as I get around to it. In the meantime, enjoy the photos! This is like a lifetime time capsule or fingerprint of a lot of what constitutes my core.)

The #resistance takes many forms!!!

I really love having a house on a conspicuous corner lot along a high-traffic street in the tourist area. Lots of people walk by. This blackboard has been a fun thing. Sometimes I forget to keep up, but usually I write some message on it. Last week it said “welcome bikers have fun and stay safe.” Then it said “we are all in this world together” — with a heart. This week it says “welcome Spring Breakers, have fun and stay safe” — with a heart.

Got the chalkboard from a church on my street — they were cleaning / getting rid of surplus, and this chalkboard was in it, and they didn’t want it! I couldn’t believe it but I was happy to take it off their hands! It was originally colored green, but as weather wore down the green surface, I bought a little jar of black chalkboard paint and painted over it.

Also along with writing the messages I try to stay extra aware during event weeks, keep an eye on people walking by and if anyone looks confused or dehydrated offer them water. It’s just in a drinking glass, not bottled, so that’s kind of a novelty for people too ha ha

#501House #porousproperty

PS. A couple of things in response to people’s very kind words.

• Some of my ancestors gave me a job to do, and the resources to carry it out. I am very fortunate.
• One thing about kindness that seems to still be a too-well-kept secret is that kindness never just benefits the recipient, it benefits everyone including the person doing it. So it’s kind of a self interest thing too. <heart> Making a net of care, it’s like an umbrella that protects everyone. Our society did not devolve into a low-trust society overnight, and we won’t re-weave it back into a high-trust society overnight. But every one of us who are adding threads to the net, each in our own ways according to skills and resources, is steadily helping with the progress. Thank you everyone for helping in your unique ways!

And I have done plenty of very bad and unkind things in my life, and even though i have done my best to make amends, the memories of what I thought it was OK to say and do to fellow humans and other fellow beings are still extremely shocking and painful to me at times. And, amends will be an ongoing lifelong task. And, beyond that, there’s simply a lot of joy in adding love & care to the world instead of subtracting it.

Someone in Deep Adaptation posted this chart showing how much food a person has to grow to feed themselves for a year. It’s a very individualistic doomer prepper mentality. And regardless of whether the numbers are correct or not, it’s not doable by most people as individuals or even small family unit.

My take:

Hyper-individualism is anti-adaptive. I have been urging our mayor and other city officials to retool our landscape maintenance practices so that we are supporting pollinators and wildlife, and growing food for humans, instead of toxic manicured landscaping. Whether people listen remains to be seen, but I will keep bringing it up.

Also we need to support our local farmers in the immediately surrounding rural areas. Instead of driving to big box stores and buying food from 3000 miles away.

I also talk to church pastors, school principals and teachers, and of course fellow residents. In many parts of the world that are not the rich global north, large amounts of food are grown in cities, towns and villages.

On a personal note: Several fruit trees in our little yard are fruiting this year for the first time. Major milestone! And of course because Nature is generous, there will be plenty of fruit to share with neighbors. I also share education and seeds with neighbors. And show people how to make use of food when it’s in abundance and needs to be cooked and preserved.

This includes not only fresh fruit & vegs we grow, but also food that comes through the charitable church-run grocery distribution system. Sometimes there will suddenly be pounds and pounds of nuts for example, to the point where the people who receive the grocery bags are just leaving them along the road. I am a famous one for scooping them up and trying to share, find recipes, redistribute. It’s a wild task sometimes.

One year the neighborhood was like flooded with cans of green beans. And for a while there were just massive amounts of canned tomato sauce. And the canned salmon, there was so much of that it was crazy. And for a while they were bags and bags of walnuts. Whole walnuts, not even in the shells. In other words a super expensive thing and there would be 10 or 20 bags, two pounds each.

Speaking of surplus food in abundance, which I was a few posts down. Yesterday I found an entire 2-pound bag of whiting fillets! Had been frozen, still cold-cold, just in time to rescue and put in the fridge. And today cooked them up in the solar oven with butter and garlic and veggies and seasonings.

The donation food is meant for low-income families. They pass out a lot of bags of groceries at the church. Unfortunately a lot of the food can’t be used unless the person has a kitchen to cook it in.

Can’t open the cans unless you have a can opener, and what will you do with a large bag of frozen whiting fillets if you don’t have a house let alone a stove.

So some people end up leaving part of their grocery bags along the sidewalk. If it sounds like I am a veteran of sidewalk rescue food, I am! The bag of fillets was inside of a big paper bag that also contained a can of beans, a can of tomato sauce, a pack of pasta. And some rolls. All of which I will use.

I will now separate the beautifully solar-cooked buttery whiting & veggie mix into portions, and either share with people who want to eat it immediately or freeze for later.

(I did also save back a couple of uncooked fillets and chop them up and put them in a bowl w vinegar, am doing a ceviche experiment in the fridge. At least I hope it will turn out to be ceviche, that’ll be my first time trying to ceviche with whiting so wish me luck! If nothing else I can finish cooking it the regular way.)

It was cool, some nice people passed by on their way to go fishing just when I was opening the solar oven and taking out the successful experiment. Sometimes the successful ones go unwitnessed except by me ha ha, and the less successful ones are the ones that get witnessed by others.

They complimented me on my yard and we ended up chatting. It’s good to be able to show the solar oven in action.

Update: And I’m eating some of the solar-cooked fish & veggies right now for lunch, and it is absolutely delicious!

Update after eating lunch and portioning the rest into jars: It’s still early enough in the day, and sunny enough, that the oven temperature is 350!

I just now filled the empty pot with chopped dandelion greens and water, and put the pot back in the oven to boil. I love to boil greens and then add sauces/seasonings that I mix up. And I use the water from the boiled greens also. Sometimes I use it in soup and sometimes I just drink it like a tea.

And bonus (for my lazy self): By boiling the greens in the same pot that I just used to cook the fish, it will make it easier to clean the pot at the end, since there won’t be as much “butter and fish residue” left in the pot as there would have been if I had gone to wash the pot directly after cooking the fish.

BTW the dandelion greens are delicious, I buy them (and many other fruits and vegetables) from a local small biz who buys them from local farms. Win Win Win!!!

Photos here.

What a difference seven years makes! When I moved into my house in March 2018, the picture on the left is what the yard looked like.

Since then it has been transformed into an oasis of fruit trees, perennial greens, places for the public to sit, solar & rainwater education, stormwater absorption, relief from the heat, housing for various friends over the years, arts & crafts, mental & spiritual wellness, community library, dune wildflower seed-bank, and much more.

The 501 house, my ultimate dream palace and work studio, is more popularly known as “jenny’s corner,” a title I got from Ms Anne Ruby and Mr Steve Miller’s name for the little environmental segment I sometimes share at the BNW and MNW neighborhood meetings.

Getting a variety of trees and other plants to grow in this yard involved a lot of hard work, experimentation, failure.

Many of the techniques I used, especially at the beginning, to get anything established on the chemical-treated, erosion-prone soil were learned from fellow permaculturists who worked in the Jordanian desert, Canary Islands, Arizona desert, and other extremely harsh climates.

Physical deserts — and social deserts — can often be rehydrated, with love and patience and the right tools and mentors. Deep grief can also provide fuel and inspiration.

Praise God/dess and Ancestors!!!

Comments I posted in response to Mayor Henry’s post talking about bike week, reporting that there had been declining numbers.

Tourism is a wonderful thing, and I always enjoy bike week. But that being said, a healthy city doesn’t allow itself to become excessively dependent on tourism. I noticed a lot of the really vibrant cities who attract a lot of tourists, are also cities where people love to live and raise their families. The more we keep striving to be more attractive to full-time residents, the better! A lot of it is just public relations; this city has so much to offer but a lot of people don’t realize it. We are getting better at getting more of the full word out, though! #DaytonaStrong #LoveOurCity

— PS. Just my personal take as a libertarian (I know a lot of my political views are kind of out there), and proponent of micro business, small business, all kinds of business. I think there’s too much micromanagement of small business. Not only during bike week, but in general. In the redevelopment areas we set the bar so high and strict, I think doing the opposite would be better. Open it up to all kinds of little pop-up shops, vendor stalls, year round. The brick and mortar will fill more easily as well, if we don’t hypermanage it so much.

On a related note, we need more benches and other seating in all of the major commercial areas. More shade, as well. People can feel when they’re not really welcome to linger. Lack of places to sit makes people feel like they have to be somewhere spending money every second, and can’t even take a rest before going onto the next shop or restaurant. When people sit outdoors, it attracts other people. I’ve seen it in cities everywhere. Our city is beautiful and there’s every reason why people would want to come here and spend time. Including we the residents ourselves.

— Sorry, not trying to monopolize this thread, but this is a lot of stuff I have already talked about in city commission meetings, and sent you guys emails etc. And I always share ideas from successful, expert organizations such as Strong Towns.

An overly managed city does not tend to be as economically successful as it might if we eased up a little on the control. We need to allow for a bit of messiness. I don’t mean ugliness, I mean we can’t be enforcing so much conformity — like we spend so much time and energy making sure everybody’s awnings are a certain size or the same color or something. And matching lamp post etc. If having everything matched perfectly made for a good city, then New Orleans and New York City and KEY WEST would not attract so many tourists in droves, as well as being loved by the residents.

Make no mistake, I love Daytona Beach. (So much that I actually adopted it as my home city. Since I did not have a real hometown.) I just want to see the climate become a lot more free for tiny businesses. Allow Creativity to flourish, as opposed to spending so much time and energy enforcing a rigid neatness.

Another negative for tourists on the beach side Main Street area, is that we lost our Walgreens. That was a major place where tourists went to get basic every day needs. Snacks, drinks, beach toys, souvenirs, information, etc. It was a loss for us residents as well. Of course we can’t control a corporate entity’s decision to pull out of a place. But we really need to troubleshoot these things when they happen.

— More: when places are empty, things like dirt and cracks seem to stand out more.

No place is perfectly clean, the great outdoors is not our living room.

But, the more we fill the empty spaces with storefronts, carts, trucks, permanent residents, a diverse array of native / water-wise vegetation … the more the basic everyday dust and asymmetry that every place has will recede into the background where it belongs.

We need to take a “probiotic” approach, so to speak, of ADDING/thickening, rather than an “antibiotic” approach of trying to eliminate every last speck of dirt and think that’s going to bring people in.

Of course we make reasonable efforts to keep things clean and tidy, but we need to put more effort into allowing and fostering creativity and uniqueness. Year round.

— (Responding to a fellow citizen who pointed out that we do not have a parking problem, as is popularly asserted.)

Yep!! I like what former commissioner Kelly White said one time. “We don’t have a parking problem in this city, we have a walking problem.”

I actually think the big vast sea of asphalt is a turnoff. People don’t like to walk across huge vast expanses to get to the fun stuff.

Back in 2015 I think it was, when I gave my talk at the inaugural “Elevate” speech event (my talk was called “filling our empty spaces” And it is still up there on YouTube), I mentioned that we could have a Daytona Beach parking app and that we absolutely must have more sharing of parking.

I would like to see apartments and shops built over the Ocean Center parking lot, so that it’s not wasted space when it’s empty.

On the note of walking, as a former pedicabber, back in the days when we didn’t have motors on those things ha ha, I am a huge advocate for creating a more open climate for pedicabs and other micro transportation. That would help people get around micro distances without having to walk. I do recognize that not everybody can walk very far, and also the terrain is not always conducive for wheelchairs.

In my Elevate speech I also mentioned “allowing an informal economy to flourish.” As long as it’s not something illegal, little carts and other creative micro businesses should be absolutely nurtured and encouraged.

I’m not sure what it will take to convince some of the old-line brick & mortar guys that food trucks will help them rather than hurt them. It seems like we have ample evidence from many towns and cities though.

People in various groups are worried about their 401(k)s. Mostly this is fellow Boomers and older; most younger people don’t have 401(k)s. 

I don’t have a 401(k) because I cashed it out a long time ago and deployed it locally. (For me, climate and the environment has always been a very large part of this choice. And now the political situation gives additional motive.)

And I recognize that not everyone will have the stomach for this but … Everyone who feels able to divest from Wall Street – the more the better. I realize many people don’t feel they can risk doing that.

Many people have huge portfolios and won’t want to cut them loose. Other people don’t have huge portfolios but are hoping they will grow and don’t want to cut them loose.

Hence I point out that many people don’t feel they can do that. Funny thing about prosperity, it makes us very risk-averse.

But, it would be a big bold step and it would have an impact. Imagine if everyone pulled their money out of their 401(k)s and invested in their local areas instead.

As I have often said, it’s a bold move and not everyone will be ready for it. But if you think about it, it’s only for a very very tiny moment in human history that we have had this attitude that we cannot live our life without amassing and hoarding a giant pile of money.

Fascism is a fusion of extreme corporate power and extreme authoritarian government.

Over the past few decades, we ourselves have fed the corporations more and more power, not only in our capacity as consumers, but also in our capacity as shareholders.

Note, I’m not saying grab the money and burn it, or spend it all on frivolities. I’m saying localize it. Pay off your mortgage. Pay off your kids’ mortgage.

If you still have money left after that, buy a commercial building in your town. Have a business there, or allow some young person to have a business there. Become a part investor in a local farm or other local business. Pay off your kids’ college debt. If you don’t have kids, help someone else pay off their college debt.

Invest in your continuing education too: classes and other training that will help you be more resilient all the way into old-old age. And will help your community be more resilient.

I’m suggesting invest locally and invest in the younger generations and future generations. And help loosen the grip of fascism.

(***The suggestion in this post is really for my fellow Boomers and older. Younger ppl, and Black people, it’s not my place to impose advice on you. I just want us to make a better world for you guys.)

And, response to a comment from a friend who doesn’t feel able to let go of her fund because she only has a small amount of savings and her body can’t handle doing landscaping work 40 hours a year the rest of her life:

I hear you. I am in the same boat as far as savings and all that. I am currently in the midst of applying for Social Security. To be honest, when I was in my 40s I was assuming this wouldn’t even be an option, I wasn’t even thinking it would be available once I hit Social Security age. If this is any comfort.

And one of my housemates, who is also in early 60s, just got approved.

But also, although both you and I do physical work, we also have work that we can do that isn’t physical body labor. Writing, teaching, art, etc., those things are lifelong. And, also an option might be continuing to do the gardening but taking on apprentices. Another friend of mine, my age-ish, is an arborist and he’s only happy when he’s actually climbing the trees himself, so for him the apprentice thing doesn’t feel like an option, but it might be for a lot of us.

Photo: one section of my bookshelf for the algorithm. And for your enjoyment.

Update March 11:

My friend, colleague, and co-author Laura Oldanie, of Rich Resilient Living, made this incredibly information-rich comment just now in the Socially Conscious FIRE group. I thought some of you might find this info extremely helpful:

I don’t know if this is the best way, but here’s a bit about what I’m doing instead of propping up and relying on Wall Street. I moved my money out of the stock market about 8 years ago. Because I no longer worked for my previous employers, I was able to move those employer based retirement accounts into a self-directed IRA. Similarly, self employed people can open Solo 401ks. SDIRAs & Solo 401ks allow you to invest in a much wider array of assets. A Roth SDIRA is actually the vehicle Peter Thiel used to jumpstart his massive fortune, but they can also be vehicles for making tax advantaged investments in the growing number of truly socially conscious investing opportunities that are percolating outside the stock market. I wrote about some of those in this blog post How I’m Investing to Save the Planet (https://www.richandresilientliving.com/how-im-investing-my-money-to-save-the-planet/) and this one on Social Justice Investing (https://www.richandresilientliving.com/a-crowdsourced-guide-to-social-justice-investing/).

There’s a bit of a learning curve to getting started investing through SDIRA’s and the whole process can be a lot more hands on than simply clicking a few buttons in your online brokerage profile. I’m not an expert in them either, but I did write this blog post about SDIRAs several years ago https://www.richandresilientliving.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=725&action=edit.

We can also expand how we think about investing and building wealth beyond directing our money into financial instruments. For example we can invest in useful skills or assets that can generate income for us. In particular, we need lots more people to be building the skills and cultivating the assets that will help us address our major social and environmental challenges instead of perpetuating them. And that’s just what Mike Hoag, Jenny Nazak, Eric Brown – Author, and I wrote about in our book Growing FREE (Financially Resilient & Economically Empowered) Building the Life of Your Dreams Without Losing Your Soul or Destroying the Planet. You can read more about our book here and find a free sample chapter to download – https://www.richandresilientliving.com/growingfree/

I believe there’s tremendous value in developing a much more holistic view of wealth and investing because money and financial capital are so volatile and fragile. As I think about designing my life to thrive now and in my later years on a climate challenged planet, I think about a lot more than money.

The last thing I’ll share is my recent blog post on Climate Change & Retirement Planning because whether it’s global warming, political uncertainties, or the whims of capitalism, there’s a lot going on that makes our conventional pursuit of wealth a lot less reliable and a lot less desirable (not that it was ever a good thing) – https://www.richandresilientliving.com/retirement-planning-and-climate-change/