Diamond-Cut Life

What if my town or yours sustained a terrorist attack early tomorrow morning? Would you and I freak out in surprise and fall apart? Or would we be emotionally fit enough to behave in constructive, responsible ways?

As an advocate of sustainability, I believe in fitness of all kinds. For instance, I work at being physically fit and financially fit. My master’s degree, though, is in counseling psychology, and

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For Thanksgiving I’ll suggest (and practice myself) a novel idea: to not eat a great deal. Just a normal-sized meal, with more sociability than usual.

“Unpatriotic!” I can imagine you criticizing me. “Killjoy!” “The economy would nosedive!” “Anti-consumption equals Anti-Christ!” (OK, pardon my drama.)

In truth, I’m very patriotic. I love our forebears. In fact I suggest we be more like them — by not being overweight and

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“I do care about global warming, but I’m too busy to (fill in the blank)”. I hear this cry often in one form or another. The blank can be many things: buying local produce, changing light bulbs to compact fluorescents, using public transit, using a clothesline instead of the dryer.

Feeling too busy to do things we know in our guts are the right things to do is like

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Today I need to transfer $1,000 from Thor’s and my checking account into a savings account for taxes. Oh the joy. I’m doing a contracted project for Opal Creek Ancient Forest Center here in Oregon (joyful work, no joke) and of course as a contractor I’m responsible for my own taxes. Hence the need to save for them.

There is a greedy one inside of me that could resent taxes

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Like many who are passionate about sustainability (or passionate about anything) I have sometimes been guilty of “us versus them” thinking. This is the mindset that eventually makes enemies of those whose views and practices differ from mine.

For instance, people who don’t recycle and compost, still use energy-guzzling incandescent light bulbs, and drive vehicles with more than four cylinders. Especially when they could have taken the bus. In other words

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U.S. culture is finally getting that global warming is both a fact and serious trouble. Good, great, excellent.

The problem now is that most people think somebody else had better do something about it — in effect so that business can continue as usual.

I embrace the opposite of that attitude: that all of us can do something about it, and that ‘business as usual’ is at the core of the problem

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One time in my life, years ago, I went inside a WalMart store and purchased one item. It was a full-length mirror for $10. I felt grateful I could afford it because I was a self-employed artist at the time (read: poor).

I never went back to WalMart because I learned about the high cost of their low prices. For instance, many who receive relief food from the Oregon Food

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Maybe you’re like me in this respect: when I see problems, I want to find solutions.

No.

I don’t just want to find solutions, I want to live them out. I feel more alive that way, more connected. Lots of problems are both personal and public, both micro and macro. Ditto their solutions.

Here we have a national epidemic of obesity and a global climate problem of overusing fossil fuels. It doesn’t take

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