Diamond-Cut Life

by Alison Wiley
Asking Linda Quirk of Run 7 On 7 to buy carbon offsets for her extensive air travel (see last post) reminded me and my husband to buy our offsets for 2008 (we can estimate the carbon we’ll burn for the rest of the year).
Note: while I think that buying carbon offsets is necessary [...]

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by Alison Wiley
I have been corrected. Supporters of Run 7 On 7 (see earlier post) have told me that Linda Quirk is traveling to all seven continents to run marathons by herself, and is not taking others with her, as a runner here in Portland had reported.
As I’ve mentioned earlier, I think it’s great that [...]

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What’s your favorite low-carbon way to celebrate your birthday? (Today is my birthday). Mine has got to be dancing with a group of people. My friend and former housemate Micki invited me and three other dancing fools to Billy Bang’s here in Portland last night to dance to The Insomniacs, a blues/rock band.
What a blast! [...]

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by Alison Wiley
My diamond-cut household’s monthly electricity use is about half the national average. Besides saving more than $450/year, we’re lowering our carbon footprint because even here in Oregon, coal-burning fuels about 36% of our electricity. And our house is happy, not deprived (diamond-cut = chiseling our consumption down to the core of happiness).

Work [...]

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Yesterday morning I was working at home here in Portland, looking out my living-room window at the cool, misty day. I needed to go down to Metro, just over four miles away, for an afternoon-long meeting.
Like most all people in a city, I had a choice-point: how did I want to transport myself from here [...]

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In all my life I’ve never seen such open exuberance on the faces of middle-aged adults as I saw last night at Richard’s election party after Barack Obama was declared the next President of the United States. Of course, mine was one of those faces, and so was my husband Thor’s.
Richard’s daughter Kate, 15, was [...]

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Exactly four years ago on the first Tuesday in November I was on the #15 bus here on Belmont in Southeast Portland — going nowhere. Traffic was standing still. And we never have traffic jams on SE Belmont. I was late to my breakfast meeting at Zells Cafe, but at least my bus driver was [...]

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I returned late Tuesday from a transportation conference on the Oregon coast. Extrovert that I am, I had a great time between doing a presentation, attending other presentations, chatting it up with keynote speakers, receiving an award, playing pool after hours with friends and going running on the beach. I even got my workaholic [...]

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Governor Kulongoski of Oregon, my home state, has stated a vision of combating global warming with both a state economy and general Oregon lifestyle that is cleaner and greener than the rest of the nation.
“Climate change is the most important environmental and economic issue of our time,” Governor Kulongoski said (the added emphasis is mine). [...]

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The New York Times reports this morning  that stocks have now plummeted so far that they reached their permissible limits, and that data on the world’s (not just the U.S. ) economy is pointing to a profound slowdown.
Most agree that big changes are ahead. I assume the fabric of our lives will change a lot, [...]

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