Diamond-Cut Life

Happy Fourth of July! It’s our nation’s birthday. I’ve posted Ideas for celebrating below, based on this basic life-principle we all tend to forget:
A nation starts its life in the beginning as land, as earth — before people arrived to populate it. And that land, the soil, water and things that grow on it, are [...]

[Read more →]

Obama is headed to be President! I think and hope. I crave a leader with vision and a sane Beltway. Exactly three years ago today Thor and I were visiting Washington D.C., having a brush with a great Founder and a diamond-cut breakfast — of a sort.
On June 4, 2005, my husband announced we [...]

[Read more →]

While President Bush and the biofuel industry are happy with the growth of biofuel, Columbia economics professor Jeffrey Sachs is not. Neither, it seems, are millions in the world currently starving who weren’t starving prior to the push for biofuel. The food riots in at least eight countries over skyrocketing food prices may have been [...]

[Read more →]

I am happy to learn this morning that Pierce County in Washington is protecting its rich farmland in the Puyallup Valley from developers.

Why? I’ll get really basic. The land has already been developed. It was logged many years ago and converted into farmland. Farmland is its highest, most brilliant and diamond-cut use. The Pacific Northwest soils are so fertile they support more biomass than any other soil

[Read more →]

My post cooking for climate change needs freshening here as sustainability’s body of knowledge keeps growing. As per Michael Specter’s well-researched piece in The New Yorker, it turns out that being a locavore — eating just things grown close to home — does not necessarily reduce our carbon footprint.

Come again? How could two Oregonians (my husband Thor and I) possibly drink wine from Australia and create

[Read more →]

Want to go on a date? Those words still hold a primal thrill for me, even in my forties. I’m going on one tonight with my husband. We’re going to choose a restaurant from here so that 25% of our bill will be donated to groups working to aid victims in Darfur.

Now I’ll back up. I feel like a jerk for juxtaposing my frivolous pleasure with the Janjaweed’s campaign

[Read more →]

Bob Herbert’s column in the New York Times this morning questions whether racism in the U.S. has abated enough to elect our first black president. While I hope it has, I have a related but deeper concern.

This human race we all belong to, with all our different skin pigments, beliefs and so forth, is not the only game in town, i.e., on the planet. Think about it. All of this

[Read more →]

My husband Thor and I love to have people over for dinner. At the same time I’m addicted to sociability, I ‘m also passionate about choosing food with the smallest possible carbon footprint (similar to ‘embodied energy’). Our guests keep coming back, so I gather our cooking tastes pretty good.

Here are the major guidelines we use:

• Buying local food lowers carbon footprint more than the ‘organic’ label
  Example: Australian wine doesn’t make

[Read more →]

Last night some friends and I had one of our periodic ‘Green Girls’ dinner parties at my friend Colleen’s house. We had a blast sharing news, laughter, viewpoints and encouragement around sustainability. Colleen’s meatless eggplant mousakka was a hit.

We all eat more than 1,000 meals a year, for a big percentage of our carbon footprint. If we want to lighten our carbon footprint, the principle to embrace is

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]