Diamond-Cut Life

Earlier this week I noted that sustainability needs a lot of entrepreneurs, and supplied the first half of my best tips for them, gleaned from twelve years of owning and operating my own business. Here’s the second half. Feel free to add your own suggestions and experience!
Be willing to [...]

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Oregon’s new ’solar highway’ project officially kicked off yesterday at the I-5/I205 interchange — yet another intersection between energy and transportation as the fields work toward sustainability (see Electric Vehicles).
Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) is partnering with Portland General Electric to install solar panels that will produce 104 kilowatts of energy — equivalent to 28% [...]

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I’ve read that the average wedding in the U.S. costs $20,000. (I wonder how many fights ensue over getting it all paid off?) Portland’s green wedding of the year, that of our friends Noelle Studer and Eli Spevak, was long on community, short on materialism. The joy and vitality were palpable.
Here Eli and Noelle [...]

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I had an exhilarating swoop into the heart of the diamond-cut life Saturday night when I bicycled all the way home from my mother-in-law’s house.  (For newcomers to this blog– welcome! — the diamond-cut life is happiness chiseled down to its essence, with excess consumption stripped away).
I felt free and strong as an eagle bicycling from far [...]

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Living here in Portland, Oregon, I’ve become aware that we have the highest percentage of hybrid cars of any city in the nation. I’ve also observed that Portland General Electric (PGE) has the largest renewable power program in the country. (Disclosure: I’m married to Thor Hinckley, the manager of that renewables program.)
The new piece is [...]

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A major predictor of a person’s happiness is the number and quality of relationships in that person’s life. And money can be a make or break in any type of relationship — marital, parent-child, friend-to-friend, dating and courtship, roommates and housemates.
I believe that when we put relationships and integrity first, money and healthy finances [...]

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Having noticed unusually high readership of my last post How To Save Money On Gas, I’m going to soon write a sequel with more tips on that topic, including from readers, via comments.
But man does not live by gas alone. We need our spirits to be fed, too. Enter poetry. This poem of mine, a [...]

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I got up before dawn this morning and went running at first light in Mount Tabor Park, near our house. Near a 100-foot tall Douglas Fir tree, I heard unusual scrabbling noises, so I stopped in my tracks to investigate.
I saw an adult raccoon spreadeagled on the tree at about waist height, looking over its [...]

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I am blessed to be in a truly happy marriage. My husband Thor and I take deep delight in each other, and deep trust. But my life has certainly not always been this way: I’m a survivor of two divorces, many more break-ups, and staggering amounts of emotional pain.
My, how things can change. Specifically, [...]

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Ewan O’Leary, the founder of the carbon offset company Little Carbon Feet, wrote the below (in italics) in response to my and Brandt Smith’s dialogue on Rethinking the Entitlement of Travel. I agree with Ewan that we’re in a lifeboat (emergency) situation with needing to reduce our carbon emissions — hence the title “Paddling the [...]

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