Diamond-Cut Life

Do you prefer cereal for breakfast, toast, or both? I love whole wheat toast from Portland Bakery, while my husband is crazy for oatmeal from Bob’s Red Mill. (Oatmeal is too gloopy for me. Mornings call for a crunching motion, I feel.)
Our dinners often include pasta with delicious things on or around it, or couscous, [...]

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I’m back after a break spent with family, helping my mother-in-law Joan pass away peacefully at Providence Hospital here in Portland. Joan was a passionate  soul who believed in making the world a better place. For that reason and because she cultivated thrift during the Great Depression like most of her generation, I think she [...]

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Today I am printing an urgent open letter from Wendell Berry and Bill McKibben, two of the nation’s most respected environmental writers and thinkers. I initially decided to join them in civil disobedience in Washington D.C. to address global warming, and my husband told me he’d support me. Then I realized that March 2 is [...]

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One of the old-fashioned customs that I’m a fan of, right up there with playing games at parties and going to church, is newsy Christmas letters. I love reading the stories of people’s lives, which is to say, the story of how people are living out their values.
We just received a good Christmas letter from [...]

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by Alison Wiley
Diamond-Cut Life embraces community and lots of different voices and perspectives. I am wide open to guest post on topics related to sustainability and/or living happily while treading lightly on the earth.
Diamond-Cut Life has gotten 20,000 web-hits in its first year of publication. So you’ll get read! The only thing I ask of [...]

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Drought-tolerant gardens and xeroscapes are beautiful inside and out. That is the conclusion I’ve come to after studying desalination, which is the increasingly popular but very costly and energy-intensive process by which ocean water is made into fresh water. (See here for Part I on desalination.)

Given that energy production drives global warming, we need to [...]

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I have another thought or two on the proposed bailout of the American auto industry. Then later this week I’ll be reporting on desalination, the increasingly popular, carbon-intensive transformation of ocean water into drinking water.
While acknowledging that job loss in the auto industry (or anywhere) is extremely painful, let’s take a step back and ask [...]

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As I entered the Hillsdale branch of the public library here in Portland just now, I was greeted in the lobby by great stacks of lightly-used athletic shoes stacked neatly in containers. Lots of containers, probably hundreds of pairs of shoes.
“Oh good,” I thought warmly, “they’re collecting shoes for people who don’t have any. Lots [...]

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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, of food more lovingly prepared than usual, with more sociability and gratitude 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 [...]

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This is a guest post by Thor Hinckley, manager of Portland General Electric’s renewable energy program. The project he’s describing below embodies sustainability’s triple bottom line of economy, environment and equity (social justice — in this case, jobs for all).

‘Beyond limitations’ is an apt description for John Murphy, President of the Portland Habilitation Center [...]

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