Diamond-Cut Life

The following is a guest post by Jim Meyer. Diamond-Cut Life welcomes your topical submissions. If you would like to write a guest post, please contact us.

Let’s get frank about the current pressures on the US lifestyle and environment as it’s been constructed up to now: A lot of people are getting [...]

[Read more →]

“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

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]