Diamond-Cut Life

Sustainable Living: More Joy And Less Consumption

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Entries Tagged as 'Oregon'

Oregon’s Popularity: Be A Giver Rather Than A Taker

July 25th, 2009 · 1 Comment · food & drink, lifestyle, sustainability, transportation

Here in Chicago at the BlogHer conference, I find a near-uniform reaction from people when they learn I am from Oregon.  They almost swoon. “Oh, Oregon!” these nice ladies exclaim. “It’s so green and beautiful.”
Learning I am from Portland in particular amps up the positive response. “Oohhh, Portland. I love Portland. I want to [...]

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Oregon’s Best Writer, Part II

July 14th, 2009 · No Comments · entertainment, health & well being, work

Who read Moby Dick in the fourth grade, has a great-grandmother who starved to death in post-Bolshevik Russia, believes you should retire at night tired from honest work, and notes that many corporations exhibit sociopathic behavior?
That would be Robert Leo Heilman, the author from rural Oregon I interviewed recently on the phone. I see him [...]

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Ban the Bag Portland!

July 10th, 2009 · 1 Comment · community, health & well being, lifestyle, money, sustainability

The following is a guest post by Hanmi Meyer, Diamond-Cut Life’s site admin.
Portland Rise Above Plastics

Single-use plastic bags represent one of the greatest environmental catastrophes of our generation. It is estimated that 60-80% of all debris in the ocean is plastic. Plastics take hundreds of years to break down at sea and most types [...]

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The Fourth In The Forest

July 5th, 2009 · No Comments · lifestyle, nature, simplicity

If less is often more, then haiku is one of my favorite ways to practice that happy discipline. I wrote these yesterday afternoon while camping on the Fourth of July.
Fourth of July at Moss Creek Campground

Fireworks, begone.
The piney air penetrates
My limbic brain-stem.

Intoxicated On The Fourth
Tipsy on pine air
I decline the wine, and write
Of independence.
Independence [...]

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Oregon’s Best Writer: Robert Leo Heilman, Part I

July 3rd, 2009 · No Comments · community, sustainability, work

The Pacific Northwest where I live is a rich, complex environment so fertile that it gave rise to the coastal Indian custom of potlatch, a gift-giving ritual in which the more you gave away to others, the more status you had. (Hmm . . . what could we learn from that?)
In modern times, my home [...]

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