Diamond-Cut Life

I’m back after a week-long break from Diamond-Cut Life. I’ve been reading Bill McKibben’s excellent book Deep Economy . . . . . was delighted by President Obama’s speech last night (clean energy, what a concept!) . . . . . attended a good Illahee lecture about desire . . . . have been organizing our table of ten people for the Oregon League of Conservation Voters annual Dinner for the Environment (also known as the EcoProm), that my friend Molly Kramer so competently directs. Life has been good and lively.

My big change of the past week has been from commuting via carpool to commuting via vanpool. I had a civil difference of opinion with a couple of carpool partners, and decided to try vanpooling instead. In both cases, a commuter is slashing her carbon footprint from what it would be if she were driving alone. The contrast is that a carpool is informal and not subsidized, while a vanpool has a formal structure and receives a state subsidy, at least in some fiscal years.

It’s a very different world, at least in this particular vanpool. There’s a rule against talking while on the highway (which is most of the 100 mile round trip between Portland, where I live, and Salem, where I work). At first I found this a hysterically funny notion — a near-compulsive extrovert like me ignoring the people around me? Verbal lock-down is not The Carpool Way of my past year, some periods of peaceful silence in the carpool notwithstanding.

I decided, though, that like many experiments in life, this one must hold some certain form of richness. And so I have embraced this vanpool experiment as my personal two-hour study hall, my library time. The ride is smooth and the overhead reading light good, which lets me write regularly now to my bedridden mother in Southern California. Last night I read an important report for work that I would never have gotten to without Study Hall. I’m also reading Newsweek, Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy as I’ve mentioned, and my dating journal from 1998. The latter is vastly entertaining, so it is my reading dessert after I’ve ingested the high-nutrient, good-for-me reading. I’m looking forward to restful, end-of-day Study Hall the way I used to look forward to banter and repartee with my male attorney ‘poolies.

I never have to drive now except a few miles to the vanpool meeting-place, which extends the life of my car as well as my own patience level (I find driving draining). I’ll probably experiment with a different vanpool beyond the current one I’m in. But my take-away is that a person can thrive and find a high quality of life in a variety of different low-carbon situations, and that happiness needn’t hinge on any one, particular situation continuing indefinitely.

Related Posts:

• The Connoisseur of Commuting Returns To Carpooling
• Top Ten Tips For Carpooling, Part II
• The Five-Carat Commute