Greetings from Alison Wiley here in Portland, Oregon. I'm a writer/doer/thinker who lives happily by putting people, nature and God ahead of accumulating more stuff. Read more →
I’m inspired today by a good piece at Get Rich Slowly by Robert Brokamp on the high cost of modern gadgets. Mr. Brokamp points out that his iPhone, alone, costs him $1,251 per year, counting in the taxes he has to earn and pay beyond the $876 he’s paying to the iPhone folks, themselves. I [...]
Have you ever stared down a paralyzing fear – and gained mastery of it, to where you then walked into your power, your sphere of influence? This is my long-promised sequel to Alison Cassandra Barcelona, in which I’ll tell why I feel hope rather than despair about
Tags: 350.0rg·collapse·copenhagen talks·faith·nightmares·roommates·sphere of influence
Have I ever mentioned that I once worked as a weight-reduction counselor? Or that the summer I was 18 the Army rejected me because I weighed, embarrassingly, 158-1/2? I cringe at the memory, not because the military and I could ever have been a match made in heaven, but because my overeating was out of [...]
Tags: baking·binges·diet·grace·holidays·monkey-mind·Overeaters Anonymous·overeating·real food·ritual·stewardship·television·weight loss
I’ve added a delicious new book by Amy Minato to Books I Love, one that would be great to read over the Thanksgiving weekend . . . . at work, the rideshare proposal I’ve been working on for months with many others is finally reaching closure, thank the Goddess . . . . . Green [...]
Disclosure: I haven’t read Sarah Palin’s just-released book Going Rogue: An American Life. The context in which I may eventually read it would be standing up, at the Borders on Southwest Morrison, as I wait ten minutes for the light rail to arrive. I think I’ll enjoy it in that context. I see Ms. Palin [...]
Pretend we were all alive together 300 years ago, or 300,000 years ago. What would we do for fun, in the absence of internet, movies, television, and everything else made possible by cheap fossil fuels? I think we’d do what my friends did with me last night to celebrate my birthday: entertain each other without [...]
Tags: birthdays·Colleen Kaleda·dancing·fun·haiku·Jean Baumann·labor of love·party·risotto·singing·vegetarian
I’m enchanted to read about “Battle of the Blades”, the Canadian TV show that pairs champion ice dancers with professional hockey players. The artistic athletes do ice-dance routines in a competition format similar to “Dancing With The Stars” — and have quickly reached similar popularity. Why am I enchanted? At least two reasons: Dance and [...]
Tags: Battle of the Blades·dance·fossil fuels·hockey·ice dancing·sports·Tie Domi·yin and yang
Late last December I decided to drink less, feeling somewhat sobered that an average of four glasses of wine per week since age 21 added up to a minimum $30,000 lifetime investment in libation. Less consumption of a luxury would liberate some funds for helping someone struggling with survival, who under-consumes (and we have gotten, [...]
Tags: drinking·happy hour·nature
I try to not be crazily greedy in the summertime. But it’s difficult, after the many months of rain and cold and dark you get living so far from the equator. Summertime is not about a greed for things or possessions. Summer, at least for me, sparks a near-manic greed for experiences, the experiences I [...]
Tags: bicycling·blackberries·concerts·Edgefield·greed·Mt. Tabor Park·Oregon Zoo·summertime·The Fray
Our chickens have laid their first three eggs! Light brown, diminutive in size (like many beginning efforts), and delicious. These are the very first chickens we’ve ever raised, the ones who were teensy chicks when I brought them home at the beginning of March, the ones we built the coop for with more clumsy care [...]
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