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 learned awhile back that China passed the U.S. as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases.* What’s more interesting, though, is that Zhang Yue, one of China’s wealthiest businesspeople, has been slashing his own emissions as he conducts his business.
Tags: absorption chillers·Broad Air Conditioning·Climate Solutions·energy consumption·Zhang Yue
Happy Thanksgiving! New disclosure: I am married to a foodie. Thor will spend much of today making something he’s never made before, a vegan macaroni and cheese dish, that we’ll bring to my sister-in-law’s house this afternoon. Food is Thor’s creative outlet, his art form, and I believe in supporting a person’s art. I also [...]
Did you know that a seven dollar gadget can reduce both your home water use and your water heating bill by as much as 50%? How many of us know how to make every drop of water that we use count, the way that most people in human history knew how to do because [...]
Tags: aerators·desalination plants·drought·Energy Star·low-flow showerheads·water conservation·xeroscapes
What does President Obama’s suggestion we curb our national oil addiction share in common with the premise of the cool book I’ve just now added to my book recommendations? The belief that change and transformation are possible. And, the underlying belief that we can cultivate happiness, a sense of sufficiency and ‘enoughness’, without always chasing [...]
Tags: change·happiness·oil·President Obama·Smart Energy·time poverty
Thor and I returned yesterday from our annual New Year’s retreat, which we take together each year, just the two of us, to go into our deep inner lives and look at our intentions for 2010. This year we
I’m not just a fan of New Year’s resolutions, I’m a cheerleader for them, and for positive change in our lives in general. As a former counselor who’s worked with a full spectrum of folks — from underachieving college students and the worried well to late-stage alcoholics and drug addicts – I have a realistic [...]
Tags: addictions·decluttering·exercise·habits·New Years resolutions
Time for last-minute but blessedly low-stress Christmas shopping. This is a guest post from fellow Portlander Katy Wolk-Stanley of The Non-Consumer Advocate, a blog I highly recommend. More support for a joyful, low-cost Christmas here. Katy writing: One part of this article on shopping that struck me as quite insightful was the subject of how [...]
It’s a frigid 18 degrees as I write here in Portland, Oregon, with the air so dry that the skin on the back of my right hand is brittle, cracking into little red lesions, despite my frequently rubbing lotion into them to keep them supple. In this same moment, Copenhagen, Denmark where the world climate [...]
Tags: alternative energy·climate·Copenhagen·Economist·GDP·weather
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
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
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