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 →
What is the most meaningful work you have ever done? How happy did it make you — both then, and now, thinking back on it? Was it the work you had originally planned on doing? New York Times writer David Brooks points out in his excellent editorial today that some bad advice is being given [...]
Tags: David Brooks·service
While the news is filled with the destructive war in Libya, a highly constructive event just occurred in Ethiopia. A Habitat For Humanity trip led
I had a marguerita last night with my fish tacos at the Hawthorne Fish House. I tossed the drink down fast, in the tiny wedge of time available to me between fighting the traffic home from a meeting in Salem (I won an award — happy surprise!) , and the start of the writing critique [...]
Tags: Bill Gracie·haiku·Holy Grail·hyperactivity·margueritas·stress
How versatile and resilient are you? What would you do if, like Joe Logan here in Portland, and for that matter, President Mubarrak in Egypt, your world changed, and your livelihood disappeared? Would you resist endlessly, hanging on irrationally like Mubarrak is doing to his now discredited leadership, creating reverberations of suffering and danger for [...]
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
I’m happy, even ecstatic in our new home, on the east flank of Mount Tabor here in Portland, Oregon. Our house is newer than our former home (one week old versus 70 years old) and larger (2250 square feet versus 1290 sf). And most importantly to me, it has an open floor plan that promotes [...]
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 [...]
Blythe traipsed in late yesterday afternoon to our writing group’s opening session here at Opal Creek, living up to her name, towing with her a forest treasure that startled me into a double take. I’d never seen a cauliflower mushroom before. It was huger than a Halloween pumpkin but formed of air and a fawn-colored, [...]
Would you like a day off from work? Say, a Friday all to yourself, in which to do anything you’d like? The only catch is that you’re not paid for your day off. As an employee of the state of Oregon, I had my first furlough day last week. Like most of my coworkers, I [...]
Long ago in a state far away I worked in a nonprofit for an executive director, Sam, whom we will also call the Mad King. He had humor and energy and that prized quality among bosses of being not at all a nitpicker or micromanager. (I can picture half my readers saying at this point: [...]
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