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 →
The godawful, oversized necklace gifted to me by a well-meaning friend. Never-used pencils, a once-worn shirt, a four-foot long roll of striped gift-wrap paper (striped? gaa!). Two framed pictures that hadn’t seen a wall in years. Three grocery bags of books I wouldn’t read again (or hadn’t read in the first place). All that and more I deposited into [...]
Tags: e-stuff·gleaning·God·Patterson's Picks·retail·stuff·the right stuff·the wrong stuff
Grateful is a beautiful feeling, like coming in out of a cold winter night to a warm, crackling fireplace. I feel grateful right now, at 6:34 on Thanksgiving morning. I have a loving marriage, secure and meaningful
Tags: Black Friday·Black Thursday·desperate·grateful·market transformation·outrage·retail·Thanksgiving
I know. You never thought you’d hear me yodel with joy about a visit to Radio Shack here at Diamond-Cut Life. I’m not a fan of chain retail shores, nor of buying any more technology than I absolutely need. Which is the exact reason I loved my latest encounter with
Tags: laptops·Luddite·power cords·Radio Shack·retail·technology
I’ve written in recent months about how a low-car diet and a low-TV diet can help us with our national obesity problem and also our carbon obesity (a new phrase I just coined). I practice both these diets. The new diet I’ll add to the mix today is an advertising diet: limiting our exposure to [...]
Tags: advertising·carbon footprint·diet·economics·global warming·green living·life·obesity·retail·thrift·TV
Short post this morning on the deaths of many retail stores recently in the U.S. First, I really feel for the people who are losing their jobs, and in many cases, their retail businesses. This is painful and scary for them, and I wish stability for all the people affected. In the bigger picture, the [...]
Tags: consumption·culture·development·economics·happiness·Naked Lady Party·retail
Read via RSS reader of your choice (for example, Google Reader).
Subscribe