I moved to Oregon in 1989 (less congestion! whew!) and eventually entered the field of transportation options. My work funds and encourages bicycling, walking, teleworking, vanpooling and carpooling, and using public transit. My work helps reduce congestion and air pollution, the things I most disliked in California. Now, I can’t say I still follow the Dodgers. Rather, I’ve started liking the San Diego Padres, who at the time of this writing are leading their division, have the smallest payroll in the National League and the best record in the National League.  That’s an unusual configuration of accomplishments. How do they pull it off?

Rather than hiring spectacular, homerun-slugging celebrities, the Padres do a lot of little things that score runs and win games. For example, they have excellent base-running, and timely hitting rather than power hitting. Their team has talented but young (read: low-cost) pitchers with one of the lowest team ERA’s in baseball. They typically sacrifice one runner to advance another into scoring position. The Padres brilliantly exemplify ‘small ball’ strategy.

Back to transportation, I wonder if the tradition of building more lanes and roads is something like the baseball strategy of hiring the homerun hitters and hotshot pitchers. Both the roads and the big-name players are high-profile, tangible, and produce concrete results (no pun intended). They please the crowds, at least some of the time. It’s easy to depend heavily on them because they seem like obvious solutions. They’re charismatic and attention-getting. At the same time, both road-building and celebrity players can be prone to controversies and criticisms. They’re high-maintenance, needing repairs (roads) and coddling (celebrities). And the costs of building new roads and hiring celebrity players, always high, can range into the stratosphere — as our economy is shrinking.

Transportation options (TO), in contrast, is a cheap date. I once heard someone term my desk’s budget a rounding error, in the context of multimillion dollar road construction budgets.  But TO helps people make travel choices that reduce car trips. Fewer car trips build road capacity — at much lower cost than building new lanes and roads. TravelSmart programs, for example, have consistently and measurably gotten travelers to voluntarily switch their car trips to bike, walk and transit trips. Bicyclists, public transit users, pedestrians and people who carpool aren’t glamorous, and neither am I or my TO colleagues. Rather, the TO world is sort of the transportation version of the Padres’ small-ball strategy. We do little things that add up to big things. And some top-level leaders in transportation have declared recently they are moving to a multimodal emphasis. “We can’t build our way out of this,” I’ve heard them say. That’s good for transportation options, and the carbon emissions reductions linked to TO.

How do I get to work these days?  I alternate between vanpooling in to Salem and teleworking from Portland. By the way, vanpoolers get free parking in Salem while people driving alone pay $40-$60/month . . . . and we build capacity for freight by taking 6-10 cars off the road daily. At peak rush hour, reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the same time. But transportation options people are humble, low-profile folks, not celebrities or anything. Like the San Diego Padres.

photo courtesy of ryan lejbak

• My New Job In Transportation Options
• The Heart Of The Matter
• Peak-Hour Tolls And Global Warming
• Great, Green Job Opening
• Carpooling Is Cool

I respect those willing to keep working with the system on climate change (Congress, the EPA, etc.). I want them to keep working within the system, and even outside of it with civil disobedience, challenging the status quo and pushing for change. My own day job in transportation options pushes for change (carbon emission reduction), by helping people bike, walk, use transit and carpools rather than drive alone.

I have a different perspective. I think humankind, particularly the U.S., isn’t mature enough, or willing on any level, to face up to climate change. The solutions involve too much change on our parts, from the structure and scale of our economy and energy grids, to our personal lifestyles and rates of consumption. We don’t have the aggregate inner strength to pull it off. But please read to the end, because I have a different kind of hope.

When I started this blog in late 2007 I thought and hoped we (humans in general) might deal effectively with climate change. I saw reduced consumption, especially reduced energy consumption, as pivotal to controlling climate change, along with renewable energy sources like wind and solar replacing most fossil fuel use. Now, in mid 2010, there’s so much scientific evidence that temperatures are rising faster than earlier thought (prime example: the new sea lanes opened by the melting Arctic ice) that I think we’re on a runaway train. The feedback loops of climactic warming are too dramatic and self-perpetuating. The blanket of atmospheric warmth started with the Industrial Revolution in the mid 1800’s. We can’t unweave that blanket fast enough to avert flooded coastlines and other startling disruptions. I’d love to be wrong about that. But I don’t think I am.

About my hope: everything we can keep alive for future generations makes a difference. Skills like knowing how to grow food, make and repair clothes, use water and energy sparingly, ride and fix bicycles, build and maintain good relationships and especially how to behave civilly under stress and constrained resources will, in my view, define the world of the mid- and distant future. It will make the difference between civilized communities rising from the ashes of our own current, hyperconsumptive society, or situations much more chaotic and compromised than that.

I would write more, but I have to head out, via light rail, to lead a meeting on expanding the transportation options program in my fair state. Wish me luck. I wish all of us not just luck, but strength and hope.

• My New Job In Transportation Options
• Clashes In Copenhagen Make Sense
• Alison Cassandra Barcelona
• Update: Lots Going On
• The High Country Road of Walking The Talk

Our house is:

• Newly built, spacious, with lots of light
• Highly energy-efficient
• Housemate’s bedroom is 12′ x 16.5′ with bathroom across hall
• On a quiet street that’s walking distance from Mt. Tabor Park
• Beautiful hardwood oak floor downstairs; bedrooms (upstairs) are carpeted
• On TriMet frequent bus line #4
• Ten minute bike ride to Montavilla — restaurants, Academy Theater, Farmers Market
• Full of lyrical touches such as outdoor dining on deck, two fireplaces, front porch, etc.
• Smoke-free, drug-free (social drinking is fine)
• Wifi-equipped

My husband and I

•  Love to talk, laugh and play games
•  Have had housemates in the past and enjoyed them
•  Compost, recycle and practice energy conservation
•  Enjoy vegetarian cooking and dinner parties
•  Like to read (we don’t watch television)
•  Cannot have cats due to cat allergy (sorry)

 We’re seeking a housemate who:

• Has successfully lived with others
• Is stably employed
• Might share one or more of our interests, i.e. gardening, vegetarian cooking, running, renewable energy, singing, dancing, writing, progressive politics
• Can supply references (both employment and renting)
• Is fairly free of drama (quirks are welcome, we’re quirky too)

Cost is $585/month plus one-third utilities.

If you’re interested and the housemate description sounds like you, please post a comment telling about yourself and your lifestyle, and please include your phone number (nobody will see your phone number but me). Thank you kindly, and best wishes on your search!

• The Very Best Diet, Part II
• Seeking The Win-Win Again
• Top Ten Tips For Living With Others, Part II
• The Win-Win Of A Work-For-Rent Arrangement
• Top Ten Tips For Living With Others, Part I

We agreed the river — created by God, in my view, was better than any Disneyland ride.

Mahamudi, our 14 year old friend from Somalia, (Thor and I bought bikes for him and his siblings last year) came over to the house last night for his twice-weekly reading lesson. He read a much more advanced book than usual, sounded out new words better than I’ve ever seen him do before, and as when swimming in the river, I was fairly beside myself with joy.  A year ago when we met him he was struggling with two and three letter words.

We showed Mahamudi the point system we devised while on our camping trip, in which he earns a trip to the coast if he keeps up with his reading all summer. He is on board, determined to earn his points and his trip — he has never been to the coast. His younger brother and sister get to come, too.

I notice that the common thread to all these sources of happiness and satisfaction is that they are woven of nature and community, rather than spending and consumption. Certainly we have to spend and consume in order to live. But it’s possible to put living things, including relationships and rivers, ahead of money and objects. That’s what my pursuit of the Diamond-Cut Life is all about.

• Dancing, Reading, Fully Alive
• Back From New Year’s Retreat
• Mind-Hiking With Stephanie Routh
• A Different Take On “We Deserve It”
• Nights Of Passion, No Regrets In The Morning

I’ve often heard people say in relation to expensive possessions,  “You deserve it” or “We deserve it”.  Sometimes they seem to be shoring up their self-esteem, i.e. we’re good people and therefore are entitled to good things. Other times they seem to be noting that they worked and earned the money to buy the luxury items.

I personally will never say of our beautiful new home “We deserve it”. I will never think or believe we are entitled to this house, despite my husband Thor and I being, I would hope, as good of people as most, and despite the fact we worked and earned the money with which to buy it.

I see our wonderful new house as a blessing, rather than something we deserve. I think this because a great many of the six billion people in the world work harder, longer, and under much worse conditions, than Thor and I will ever work, and due to low wages and lack of opportunities will never get to live in or own a home like this one. If we want to talk about deserving, then people from all corners of the world who are harder working and/or kinder than I am would be more deserving than I am of this lovely house. So, I say Thor’s and my lovely domicile is a matter of grace, a gift from God, and also a function of luck (we were born in the U.S., a country rich in resources).

And I’m grateful. My prayers this past week are for our new, larger house to be something we share with others, a source of community-building. And, our first house guest arrives on Monday — my brother Mick, from California.

As Buddhism points out, everything is transient. All of this could go away — the house in a fire or earthquake, Thor’s and my jobs in a yet deeper recession — and Thor and I would still be the same people. Both of us were poor when we were younger, long before meeting each other, struggling to pay monthly rent. Now we’re relatively affluent. But whether poor or well off, we are human, no more or less ‘deserving’. It doesn’t pay to get too attached to any particular thing, whether a home or a label or status we have in the world.

More friends are coming over this weekend to help us unpack, and share meals, and celebrate Thor’s birthday. Mahamudi, our 14 year old friend from Somalia, arrives at 2 this afternoon for his regular reading lesson with us; his light-hearted, playful approach to life helps offset our Type A, first-world tendencies.  All of these sources of our happiness are not entitlements, but blessings.

• Back From New Year’s Retreat
• Top Ten Tips For Living With Others, Part II
• The Five-Carat Commute
• The Inconvenient Truth of the Diamond-Cut Life
• More Tips On Working For Rent

The ‘more’ addiction looks different in different people. While I would feel no sense of suffering if I could never again fly to a foreign country (uses a great deal of oil), and I’ve never been plagued by cravings for expensive jewelry or designer clothes (here is my general take on Sex And The City) I do the time poverty thing.

For instance, this morning I would love to go running, work on my novel, write my mom and sign up with Northwest Natural Gas for their Smart Energy program for our new house (we’re moving in tomorrow). All that, plus getting dressed and eating breakfast, before I start my work-day. In addition to having already spent 90 minutes on the new book review and this post. Clearly, unrealistic. Compulsive, if I were to insist on it all. I have to let go of some of those things, at least for this morning. More is not necessarily better. In many cases, it’s crazymaking.

OK. I worked on my novel, Revelle, last night, so tomorrow is soon enough to work on it again. The other items can probably all fit if I make it a short run. But I’ll need to be flexible, because I can’t control what might arise unexpectedly. I’ll keep cultivating that crucial faith in the ‘enoughness’ of my time.

• How To Save Five Hours A Week
• Getting Consumed By Sustainability
• Beth’s Take on The Nature of Desire
• Biodiesel Now Yielding 3.5 to 1?
• Looking Forward To . . .

I confess there’s no cardiovascular virtue in a brisk pace when you’re bicycling down Mount Tabor as I do to get here. Rather, you worry about your whining brakes. I’ll be standing on my pedals to achieve a crawling pace when I climb back home for my 9 a.m. phone appointment. Thus achieving athletic, cardiovascular virtue.

I’m a little proud of having finally gotten my act together for the bicycle season. Even though 40% of trips made in the U.S. are two miles or less in length, i.e. easy biking or even walking distance, most of those trips are made by car. My theory, or at least my personal situation, is that the car bias is not due to physical laziness, but to the blowing of my brain’s logistical gaskets when it comes to locomoting by bicycle. Getting my helmet to stay on my head, getting that helmet to stay in one reliable place, finding a lock with either a key that fits or a combination I can actually remember, determining clothes of sufficient modesty and practicality for pedaling (I normally favor long, flowing skirts), and getting my laptop, DayRunner, purse and notebooks all fitted into the one pannier my husband is willing to part with –  my thin shoulders sag at the overwhelming nature of this sequence. And all of that before sitting down to the challenges of my paid work.

At the beginning of the season, it  feels like moving a mountain. Or at least a modestly sized, extinct volcano like Mount Tabor.  I’m always impressed that many people commute and travel by bicycle year-round. My logistical skills aren’t up to that. But now that I’ve got the helmet, lock, skirt and pannier situation under control, and the endorphin-driven pleasures of athletic virtue to look forward to, I know many of my short trips this summer will be via bicycle. It’s probably not a coincidence that later today I’m meeting with Stephanie Nolls of the Bicycle Transportation Alliance. We’re discussing my desk’s sponsorship of the Bike Commute Challenge coming up in September, an event that inspires thousands of people to commute via bike that month, many of which trips would have otherwise been via car. The BTA rocks.

* The seven virtues according to ancient Chinese lore are humility, forgiveness, compassion, gratitude, honesty, patience and kindness. If I were to add a few diamond-cut virtues of my own choosing I’d name thrift (helps both the pocketbook and the planet’s resources), courage (sustainability means consistently going outside our culture’s consumption-shaped box)  and . . . . . community. My experience is that the more we can connect with and depend on each other, and our own bodies, the healthier and happier we are, and the less dependent we are on machines and the fossil fuels that drive global warming, as well as the disastrous, ongoing oil spill in the Gulf Coast.

• Mountain Boarding: A Low-Carbon Sport
• Bike-Commuting While Pregnant
• Soaring Above PZEV To Zero Emissions
• Bike. Walk. Joy.
• Bicycling In The Mist

During the Vietnam era, the draft meant that everyone had a brother, son, friend, nephew, husband, boyfriend, uncle or grandson who could be forced to fight and die in Vietnam. People couldn’t ignore the Vietnam war; it was personal. The draft forced us us to take honest ownership of it. Were we truly willing for our loved ones to be maimed and killed in the existing political circumstances? Were they, themselves, willing? Resistance to the war was large and understandable.

Now, with no draft, and a poor economy that pulls people with low incomes and limited choices disproportionately into the military while leaving the rest of us unaffected, it’s easy for a U.S. citizen to feel no ownership or responsibility for  the two wars we are paying for with our tax dollars. These wars kill large numbers of civilians, are largely driven by our national addiction to cheap petroleum, and are immoral, in my view.

To be honest, I myself rarely think about our dual, open-ended wars in the Mideast.  But I should. If we had a draft, or even a clear and steady stream of information from the media about how much of our paychecks we are each personally spending on these wars via the federal income taxes we pay, we would become a lot more dedicated to seeking peace. And peace is supposed to be what any given war is seeking.

If you’re interested in another take on today’s holiday, the following piece of mine was originally published by the Philadelphia Inquirer on Memorial Day, 2003.

I have some mixed feelings about Memorial Day.

On one hand, I deeply respect people – in this case, soldiers and veterans – who work and struggle for causes larger than themselves, and are willing to die for their cause. I’d like to be as devoted and courageous as they are.

On the other hand, I want a world in which our children and grandchildren advance freedom and justice, yet die peacefully, and are never maimed or murdered in wars, nor inflict that on others. Is that vision less than patriotic on my part?

I look to history to help me understand patriotism and progress. I read that the ancient Aztec culture made thousands of human sacrifices annually because they believed those deaths would appease their gods and protect them from danger. One million women (a conservative estimate) deemed witches, largely due to their use of plant-based medicines and healing arts, were burned at the stake during Europe’s Middle Ages in the conviction that those torturous deaths were for the greater good.  In the 21st century, we see these cultures as having been sick and mistaken. But the cultural fears of those times justified the slaughter as necessary.

Similarly, our modern fears justify our modern slaughters, our wars. We frame war as a last resort we employ only to protect ourselves. Yet, the not-violent revolutions and regime changes in the former Soviet Union and South Africa show that human freedom and progress can happen, on grand scales, without war. Possibly, our great-great grandchildren will see the sacrifices of human life we made in the wars of the 20th century as inhuman and unnecessary – the same way we now understand the witch-burnings of medieval Europe and the human sacrifices of the Aztecs.

Entertaining that possibility does not diminish my respect on Memorial Day for the American soldiers who have died, and the veterans who have been crippled, physically and emotionally, by war.  I want their descendants to suffer less than they did, to win even better advances for humanity – as warriors of peace. That vision is my version of patriotism.

photo courtesy of BL1961

• Mixed Feelings On Memorial Day
• Anniversary Of 9-11: Needing A New Path
• How To Talk About Money
• The Maven of Green Careers
• Clashes In Copenhagen Make Sense

Our new house is so new they’re still finishing it. It’s on the east side of Mount Tabor, just a mile or so from our current house. I know, I know, you want to see a picture of it. The only thing I excel at less than home repairs is taking photos of things. I’m not very visual; I’m kinesthetic and auditory. But I can tell you that our new house has two stories and an open floor-plan, so that the person making dinner in the kitchen can stay in excellent social contact with husband and/or housemates milling around in the family room and dining room, not to mention the outdoor deck that the dining room opens onto. I see this steady supply of social contact as necessary not just for community (very important to me) but also for a fair and equitable division of labor. For example, “Hey, you, please report to the island at this time to make the salad. I’m not making this whole dinner by myself. Thank you!”

We’ll be moving in sometime in June, and have already found a pleasant couple from Atlanta to rent our current house on Belmont. Our new frequent bus line will be the #4, and Thor’s bike ride to his job downtown will actually take him through part of the park! Speaking of transportation, I have to dash now to pick up my friend Jean, to carpool together down to Salem. More soon.

• Top Ten Tips For Living With Others, Part II
• Back From New Year’s Retreat
• Building The Web of Community
• Green Girls Take On CRAG
• About Furloughs And Household Finances

On the home front, my husband Thor and I finally found our new house, still here on Mount Tabor, and will be moving into it in early June. It’s a lovely, sun-drenched home with good insulation, solidly up to earthquake code**  due to being a new construction, and just seven minutes walk from our beloved Tabor Park — can’t wait for those Tuesday night concerts in July! Best of all for this extrovert, our new home has lots of room for house guests, housemates, parties, and cultivating community in general.

On May 24 I’m taking  a week of vacation to do a Nia dance training intensive here in Portland. Nia is a dynamic, expressive form of dance that emphasizes the joy of movement. Since dance is central to the novel I’m writing, I’m loking forward to the training for two reasons.

* Research  shows that girls and women instinctively seek to collaborate in both work and play. It can be a more productive approach to many types of projects than the  competitive,  hierarchical approach that boys and men tend to pursue. I’m referring here to the gender research of Deborah Tannen, PhD.

** I grew up in the earthquake country of Southern California, and want to be as prepared as possible for the major earthquake that I understand is overdue here in Oregon. Last month, April, was earthquake preparedness month, and I notice that our impassioned discussions about sustainability here in Oregon  don’t always address non-wonky, practical issues like sustaining ourselves after an earthquake.

I can see that Diamond-Cut Life’s focus is becoming broader as time goes by. Like everything else in life, my blog is evolving. I welcome your comments on DCL’s evolution. My stats page tells me that since I started Diamond-Cut Life in autumn 2007, it has had 346 posts and 592 comments. I feel great about that. And while we’re counting things, Thor and I celebrated six years of marriage last week. Here’s a post on why we’re happy together and why I term it a diamond-cut, sustainable marriage.

• Seeking To Be Sustainable In An Earthquake
• A Different Take On “We Deserve It”
• My New Job In Transportation Options
• We’ve Found Our New House
• Update: Lots Going On