Posts on simpler living, progress, and community
Have you ever been passed by one of those big diesel pickup trucks with smoke stacks belching smelly black clouds? I’ve seen a few where I live north of Austin, Texas. They always make my skin crawl — the aggressive displays of testosterone and environment-be-damned defiance that they are. Being passed by one while you’re […]
I’ve grown so tired of the price of gasoline. Maybe I’m hopelessly spoiled, having experienced gas under $1.50 a gallon for most of my life. I even remember it under 1$. But gasoline in the U.S. blew past $3 a gallon a few years ago and there appears to be no looking back. A suburban […]
Do this sound familiar? Alarm goes off, eyes open, and there it is — that creeping sense of shouldering a mountain of unfinished plans and unmet demands that didn’t disappear while you were sleeping. After silencing its alarm, you look at your smartphone for any txt messages or email that might have arrived during your […]
So Generation Y (or Millennials) don’t like taking orders? Well, it’s not that simple, but a great many articles, interviews, and blog posts have been written on how Millennials want a different kind of workplace and have a different life purpose motivation than the predecessors (like me) that they’re overlapping with. I’m not sure I […]
Check out this post on the Whole Foods blog by Paige Schilt. She offers some practical advice on a few things we can do to help offset the scary drop in bee population. Historically, every winter there is a natural percentage drop, and then the numbers recharge. But for a few years it has been […]
Just finished Hugh MacLeod‘s delightful little book, Ignore Everybody, And 39 Other Keys To Creativity. It sat on my bookshelf for months, waiting for that little impulse for me to engage with it. I see now it was published in ’09, so I’m a late comer, but it hasn’t aged a bit in its value. […]
Back on May 30, I wrote about how we had decided, ten years ago, to strip our suburban yard down to the cheap fill dirt and completely redesign the environment from scratch. As I gather photos for more blog posts and video that I intend to create on the subject, I’m inspired at how it […]
I was rummaging through some old photos of our yard (see the end of this post) from about 2005-06, right as we began what has become an ongoing quest to see how far we can stretch a suburban yard away from the standard grass-lined-with-shrubs thing. The before and afters below shocked me. Now that so […]
I’m attending my first WorldBlu LIVE in Denver this week and loving it. If I had to describe this annual event where people come together to talk about and celebrate democratic workplaces and the mission to foster more of them, I would say it reminds me of some of my favorite conversations from another breakout […]
Ah, the canals of Vegas. Such interesting times we live in, that people would take the time to ride a gondola in a 25-yard long baby pool, equipped when authentically clad gondola driver but minus any of the real atmosphere of the Venice Grand Canal it is patterned after. The Grand Canal Shoppes is, no […]
Of course they can, and Traci Fenton, CEO of WordBlu, shares evidence and explains why in my interview with her today. Traci founded WorldBlu in 1997 to advocate for and teach about the benefits of democracy in the workplace. Fresh out of college, she joined a Fortune 500 company, beaming with enthusiasm that her voice […]
I’ve been enjoying a few days off from official work and plan to finish out the week with a few more working in our garden. We have a pretty elaborately landscaped yard around our home which we’ve been developing and working for about eight years. Most of it is ornamental, some of it edible. My […]