Month: June 2018

  • If you give a moose a muffin…

    If you give a moose a muffin…

    A delightful children’s picture book by American author Laura Joffe Numeroff, where the cause and effect of life’s choices are played out in somewhat silly examples.  And what happens when you give a moose a muffin? He asks for jam, of course, and when he’s finished eating all the muffins, he’ll want you to make more.…

  • Voting with every dollar spent

    Voting with every dollar spent

    Over the past 10 years or so, the concept of an economic democracy has been turning over in my mind. I feel like there is a ballot being cast with every retail transaction we make. There is a vote associated with every dollar spent at a retail outlet. This sends a message to the supply…

  • It is always the middle of the night, somewhere

    It is always the middle of the night, somewhere

    One of the funny side effects of travel is developing a distorted sense of time. The world is so large, with so many time zones and even the international date line. When you think about other far away places, it is always the middle of the night, somewhere. This is along the same line as…

  • How did I become addicted to plastic?

    How did I become addicted to plastic?

    There was a time, when I lived in my first apartment, where I could fit everything I owned into the back of a pick-up truck. Consequently, the amount of garbage I created in a week, would not fill a full-sized trash bag. There was little recycling in those days, but even so the amount of…

  • Unused creativity is not benign

    Unused creativity is not benign

    Brené Brown’s research on the feeling of shame, which we all know too well, has led to many other discoveries in human behaviour. Ones which might not have been immediately linked to feelings of shame. In a podcast interview with Elizabeth Gilbert’s Magic Lessons, Brené explains: “I used to believe, before I did the research for…

  • Irrepressible optimism or finding good in everything

    Irrepressible optimism or finding good in everything

    Over the years I have been writing and posting to my blog, I’ve had a goal which has guided my content. It is simple. I want the words to be fashioned in such a way so that the reader and the writer feel good at the end of the piece. This practice has been a…

  • Consumer anarchy and the Buyerarchy of needs

    Consumer anarchy and the Buyerarchy of needs

    A fellow Canadian created this tongue and cheek challenge to help us draw attention to a more sustainable way to consume. Actually, I don’t know if that was Sarah Lazarovic‘s motivation, but I am using the illustration to draw attention to these layers of our behaviour, as it relates to buying stuff. Just like Maslow did…