The Dark Side

I moved to Aberdeen, Washington about 4.5 years ago in September 2017 to get myself back into housing after nearly six years of homelessness... | Continue reading


@eclogiselle.com | 1 year ago

Small Communities and the Bigger Picture

This is my current wallpaper on my laptop: A few weeks back there was a nice photo on Bing (free to use as wallpaper) of buildings fro... | Continue reading


@eclogiselle.com | 2 years ago

Housing supply and demand in one screenshot

In the 1980s, starter homes made up about 40 percent of new housing. Now it's around 7 percent. The above screenshot and stats are f... | Continue reading


@eclogiselle.com | 2 years ago

The Lucky Jaguar

There was a village that believed in the idea of The Lucky Jaguar. When a jaguar appeared near the village, a village elder instructed peopl... | Continue reading


@eclogiselle.com | 2 years ago

Social capital is the key to community development

The opening sentence of Jane Jacobs' book The Death and Life of Great American Cities is "This is an attack on urban planning." The followi... | Continue reading


@eclogiselle.com | 2 years ago

Never Split the Difference

Negotiating is a very human thing, which means it is messy and complicated and involves understanding a lot of psychology. What people wa... | Continue reading


@eclogiselle.com | 2 years ago

Fostering Meaningful Discussion in Low Trust Environments

In May of 2020, I took over a dead sub for my small town of Aberdeen, Washington called r/aberdeenwa. I think it had like 9 members when I f... | Continue reading


@eclogiselle.com | 2 years ago

The Butterfly Economy

In January 2020, I wrote a comment on Hacker News that said in part: When your caterpillar morphs into a butterfly, harping on how your ... | Continue reading


@eclogiselle.com | 2 years ago

An Ounce of Prevention

One of my early career dreams was image consultant . I grew up in a family where clothes was a big deal and dressing well mattered to me for... | Continue reading


@eclogiselle.com | 2 years ago

The Hot New Thing

People hate change. They have something of a tendency to dig their heels in and be against it just because it is new and different. They as... | Continue reading


@eclogiselle.com | 2 years ago

Doing the Thing

Yeas ago, I was involved with The TAG Project . Maybe a year or so after I joined one of their email lists, Valorie King (the project founde... | Continue reading


@eclogiselle.com | 2 years ago

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs

I love the scene in Aliens where Ripley says "I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit." While others are freaking out, she si... | Continue reading


@eclogiselle.com | 2 years ago

It's not the heat. It's the stupidity

Design Word: Vernacular Historically, architecture and culture were strongly shaped by local geography and weather. The term typically ap... | Continue reading


@eclogiselle.com | 2 years ago

Policies that make the poor less poor

We should have policies to make the poor less poor. Unfortunately, policies explicitly aimed at trying to make the poor less poor typica... | Continue reading


@eclogiselle.com | 2 years ago

Community Beautification: Oxygen Is Beautiful

Community beautification programs are fairly popular and they typically involve adding greenery, picking up litter and that sort of thing. T... | Continue reading


@eclogiselle.com | 3 years ago

Benefits Packages for Small and Micro Businesses

61% of employees rank health benefits as one of their top-three factors for a job search. Years ago, I worked for the insurance giant Afl... | Continue reading


@eclogiselle.com | 3 years ago

Citizen Planning in Unincorporated Communities

An unincorporated community may have a lower cost of living and less regulatory burden than an incorporated city. For some people, this can ... | Continue reading


@eclogiselle.com | 3 years ago

Sidestepping the Shirky Principle

Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution The above quote is known as The Shirky Principle (and the con... | Continue reading


@eclogiselle.com | 3 years ago

Create an Online Community Space for Your Geographic Community

This will mostly be about Reddit. I like Reddit, but if you are more familiar with Facebook or Google Groups or something else, you may want... | Continue reading


@eclogiselle.com | 3 years ago

Small Scale Community Development Work

If you are in a small community, you may feel that "planning and development" work are out of reach. You may feel you simply don't have the ... | Continue reading


@eclogiselle.com | 3 years ago

Promote a Place or Place of Business via Web

If you are trying to do economic development for a small community, you need a website. If you are a small business in a small community and... | Continue reading


@eclogiselle.com | 3 years ago

The Niche I am Looking to Fill

Eclogiselle is intended to be a compendium of free resources for small communities with paid services available below $5000. In fact, I hope... | Continue reading


@eclogiselle.com | 3 years ago