I thought about recording with parents for a while. Environmental action is personal and people keep asking me what motivates me. Well, now you’ll get almost 50 years more background. Another issue with family and changing habits, lots of people talk and ask about challenges of changing others or selves within close relationships. This episode will give you my background, environmental and otherwise, how it affects our relationship, her views,[…] Keep reading →

Marie Spodek is my mom. This picture shows her running her first marathon at 66 years old, never having run more than 5k at once before training. She’s been an entrepreneur, stay-at-home-mom, traveler, writer, and more. On travel, she wrote of her international start after growing up on a farm, then in a small town in South Dakota: Ten days after I graduated from Augustana College (1965), I was in[…] Keep reading →

How did you learn the exercises you do? Did you watch videos or read about them in a book? I bet you learned them from someone. Do any of them still remind you of the person who taught you them? Most exercises remind me of the people who taught me them. It feels good to think about friends, so in the hopes of leading you to think more about it,[…] Keep reading →

Last month I asked “What automatic thoughts come to you when you think of straight white men?“. I also explored the topic with Psychology Today‘s Editor-at-Large, Hara Estroff Marano, in an audio recording for a piece there, White Men and Preconceived Notions. Some updates. . . First, context. However obvious, I’ll still say that the following is a personal account with all the biases of someone just talking to the[…] Keep reading →

On December 22, 2011, a friend and I challenged ourselves to do ten burpees a day for thirty days. As I had aged out of playing ultimate at the level I wanted to, squeezed enough sense of accomplishment from running marathons that I wanted, and didn’t want to pay to use the gym down the block, which I might not go to in the rain and required changing, reshowering, and[…] Keep reading →

The manufacturer of my rowing machine, Concept2, created its annual holiday challenge. In honor of anyone rowing at least 100,000 meters between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve, they would donate to a climate charity of your choice. Something got into me to do it. 26 days meant five of my workout cycles (day 1: lifting, day 2: Turkish Get Up (TGU), day 3: rest, day 4: cardio, day 5: rest). I[…] Keep reading →

Running errands today in 16 degree weather (-9C) reminded me of a time playing Ultimate in college. I think it was the year we were in the finals of most regional tournaments against Wesleyan and expected to make nationals, though I don’t remember exactly since what do I remember exactly from around 1990? In any case, the only times we could all meet was super-early, maybe 6am. This was during[…] Keep reading →