Glimmering Podcast

We borrow a little Agile trick to check in with each other: What have we tried, what are we stopping, what are we continuing, what will we start?

After an introductory plea to take it easy on yourself and your family, and to focus on Love First, Fix Later, we answer the following listener questions: How do I prevent losing my motherhood mind while at home full time with my toddler? How do I keep my not-independent 6 year old busy all day while I work? What are some good non-candy rewards/motivators? What might an appropriate meal plan look like? How can I get some time for my own brain? Are there free online educational resources I can use? Yes! Here! How important is it to limit recreational screen time? What are some exercise ideas that won’t bore me to death? How do you balance/negotiate the needs of 2 working parents, especially when he refuses to stay home and help? And are there ways to achieve long blocks of focus or do you just always chunk out the day in bits? What are good resources for pre-k (4yr old) and 1st grade (6 year old)? Show Notes Laura's post on: How to occupy your kids during the pandemic (the academic version) BusinessInsider post on: Here's how much work your brain can handle before needing a break Reward items our kids love Amazon affiliate links - thanks for helping us pay the bills! Toy Advent Calendars Japanese erasers Mochi squishies Laura's friend Graeme Seabrook does 1-1 coaching for moms and runs a support community called The Mom Center. Graeme’s coaching focus is to dismantle the cultural and systemic structures that keep co-parenting relationships from being equitable. If you need help navigating these negotiations with your partner, we highly suggest you check out her work. Her website is graemeseabrook.com. Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics - please support your local bookstore. This link is to ours, which is providing free shipping during the pandemic lockdown! Stephen Colbert on breakfast for dinner.Support Glimmering Podcast

In this episode we are once again catching up after a long unintended break! Lots has happened to the Camachos since we were last here 6 months ago. While we skim over some of the low points of 2019, this episode is mostly a retrospective of Marriage Startup and Glimmering 1.0, plus a lot of excitement about the future of Glimmering and this podcast. Don’t worry! We’re not going anywhere. The archives will be disappearing, though, for the sake of family privacy. So go back and listen to your favorites (they’re at glimmeringpodcast.com) while you can! And if there are any you loved and want to hear again, email us and we will consider a re-release. Go check out the Glimmering.com redesign and subscribe to access all our writing, or become a paid supporter to help sustain the Glimmering mission.Support Glimmering Podcast

In this episode, Leslie and Sophia are launching the first of their new segment, called “Ask Me Anything Dad.” It’s a wide-ranging discussion with a 12 year old about beliefs, sexuality, and identity. If you’re a parent, or just someone who is curious about what’s going on in the minds of “kids these days” this could be gold for you. Support Glimmering Podcast

In this episode, we talk about what our first Easter was like after both of us left the Christian Church. For the past few years, we haven't really celebrated Easter in a religious context, opting for brunch with friends or just our own little quiet family egg hunt and special breakfast. This year, we participated in the Easter programming at our Universalist Unitarian fellowship: our first religious holiday separated from our religion of origin. First, we talk about where we are at, spiritually and religiously. Leslie doesn't identify as a Christian anymore; Laura does but in a "'f!ck you' to mainstream Evangelicalism" kind of way. In truth, we're pretty much in the same place, just with a little variance on our expression of our beliefs. Next, we debrief our experience with the Easter service at UUFCO. (spoiler: we loved it!), and talk about what it was like to celebrate Easter without an emphasis on Jesus/resurrection. We each climb up on a soapbox in this episode. You can find some of Laura's here. Some corrections: Laura got the date of the Pulse nightclub shooting totally wrong. Leslie referred to the shooter as a white supremacist, when actually he was an Afghani-American with a history of domestic violence and an affinity for ISIL. We apologize. We could use the excuse that there are so many mass shootings to keep track of nowadays, but we really ought to have done our homework if we were going to talk about a specific one. Content note: Clearly, there's a lot of talk about religious stuff in this episode, mostly Christianity. :) Support the Glimmering Podcast.Support Glimmering PodcastLinks:Episode 73: Easter for the Broken — Last year's Easter episode. It's exciting to see how far we've come!Episode 79: Scalzian Mystics — Another episode about our spiritual and religious journeys.Laura's FB post about leaving the Christian church — In the Christianity I was raised by and ever encountered, the “world” was only ever framed as something working against Christians and Christianity. “The world” was something Christians were only ever responsible for engaging in vague, spiritual ways: “thoughts and prayers.” Never, ever actual political involvement, protest, or any of the avenues set up for making human change.TalkTalk, a song by A Perfect Circle on Spotify — Laura's religious anthem.Orlando nightclub shooting - Wikipedia

In this episode, we’re talking about what’s new in Camacho World - turns out, it’s a lot! Leslie talks about being let go (getting fired) while maintaining friendships; Laura talks us through Alana's vision issues, and... well, that's more than enough really. This is a super casual, barely scripted chat about job stuff, health stuff, new adventures, stress, and hope. If you like to hear about our personal stuff, this is the episode for you! ;)Support Glimmering PodcastLinks:Growing Pains: Transitioning from an Entrepreneurship to a Professionally Managed Firm: Eric G. Flamholtz, Yvonne Randle: 9780787986162: Amazon.com: Gateway — Since it was first published in 1986, Growing Pains has become a classic resource for understanding how start-ups can make the transition to become large, professionally-managed organizations that maintain the special spark that launched them. In the fourth edition of Growing Pains, authors Eric Flamholtz and Yvonne Randle have thoroughly revised and updated the book to include new ideas and concepts including information about strategic planning, Sarbanes-Oxley, family businesses, and overcoming growing pains, as well as new examples and cases of companies.Leslie Camacho | LinkedIn — Leslie is the espresso-swilling, D&D-rolling, latino nerd of the Glimmering team. By day he's helping agency owners succeed by improving every aspect of their operations and processes so the owners and talent can have better lives, increase profits, and create happier clients. After hours, he's into hiking, cycling, playing obscure board games, WoW with Laura, and chilling with the kids and dog. He likes his metal like he likes his politics, progressive.

In this episode, we’re talking about kids and media consumption - what does science say about screen time? How do we sort out the fear mongering from the useful data? What are our own practices in the Camacho household, and what might we want to change? Leslie introduces the topic with some thoughts on the balance of screen time and other activities. We talk about how we want our kids to enjoy a wide variety of activities without relying on digital media to keep themselves entertained. Laura presents her thoughts on the research on screen time. The data is inconclusive. While scientists have made some observations in some populations, even those are not consistent across all populations. Laura rants about the tons of junk "science" reports acting like correlation is causation, and villifying screen time as the source of all evil and unhappiness in the world. The bottom line is, this is a new area of research and it's going to take probably another decade to be able to make any conclusive statements. The only evidence that shocked Laura was that across many studies, kids are apparently averaging around 6-8 hours of entertainment (not including in-school or homework-related) screentime per day. The Camacho household limits kids to 2 hours of screen-based entertainment on most days, so this left us feeling like maybe our concerns about how much time our kids are on screens are misplaced! If you read nothing else on the subject of screentime, this NPR interview with Jordan Shapiro, a Temple University professor whose background is in philosophy and psychology, is golden. Shapiro's guiding principle of parenting in the digital age is engagement and relationship. Laura loved this because it goes back to the basics of episode 80: the most important indicator of raising successful adults is parents who created a warm, trusting, emotionally-connected/involved relationship with their kids. We need to do this for our kids within the digital world. We have to engage digital content alongside our kids, and teach them when they are very young how to be discerning of the content they consume, compassionate in their treatment of the people hidden by their avatars, etc. Leslie takes a turn ranting about privacy issues, brain hacking, and the general evilness of Big Tech - knowledge from which we should not shelter our kids. We circle back to a sense of optimism: This isn't as fraught as it seems; we just have to be realistic about our situation. We have entered the digital age, we are parents of the digital age, and our parenting is going to have to evolve if it’s going to be effective. Ironically, that evolution only needs to widen the same basic principles of good parenting (connection, trust, conversation) to include the digital world.Support Glimmering PodcastLinks:Forget Screen Time Rules — Lean In To Parenting Your Wired Child, Author Says : NPR — If we want to get rid of the horrible stuff happening on Twitter right now, then we need to model it for kids when they're 7 and all they want to do is be like their parents. Landmark Report: U.S. Teens Use an Average of Nine Hours of Media Per Day, Tweens Use Six Hours | Common Sense Media — Common Sense Media finds that teenagers (ages 13-18) use an average of nine hours of entertainment media per day and that tweens (ages 8-12) use an average of six hours a day, not including time spent using media for school or homework.Screen time kids study: Groundbreaking study examines effects of screen time on kids - 60 Minutes - CBS News — ...your telephone in the 1970s didn't have a thousand engineers on the other side of the telephone who were redesigning it to work with other telephones and then updating the way your telephone worked every day to be more and more persuasive.What is "brain hacking"? Tech insiders on why you should care - CBS News — An Anderson Cooper interview with Silicon developer Tristan Harris, on "brain hacking" - how technology is created to be addictive.The Orville - Wikipedia — A show we are watching and discussing in real time with Sophia.ABCD Study — The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study is the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in the United States. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded leading researchers in the fields of adolescent development and neuroscience to conduct this ambitious project. Is Screen Time Bad for Kids’ Brains? - The New York Times — A very thorough commentary on the ABCD study. I don't usually link to paywalled content, but this one is worth the use of one of your free NYT reads, if you are interested in this topic.The 21st Century Skinner Box - Behavioral Scientist — A truly chilling look at how Big Tech can manipulate our preferences. Why I don’t worry about my kids’ screen time, Part 1 | Project Based Homeschooling — This is a fantastic series of blog posts about active vs. passive screen time, scarcity vs. abundance mindset about activities, and an altogether sane and respectful approach to teaching kids priorities and limits. The links to the rest in the series are listed at the bottom of the linked post.How I limited screen time by offering my kids unlimited screen time. | Narrowback Slacker — This is how the Camacho household aspires to run its screen agreements - the list of requirements must be met before screens go on.‎Distance Over Time (Bonus Track Version) by Dream Theater on Apple Music — Barstool Warrior is one of Dream Theater's best songs. The rest of the album is great too!‎This Land by Gary Clark Jr. on Apple Music — The title track, This Land, hits me in the gut. "I'm America's son." Damn straight. ‎The Verdict by Queensrÿche on Apple Music — The 3rd album with "new" lead singer Todd La Torre is their best yet with this lineup. Gary Clark Jr - This Land [Official Music Video] - YouTube — Required viewing for Glimmering listeners.

In this episode, we talk about media consumption - what media held a deep influence in our early years, what’s been recently life-changing and what we’re currently enjoying. We talk about what it’s like to give ourselves permission to simply enjoy the media we love, and how it enriches our lives and relationships. And we wonder if we need to be more critical about our indulgences, making room for other activities. All of this leads into next episode’s topic: Kids and Media.Support Glimmering PodcastLinks:The Gentleman's Guide to Vice & Virtue | The Lady's Guide to Petticoats & Piracy — Laura's enjoying these books by Mackenzi Lee.Play the original Civilization online! — Laura's in full nerdy ecstasy, having found this.The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel — One of our favorite shows right now.Watch Survivor | Prime Video — Several seasons are available on Amazon Prime.OverDrive: eBooks, audiobooks and videos for libraries — One of Laura's favorite apps.Seeing White – Scene on Radio — Why? Where did the notion of “whiteness” come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for? Scene on Radio host and producer John Biewen took a deep dive into these questions, along with an array of leading scholars and regular guest Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika, in this fourteen-part documentary series, released between February and August 2017. The series editor is Loretta Williams.Dream Theater - Distance Over Time (Amazon Music) — If you like prog rock or metal, you'll probably love Dream Theater's Distance Over Time, especially Barstool Warrior. Yes, that is a dumb song name but the song is incredible. ‎Bowls - Tibetan Singing Bowls on the App Store — This is not a great app. Leslie is trying to find a better one. But, it gets the job done! The sounds are authentic and help Leslie relax.HE-MAN AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE Title Sequence — Why is it in all caps? Watch and it will make sense... probably.The Toys That Made Us - Netflix — We can't say enough great things about this toy documentary series on Netflix! Learn the history of Barbie, G.I. Joe, He-Man, Hello Kitty, and many more.She-Ra and the Princesses of Power Reboot on Netflix — An excellent reboot of the original! We love it and our kids do too!Robotech / Roboverse — Robotech is Leslie's favorite cartoon of all time and his still in his top 10 media. From the official website, "Robotech is a sweeping science-fiction anime epic of humans defending their home world against alien domination. The saga is told through the eyes of characters caught up in a series of wars that erupts when a mysterious spacecraft crash-lands on Earth at the turn of the millennium. The secrets of alien knowledge aboard this vessel were unlocked, leading to the development of "Robotechnology" and the creation of a vast arsenal of robotic "mecha" to defend the Earth against the alien threats that would eventually strike to lay claim to the mysterious power source known as "protoculture." ROBOTECH has often been called a "space opera" because it is not just action-packed entertainment, but also an engaging drama.ROBOTECH™ OPENING HD with Original Robotech™ opening theme (From pachinko™ machines) - YouTube — Robotech opening title sequence. This one has been remastered by a super fan for HD. [Monty Python] The Beatles of Comedy - The Atlantic — "It’s a pity that the word irreverent has lost its weight, so that it’s come to seem a mere synonym for cheeky. The Pythons were irreverent in the deepest sense. They had automatic respect for nothing. Everything was fit matter for comedy: religion, national differences, cannibalism, Hitler, torture, death, crucifixion. They created a parallel world in which nothing was serious. They were like boys: they not only weren’t afraid; they didn’t know they should be afraid."Why Modular Productivity Softwares Are Only Just Beginning — “Modular Productivity Software” is a term to explain applications that allow you freedom to customise layout and help you to get things done. Software like Notion, Airtable, Coda and Milanote are perfect examples of modular productivity software. Helping you to plan your tasks, manage lists, co-ordinate projects and bring forward ideas, all in one workspace. The best way to describe modular productivity software is as online lego."

CW: This episode has references to personal experiences with disordered eating and calorie and food restriction, and includes us eating (no sounds!) and responding to food. Thank you for listening to the Glimmering Podcast! Help support us by leaving a star rating or review in iTunes, sharing our posts on social media, or becoming a patron. Supporters on Patreon will get a sneak peek of Leslie's new podcast! In this episode, we talk about our own hangups with food consumption and explore how mindfulness could help us bring our Love Deeply ethos into meal time. Mindfulness is defined as the act of focusing attention on present-moment experiences. Mindful Eating would then be: focusing the whole of your attention on the details of your food/eating experience. Leslie initially hates this idea, but Laura explains it a bit and he adjusts. Laura talks about how she's discovered that instagramming her food has become the way she prays before a meal, and how that in itself is an act of mindfulness and intentional gratitude. Laura briefly goes over the emerging scientific evidence of mindfulness being an important health practice, and mindful eating sharing some of those benefits. She reminds us that Zen Buddhism has been teaching this for thousands of years and that it can be a good thing without Western scientists telling us "why." Leslie admits his love of Western medicine-backed empirical evidence. Then we do a little mindful eating practice with actual food. Here are the questions we ask each other as we partake. We were both surprised by some of our responses! What if food is an expression of love - for each other and our bodies? What if we saw each bite was a gift to our bodies? What if we gave ourselves permission to just enjoy what we eat when we eat it, instead of thinking about how we can rid our bodies of its calories later? What if we loved our bodies enough to listen to their needs: what food they wanted when they wanted it and when to stop If you try eating mindfully after listening, or are a veteran of mindful eating yourself, we would love to hear about your experience!Support Glimmering PodcastLinks:What are the benefits of mindfulness? — This article offers an overview of the research on mindfulness and discusses its implications for practice, research and training.Mindful eating - Harvard Health — This article includes a list of tips to help you get started eating slower and more mindfully.Does the Mindfulness Diet Work? | Time.com — Surprisingly, people who used the diary lost just as much weight as those on a meditation program. Three months later, they even surpassed the meditation group in maintaining their weight loss. Best of all, people did not even have to write in their answers to reap the benefits. Another experiment found that just considering the questions in the diary, without putting pen to paper, resulted in a more mindful meal.Effects of changes in eating speed on obesity in patients with diabetes: a secondary analysis of longitudinal health check-up data | BMJ Open — "Eating quickly is associated with impaired glucose tolerance and insulin resistance, and is a known risk factor for diabetes through increases in body weight. Other studies have also reported associations between eating quickly and increased BMI, indicating that eating speed is a contributing factor for obesity. A possible reason for this association is that fast eaters may continue to eat until they feel full despite having already consumed an adequate amount of calories, and the combined effect of eating quickly and overeating may contribute to weight gain. In contrast, eating slowly may help to increase feelings of satiety before an excessive amount of food is ingested."Eating attentively: a systematic review and meta-analysis of the effect of food intake memory and awareness on eating — Evidence indicated that eating when distracted produced a moderate increase in immediate intake but increased later intake to a greater extent. Mindful Eating and Weight Loss, Results from a Randomized Trial — Results indicated that [Eat Smart, Move More, Weigh Less] participants lost more weight than participants in the waitlist control group...Study results suggest that there is a beneficial association between mindful eating and weight loss.Body and Mind: Mindfulness Helps Consumers to Compensate for Prior Food Intake by Enhancing the Responsiveness to Physiological Cues — Consumers who are chronically high in mindfulness or who receive a short mindfulness training that focuses attention on the body compensate more for previous food intake in their subsequent consumption. Thrive Tribe Paleo Bites- Cacao Nib Snack Clusters — The little snacky things we ate on the show.Beginner's Body Scan Meditation - Mindful — A hilarious essay on how your first body scan session will probably go. ;) ________ During the first few “body scans” I mostly thought about lunch and how my butt compares to other butts anywhere on the planet. Every so often I would notice a sensation in my body. When I did, I immediately became alarmed or bored or my mind just wandered off to Taco Bell.A 3-Minute Body Scan Meditation to Cultivate Mindfulness - Mindful — A VERY brief mindfulness meditation practice to relax your body and focus your mind - a good one to try directly before a meal. (There's audio to guide you, and also a script to read, so you know what you're getting into.)Why Mindfulness And Trauma-Informed Teaching Don't Always Go Together | MindShift | KQED News — We are adding this article as an acknowledgement that mindfulness is not always helpful and certainly not a one-size-fits-all solution to every problem. If you find a mindfulness practice triggering to you, please stop and take care of yourself in ways that work for you.

Thank you for listening to the Glimmering Podcast! Help support us by leaving a star rating or review in iTunes, sharing our posts on social media, or becoming a patron. Supporters on Patreon will get a sneak peek of Leslie's new podcast! This is the second episode in a quarter-long deep dive into the general theme of Consumption. This episode is headed up by Laura about Food Waste - a look at the food we don’t eat: why we don’t, where it goes, and how to do better - all through a “Live Justly” lens. In this episode, Laura talks about how an estimated 40 percent of food in the United States goes uneaten, and according to even the most conservative estimates, Americans waste 160 billion dollars worth of food each year. One of the biggest wastes of food happens at the farm - overproduction, weather or insect damage, and perfectly good crops left to rot because of labor shortages. At the consumer level, confusion about sell-by dates contributes most to food wastage. We take some time discussing how arbitrary and unscientific sell-by/use-by dates are, and then have a quiz based on real-life questions from Laura's secret food group friends. Next, we discuss two big areas of injustice happening with regards to food waste. Human justice: people are still hungry. 15 million American households in 2017 experienced food insecurity. That’s almost 12% of our population. While food banks do valuable work for communities, the root of the problem is a political one. Overproduction is possible because it's so cheap to produce food - because we underpay our food workers from farm to table. In "The High Cost of Cheap Labor," Philip Martin, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California, Davis, concludes that raising farmworker wages 40 percent across the board would add a mere $21.15 to the annual budget of every American household. (Remember, we supposedly waste almost $2000 worth of food per family of four, per year.) We touch briefly on the atrocity of prison labor. You can find more articles on that in the show notes. Secondly: Climate Justice. Carelessness with overproduction is causing great harm to the environment. The energy that goes into the production, harvesting, transporting, and packaging of food that ends up in the trash, generates more than 3.3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. Then once it is in the trash, food waste in landfills is responsible for 23% of all methane emissions and 4.5% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions [source]. Finally, we talk about what we are doing in our household to reduce our food waste; what's happening at a local level; and what needs to happen globally. Packaging waste is a big problem, especially since Americans are bad at recycling properly, and we talk about a new initiative to eliminate single-use product containers for big brands in many households. Ultimately, it's up to us to do what we can, where we can. Support Glimmering PodcastLinks:Improving date labeling policies and practices can decrease consumer confusion, which will not only reduce food waste, but also improve food safety. — Improving date labeling policies and practices can decrease consumer confusion, which will not only reduce food waste, but also improve food safety.Food Recovery Hierarchy | Sustainable Management of Food | US EPA — The Food Recovery Hierarchy prioritizes actions organizations can take to prevent and divert wasted food.How Reducing Food Waste Could Ease Climate Change | Food Waste: from field to fork — The energy that goes into the production, harvesting, transporting, and packaging of that wasted food, meanwhile, generates more than 3.3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide.What 'Sell By,' 'Best Before' And 'Use By' Dates Really Mean — How (and why) to safely ignore the "sell by" dates and avoid wasting so much food at home.Food Waste | ICCR (Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility) — Food waste in landfills is responsible for 23% of all methane emissions and 4.5% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Food waste also includes precious natural resources, accounting for 25% of water, 30% of fertilizer, and 31% of cropland wastage in the U.S. Thread by @SarahTaber_bww: a rant about the Ugly Produce companies — The food system is a hot mess but using ugly produce is one thing it's actually really good at. Using every single part of what's grown, if there's any possible way to sell it. The one big source of food waste that I *do* worry about is crops that are perfectly good, and rot in the field bc the farm can't get anybody to harvest them. (Orrrrr they don't want to pay enough for people to come harvest them.)Thread by @SarahTaber_bww connecting the Japanese internment to criminalizing Latinx immigrants — The initial call for Japanese internment came mere hours after the Pearl Harbor bombing, from the Salinas Valley Vegetable Grower-Shipper Association. AKA, Japanese internment was initiated by the California farm lobby. Op-ed | Here's the ugly truth about the ugly produce movement — One take on the problems with the ugly produce companies: VC-backed startups are commodifying need and undermining food banks and CSAs while they're at it. It's a market solution disguised as activism.How governments around the world are encouraging food waste initiatives — A comprehensive list from Winnow, a commercial kitchen technology company designed to reduce food waste.The High Cost of Cheap Labor - Modern Farmer — Raising farmworker wages 40 percent across the board would add a mere $21.15 to the annual budget of every American household. Prison Labor in America: How Is It Legal? - The Atlantic — Inmates at Angola, once cleared by the prison doctor, can be forced to work under threat of punishment as severe as solitary confinement. Legally, this labor may be totally uncompensated; more typically inmates are paid meagerly—as little as two cents per hour—for their full-time work in the fields, manufacturing warehouses, or kitchens. Prison strike 2018: federal prisoners work factory jobs for much less than the minimum wage - Vox — Because prison labor is so cheap, federal and state governments can sell prison-made goods and services to private companies at rock-bottom prices, creating a labor-market incentive for mass incarceration.How Long Does Your Favorite Food Last? StillTasty.com | Your Ultimate Shelf Life Guide — How long will your favorite food or beverage stay safe and tasty? What's the best way to store it? Get the answers for thousands of items!High Desert Food & Farm Alliance: local food for Central Oregon — A Central Oregon non-profit improving food access, supporting farmers, and creating a more equitable food system.Help! I don’t know how to recycle anymore. | Grist — ...for years and years and years, American consumers never thought twice about what they threw away. It was China making its big “No thanks!” announcement that has forced us to realize that what we discard may actually not have any greater destination than the landfill. It’s like atheism, for waste.Meet Loop, the new zero-waste platform for consumer products — TerraCycle worked with companies like Procter & Gamble, Nestle, PepsiCo, Unilever, and more than a dozen others for over a year to develop the new platform. Each package in the system is designed for 100 or more uses.Don't Fear That Expired Food : The Salt : NPR — Those "sell by" dates are there to protect the reputation of the food. They have very little to do with food safety. If you're worried whether food has started to go bad, just smell it.Buy Recycled One-Use Paper Products — If every household in the United States replaced just one roll of virgin fiber toilet paper (500 sheets) with 100% recycled ones, we could save 423,900 trees. We are going to phase out of Kirkland brand household paper goods, and start using recycled or reusable alternatives.

In this episode Leslie talks about his decision to forego alcohol for 31 days as part of "Dry January." After a brief explanation of what Dry January is, he answers Laura's questions about how it's going, what he hopes to gain from the experience, and to what charity he's donating the money he's saved on not buying alcoholic drinks. We also talk about the new (hopefully more emotionally sustainable for Leslie) structure we are testing out: Keeping a broad, quarter-long theme, we will offer a handful of shorter more explainer or interview-style episodes about one aspect of the theme, capstoned with a longer, maybe heavier conversation episode like you’re used to us doing. Will it work out for the long run? Who knows! But we're going to give it a try. So, this is the first episode in a quarter-long deep dive into the general theme of Consumption. The next few episodes will be about Food & Drink - how we consume, what we consume, etc. Our goal is to have conversations that invite all of us to be more mindful and intentional about our consumption.Support Glimmering PodcastLinks:Dry January | Alcohol Change UK — Dry January is the UK's one-month booze-free challenge. Sign up. Save money. Feel great.The Bethlehem Inn - Shelter for Homeless - Bend, OR — We are a community-supported emergency shelter that provides a warm, safe place to sleep, nourishing meals, and case management services for adults and children experiencing homelessness in Central Oregon. Dry January: The Science Behind the Classic New Year's Resolution | Inverse — Alcohol Concern claims that 62 percent of Dry January participants reported better sleep and higher energy level and that 49 percent of participants reported losing weight.

In this episode, we share a few last thoughts on the Identity series, including our experience attending the UU fellowship two weeks in a row. Leslie reports that he's quite confident about his choice to no longer call himself a Christian - it feels like an act of protest. We talk a little bit about what has changed for us, and for the podcast, in 2018 since we moved our identity from Marriage Startup to Glimmering, and added the "live justly" aspect to our focus. Next is a back and forth "Top Ten Extravaganza" of stuff that impacted our lives in 2018. Laura's autoimmune brain fog is fully on display, as Leslie mentions several major highlights of the year that she didn't even think of, like our trip to Italy and getting a dog. Finally, we look forward to the New Year and what 2019 will bring both professionally and personally. Leslie's working on a new project just for fun (and self-edification), and Laura is excited to announce that Wild Goose Guidance is baaaaack! And New Moon cards are going to be free again. You can read all about it here.Support Glimmering PodcastLinks:What it’s like to get fired for being gay in 2018 – Jeremy Gimbel – Medium — This wasn’t the year I expected to become a target of homophobia. Not in 2018, not anymore, not since we’ve come so far. But indeed that’s precisely what happened. And so without further introduction, here is the story of a very special Christmas gift that American Bible Society delivered to its staff in December 2017.John Leguizamo's Latin History for Morons | Netflix Official Site — In this one-man Broadway show, John Leguizamo finds humor and heartbreak as he traces 3,000 years of Latin history in an effort to help his bullied son.Syllabus found in the playbill for Jon Leguizamo's Lation History for Morons — All the books from the official Latin History for Morons playbill conveniently collected at Goodreads. Headlong Podcast: Surviving Y2K — December 31, 1999: The world braced for disaster as midnight approached. Then, nothing happened. The hysteria over the Y2K computer bug quickly became an afterthought; a punch-line. In Surviving Y2K, Dan Taberski takes you back to the turn of the millennium to meet the people for whom it was anything but a joke — computer coders, conspiracy theorists, survivalists, and true believers — as they each face their own version of the apocalypse.Good Christian Fun Podcast — Good Christian Fun is a comedy podcast delving into the strange upside-down world of Christian pop culture. Hosts Kevin T. Porter and Caroline Ely are your tour guides through the weird and hilarious world of faith-based entertainment. GCF is a show for skeptics and believers alike, all are welcome. Don't worry, we won't make you go to church. ;)Postcards To Voters — Postcards to Voters are friendly, handwritten reminders from volunteers to targeted voters giving Democrats a winning edge in close, key races coast to coast.Home - Resistance Labs — We leverage technology and our army of passionate, remote volunteers to help progressives run and win everywhere.Seeing White – Scene on Radio — Where did the notion of “whiteness” come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for? Scene on Radio host and producer John Biewen took a deep dive into these questions, along with an array of leading scholars and regular guest Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika, in this fourteen-part documentary series, released between February and August 2017.Panda Planner® Weekly — The planner that Laura is using this year.The Hate U Give — One of the most memorable books Laura read (listened to) this year.Potion Explosion — Laura's favorite family game of 2018.My Little Scythe — The board game Leslie mentioned at the top of the show.The Essex Serpent — Set in late nineteenth-century England, about an intellectually minded young widow, a pious vicar, and a rumored mythical serpent that explores questions about science and religion, skepticism, and faith, independence and love.Esther Perel's books and podcasts — Psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author Esther Perel is recognized as one of today’s most insightful and original voices on modern relationships. We agree!MaryRuth's Vegan Liquid Morning Vitamin — I didn't end up listing this in my top ten, but want to put it out there. This is the most effective daily vitamin our family has ever used! We mix it with a shot of Young Living's NingXia Red (an antioxidant juice blend) and even the supertaster kids love it. We've just started the kids on the K2+D3+Calcium gummy supplement, too. The texture is like a soft, silky Starburst and the peach/apricot/mango flavor is fantastic. These are affiliate links directly to MaryRuth's, because we are trying to stop supporting Amazon as much as possible. We understand what a privilege it is to be able to distance ourselves from Amazon, and if you can't do that, no worries; you can purchase them there as well. :)Resistbot — Text the word congress to Resistbot on Messenger, Twitter, Telegram, or to 50409 on SMS* and I’ll find out who represents you in Congress, and deliver your message to your two Senators and representative in under 2 minutes. No downloads or apps requiredDot All Conf | The Craft CMS Developers Conference 2018 — The official Craft CMS Developer conferenceThe Unheavenly Creatures [Explicit] by Coheed & Cambria on Amazon Music - Amazon.com

In this series we’re learning about identity by asking a foundational question, “Who am I?” We want to better understand how culture and social conditioning have influenced our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. What should we embrace at our core? What lies do we get rid of? And perhaps most importantly, what do we pass on to our kids? The answers are complicated, often difficult, yet uplifting all at once. In this episode we’re following the theme of this series by asking “How to do we help our kids answer the Who Am I? questions of race, sexuality/gender, and spiritual & religious identity for themselves, with as much clarity and authenticity as possible?” We talk about how being raised fundamentalist gave us all the "answers," so that when we left the framework of that paradigm, we had nothing left. We've had to parent ourselves through these questions and feel somewhat ill-equipped to help our kids with them. Laura shares some of the parenting research she dug up in the last week, which turns out to be deceptively simple. The most important thing is a warm, trusting, emotionally-connected/involved relationship with your kids. We talk about how our respective gender socialization has made that easier or harder for us, and what we want to do to change things. Next, we get specific about three areas of identity where we want to parent with more intentionality: Race/Culture, Sexuality/Gender, and Religion/Spirituality. Our overarching goal is to know and celebrate who they are as individuals, rather than trying to stuff them into a particular set of expectations we have for them, and to remain flexible as they evolve. We end with a teaser: we went to a new church and we kinda liked it! We'll talk about it on the next episode: our wrap-up of the Identity series.Support Glimmering PodcastLinks:How do your parenting methods affect your child's future? | Kobe University — This study from Kobe University in Japan, found that "people who had experienced “supportive” child-rearing where parents paid them a lot of positive attention reported high salaries, academic success, and high levels of happiness."Lessons from the longest study on human development | Helen Pearson - YouTube — Science journalist Helen Pearson shares some important findings and simple truths about life and good parenting. Her book, Life Project: The Extraordinary Story of 70,000 Ordinary Lives is a fascinating, conversational look into the British Birth Cohort studies.Raising religious kids: The pros and cons — Quartz — This is a good roundup of a lot of recent science around religiosity in families, written in very accessible lay language.

In this series, we’re learning about identity by asking a foundational question, “Who am I?” We want to better understand how culture and social conditioning have influenced our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. What should we embrace at our core? What lies do we get rid of? And perhaps most importantly, what do we pass on to our kids? In this episode, we talk about our spiritual identities. When we first got together we believed the same things, were part of the same religion, and worshiped together. Our spirituality and religious beliefs were a foundational in our relationship. After 15 years of marriage, do we still share the same spiritual identity? Are we still even spiritually compatible? First, we ask each other core questions like, "Are you even still a Christian?" and "SBNR or nah?" then we do a "quickfire" round of questions (that of course isn't super quick) where we come up with the episode title on the fly. We end on a bit of a cliff-hanger: how do we talk about all of this identity stuff with our children? Can we be in flux personally, and still give them solid roots to grow from?Support Glimmering PodcastLinks:Christian (Part 1) — The Liturgists — The first episode, plus episodes three and four were Laura's favorites from the 5-part series.Solving the Riddle of Metallica | The New Yorker — "Metallica’s music can work on anybody, but I suspect its discography offers a particular kind of escape for boys who maybe don’t want to play football or wrestle but nonetheless require some physical outlet for the pain and confusion that flows through adolescence. These records exist, on some level, to amplify and release demons. Long may they reign."Metallica - The Unforgiven [Official Music Video] - YouTube — Leslie says: "This song has haunted, inspired, and driven a part of me for decades. I love it." A Perfect Circle - TalkTalk — Laura's defining song. You can read the lyrics here.EDO AND JO | BLISS CD — Laura says: "Kirtan. It's...kinda like Hindu praise and worship music!"What My Jesus Would Do – Whatever — Our favorite agnostic prophet, John Scalzi, says: "At no point will I cede ownership of Jesus to these people, or the idea that the Jesus I know supports the intolerance, ignorance or fear they claim He does. They don’t own Jesus, and I strongly believe He doesn’t support their intolerance, ignorance or fear. And I think it’s perfectly reasonable to let these folks know this, in a way that explicitly undercuts the proposition that they hold the monopoly on understanding Jesus."Biblical Insights into Astrology — Divine Inspiration Astrology with Kelly Lee Phipps — "When I interpret charts I illuminate for clients their potential, both shadow and light, to help them accept their whole being and to help them live the full expression of their gifts. We also probe and improve on their weaknesses. When I look at the transits and progressions, I explain the qualities and potential of the seasons, days and years, giving guidance based on the motions and cycles of heavenly bodies reflecting psychological states and the flow of events. My aim is not to predict the future, but to help people live more fully in the present, navigating the currents of life with skill. We all have heard that to everything under the sun there is a season (Ecclesiastes 3:1-10). In Psalms 104:19 it says, ‘The moon marks off the seasons, and the sun knows when to set.’ When I read a chart, whether it’s for a person, city, nation, or event, I am using the heavens as the Bible says, to read the signs."Weekly Horoscopes & Weekly Astrology by Chani Nicholas for your Sun & Rising Sign | Chani Nicholas — Laura's favorite astrologer, who offers frameworks for healing with a queer, feminist, social justice lens. (I've found that reading for both my sun and rising signs makes for the most meaningful guidance - you can calculate those here.)The Potluck Vegetarian | Haystacks — This recipe even includes instructions for assembly line construction!Kellogg’s Special K Cottage Cheese Loaf Recipe - SDA Style - Be a Bree — A Seventh-day Adventist potluck classic.

In this series, we’re learning about identity by asking a foundational question, “Who am I?” We want to better understand how culture and social conditioning have influenced our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. What should we embrace at our core? What lies do we get rid of? And perhaps most importantly, what do we pass on to our kids? In this episode we’re talking about Laura's answer - and the response that many straight, white, cis, neurotypical, able-bodied people would give - to the question, “Who am I?” (Spoiler alert: it’s not about race.) Leslie apologizes for using a culturally insensitive metaphor in the last episode, by inadvertently using an ableist term. So sorry! We are still working on offloading these deeply ingrained language norms. We talk about how racial identity didn't factor into Laura's self-construct because she's white and was raised "colorblind" (or, a less ableist term for it: race-evasive). Leslie gives a quick explainer on the origin of the term "grandfathered in," which, unsurprisingly, has racist connotations. Laura tells an embarrassing story about how she didn't count herself as a white person one time, and shares an excellent quote about race-evasiveness from Shannon Sullivan: "It’s almost like a pride in being completely clueless about the world in which we live as white people, as if we can’t see how our own whiteness, along with other races, is operating in it. And that actually allows white supremacy hum along quite happily and unchallenged. If you can’t see race, then how in the heck are you going to see racism?" The meat of the episode is Laura talking about how parenthood completely took over any other sense of her identity for a very long time, and her evolution in embracing the identity of "Parent of Child with Special Needs." While parenting is still her most all-consuming job, she also feels like she's coming out of the woods of early childrearing and can focus on the true joy of having kids: enjoying authentic and interesting relationships with individuals you've helped shape since they were born. We finish off with a teaser for the next episode in this series: Spiritual Identity.Support Glimmering PodcastLinks:Indigenous Corporate Training: Use these culturally offensive phrases, questions at your own risk — There are a couple Canada-specific items, and some American atrocities are left out, but this is a good resource from Bob Joseph, a Gwawaenuk Nation member who is a certified master trainer, with a background in business administration and former associate professor at Royal Roads University.Autistic Hoya: Ableism/Language — You're not automatically a bad or evil person/activist if you have used random language on here, but if you have the cognitive/language privilege to adjust your language, it's definitely worthwhile to consider becoming more aware/conscious of how everyday language helps perpetuate ableist ideas and values.7 Reasons Why 'Colorblindness' Contributes to Racism Instead of Solves It - Everyday Feminism — Colorblind ideology takes race off the table. But for many people of color – as well as for White people who work to dismantle systems of privilege – race is very much on the table. Racism forces it to the tabletop. Colorblindness just pretends the table is empty.Revealing Whiteness: The Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege (American Philosophy): Shannon Sullivan: 9780253218483: Amazon.com: Books — Revealing Whiteness explores how white privilege operates as an unseen, invisible, and unquestioned norm in society today. In this personal and selfsearching book, Shannon Sullivan interrogates her own whiteness and how being white has affected her...As it articulates a way to live beyond the barriers that white privilege has created, this book offers readers a clear and honest confrontation with a trenchant and vexing concern.Seeing White – Scene on Radio — Where did the notion of “whiteness” come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for? Scene on Radio host and producer John Biewen took a deep dive into these questions, along with an array of leading scholars and regular guest Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika, in this fourteen-part documentary series, released between February and August 2017.The Racial History Of The 'Grandfather Clause' : Code Switch : NPR — But like so many things, the term "grandfather," used in this way, has its roots in America's racial history. It entered the lexicon not just because it suggests something old, but because of a specific set of 19th century laws regulating voting.Leslie's Orc Hunter — Casually bad-ass. Laura's Orc Rogue — Casually lethal. Potion Explosion 2nd Edition — This is the game we refer to at the end of the episode. Our whole family loves playing it! It says ages 14+, but we have an 8.5 year old who plays quite well independently, and our 5 year old likes teaming up with one of the adults for help.

In this episode, Leslie explains why "Where are you from?" is a question only satisfied by an answer that explains the origin of his brownness. He talks about his biracial struggle: not white enough for the white half of the family, and not brown enough for the brown side. We mention the excellent book So You Want to Talk About Race?, and the mindblowing Seeing White podcast series. The Identity series is a "Learning Out Loud" exercise; we don't have all the answers - we are really just learning how to ask the right questions. We encourage you to use this conversation as a springboard into your own inquiry about identity!Support Glimmering PodcastLinks:11 ways race isn’t real - Vox — Every time someone struggles to explain or select a racial identity, every time we have a public debate about should check get to check box, and every time a person's looks don't seem to match up with what they call themselves, it's a reminder that race is a social and political construct. But what does that actually mean?When Labels Don’t Fit: Hispanics and Their Views of Identity | Pew Research Center — Hispanics are also divided over how much of a common identity they share with other Americans. About half (47%) say they consider themselves to be very different from the typical American. And just one-in-five (21%) say they use the term “American” most often to describe their identity. On these two measures, U.S.-born Hispanics (who now make up 48% of Hispanic adults in the country) express a stronger sense of affinity with other Americans and America than do immigrant Hispanics.Census Historical Comparison Tool — A fascinating tool from the Pew Research Center that lets you see every single racial/ethnic category on the United States Census from 1790 to the present. Census may change questions on race, Hispanic origin for 2020 — Federal officials are considering major changes in how they ask Americans about their race and ethnicity, with the goal of producing more accurate and reliable data in the 2020 census and beyond. Recently released Census Bureau research underscores an important reason why: Many Hispanics, who are the nation’s largest minority group, do not identify with the current racial categories.So You Want to Talk About Race, by Ijeoma Oluo — In this New York Times bestseller, Ijeoma Oluo explores the complex reality of today's racial landscape--from white privilege and police brutality to systemic discrimination and the Black Lives Matter movement--offering straightforward clarity that readers need to contribute to the dismantling of the racial divide.Seeing White – Scene on Radio — Scene on Radio host and producer John Biewen took a deep dive into these questions, along with an array of leading scholars and regular guest Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika, in this fourteen-part documentary series, released between February and August 2017.Why America adopted race-based slavery. — This article neatly sums up how and why the early Americans transitioned to using race (and appearance) as a justification for enslaving another human being.Slavery to Mass Incarceration: a brief history of white supremacy by the Equal Justice Initiative — A narrative of racial difference was created to rationalize and justify the continuation of slavery. That myth has simply evolved over time.

In this episode, we take a moment to thank our veterans (and their families) for their sacrifice and service, and promise to Never Forget. Laura gives a quick rundown of midterm election wins and points you to the Small Victories letter which lists how we moved toward a more just, equitable, and representative America. We run through a bunch of family updates on mental health, new medical diagnoses, how school's going for the kids and work's going for us, and of course, talk about the new puppy! Finally, there are a few shoutouts to listeners for their excellent feedback and an offer from our friend for anyone who is concerned about their cyber security - particularly those on the front lines of online activism, or who are concerned about online stalking.Support Glimmering PodcastLinks:Small Victories - All we accomplished — The 2018 midterms were electrifying in the progress toward a more just, equitable, and representative America.Skye Rowena Cloud (@skyerowenacloud) • Instagram photos and videos — Skye is our Staffy/Pit mix puppy! She was born on August 1st, and chose us on October 20, 2018. This is the page for all her fans. ;)Dot All Conf | The Craft CMS Developers Conference 2018 — The official Craft CMS Developer conferenceITDRC (Information Technology Disaster Resource Center) — America's premier team of volunteer technology professionals - connecting communities in crisis. The Information Technology Disaster Resource Center (ITDRC) was founded in 2008 to provide communities with the technical resources necessary to continue operations and begin recovery after a disaster. We harness the collective resources of the technology community to provide no cost Information, Communications, and Technology (ICT) solutions that connect survivors and responders in crisis.Toggl Review: The Best Time Tracking Software On The Market? — Thought you'd never ask. Toggl is a dedicated, web-based time tracking tool, meaning it's specifically designed to keep tabs on your hourly input. Now, while that may seem like an incredibly niche piece of kit, it actually has a ton of practical uses for both clients and freelancers. Today we ask the question: Is Toggl really "worth your time?" What My Jesus Would Do – Whatever — The Jesus I know and whose words I have read and striven to understand would not sign off on a much of the agenda of those who now parade Him around like a fetish, and in doing so have created this other Jesus, a vacuous, empty vessel for an uncharitable worldview. But this implicitly asks a question: What would the Jesus I know do, confronted by this Fetish Jesus? Would he fight him? Argue with him? Denounce him? Engage in a mystical battle of miracles? The answer is: None of the above, of course. The Jesus I know would do the hardest thing imaginable: He would forgive.The Fly Media Origin Story Part 1 — Bureau of Digital — Of the hundreds of people we’ve met who started a digital agency, almost all of them stumbled into it. But the two people on today’s show saw the web as a way to improve their lives. Living in a small Northeastern mill city, a tanking economy and failing health were taking its toll on the young couple. And then a friend told them about working in tech in Atlanta. Sherri and Reuben Johnson never looked back. Listen to part one of The Fly Media Origin StoryThe Fly Media Origin Story Part 2 — Bureau of Digital — How do you start a tech company without a computer? Drive and relentless determination. Sherri and Reuben Johnson of Fly Media Productions worked out of their local library, using books and VHS tapes to teach themselves how to build sites. With no clients or connections, they would park their junker car out of sight, then walk the main streets handing out printouts promoting their web services to local businesses. Like many of us, their beginning setup wasn’t ideal. So how do you make things work when you have ability, but few tools or resources—and how do you stay true to yourself in the process?CTRL+CLICK CAST Podcast - We Inspect the Web For You — CTRL+CLICK CAST inspects the web for you! We proudly feature diverse voices from the industry’s leaders and innovators, who tackle everything from design, code and content management systems, to culture and business challenges. Our focused, topical discussions teach, inspire and waste no time getting to the heart of the matter.(2) Weekend Update: Pete Davidson Apologizes to Lt. Com. Dan Crenshaw - SNL - YouTube — Pete Davidson stops by Weekend Update to apologize for his comments about Lt. Com. Dan Crenshaw.

In this episode, Leslie goes through his ballot, following Laura’s Voters’ Guide. Laura talks about her research for the Guide and Leslie adds his own research and opinions to the conversation. We have two important races that will have repercussions for the whole country: Please donate to Kate Brown for Governor and Jamie McLeod-Skinner for U.S. Representative!Support Glimmering PodcastLinks:Amazon.com: uni-ball 207 Retractable Gel Pens, Medium Point, Black, Box of 12: Industrial & Scientific — Leslie's favorite pens for enacting democracy lol - uni-Ball 207 Retractable Fraud Prevention Gel Pens, Medium Point, 0.7 mm, Black Barrels, Assorted Ink Colors, Pack of 24Committed to Communities | Jamie McLeod-Skinner for Oregon — This is an increasingly tight race! If you have extra funds, please donate to Jamie's campaign!Kate Brown Oregon's Governor | — Another tight race that needs support from people who care about democrats retaining governorships. Please donate!Board of County Commissioners | Deschutes County Oregon — The Board’s duties include executive, judicial (quasi-judicial), and legislative authority over policy matters of countywide concern. City Council | City of Bend — Here's what our city council does in Bend. Yours might be different - especially if your city has wards.Dswcd | WHAT WE DO — The Deschutes Soil and Water Conservation District Provides free technical assistance to private land owners and land managers to address resource concerns on their land. Funding for Deschutes Soil and Water Conservation District comes from a variety of local, state and federal sources. Programs are designed to conserve water, reduce invasive weeds, and provide plant health and wildlife habitat.A Primer on Measure 102 | Local News | Bend | The Source Weekly - Bend, Oregon — Measure 102 would remove the restriction that affordable housing projects funded by municipal bonds must be government owned. Measure 104 is how corporations and special interest groups hope to keep their tax loopholes | Oregon Center for Public Policy — Making it harder to reexamine tax subsidies and discard them if necessary - as Measure 104 would do - is a terrible idea. It would allow a minority of lawmakers to ignore the will of the people, while transferring even more political power to corporations and special interest groups.Meet Oregon’s anti-immigrant hate group: Oregonians for Immigration Reform (OFIR) | Southern Poverty Law Center — OFIR’s co-founders and current leadership also have longstanding ties to hate groups and a history of making racist statements. Federation for American Immigration Reform | Southern Poverty Law Center — The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) is a group with one mission: to severely limit immigration into the United States. Although FAIR maintains a veneer of legitimacy that has allowed its principals to testify in Congress and lobby the federal government, this veneer hides much ugliness.A massive new study shows how to reduce abortions — and it's not more regulation. — If you want to see fewer abortions, then you need to support the organizations that are already providing and fighting for reproductive health care. That’s the only way to guarantee people’s right to life.Unsafe Abortion: Unnecessary Maternal Mortality — Unsafe abortions are a leading cause of maternal death. Unduly restricting abortion providers makes abortions unsafe, which puts more women at risk and adds unnecessary strain to our healthcare system.

In this episode, we learn about why the 2018 midterms are so important, how to be an informed voter, and what all we can do to get out the vote for 2018. Laura walks us through her strategy and approach to researching candidates and ballot measures. We also talk about reasonable shortcuts to take if you don’t have the time or inclination to do the research yourself.Support Glimmering PodcastLinks:Gerrymandering, explained - VoxThe Gerrymandering Project – FiveThirtyEightIconic Dodge City moves its only polling place outside town.53,000 mostly Black voters’ registrations are on hold due to Georgia’s Exact Match law.Save My State | #VoteSaveAmerica — Check to see if you are registered and view your local ballot. Also has voter information for every state like registration deadlines, polling booth locations, and everything on a state’s ballot. This is a good way to help an out-of-state friend vote! Uber and Lyft will [MAYBE] help you find your polling place on Election Day - The Verge — We are skeptical about how dedicated Uber and Lyft drivers (not to mention their respective companies) are in this endeavor. Voter Information: Varied State Approaches — Shows how well (or badly) each state prepares and educates its citizens for voting. Fighting Hate | Southern Poverty Law Center — The SPLC is the premier U.S. non-profit organization monitoring the activities of domestic hate groups and other extremists – including the Ku Klux Klan, the neo-Nazi movement, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, black separatists, antigovernment militias, Christian Identity adherents and others.Mission | OpenSecrets — Nonpartisan, independent and nonprofit, the Center for Responsive Politics is the nation's premier research group tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy. OUR VISION is for Americans to be empowered by access to clear and unbiased information about money’s role in politics and policy and to use that knowledge to strengthen our democracy. OUR MISSION is to produce and disseminate peerless data and analysis on money in politics to inform and engage Americans, champion transparency, and expose disproportionate or undue influence on public policy.Mission & History - FollowTheMoney.org — The non-partisan Institute researches and archives a 50-state federal/state database of contributions documenting $100+ billion, plus more than 2 million state lobbyist-client relationships that are registered annually. Recent expansions include selected local-level data, collecting independent spending reports for federal campaigns and in 31 states, and lobbying spending in 20 states.Vote Smart - The Voter's Self Defense System — Find your candidates' bio, voting record, ratings by special interest groups (like, their NRA "grade"), who is funding them, and more.Vote Informed on the Entire Ballot - BallotReady — Enter your address and this site (and app) will collate as much info as they can from across the web, to give you a sample ballot with every measure and candidate summarized. You can print your sample ballot "cheat sheet" and take it with you to the polls!Oregon Secretary of State: Voting & Elections — Oregon's official website for all election & voting related activities. It is a PITA to use but at least it exists! ORESTAR (Oregon Elections System for Tracking and Reporting) is located here.

In this episode we commiserate with all our friends and listeners who’ve struggled through Easter this year. In the process, we take a hard look at what Easter means to us, the doubts we have, and what we wish Easter meant to more people, especially the broken. We talk about our religious upbringing and Jesusy stuff in an exploratory, not preachy way, but the topic is what it is, if you need to avoid it. Support Glimmering PodcastLinks:I’m Bored with Easter – FeistyThoughts — Every year Easter is about individual sin. But I need an Easter that is big enough for our collective sin and brokenness, big enough for our systemic and institutionalized brokenness. I need an Easter that goes beyond the personal. The things that overwhelm my heart and soul right now have less to do with my personal wretchedness, than the brokenness of the systems I’m embedded in, participate in, and that impact me and the communities I love.Find Me Tomorrow? — Jesus-on-that-cross. I don’t know how to connect with you. I feel the loss of the old ways, the steady in my tracks normal ways of doing these religious days. I believe you to be real, but all that gives me is a numb sort of peace, today.Isaiah 61 NLT - To all who mourn — The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me,     for the Lord has anointed me     to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted     and to proclaim that captives will be released     and prisoners will be freed.[a] 2 He has sent me to tell those who mourn     that the time of the Lord’s favor has come,[b]     and with it, the day of God’s anger against their enemies. 3 To all who mourn in Israel,[c]     he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning,     festive praise instead of despair. In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks     that the Lord has planted for his own glory.Jars of Clay - Oh My God LyricsOh My God (20th Anniversary Edition) by Jars Of Clay on Amazon Music - Amazon.com — Oh My God (20th Anniversary Edition)

In this episode, we talk about Laura’s plans for a sabbatical. She’s finished her year-long coaching certification courses, but instead of diving straight into paying work, she has found she needs to take a step back and do a lot of internal work first. There’s a lot of vulnerability and rawness in this episode, and of course Laura cries. Hopefully it encourages you to look at the roles you play in your life, and how to embody more healthily and authentically the inescapable ones.Support Glimmering Podcast

We take a personal look at the rapidly changing view of sexual harassment and assault in the USA, starting with our own experiences. We want to know how it impacts our partnership, how we should be talking about #MeToo with our kids, and what we can practically do to improve women’s rights. Leslie updates us on the Tax Reform Bill and we talk about our new show artwork, The Heart Switch! Support Glimmering PodcastLinks:The Wealth Inequality Problem in One Chart — On the chart, we plotted the “Median Net Worth” of different wealth groups between 1998 and 2013. This is based on a study that the Federal Reserve does about every three years on consumer finances. When this data is compared in 2013 dollars: - The Lower Class: Wealth has decreased by 26.5% for the bottom 20% of incomes - The Working Class: Wealth has decreased by 52.7% for the second lowest 20% of incomes - The Middle Class: Wealth has decreased by 19.1% for the middle 20% of incomes - The Top 10%: Wealth has increased 74.9%, soaring to a median net worth of over $1.1 million.The Weeds Podcast - Five big problems with the GOP tax plan — Explains the Tax Reform plan issues way way better than I can. If you want to get into the weeds then, um, well The Weeds is your podcast.Analysis of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act | Tax Policy Center — On average, relative to current law, low- and middle-income taxpayers would see little change and taxpayers in the top 1 percent would receive an average tax cut of 1.1 percent of after-tax income.The Republican tax bill will exacerbate income inequality in America - Vox — The centerpiece of the Republican tax plan is a massive corporate tax cut, from 35 percent to 20 percent, which is expected to disproportionately benefit the wealthy. Shares of stock in the businesses that pay corporate income are mostly owned by the wealthy, and the top executives whose compensation packages are linked to stock market performance are also much richer than the average American. So the bill’s cut in the corporate tax rate is going to help them the most.The Senate Republican tax plan, explained - Vox — The plan, crafted by Senate Finance Committee Chair Orrin Hatch and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, would slash corporate tax rates permanently, offer temporary cuts for individuals, and repeal the individual mandate in Obamacare, a $338 billion health care cut that leaves 13 million more people uninsured by 2027. The result is that, by that year, when the individual cuts expire, most Americans will be worse off due to higher taxes and lower health care coverage, while rich people who own shares in corporations will continue to benefit.Facebook Post that is a good starting point for #MeToo — A deconstruction of the "women are impossible to understand" trope, situations of potential harassment and specifically with a power imbalance (social and other), descriptions of toxic masculinity.#MeToo - A "Laura approved" good donation option — Just BE Inc. has been a labor of love for the last ten years. What started as a small community group aimed at helping young women find more focus, has developed into an organization working hard to ensure the health, well-being and wholeness of little brown girls everywhere. Resistbot - Super Easy way to stay active in a meaningful way — Text RESIST to 50409 or message me on Facebook and I’ll find out who represents you in Congress, and deliver your message to them in under 2 minutes. No downloads or apps required.Action 2: Take The Tax Bill Fight to the House -- wall-of-us — Take action against the Tax Reform bill. Wall of Us makes it as easy as possible. Stop Final Passage of the GOP Tax Scam Bill: 5 Calls — Detailed info on the Tax Reform bill and how to fight it. NOTE: Allow the site to know your location so it can automatically give you the contact info of your local representatives. Anton Peck's Portfolio — Leslie's favorite is the Robot Christmas Card collection!Anton Peck (@antonpeck) | Twitter

In this episode, We talk about our family vacation to the Great Wolf Lodge, vacations for depressed parents, Magda’s holiday sanity project called Coffee & Eggnog, the Holiday Survival Plan, and some other random things that are making life easier or bringing us joy.Support Glimmering PodcastLinks:The House Republican tax bill, explained - Vox — In an influential 2006 paper analyzing data in 72 countries across 22 years, he and his American Enterprise Institute colleague Aparna Mathur estimated that a "1 percent increase in corporate tax rates is associated with nearly a 1 percent drop in wage rates.” A second paper in 2010 found a slightly smaller effect (a 0.5 to 0.6 percent decrease in wage rates per 1 percent increase in corporate tax rates) but still concluded that labor was ultimately paying the tax. More than paying it, in fact — they estimate that labor pays 2,200 percent of the tax’s burden, a really extraordinary estimate.How tax breaks help the rich - Vox — But how, exactly, do these tax breaks work? Before we decide whether to keep them or get rid of them, we need to understand whom they benefit.Happy anniversary, Americans of Conscience! - Jennifer Hofmann — With this in mind, here are the three issues the Americans of Conscience checklist will focus on this December and through 2018: Equal rights for all Americans Full voting access for all Americans Humane treatment of asylum-seekersGreat Wolf Lodge Indoor Waterpark — There are lots of kid friendly attractions at Great Wolf Lodge indoor water park in Grand Mound, WA.Coffee and Eggnog Holiday Survival Guide — Coffee and Eggnog Holiday Survival Guide builds a Survival Plan that’s specific to you, and gives you support from before Thanksgiving to after New Year’s Day.Advent Calendar for Depressed People | The sparkle can be too bright — Advent Calendar for Depressed People - The sparkle can be too brightSparkle Stories — A safe place for your child to listen & learn.Glimmering Podcast: 053 – Christmassing – Making the Holidays Our Own — In this episode we recount the painful story of Christmas 2014 and use the workbook called Get Christmased to start owning our Christmases. It’s pretty heavy – Laura cries. But by the end, we have some definite forward momentum. Whether or not you celebrate Christmas specifically, we invite you to investigate your own approach to seasonal family rituals and craft them into something that brings joy for you and yours.Amazon.com: Micandle Battery Tea Lights With Timer — Battery Operated Flameless Candles - To Brighten Your Home Amazon.com: Prime Music — As a Prime member, you can stream over 2 million songs ad-free, listen on any Echo device, and take your music anywhere with offline listening.Amazon.com: Nintendo Switch - Gray Joy-Con: Video Games — Introducing Nintendo Switch, the new home video game system from Nintendo. In addition to providing single and multiplayer thrills at home, the Nintendo Switch system can be taken on the go so players can enjoy a full home console experience anytime, anywhere. Amazon.com: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - Nintendo Switch: Video Games — Hit the road with the definitive version of Mario Kart 8 and play anytime, anywhere! Race your friends or battle them in a revised battle mode on new and returning battle courses.Amazon.com: Super Mario Odyssey - Nintendo Switch: Video Games — Explore huge 3D kingdoms filled with secrets and surprises, including costumes for Mario and lots of ways to interact with the diverse environmentsAmazon.com: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Nintendo Switch: Video Games — Step into a world of discovery, exploration, and adventure in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a boundary-breaking new game in the acclaimed series.Amazon.com: Apple Watch Series 3 - GPS - Space Gray Aluminum Case with Gray Sport Band - 42mm: Cell Phones & Accessories — Apple Watch Series 3Amazon.com: FasciaBlaster™: Health & Personal Care — Helps restore fascia, muscle, and other soft tissue -- aiding in pain relief

This is the third and final part of the Awkward Social Justice series. In this episode, we talk about how to take everything we’ve discussed in the first two episodes of this series and channel those things into meaningful action and change. We’re taking the ideological to the practical. We’re newbies at activism, but our gifts are connecting and synthesizing resources, so we’re going to put our efforts out into the world to effect change within our sphere of influence. At root and most simply, that’s what activism really is. Check out our extensive resource list in the show notes! The worksheet Leslie did in this episode is The Americans of Conscience Action Worksheet by Jen Hofmann. We have setup a dedicated Activism - Getting Started page on Glimmering.com that we'll be updating on a regular basis. Support Glimmering PodcastLinks:Americans of Conscience Action Worksheet - Google Docs — The Action Planner Leslie went over in this episode.Action Checklist for Americans of Conscience - Jennifer Hofmann — No matter your political stripe, Americans are good, generous people who pull together in a pinch. Katrina. New York. Sandy Hook. When the chips are down, we look out for each other. Now is no different. Jamelle Bouie's The Newsletter — Jamelle is Slate's chief political correspondent. The Newsletter is "... a compendium of gifs, links to good writing, my work for that week, a few photos, and a recipe. Sometimes something extra. I try to make it something fun and varied that you can enjoy on the weekend. It's also a chance for you to ask questions and generally chat about the world. It comes out every weekend, usually Fridays." The Weekly List by Amy Siskind — Amy Siskind’s work, tracking the erosion of our country’s democracy. Depressing but necessary. And it will someday be a road map back.Resistance Live - The Gaia Project — Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin’s near-daily explainer of current events. She’s a former Wall Street securities litigator and trial lawyer and current CEO of Gaia Project Consulting, LLC, and the Founder of The Gaia Project for Women’s Leadership.ProPublica - One of the absolute best investigative journalism newsrooms — The Mission - To expose abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust by government, business, and other institutions, using the moral force of investigative journalism to spur reform through the sustained spotlighting of wrongdoing.Reveal - the nation’s first nonprofit investigative journalism organization — The mission of The Center for Investigative Reporting is to engage and empower the public through investigative journalism and groundbreaking storytelling in order to spark action, improve lives and protect our democracy.Anil Dash - Leslie's tech hero. He wants to be like Anil when he grows up. — I’m a technology entrepreneur, activist, and writer focused on making the tech world more humane and ethical. Having created Internet technologies for two decades, I’ve become obsessed with the way technology shapes and transforms society, media, government and culture. My advocacy focuses on ensuring tech benefits those who are most vulnerable and in the most need. This often involves connecting tech to policy, pop culture, urbanism, social justice and other domains that the technology industry has historically overlooked.AlterConf | Changing the Face of Tech & Gaming — AlterConf is a traveling conference series that provides safe opportunities for marginalized people and those who support them in the tech and gaming industries. By highlighting the powerful voices and positive initiatives of local community members, we build hope and strengthen the community’s resolve to create safer spaces for everyone.

This is part 2 of the Awkward Social Justice series, where we explore our history as non-activists; trace our inroads into civic engagement and social justice issues; and finally offer a encouragement and resources for others who are just getting started. In this episode, we talk about learning to live justly: the point where we began to put our Awareness to work into engagement and taking Action. Laura talks about the 2 year gap between her big tipping point (Ferguson, 2014) and when she graduated from signal boosting to civic action. Leslie talks about his gradual evolution and a few key moments that have changed his trajectory significantly. This is an invitation to observe where you are in this process, and to be deliberate about the next steps in your own evolution. There are some great resources in the Show Notes to help you do some heavy thinking (mostly on racial injustice, as that remains a theme that is personal for us), and we are always an email away. In December 2014, Laura wrote the following on Facebook. What we consider must-reads for this podcast are marked with an asterisk: I've been struggling for words to add to the conversation revolving around the recent exposure of the prejudice and violence endemic in this country. And I realize, I don't have to add to the conversation; I just need to listen better to what is being said. Our refusal to engage in other people's realities and listen to their stories is what truly divides us in any situation. A lack of compassion always divides. I've spent the last few weeks just trying to listen, trying to build my compassion in an area where my knee jerk response has all too often been one of self-protective denial. I encourage you to do the same. I'm linking some of the resources that have had the most impact on me. Read this excellent article on brain chemistry and the science of unconscious racial prejudice - no one is exempt from this. Consider it an invitation to live a more examined thought-life. ***** Here is some context that outlines the corruption and systemic oppression specifically in St. Louis County. It's a very long article, but well worth the investment. If it helps build outrage against corruption to see it through the lens of a couple of guys who can't be labeled as "thugs" or dismissed for "resisting arrest," this is a very good example of what American citizens are up against, when they seek justice from a self-protective system. Amidst all the depressing stuff I read, I was incredibly encouraged by this interview of police chief Kelly McMillin, in Salinas, CA, about how he is training his staff to de-escalate events and build trust in the community that his force truly serves. This NPR interview with civil rights attorney Constance Rice gives an inside look at mindsets pervasive in the police force. Her solution to the issue is compassion and common sense. (There's also a full transcript available for non-listening types.) I also appreciated this culture piece that points out how difficult good policing is, and that not everyone is qualified to do it, just because they can pass all the tests. ***** A four-part, time-intensive read that is well worth contemplating is Ta-Nehisi Coates' "The Case for Reparations." The twitter hashtags #alivewhileblack and #crimingwhilewhite are illuminating. This WaPo article highlights some of them. Here's my friend Tyler's interview with rapper Propaganda, about the intersection of faith and racial justice: Part 1 Part 2 Finally, as a parent, it's important to me to talk explicitly and age-appropriately with my kids about racism and prejudice. These two articles have thoughtful, research-backed strategies for navigating such conversations: "Inoculating our children against racism" and "Research based advice on teaching children not to be racist."**Support Glimmering PodcastLinks:Black Lives Matter: birth of a movement | Wesley Lowery | US news | The Guardian — The killing of Michael Brown created a new generation of black activists, with thousands taking to the streets, and a hashtag used more than 27m times. But will the movement survive the Trump era?Amazon.com: Between the World and Me (Audible Audio Edition): Ta-Nehisi Coates, Random House Audio: Books — Written as a letter from father to son explaining the starting line for people of color and the state of the world. It helped Leslie understand that he was born on a side. Ta-Nehisi Coates Reads From 'Between the World and Me' - The Atlantic — Ta-Nehisi Coates reads a short passage from his new book, Between the World and Me.

This is part 1 of the Awkward Social Justice series, where we explore our history as non-activists; trace our inroads into civic engagement and social justice issues; and finally offer a encouragement and resources for others who are just getting started. We talk a lot about race as the prevalent example for social justice, because our early Awareness Moments came in that context, and because this is a very alive topic for Leslie. This is an invitation to expand your own awareness - of your biases, your privileges, your assumptions and actions. There are some great resources in the Show Notes to help you, and we are always an email away.Support Glimmering PodcastLinks:7 Reasons Why 'Colorblindness' Contributes to Racism Instead of Solves It - Everyday Feminism — Since it’s the responsibility of White folks to educate ourselves and each other (and not expect people of color to be our trainers), I encourage you take to heart the seven reasons I’ve already been taught:Colorblind Ideology Is a Form of Racism | Psychology Today — Colorblindness creates a society that denies their negative racial experiences, rejects their cultural heritage, and invalidates their unique perspectives. Let's break it down into simple terms: Color-Blind = "People of color — we don't see you (at least not that bad ‘colored' part)."Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah — Leslie's favorite book from 2016. He recommends getting the audiobook read by Trevor Noah himself. You need to hear Trevor read the Hitler story to you. It's not what you think. You'll die laughing. Raising Race Conscious Children | Resource for Talking About Race & DiversityNational SEED Project - White Privilege and Male Privilege — Dr. Peggy McIntosh’s excellent paper, from which many iterations of “Unpacking the White Privilege Backpack” have been taken. Read the original. As Dr. McIntosh says in her footnotes: “Some people "get" the idea of systemic privilege and ask "But what can I do?" My answer is, you can use unearned advantage to weaken systems of unearned advantage. I see white privilege as a bank account that I did not ask for, but that I can choose to spend. People with privilege have far more power than we have been taught to realize, within the myth of meritocracy. Participants can brainstorm about how to use unearned assets to share power; these may include time, money, energy, literacy, mobility, leisure, connections, spaces, housing, travel opportunities. Using these assets may lead to key changes in other behaviors as well, such as paying attention, making associations, intervening, speaking up, asserting and deferring, being alert, taking initiative, doing ally and advocacy work, lobbying, campaigning, protesting, organizing, and recognizing and acting against both the external and internalized forms of oppression and privilege.”Safety Pin Box — One of the best ways for white people to begin learning how they can use their power to dismantle systemic racism. It’s a subscription program that gives you weekly assignments that progressively move you through being a better ally and actor for racial justice.Helenita Frounfelkner gets $50,000+ in donated goods for Houston Flood Victims — Helenita is amazing. Check out her great work and support it if you are able. "We received a 5500 lbs of baby essentials valued around $50K from these brands. I have to say that these brands aren’t huge conglomerates. These are family-owned and operated companies run by teams of less than 5-6 people who came together out of the extraordinary goodness of their hearts to help some of the tiniest flood victims. My heart is SO full. This is the Lord’s work. I am so grateful."

Show Summary In the final episode of Marriage Startup, we talk about what made the podcast important to us, what we learned, and what we’re taking with us into the new podcast. Yes! The new Glimmering Podcast. It’s a continuation of the transparent, authentic conversations we’ve always had; we’re just expanding our topics to include issues like politics, race, social justice, civics, sex, technology, privacy, and as always, parenting, marriage, and mental health. With the Glimmering Podcast, we hope to empower our listeners to navigate those difficult conversations in their relationships that matter the most. Show Resources Love First, Fix Later Fireside.fm Support Glimmering Podcast

Show Summary We wrap up our Emotional Labor series with a look at all we’ve been through, how we’ve improved, and recognition that this is probably a life-long work in progress. Leslie gets endearingly ranty about a favorite soapbox topic, Laura talks about how the kids are internalizing their chore motivation, and you’ll find out the crazy amount of money our kids made running their lemonade stand for just 3 hours on the first hot day of spring. Show Resources Basecamp 3 Support Glimmering Podcast

Show Summary We pause to consider what we’ve learned about Emotional Labor. Laura digs deeper into the problems she’s encountered because of the connection she made between work ethic and approval (and perhaps more importantly, disapproval). Leslie shares the same, but in connection with growing up in a very conservative Christian household before discovering what grace really means (and how it helps him do the dishes… really). Then we discuss male role models, and what may or may not be part of the feminist conversation. And of course, we close with Heart Loop – the things we do to improve our marriage and champion each other. Show Resources Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life, 3rd Edition: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships by Marshall B. Rosenberg PhD (thank you Molly) Support Glimmering Podcast

Show Summary We do our best to figure out why we work together so well in our business but why we revert back to a terrible, draining, backwards 1950s style when it comes to home & family. In part one we succeeded in figuring out what the big picture problem was and in part two we take a deep dive into what may be causing it so we know where to improve. Show Transcript Download the pdf transcript here. Show Resources Arlie Hochschild created the term ’emotional labor’ in 1983 in her book, “The Managed Heart.“ Will It Fly? by Pat Flynn (Amazon Affiliate link) Living Forward by Michael Hyatt (Amazon Affiliate link) Crafting a Rule of Life by Stephen A. Macchia (Amazon Affiliate link) A (kind of silly) online estimator of who does what around the house: “Chore Wars.” A helpful guide on how to “Negotiate a Fair Division of Household Work” from the University of Rhode Island. A fun and insightful video by “Song a Day” maker, Jonathan Mann (he and his wife overcame this issue with kanban!) “Among couples we studied, on average, men worked longer hours outside the home, yet even in families where women worked equivalent or longer hours and earned higher salaries they still took on more household responsibilities. When our data were merged with the Chicago Sloan Study of 500 working families, we learned that men spent 18 percent of their time doing housework and took on 33 percent of household tasks, whereas women spent 22 percent of their time on housework and carried out 67 percent of household tasks. Women performed over twice the number of tasks and assumed the burden of “mental labor” or “invisible work,” that is, planning and coordination of tasks. Moreover, leisure was most frequent for fathers (30 percent) and children (39 percent) and least frequent for mothers (22 percent).” ~ From an excellent article in The Atlantic, “The Difference Between an Happy Marriage and a Miserable One: Chores.” Another nicely toned article from the Atlantic on spousal chore distribution: “Spouses Probably Shouldn’t Try to Split Household Tasks Exactly Evenly.” “Husbands help wives (and wives husbands) not because they “owe” each other, but because that is what spouses do. In fact, if you are out the point where you are figuring out who owes what to whom in terms of hours or percentages, something has already gone wrong. Counting hours is a sign of a problem, not a potential solution. …housework is a feminist issue—and why both men and women need to work to stop it from becoming the whip that makes one spouse the master and the other the dog. But I don’t think you keep this from happening by splitting housework equally. Rather, you keep it from happening by remembering that your spouse is not your debtor, but your spouse. The goal is not to clear your ledger, but to live with each other, and love each other, day in and day out for the rest of your lives.” Support Glimmering Podcast

Show Summary In this episode, we are dig into Emotional Labor, a major issue that impacts our relationships at home and work in deep, unexpected ways. This is a complex topic, often weighed down by years of bad habits, gender equality issues, and uninvestigated family of origin issues. The only way through is to talk it out, so we get the conversation going with many tears and lots of kindness. The Video that Shows the Problem   Show Transcript Download the transcript here. Thanks to listener-volunteer Siobhan! Resources “…we came to see that, despite our best intentions to be equal partners, we had no role models. The minute we got home with our brand new baby, it was like these unconscious, old 1950s-era black and white movies started playing in both our heads – that the Ideal Father goes off to work and provides, and the Ideal Mother is always available for her kids and keeps the house neat and tidy. Those old movies, time diary data shows, are still playing all over the world.” from Brigid Schulte’s “Why Time is a Feminist Issue.” It’s 2016. Time to Get Real About How We Work and Live by Brigid Schulte The original article called “Where’s My Cut?: On Unpaid Emotional Labor.” Emotional Labor (Wikipedia) Metafilter thread on Unpaid Emotional Labor, and the most excellent Unpaid Emotional Labor checklist (if you don’t read anything else, read this one and follow instructions!) “At work as at home, men reap the benefit of women’s ‘emotional labor.’” by Soraya Chemaly, Director, Women’s Media Center ‘Women are just better at this stuff’: is emotional labor feminism’s next frontier? by Rose Hackman Support Glimmering Podcast

Show Summary In this episode, we catch up from being sick for weeks on end. We’ll also announce the winner of the Baron Fig notebook give away and our last giveaway of the “new year.” You don’t want to miss it, especially if there is a business you’re starting or want to start. Show Resources BioFlourish – Dr. Marc Wagner’s website (his Facebook page is here) Will It Fly? by Pat Flynn (Amazon Affiliate link) Smart Passive Income (Pat’s main site) Living Forward by Michael Hyatt (Amazon Affiliate link)  MichaelHyatt.com – Your Virtual Mentor Crafting a Rule of Life by Stephen A. Macchia (Amazon Affiliate link) Support Glimmering Podcast

Show Summary In this episode we respond to feedback from our listeners. First up is a thoughtful response to “Soldiering through our emotions” from Molly. Then, we dissect and discuss an article a listener linked us to. We round out the show with discussion of our Love Languages, and our Kaizen Moment takes a slightly different twist as we tell the other what to do for us this week. We also announce this week’s giveaway: a Baron Fig notebook! Resources “She Divorced Me Because I Left Dishes by the Sink” The original article called “Where’s My Cut?: On Unpaid Emotional Labor.” Metafilter thread on Unpaid Emotional Labor, and the most excellent Unpaid Emotional Labor checklist (if you don’t read anything else, read this one and follow instructions!) This article called “35 Practical Steps Men Can Take to Support Feminism” is also excellent and goes hand in hand with the above. (Again, we are aware of the gender role generalizations going on here!) If you don’t think the above is an issue, there are plenty of works cited in this article, called “At work as at home, men reap the benefit of women’s ‘emotional labor.’” Leslie’s essay, “Do the Dishes.” Take this quiz to find your 5 Love Languages profile Glimmering – Our professional website Pixel & Tonic, makers of CraftCMS & Craft Commerce – where Leslie is the new Chief Customer Officer Baron Fig Confidant notebook – this week’s giveaway! Habitica – Gamify your life! Liam Neeson’s “Particular Set of Skills” Support Glimmering Podcast

Show Summary In this episode Joel and Leslie talk husband to husband, human to human about what to do when tragedy derails your plans and impacts your life. It’s genuine, heartfelt, and practical. Joel’s advice is also unexpected and deeply humanizing. It’s a must listen, especially if you have a “just push through it” personality. You can find out more about Joel and his work at Relaunch over at RelaunchShow.com (highly recommended). React to this like a person, not like a good little solider. – Joel Boggess, Relaunch The Details Normally, I’m joined by my co-host and amazing wife Laura who is the co-founder of Glimmering and Wild Goose Guidance. But this episode is a first for two reasons. First, it’s our first episode with a guest that isn’t related to us! I’m very grateful to be speaking with Joel Boggess – one half of the team behind the creation, development, and explosive growth of ReLaunch, a podcast that interviews the hottest and most in-demand personal development experts and business thought-leaders to bring you fresh ideas, inspiring stories, and most importantly, practical steps that help you start over with confidence. Just recently Relaunch was listed in the “Top 5 podcasts for inspiration” by the Huffington post. And, Relaunch made it into Inc.’s top 20 business podcasts for 2015. Joel is a specialist at helping people “relaunch” a book or podcast, and reach number 1 in their categories and get their message out to not just a big audience, but the right audience. Originally, Laura and I were going to pick Joel’s brain on the work we’re doing with Marriage Startup and especially Laura’s work on Wild Goose Guidance, but that got unexpected derailed. Which brings us to our second first: This is the first episode without Laura. Yesterday, a close friend of the family received news that their mom has cancer. It has thrown all of us for a loop and Laura has jumped in to help however she can. Show Resources Download the transcript for this episode Finding Pockets of Happiness – Joel interviews Donna Lee Gauntlett Support Glimmering Podcast

Show Summary In this episode we announce the winner of last week’s Bullet Journal giveaway and announce this week’s giveaway: a Wild Goose Guidance gift certificate for a free reading! Laura updates us on how she’s come back to her Wild Goose Guidance work. And Leslie gives an overview of Peter Drucker’s 3 steps for managing a successful transition. It all comes down to honesty, introspection, creating a feedback loop, and embracing a slow, steady pace toward meeting one goal at a time. Resources Download the transcript for this episode The ReLaunch Show – Send us your questions! Wild Goose Guidance – Help for the Stuck Places Managing Oneself by Peter Drucker (Amazon/Audible affiliate link) Bullet Journal Glimmering – Our professional website Support Glimmering Podcast

Show Summary In this episode, Leslie talks about his plans to go slow and build momentum in the New Year. There’s no need to beat yourself up with resolutions and goals in the first couple weeks of January! We invite you to take the time to understand who you are, who you want to be, and build the momentum to get there. Because you will. Resources The ReLaunch Show Crafting a Rule of Life, by Stephen A. Macchia How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, by Scott Adams Adams’ blog post explaining why Goals are for Losers. Bullet Journal Support Glimmering Podcast

Show Summary In this episode, Leslie has collected 5 thoughtful questions for us to reflect on as a way to say goodbye to 2015 and set the foundation for 2016. This isn’t about goals and accomplishments; it’s about ending the year with a full heart and building from there. Strangely enough all the business stuff I’ve worked on, all the professional growth I’ve worked on, all the accomplishments we’ve talked about, they were all overshadowed by a sense of wholeness with our family around a holiday because that’s been an old old wound for a long time. – Leslie The Questions If you had to describe 2015 in 3 words, what would they be? (thank you Anuschka from to Into-mind.com) Is there something you’re still holding on to? Is it time to let it go? (thank you to Celestine Chua from PersonalExcellence.co) What is your favorite memory of 2015? What had the most positive impact on your life in 2015? What, if anything do you want to carry forward into 2016? Bonus question: What do you want to give more of? Resources Into-Mind.com’s Year in Review questions PersonalExcellence.co’s 101 Important Questions to Ask Yourself BeClause Cutehom Espresso Cups (Amazon affiliate link) Support Glimmering Podcast

Show Summary We take a critical look at the goals we set for 2015 using Michael Hyatt’s Best Year Ever System. We’ll review what we accomplished, examine the reasons we missed some, and most importantly, pull out the most valuable lessons we learned. Hint: Sometimes what you don’t accomplish is more valuable than what you do! I’m actually really excited about maintaining my personhood while doing these other things well! – Laura Show Resources In Episode 23, New Year, New Goals, New You, New Season, Best Year Ever?, we go into detail as to why we choose these goals in the first place. Michael Hyatt’s 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever Tough Mudder Owner Camp Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port (Amazon Affiliate link) Anne Lamott The Miracle of Personal Development by Jim Rohn Support Glimmering Podcast

Show Summary In this episode we recount the painful story of Christmas 2014 and use the workbook called Get Christmased to start owning our Christmases. It’s pretty heavy – Laura cries. But by the end, we have some definite forward momentum. Whether or not you celebrate Christmas specifically, we invite you to investigate your own approach to seasonal family rituals and craft them into something that brings joy for you and yours. “Last Christmas was our worst as a family…. and I have a record of bad Christmas.” – LeslieSupport Glimmering PodcastLinks:Get Christmased: Create the Christmas season that works for you and your family - by Magda Pecsenye. — The workbook we’re referring to in this episode.Coffee and Eggnog – Holiday Survival Guide — If you need more personalized help around the holidays, Magda's Coffee and Eggnog Holiday Survival Guide builds a Survival Plan that’s specific to you, and gives you support from before Thanksgiving to after New Year’s Day. You're the Best Parent for Your Child: 31 Truths from AskMoxie.org. — Magda has also written this compassionate and insightful compilation of parenting truths gleaned from her website, AskMoxie.org.

Show Summary In this series, we’re exploring what it means to stick to your values while being free to let your culture change… sometimes daily. We based this discussion off Matt Blumberg’s wonderful article, The Difference Between Culture and Values. This episode is part three – where we take the values we listed in part 2, and talk about how we are bringing (or trying to bring!) them into our family culture. We of course run out of time to get to the business side of things, but that’s okay – this is a work in progress, something we need to keep alive and revisit frequently. We hope you’ll do the same. We used to lie down on the dissection tables and watch Shakespeare videos. – Laura Show Resources Nurture Shock – A book that really influenced our parenting. Specifically to this show, the way we talk about race/culture/differences with our kids, and how we approach talking to kids about lying. Highly recommended. Donald Miller has a great lecture on the importance of Story in our lives. (It’s kinda Christian-y, but not intolerably so.) Sympathy vs. Empathy vs. Compassion – an article from OperationMeditation.com Support Glimmering Podcast

Show Summary We pause from our normal schedule to give thanks. No music, no production, just two mics and a thankful posture. We’ll return with a “normal” show next week. Support Glimmering Podcast

Show Summary In this series, we’re exploring what it means to stick to your values while being free to let your culture change… sometimes daily. We based this discussion off Matt Blumberg’s wonderful article, The Difference Between Culture and Values. This episode is part two – where we work to define our family and business values. In a blind interview, open script, we discuss three of the values we chose for Glimmering and for our family. There’s some overlap and a number that caught the other by surprise but were instantly acknowledged as vital – just not on their radar. We gave the discussion plenty of time, so we’ll try to wrap up next week when we discuss how to put the values into action. Values Discussed Family Grace (Leslie & Laura) Inclusiveness (Leslie) Compassion (Laura) Inquisitiveness (Laura) “A Long Obedience in the Same Direction” (Leslie) Glimmering LLC Authentic (Leslie) Cultivate Joy (Laura) Do the work (Leslie) Champion the Good (Laura) Change (Leslie) Demonstrate Balance (Laura) Show Resources Heather Petit’s values triads. The posts linked below are the originating posts, but she has many others showing these in action (use the categories to navigate). Heather is a brilliant parent; she captures a heart-centered systemization approach that has been absolutely inspiring to me. She and her husband, Will, practice kaizen in their parenting as well as their marriage. It’s an honor to know them (if only virtually!). Safe, Respectful, Kind – for the core physical processes, and the main experience of the early years – pregnancy through Kindergarten or so. It covers health, self/integrity, empathy. Effective, Prudent, Truthful  – for the understanding of self and action, choice, decision-making, and the intersection between self and other – any other. Not yet to relationship, though the edges of all overlap. Starting around first grade, this matches the social and emotional development – up through middle school, I’d say.  This covers will, choice, and identity. Acceptant, Loving, Faithful – for interrelating over the longer term, for marriage, for children, for the people with whom we choose to have relationships. Master of None – As explained by Merv & Trey, our friends over at Culture Slash. Support Glimmering Podcast

Show Summary We explore what it means to stick to your values while being free to let your culture change… sometimes daily. Culture and values is something that people, not just owners, get mixed up on a regular basis. Its also difficult to make them practical to our daily lives. We use Matt Blumberg’s excellent “The Difference Between Culture and Values” article as a way to explore what we need to do to set the values for our family and our business (Glimmering LLC).  In part one we set the stage and set a challenge for ourselves. In part two, we’ll see the results of the challenge “live.” We also answer a listener question (Hi Maggie) about the stuff we use to make the Marriage Startup Podcast. The Challenge “A leader’s job is to embody the values.  That impacts/produces/guides culture.  But only the foolhardy leaders think they can control culture.” – Matt Blumberg, The Difference Between Culture and Values Our challenge is to pick our short list of values for our family and for our business. In episode 50 we’ll share them with each other “live” and have an open discussion about them and talk about how to live them out in our family and our business. We invite you do the same. Podcasting Resources Heil PR40 + shock mount + boom arm (Amazon affiliate link) Audio-Technica ATR2100 (Amazon affiliate link) Zoom H6 (Amazon affiliate link) Hindenburg Journalist Pro Audacity Adobe Audition CC Reaper – Digital Audio Workstation Liberated Syndication (libsyn) Feed.Press – Podcasting hosting and subscriber tracking (affiliate link, great service, great team) WordPress (what we currently use) Craft CMS (what we’re moving to) Simplecast.fm Podcast Answer Man (all the resources on podcasting you could ever want or need and where we purchased professional training for ourselves) Support Glimmering Podcast

Show Summary In this episode, we discuss an article from the Harvard Graduate School of Education that outlines some principles for raising kind, ethical, caring children. We explore what it means to expand one’s circle of concern, and what we can do to bring concepts of compassion, faithfulness, and “Showing Up” into reality in our family and businesses. Compassion is a lost art. – Laura Show Resources Harvard’s Making Caring Common tips for Raising Caring Children. Our Marriage Startup Special edition 001, “Where Do We Go From Here, God Have Mercy” episode that we did for HarmonyMoore.com’s “Survivor Song’s” series.  Leslie’s Depression in a Nutshell. Geek Mental Help Week Zaengle.com – Glimmering helped launch this beauty! Made by Sidecar’s Mission Arrabon – Offers cultural awareness and competency training for achieving diversity and reconciliation. Support Glimmering Podcast

Show Summary In our last “summer slowdown”  episode, we go retrospective and introspective. We talk about our long-anticipated weekend away to Owner Camp in Seattle: how nice it was to be just adult selves for the first time in a long time, and about the inspiration we gleaned from being around other owner and entrepreneur couples. Then Leslie reflects on turning 40. He has some advice to his younger self, and a lot of positivity toward his future. We end with a Kaizen twist on the “What I’m Going to Do for You This Week” segment, and look forward to weekly episodes starting up again in November. Show Notes WGG Sabbatical newsletter Glimmering LLC (our company) Owner Camp by the Bureau of Digital Affairs Friendly Fire with Ben and Carl EllisLab ExpressionEngine 3 Greg Hoy, Happy Cog Jody Grunden, SummitCPA April Grunden, Grunden Law Toggl Time Tracking app (check out this excellent Toggl review by listener Lewis at his site, Freelance Effect. Media Temple Marriage Startup 005 – Gratitude, Communion, and Kayaking Jon Batiste & Stay Human Owner Camp in 1 Picture Support Glimmering Podcast

Show Summary In this episode we dig into an old but new-to-us concept called Kaizen that helps us streamline our approach to life, business, and marriage. We’ll let you know briefly what we’ve been up to since the last episode, and we’ll answer a listener question about fighting in front of the kids. Marriage Kaizen Our “first pass” without much explanation (yet). Listen & Rest Improve Do Check-in Repeat Show Resources Kaizen, at least in a business context, was brought to the west by Masaaki Imai in his book Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success (Amazon affiliate link) Masaaki explains Kaizen (warning, boring yet informative video) Kaizen Debunked or Nerds Argue about Word Meanings (for those that like arguing about things) Pixel and Tonic & Craft CMS Craft Podcast Design & Content Strategy Conference Bonus! Most of the conference talks are on the their blog. The Feeling Good Handbook (Amazon affiliate link) Glimmering LLC (hire Leslie, for next year) Wild Goose Guidance – Get Unstuck Support Glimmering Podcast

Show Summary We attempt to disarm a trap we set for ourselves, where we try to cover our insecurities by demanding respect, especially from our kids, and the damage that can cause. The episode is a behind the scenes interview with Laura on her article Authority, Personhood, and Compassion. But first, we go over the new website and introduce a new segment, “month in a minute.” Show Notes Authority, Personhood, and Compassion by Laura Camacho Become Laura’s Patreon and support her writing Visit Modern Board Games in Bend Oregon! It’s awesome! Michael Rog Nate and Ashley Croft Brandon Kelly Sandra Bland’s arrest video My 9 Year Old has Lost Her Mind by RenegadeMama Owner Camp Alumni Spectacular in Seattle WordPress Array Themes Show Transcripts Coming soon…. Support Glimmering Podcast

Show Summary Leslie answers a listener question about productivity tools and just manages to avoid going completely down the rabbit hole; Laura gives a brief health update; and we discuss the podcast Summer Schedule and what it means for Marriage Startup to come out of beta. Show Resources Personal Kanban by Jim Benson (Amazon Affiliate link) Getting Things Done by David Allen (Amazon Affiliate link) Leuchtturm 1917 Notebook A5 Hardcover Dotted Medium Black (Amazon Affiliate link) Baron Fig Notebooks GetPlan.co Productivity podcast Nozbe (affiliate link) Pomodoro Technique Five Pillars of Productivity Specificity Measurement Accountability Deadlines Play Show Transcripts Download the transcript here. Support Glimmering Podcast

Show Summary In this episode, Dr. Marc Wagner of BioFlourish answers a few questions from listeners about Functional Medicine and Human Flourishing. He offers info on how to find someone like him in your area, and discusses Leslie’s progress a bit more with him. Show Notes Find a Functional Medicine Doctor Find a Nutritional Therapist Read more from Marc on his website, BioFlourish.com Spark, by JohnRatey (Amazon affiliate link) Note from Leslie: “I’ve started reading Spark and so far it is excellent.” The Good Gut: Taking Control of Your Weight, Your Mood, and Your Long-term Health by Justin Sonnenburg & Erica Sonnenburg (Amazon affiliate link) Show Transcript Download the transcript here. (Thanks, Siobhan!) Support Glimmering Podcast

Show Summary In this episode, Dr. Marc Wagner of BioFlourish discusses Leslie’s health assessment and food/mood log. It’s another deep dive with lots of fancy vocabulary! We’ve tried to flesh out the resources for you below, and we encourage you to contact us (either via email or the comments on this episode post) if you have any questions for us, or Dr. Wagner. We will be doing a listener feedback show specifically for this series, so that Dr. Wagner has ample opportunity to address your questions. Show Notes “All or nothing invariably leads to nothing.” – Dani Shapiro in her book Devotion: A Memoir. Leslie’s Food & Mood Log (pdf) Leslie’s Symptom Burden Analysis (pdf) Leslie’s Protocol from Dr. Wagner (pdf) Dr. Wagner’s Sleep Tips (pdf) BioFlourish.com – Dr. Wagner’s Blog Show Transcript Download the transcript here. Support Glimmering Podcast

Show Summary In this episode, we answer a listener question and talk about our different circles of friends and acquaintances. Noting that we cannot be Everyone and Everything to each other and that marriage cannot be lived in a vacuum of just two people, we discuss what makes our other relationships valuable assets to our lives, businesses, and marriage. Show Resources Zaengle Corp The Judge John Hodgman show about levels of friendship. Moby’s 6-Stage Acquaintance-Friendship Theory, from the above podcast. Roger Rustad – the most resourceful person Leslie knows Show Transcript Download the transcript here. Support Glimmering Podcast