The WALKING podcast

Here, in the darkest, dourest, deadliest, bleakest doldrums of Winter 2020, I don't feel like making any more podcasts, because what's the point, but I thought I'd slip last year's holiday extravaganza episode back into your feeds, in which we exploded the usual format of the show to bring you a star-studded, Yuletide spectacular that harkens back to the homespun, holiday podcast specials of days gone by! With special guest appearances by: Decemberists guitarist Chris Funk, fine arts photographer Meghann Riepenhoff and friends, TV producer Jesse Ziebart, Grammy-nominee Korum Bischoff, and restauranteur and businessman Harvey Wolff from Proper Fish. Come along on a wintry ramble around the island, chasing away a case of the holiday blahs! The WALKING Podcast Holiday Special is brought to you by Dresden Stollen Bakers. When Irmgard Maron came to the United States in 1928, she brought a cherished recipe for stollen from her native Dresden. She began baking for friends and relatives during the holidays and, at their urging, started a small bakery business. Ninety-one years later, three generations of her descendants still gather to bake this deliciously rich holiday bread once a year and sell it to families like yours around the world. It has been a comfort these last couple of months, during the pandemic, to pass by the Maron homestead on my walks and see the silhouettes of various Marons, all masked up, still busily packing stollen in the outbuilding to ship around the world, their long tradition undeterred and unstoppable.

I accidentally walked into a creek. This week's walk is sponsored by Chris Funk's new solo record, "Songs for Dog Fitness." Pandemic music for walking your dog, or for not walking your dog. (You may know Chris as the creator of the WALKING podcast theme song from last season, or as the guitarist for The Decemberists. Check out his new record on Bandcamp and you can even buy it on purple vinyl.)

Four hours, 10.4 miles. I had to stop at a bakery in the middle. This election night special coverage special is, as always, just a recording of me walking. I hope you'll come along as a way to relax or be distracted. As special coverage theme music, I used "Fanfare for the Frontier" from Mike Verta's Hollywood Masterclass. This walk is dedicated to Wendy Macnaughton, who will be hosting an election night drawing party / birthday party for herself on Instagram live at 5pm pacific/8pm eastern. Why not draw with her if you need a calm, restorative place to be online?

I put the word out on social media that if people made a donation to a cause they believed in, and sent me the receipt, they would be entitled to one (1) classified ad--a message about absolutely anything--which I'd during the ad break in the middle of the walk. I was thinking of my fave podcast Election Profit Makers, which has raised $20,000 for voting rights organizations. I didn't expect to raise that much--that would have been hubris. But I thought we'd get more than two donations. You can submit your donation receipt and classified through the email address on my website.

This is the second episode of the third season of The WALKING Podcast, a special pandemic mini-season where I am walking with my daughters and giving them the revenue from your classified ads, because my children won't go on a walk with me without getting paid. Ads only cost $1! Keep them coming and help support family togetherness. Venmo Jon Mooallem LLC and put your classified in the comment. Thank you to this week's sponsors: Reyhan Harmanci for Patrick Hoffman's new book CLEAN HANDS, Grain Design, Ann Friedman, the Barcott-Dederer family, Todd Vaziri for Feeding America, Sam Green, Drew Hansen (shout out for our very first political ad), Alexis Coe, Bay Nature Magazine, and our flagship sponsor this season, the Garden Girls, Bainbridge Island's only Golden Girls-themed farm stand and the official Golden Girls-themed farm stand of The WALKING podcast.

There is a season--turn, turn, turn. A time to listen to someone else take a walk, a time to take a walk yourself. We are now in the latter. As I took this walk out to the harbor the other morning, I recognized that walking has become *the* leisure time activity of US Quarantine Culture: a way to maintain the fitness of our lower bodies and souls, a thing not just to do, but to write about and discuss. And so, I made a decision, mid-stride: The WALKING Podcast will be saying goodbye for a while, remaining fallow until conditions change and require it to sprout up again. Stay safe. Help other people when you can. Happy walking.

Nothing much to say here. This--as always--is a recording of me walking in the woods. Maybe it's helpful to you. Maybe you'd like to take a walk but can't. I feel lucky that I can, so I feel obligated to share. This week: no sponsor. But you can hear me phone a friend. This walk is sponsored by a spirit of togetherness.

Not a very relaxing moment here in Washington State. And yet, thankfully, the trails feel (and sound) exactly the same. This week's walk is sponsored by Ann Friedman, journalist, newsletter-er, and co-host of the Call Your Girlfriend podcast. Ann stands out in my mind (and in my social media sphere) as someone who's always making an effort to champion what's good and stand up for what's right. I really admire that. Her Philanthvertizement reads as such: "I would love your listeners to consider a donation to IRAP, the International Refugee Assistance Project, which provides legal advocacy for refugees and displaced people. Their motto is 'Everyone should have a safe place to live and a safe way to get there.' I started donating to this group in 2017, when three things happened. First, Trump's Muslim ban took effect—and protesting at airports felt profoundly ineffective in the face of such cruelty. A few months later, I read Mohsin Hamid's novel Exit West, in which refugees can leave one country and instantly appear in another just by walking through a door. These portals are the only magical element of the story: Mostly, it focuses on the brutal realities faced by a pair of young lovers when they become stateless. And a few months after I read Exit West—but long before I had stopped thinking about it— I heard IRAP's founder, Becca Heller, speak about her work. I have been a donor ever since. You can find a donation button at refugeerights.org" THANK YOU! Until next week, walk at your own pace and don't touch your face.

Not much to say about this walk: just putting one foot in front of the other. Particularly after the accursed misadventures of last week, this walk was a welcome, uncomplicated delight. It's a walk that unabashedly puts simplicity first: the sensibility of this walk is Straightforward-forward. I'm noticing a boost in listenership after my appearance on the LiveWire Radio show this week, so all of you who are coming along on the walk for the first time have picked an exceptionally typical place to start. This is representative of what happens here at WALKING: walking. This week's Philanthvertizer (philanthropic advertiser,) in lieu of a proper sponsor, is a woman who is so talented I accidentally just typed her name as "Avery Talented." Her actual name is: Avery Trufelman. Avery says: "Rehabilitation through the Arts (RTA) is an extraordinary nonprofit. And, full disclosure, my mom does work with them. Basically they put on theatrical performances in maximum security prisons all around New York. They've changed the lives of the incarcerated people they work with. They also do the incredible work of letting the public into these prison facilities, to see what the living conditions are really like and to witness the immense heart and talents we've locked away. Intense, huh? Maybe your listeners will be moved to donate."

I was thinking about Growing Pains on this walk--the old TV show. I was thinking about how the dad, Jason Seaver (Alan Thicke), worked at home; he was a psychologist with a private practice in an office right off the family living room. (Horrendous home-office placement, particularly in a family with three loud, wise-cracking kids, but I digress.) I'd never before seen a dad who worked at home. None of the actual dads I knew, in real life, worked at home. They all drove away in the mornings to be middle-men, or lawyers or "sell components" I can't claim that sifting through these memories of Jason Seaver as I walked through the woods birthed any great epiphanies or insights. It's just, some thirty-five years later, I'm a dad who works at home myself. And on days like this--a snow day, when my daughters are off from school, rambunctiously skipping back and forth from the neighbors, making snow angels and sledding, and I'm up in my office over the garage, yapping on the phone with book publicity people and typing (always typing)--I feel grateful to be a dad who works at home: grateful to be here, looking down on them from my peculiar perch, and taking a break to share hot cocoa, share the burden, share in the laughter and love. Rain or shine. All the time. This week's walk is sponsored by Sean Sullivan, who thinks you'll like The Monolith, a short documentary by Rosie Walunas. You can see it here.

Exploding the usual format of the show to bring you a star-studded, Yuletide spectacular that harkens back to the homespun, holiday podcast specials of days gone by! With special guest appearances by: Decemberists guitarist Chris Funk, fine arts photographer Meghann Riepenhoff and friends, TV producer Jesse Ziebart, Grammy-nominee Korum Bischoff, and restauranteur and businessman Harvey Wolff from Proper Fish. Come along on a wintry ramble around the island, chasing away a case of the holiday blahs! The WALKING Podcast Holiday Special is brought to you by Dresden Stollen Bakers. When Irmgard Maron came to the United States in 1928, she brought a cherished recipe for stollen from her native Dresden. She began baking for friends and relatives during the holidays and, at their urging, started a small bakery business. Ninety-one years later, three generations of her descendants still gather to bake this deliciously rich holiday bread once a year and sell it to families like yours around the world. The WALKING Podcast will be back to normal next week, i.e. no talking.

Welcome back! It's Season 2 of The WALKING Podcast. Brrrrrr. The theme of Season 2 will be BUILDING BRIDGES (SEO interlude: Jeff Bridges, Phoebe Bridgers, Phoebe Waller-Bridge,) so let's bundle up and take a walk to an actual, new bridge, built by local non-profits and civil servants! Setting out at dawn, as a sleepy Thanksgiving weekend comes to a close, we'll hear along the way: the crunkle of boots on frost-stiffened grass; vigorous sniffling; the startling, low moan of a fog horn; a prudent jogger approaching from behind; a neighborly convergence full of cheer. This week's walk is sponsored by Mat Honan on behalf of birds. Mat encourages us to appreciate birds and to help them. You can check this out, he says.