Tag Archives | family

Finding Gratitude in Hard Times

Finding Gratitude in Hard Times

Sometimes life seems overwhelming and hard. Terrorist attacks, economic woes, personal problems—you name it, we all have our list of trials and tribulations. It’s in these difficult moments that it’s hardest to feel grateful. But it’s also in these moments that feeling grateful is most important. For me, it has been a challenging few months. […]

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Easy Corn Casserole

Easy Corn Casserole

by Maria Luci, editor at Maria’s Farm Country Kitchen and Rodale’s When I got married, my mother gave me a little booklet bound with a ribbon that was simply titled, “Recipes from Your Mother.” Inside the booklet, as you probably guessed, were my mother’s (and a few of my grandmother’s) signature recipes. The first thing […]

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Connecting the Dots

Connecting the Dots

by guest blogger Renee James, humorist and blogger Many years ago, when I was a single, young working woman, I had great affection for two comic strips that appeared in the newspaper*: Cathy, written by Cathy Guisewite, and Calvin and Hobbes, written by Bill Watterson. I often clipped and saved—how quaint!—my favorites and posted them […]

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A Year Without a Garden

A Year Without a Garden

Here’s something I love about Rodale Inc. Last month, when we had an all-employee meeting where we asked employees to submit questions to me and other Rodale executives—anonymously, of course!—this was one of the questions I received: In one of your final “Maria’s View” articles for Organic Gardening, you wrote you were going to leave your […]

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The Healing Power of Regenerative Organic Agriculture

The Healing Power of Regenerative Organic Agriculture

September 20, 2015 marked 25 years since my father, Robert Rodale, was killed in a car accident in Russia. If on that fateful day someone would have asked him what his legacy was to be, I know for a fact he would have answered: “Regenerative organic agriculture.” To him, organic alone was not enough. He […]

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The True Story of the Man Who Invented the Dimmer

The True Story of the Man Who Invented the Dimmer

One of the many things we take for granted these days—our ability to dim the lights to create a romantic mood or the perfect dinner party ambiance—was once a dream in the mind of my uncle. I am blessed to come from an interesting family, and my uncle Joel Spira, founder and CEO of Lutron, […]

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Skiing the Conditions of Parenthood

Skiing the Conditions of Parenthood

by guest blogger Renee James, humorist and blogger About 15 years ago, I wrote a column about my boys and the day one of our gerbils died. Like most stories I wrote about my sons, it taught me a great deal about them, even more about myself and about why most of what I often […]

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'Amazing' Is in the Eye of the Beholder

‘Amazing’ Is in the Eye of the Beholder

by guest blogger Renee James, humorist and blogger Many things sound so much better in theory than they turn out to be in reality. Unfortunately, you usually can’t tell if that’s the case until you’re in the midst of the experience. Then it begins to dawn on you that, in fact, you’re in a bleak […]

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