Love & Family

Working Women, Unite!

Working Women, Unite!

As some of you may have heard, starting on September 1 I have a new job as CEO of Rodale, Inc. It’s a company that my family owns (I’m the third generation), and that I’ve worked for since age 13. (Well, there was one year after college when I worked in Washington, DC, for Fenton […]

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What Family Values? The Real Reason America is Falling Behind the Rest of the World

What Family Values? The Real Reason America is Falling Behind the Rest of the World

I stumbled across a frightening little list this morning. It’s a list of the only four countries in the world that don’t offer guaranteed paid maternity leave for mothers (based on a Harvard/McGill University study of 173 countries). You might expect to see Liberia, Papua New Guinea, and Swaziland on the list. But…the United States? […]

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Why American Women Should Not Take Our Freedom for Granted

Why American Women Should Not Take Our Freedom for Granted

Has anyone else been surprised to see so many women taking to the streets in Iran, in protest of the election so obviously stolen by what’s-his-name-who’s-clearly-whacked? I am both frightened and relieved to see their covered heads, marching with fists raised…but it’s also a reminder of just how close we all are to chaos and […]

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Put Your Kids to Work. They'll Be Glad You Did

Put Your Kids to Work. They’ll Be Glad You Did

I recently read a sweet little book called Growing Up Country, by Carol Bodensteiner. She describes her childhood growing up on a dairy farm in Iowa. What struck me most about her account is how much she enjoyed being challenged with work on the farm. At each age, she “graduated” to harder and harder chores, […]

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Top Ten Reasons Why Art is Essential to the Human Spirit

Top Ten Reasons Why Art is Essential to the Human Spirit

I’m currently staying in this really cool hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, called 21C. It’s a museum dedicated to 21st century art, so as you can imagine, there’s art everywhere. As I ate dinner by myself in the absolutely yummiful hotel restaurant called Proof, gazing at amazing and bizarre horse photographs (with a wonderful video loop […]

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The Real Reason Our Government Just Keeps Getting Bigger and Bigger

The Real Reason Our Government Just Keeps Getting Bigger and Bigger

It really doesn’t matter if a Republican or a Democrat is in charge. Unless some politicians grow some…shall we say…masculine tools essential for procreation, we are doomed to have an increasingly large federal government. And yet, with Bernanke finally warning us that our debt is leading to financial instability (what took him so long?), maybe […]

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Will People Ever Pay for News? Vote Yes or No!

Will People Ever Pay for News? Vote Yes or No!

It’s all Benjamin Franklin’s fault. He was the one who invented, in his first magazines and newspapers, the idea of using advertising to subsidize content. Not many people realize that even when they pay for the information in newspapers, magazines, or websites, they are only paying for part of the product. All those “annoying” ads […]

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Top 10 Reasons I Love Pennsylvania

Top 10 Reasons I Love Pennsylvania

My recent trip to Harrisburg reminded me of how much I love this state o’ mine. And I am very happy that Rodale.com is based here—I call our content reality-based news (see reason # 8). But here are the top ten reasons I love living in the Keystone State: 1. We invented cable television. Because […]

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