Random Thoughts

Five Pictures of Spring

Five Pictures of Spring

Just because. Related Posts:10 Surprising Ways to Teach Kids to Love NatureSpring-Clean Your WardrobeEating in Season: Spring Fruits and Vegetables

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Equal but Separate

Equal but Separate

by guest blogger Renee James, essayist and blogger I can’t believe it took researchers this long to figure out two things about heterosexual preferences. Number 1: Women like men and men like women. Number 2: Their everyday behavior bears that out. Let’s take a little trip back to the tumultuous days of the 1960s, shall […]

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Cleaning Out My Kitchen

Cleaning Out My Kitchen

It’s that time of year—the end of February (still two-feet of melting snow outside)—when the spring-cleaning gene kicks in and the urge to clean out everything becomes irresistible. But here’s the truth about my kitchen: I don’t actually live on a farm. But I do live in the woods with a huge garden! And this […]

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A Tribute to Lady Gaga, the World's Bravest Rooster

A Tribute to Lady Gaga, the World’s Bravest Rooster

by Leah Zerbe, an online editor at RodaleNews.com I’ll never forget where I was the day I heard Lady Gaga crow for the first time. Not the singer, but my chicken, a particularly beautiful little guy with flashy feathers and a gorgeous, larger-than-life swagger. To backtrack: I never asked for Lady Gaga the day we […]

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Cultivating Wildness

Cultivating Wildness

For all of you lazy buns out there who don’t want to start a garden but still want to help heal nature (and humanity, by the way), I have an idea for you. Take a piece of your yard—any piece—and make it a designated wilderness zone. Cultivate some wildness! It seems a little scandalous, doesn’t […]

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If You Were President…5 Questions to Ask Yourself

If You Were President…5 Questions to Ask Yourself

Happy Presidents’ Day. We all love to worship an idealized version of our leaders—the guy in the top hat or the guy with the wig (and maybe one day the lady in the pantsuit). But what if you were president, what would you do? Could you do it? Could you handle the stress of it? […]

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Just Keep Swimming

Just Keep Swimming

by guest blogger Renee James, essayist and blogger When Lynne Cox was a little girl on her swim team in New Hampshire, she never wanted to get out of the pool. She wasn’t the fastest, and she rarely won races, but that didn’t matter; she was still always the last to get out of the […]

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5 Things We All Need to Learn from Temple Grandin

5 Things We All Need to Learn from Temple Grandin

Photo: (cc) Steve Jurvetson/Flickr I recently had the great pleasure of hearing Temple Grandin speak at the Ecofarm conference in California. She is renowned for transforming the animal slaughter process to be more humane. For example, before she helped McDonald’s Corp transform its slaughtering techniques, only 30 percent of the animals were being killed on […]

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