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Randi Weiner has been covering Rockland education issues since 1998.
An Ohio native and 1976 graduate of Bowling Green State University, she covered local government, marine issues, business, police news, courts and schools for daily newspapers in Ohio and Michigan before joining the Journal News in 1989. Her local assignments included early morning rewrite and police news for the Commuter Final, and covering Ardsley, Elmsford, Tarrytown and Irvington government, police and schools for the Reporter Dispatch and the Tarrytown Daily News from 1989 to 1996. In 1996, she transferred to the Rockland Journal News, where she edited the Crossroads Page and wrote a history column for two years before moving to education coverage.
She has earned writing awards from the Associated Press, the Michigan Press Association and Harte Hanks Communications, and was lead writer for a runner-up Best of Gannett award-winning story in 2001.
She has tended bar and danced in a beledi troup, sat on the boards of two community theaters and earned a best supporting actress award for amateur stagework in Ohio. She currently plays mandolin with the Shamrogues, Connecticut’s largest Irish band.
Randi lives in Connecticut with her husband, Dave, and has three children.
E-mail Randi Weiner at rcweiner@lohud.com
There’s an awful lot of sugar in my house these days.
My mother-in-law sent her usual box of goodies for the holidays, including mini chocolate bars and peanutbutter chocolate cups; my trip to the grocery store these past weeks have yielded up sugared fruit slices, special cakes, cookies and coated marshmallows. Boxes of chocolates left over [...]
My work schedule has been eccentric over the years, but I still manage to gather the troops most nights for a sit-down dinner.
The downside is we end up eating closer to 9 p.m. than anything else. I used to tell the babes that we subscribed to the European model and let them graze until I [...]
One of the few things my youngest will eat in any form is chicken nuggets.
Or so I thought.
For years, her default meal at fast-food restaurants and our local fish place was chicken nuggets; when I do my weekly grocery shopping, I usually pick up a package of frozen nuggets to have in the house for [...]
I got a phone picture the other day from my oldest, who sent me a shot of two water classes with painted pheasants on them.
“These are to match the dishes,” she had messaged with the photo.
Shortly before she moved to her own place, she and I visited a consignment store looking for a couch, and [...]
Although she’s now in her own place, my oldest dropped by the homestead this weekend for a visit and a trip to our local massive food warehouse.
One of our favorite aisles is the book aisle, and we like to cruise through the cookbook offerings, of which there are many.
I asked her if she needed any [...]
Maybe it’s just the male equivalent of the full-but-boring-closet, but my son will open the refrigerator door, take a look at all the stuff in there, and say there’s nothing to eat.
The refrigerator has juice, cider and milk; there’s leftover pasta from dinner three nights ago, leftover chicken from last night and something from a [...]
My oldest has signed a lease for her own place and plans to move out this weekend with luck.
We spent last weekend wandering around kitchen stores and kitchen outlet stores looking at gear. She has a lot of stuff from her college apartment, and inherited some stuff from when my mother died last October, but [...]
My brother-in-law’s grandson is a nut about ranch dressing.
Apparently he dips everything he can get into his 3-year-old hands in ranch: grapes, breakfast cereal, cookies, ice cream—and his mother and grandmother travel with a small tub of ranch to keep him happy.
It’s been 13 years since I had a child that young and have forgotten [...]
My husband ordered a case of pears for his parents this holiday season via computer. I looked over his shoulder when I walked by the machine at the time and noticed that he had mis-spelled our email address.
In order to correct the address, he backspaced to the order page, attempted to correct the address, and [...]
For years, I’ve purchased masses of small gifts for my children which are duly wrapped and placed around the fireplace waiting for the holidays to appear.
The years have changed the gifts from small plastic frogs and harmonicas to book lights and gift cards, but what hasn’t changed is the tradition of drifting by the fireplace [...]
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As most parents soon discover, feeding a family is rarely that easy, whether its nursing a fussy newborn or trying to get a hot meal into a squirming toddler (or attempting both at the same time.) And that's not even the days when work runs late, the main course burns, or your adventurous little sushi eater announces from now on she will only eat food that is pink. As parents ourselves, we've been there, done that, even learned a few tricks along the way. And we're pretty sure so have you. Maybe together we can make eating together as a family -- gulp! -- fun again.     Hema Easley has been a reporter for The Journal News since July 2002, first covering municipal government and then nonprofit agencies, women's issues and the South Asian and Muslim community in the Lower Hudson Valley. In her previous job, Hema was a correspondent for the Associated Press in South Asia. She lives with her husband and two sons in Orange County. Katie Ryan O'Connor, a Journal News editor and 35-year-old mother of three, never quite appreciated the work that went into feeding kids until she had to do it herself as a mother. If she had a food-and-kids philosophy it would be something like this: try your best to offer as much healthy food as possible, but sometimes fruits just have to be counted as vegetables and there are far worse things than chicken and spaghetti. Again. Tracey Princiotta, a 37-year-old mother of one, loves to cook, bake and eat, and is relieved that her son appears to be equally willing to chow down -- even if it's baby food and formula right now. Despite her husband's intense aversion to vegetables, she has high hopes of nurturing a true chowhound who will try everything at least once. And if all else fails, she's not above sneaking veggies into other foods. Marcela Rojas has been a municipal reporter with The Journal News since January 2003. She is a native of Putnam County and grew up eating Peruvian food. She didn't realize until she was 13 that rice did not come with everyone's meal. After several years of living in Los Angeles -- where she grew a fondness for Thai food -- she returned to Putnam County where she now lives with her husband and daughter. Zyla (rhymes with Lilah) just turned 1 in March and, so far (her mother is pleased to note), loves to eat everything. Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, a Journal News reporter, started her career as a journalist in 1999 after graduating with a master's degree from New York University. Before joining the paper in 2006, Swapna worked as a municipal reporter for the Home News Tribune in New Jersey, and took a baby sabbatical to care for her two children, now ages 7 and 5. She has currently outsourced feeding her children and husband to her mother, who is visiting from India. Her friend and colleague Katie O'Connor, informs Swapna that she wouldn't mind being fed Indian food by her mother, too.
Randi Weiner has been a reporter with The Journal News since 1989, having covered police, government and schools in Westchester and in Rockland. An Ohio native and 1976 graduate of Bowling Green State University, she worked for daily newspapers in Ohio and Michigan before moving east. She has tended bar and danced in a beledi troup and sat on the boards of two community theaters. She plays mandolin with the Shamrogues, Connecticuts largest Irish band. Randi lives in Connecticut with her husband and has three children. |
Copyright ©2009 The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper serving Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties in New York.
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