June 21, 2013
Chinese Chrysanthemums from ‘The Golden Age of Botanical Art’
BETTY SMITH is a very Plain-Jane kind of name and in many ways the woman I knew who bore that name was perfect for it. She was a person of obvious simplicity. She radiated simplicity. But if simplicity can be complex, Betty Smith’s simplicity was complex.
June 21, 2013
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY was once a bastion of civility and high learning. Now, its gothic buildings tower over vast fields of mental debris.
June 21, 2013
LIFE NEWS reports:
From the stage at the recent Women Deliver conference, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s daughter Chelsea revealed that her much-admired maternal grandmother was the child of unwed teenage parents who “did not have access to services that are so crucial that Planned Parenthood helps provide.”
Chelsea’s grandmother was born of an unintended pregnancy. And new research shows that her family is not alone in treasuring a person who – if Planned Parenthood had been successful – would not have been born.
June 20, 2013
A FRENCH court has sentenced a non-violent protester against homosexual “marriage” to jail for four months. Galliawatch has the story, which you probably won’t read about anywhere else.
June 20, 2013
THE witty swimsuit retailer Jessica Rey does a nice job of describing the history of the bikini and explaining why immodesty is degrading, not liberating. Rey’s swimsuits are attractive though I wouldn’t call them modest, except by today’s aggressively revealing standards.
June 19, 2013
Feminists often say that the business world is pitted against them. Rubbish. As this graphic from a human resources outfit illustrates, corporations in general are happy to accommodate the working mother.
The underlying assumption in this graphic and the study it cites is that motherhood is not necessary or important. Replace the words “stay-at-home mom” and “motherhood” with “soldier” and “service in the military” and you can easily see what I mean. The trapped feelings of a soldier are not decisive in whether he performs his duties and defends his country. The feelings of a mother are decisive because maternal care is considered inessential.
It is not surprising that some women newly at home report feeling trapped, as if an office cubicle and long commute are not confining. That’s perfectly understandable given they are ill-prepared and have learned since early childhood that motherhood is a lesser occupation and that it is weak and risky to depend on a man. As for the “resentment” they reportedly feel toward “spouse and/or baby,” human resources departments would not cheerfully report such ugly feelings with regard to men and their family responsibilities. That’s because they do not have to persuade men to work. They do have to persuade women, and it’s good for the bottom line when they do.
The modern corporation, like the Communist state, is more than happy to collectivize motherhood. The assumptions of this human resources graphic are similar to the beliefs of Soviet bureaucrats. If it was true, however, that women by nature felt trapped and resentful when caring for their children and homes, the human race would have ceased to exist a long time ago.
June 19, 2013
DANIEL S. writes:
In a recent appearance in Northern Ireland Obama made a statement which could be interpreted as a call for an end to Catholic and other private religious schools in Northern Ireland:
“If towns remain divided,” said the U.S. President, “if Catholics have their schools and buildings and Protestants have theirs, if we can’t see ourselves in one another and fear or resentment are allowed to harden—that too encourages division and discourages cooperation.”
So in other words, Catholics and Protestants should cease being those things, as religious beliefs are divisive, and presumably submit to some sort of secular, unitary state. Obama is clearly a man who despises the Catholic Church, and yet leading American Catholic bishops still treat him with deference and act as if Obama is a man who acts in good faith.
June 19, 2013
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A Seat in Wood Island at Holly-Mount, Mary Delany; 1745
June 18, 2013
FEMINISM is totalitarian by nature. Sex differences exist, therefore they must be repressed. When it comes to women in the military, this means the male service member becomes the enemy.
Elizabeth Harrington of CNS News reports:
In a memo sent on June 13, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus ordered that all sailors, Marines, cadets and civilian employees have their workplaces searched by June 28.
The “comprehensive visual inspections” of the workspaces conducted by commanding officers will “ensure they are free from materials that create a degrading, hostile, or offensive work environment.” Read More »
June 18, 2013
THIS question becomes more pressing by the day. Among the latest evidence that Pope Francis is not Catholic is his private criticism of a group of Catholics who presented him with rosaries.
At Ars Orandi, David Werling reflects on the meaning of the Pope’s criticism.
June 18, 2013
THE logical inconsistencies in the argument for same-sex marriage, including the contradiction between the idea that sexual “orientation” is innate and the notion that it is fluid (as in transgenderism), have been discussed here before. Dale O’Leary at Aleteia does a particularly good job of summarizing them. She writes: Read More »
June 18, 2013
The Sheraton-Park Hotel in Washington, D.C.
BUCK writes in response to my post about flowers in the trash:
I should love flowers, but I don’t. I certainly should know a good bit about them, but I don’t, except for the annual rose that blooms on its own just outside my front door every spring and the surrounding trees and bushes that do whatever they do.
Ironically, my dad was a florist. However, neither of my parents grew anything. They had no intellectual interests, there was no music or art and there was little conversation. The only thing we had in common was the advent of TV. Mom read pulp fiction. Dad read Playboy. But there were always flowers. They were just there. It seems odd and almost dishonest that they were there, as if they were intruding or defying the natural order.
June 18, 2013
I HAVE been hard at work in recent months on two new organizations, the American Traditionalist Society and the Lawrence Auster Society. The websites for both organizations should be up and running soon. In the meantime, I am asking for your support for the continued existence of this site, The Thinking Housewife. It has been nine months since my last fundraiser. If you value this commercial-free site and would miss it if it were to end, please consider donating. Thank you for your support.
June 17, 2013
Edith Holden
I WENT for a walk in our suburban neighborhood the other evening, a golden hour when the intoxicating scent of roses and honeysuckle vines drifted upward. Since I needed some exercise, I headed up a hill that once belonged to a large estate, many years ago, and is now a street of fastidious, expensive colonials, with parked cars and manicured turf. Pick-up trucks visit each outdoor carpet once a week and, with their arsenal of mowers, blowers and trimmers, landscape workers obliterate every trace of botanical insubordination.
June 17, 2013
JEAN-MICHEL COLO, mayor of a small town in the Basque region, is the first of what will no doubt be many French officials to refuse to comply with Taubira’s law. Colo has refused to carry out an official marriage ceremony for two men. He could go to jail for five years and be fined up to $100,000 (U.S. dollars.) See the story at LifeSiteNews. Colo is quoted as saying:
“I don’t give lessons, I’m not inciting other mayors to follow my example, but I won’t enforce an illegitimate law. My seven councilmen and I are completely in agreement in saying that we will not participate in this charade.”
June 17, 2013
TIBERGE at Galliawatch reported on June 13:
A demonstration against the Islamization of France and “anti-fascist” left-wing extremists has been banned by the Paris Prefect because of its “provocative nature.”
The demonstration was set for June 22, under the aegis of Riposte Laïque. Christine Tasin, one of the major contributors to RL[,] reacts, first by saying that if the demonstration had been against extreme right-wing groups it would not have been banned and Manuel Valls would have joined in: Read More »
June 17, 2013
DANIEL S. writes:
There is much that can and should be said about the mass surveillance of American citizens by the NSA, which has been repeatedly justified by our rulers in the name of combating “terrorism.” That is exactly what it is not about. The Justice Department has made clear to the FBI that surveillance of mosques is not allowed without special permission from a secretive panel, the Sensitive Operations Review Panel. In the same manner, the American government had been repeatedly warned about the extremist, violent views of jihad-terrorists Umar Abdul-Mutallab, Major Nidal Hasan, and Tamerlane Tsarnaev and yet chose to do little about them prior to their attacks on Americans.
