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BRITISH PRIME MINISTER David Cameron and his deputy Nick Clegg recently delayed cabinet meetings so they could take their children to school. They say they will be doing more of the same in the future. Cameron will be taking paternity leave when his wife gives birth in September and Clegg may have more serious responsibilities as his wife is a top lawyer and reportedly the main breadwinner in the family. According to The Daily Mail, (more…)
IN THIS previous post, Elise, an 18-year-old high school graduate and an intelligent young woman who has thought about the direction of her life, has decided not to go to college. This is a daring thing to do because many of her friends are headed there. But Elise believes that college is unnecessary to achieve her ultimate goal: to be a wife and mother.
The problem is that college is also one of the chief institutions in modern culture for matchmaking. Gone are the traditions that brought young men and women together in other ways. Where is Elise going to even find a man to marry without going to college or, well, going somewhere? Will it take a miracle? Should she hope for a man to fall from the sky? (more…)
EARLY 21st century culture teems with goddess spirituality. We have shorn the new and reclaimed the old. A matriarchal society must have its she-gods, its polytheistic pantheon of feminine beings who suspiciously have little in common with the modern feminist. It’s interesting how the good goddess, rather than the vindictive or irrational or lustful goddess, dominates contemporary goddess culture.
Here’s a synopsis of goddess theology from one of the many feminine spirituality sites on the Internet:
In the beginning was the Great Mother, worshipped in an era when the ability to bring new life into the world was paramount – hence the elevated position of women in primitive society when the struggle just to survive left little time for anything else. Even when mankind found time to make statues and paint pictures in caves, the focus was still on the necessities of life – motherhood and successful hunting. The religious beliefs, which can be inferred from theses remains, also seem to focus on survival. (more…)
IS THE ANNOUNCED separation of Al and Tipper Gore simply a case of a husband and wife who have drifted apart and have decided mutually and amicably to go their separate ways? This is very unlikely.
At their advanced ages and after forty years of marriage, this picture of a mild and mutual parting does not make sense. More likely, this is a case of deep-seated anger or disappointment. Dissolving a longstanding marriage requires will and determination. The very essence of divorce, its romantic appeal to a generation of radical individualists, is in the will. A whole way of living and network of connections must be reordered. The life story is redefined, which may be especially thrilling on the brink of old age. It requires intense anger, bitter disillusionment, acute meaninglessness or some inner revolt against nature itself to motivate an individual to pursue this course when there is so little to gain and they face the latter stage of life without a spouse. (more…)
IT HAS been one year and four weeks since I started this blog. I was too busy posting to note the anniversary on May 5. There are now 703 entries in the archives, and they include many intelligent, funny, sad, wise and admonishing contributions from readers. It has been a year of curses and compliments. (more…)
THE ANSWER IS NO. They can reconstruct society from top to bottom, but they cannot tolerate each other. This is why liberalism is ultimately doomed.
LYDIA SHERMAN, at her blog Home Living, says something that is absolutely forbidden in today’s society. She criticizes men who send their wives to work and questions their masculinity. This is a statement that will win her the hatred of both feminists and some in the men’s rights movement. She writes:
Truly masculine men will not ask their wives to go to work. They will try harder to provide for their families, or cut down on expenses so that their wives won’t have to work. Manly men will tell you that when women are not in the workplace, they get their jobs done much better. Women going to work has complicated the way things are done in the workplace, and this has not been good for the men.
THE NORTHERN ORIOLE, also known as the Baltimore Oriole, is an unusual bird, as well as one of rare beauty. The male has distinctive bright orange and black plumage, party attire in a field of grays and browns in the woodlands of the Northeast. Perhaps this festive creature avoids being eaten by hawks by rarely alighting on the ground. It flits in the upper branches and dramatically swoops from one position to another as if on a trapeze. How else to explain the Oriole’s survival given his outrageous outfit?
The bird’s whistling, flute-like call is also distinctive and unmistakeable. We get very few Northern Orioles, but the ones we do get are easily identifiable from their perches in the woods. The whistle sounds human and they vocalize for many hours during the day.
My teenaged son and I have followed the Oriole’s habits for a few years and our amateur study of the bird is marked by both tragedy and uncommon bird-to-human communication. (more…)
ELISE WRITES:
I’ve been reading your blog for some time now, and I thoroughly appreciate what you write. Your blog posts are always refreshing and challenging. I wanted to ask if you would be willing to consider writing on the topic of the role of daughters within the family unit and of society as a whole. Your posts affirming the work of housewives (as in one of your recent posts) are encouraging – but as an eighteen-year-old homeschooled daughter wondering what the next chapter is in her life, I would be very interested to hear your thoughts about daughters.
I would love to someday marry and be the best wife, mother, and homemaker I can possibly be – but we’re talking about the (irreplaceable) role of the mothers, the wives here – what about daughters living at home? Is it enough to stay simply at home, being a help to mother in areas including housework, homeschooling, cooking, tending a vegetable garden, etc.? Do you think a young woman should get a job, or start a home business, so that she isn’t a “burden” on her parents? (more…)
THERE are many excellent versions on the Internet of “Semper Fidelis,” the United States Marine Corps march written by John Philip Sousa in 1889. Here is a good one and you can hear the Marine Band playing the song in 1909 here.
To our military heroes on Memorial Day, we march for thee.
THE PICKAXE awakens a lust for power, or at least it does in me. This simple implement, invented by technological minds when levers were still new, inspires visions touched with grandiosity. The thought of prying glacial boulders from the subterranean depths, of digging deep ditches, or of uprooting the feet of massive trees, all with little effort, springs to mind. The fact that one may never come close to truly spectacular feats doesn’t matter. It is the dream, the enlarged sense of possibility, that counts.
The pickaxe has been idle all winter, propped under the eaves, silent and magnificent, it’s tapered handle suave and elegant against the wall. Even careless neglect, days in damp dirt, never seem to harm its blade, pointed on one end, like a finger, blunt and flat as a spatula on the other, so very much like a hand, but much better. In early spring, the sabbatical ends and by May, I am always vaguely aware of where the pickaxe is. I almost never forget where I have left it a day or two ago. It is like the gun to the hunter, or the net to a fisherman, a material extension of being, an extra limb.
A pickaxe isn’t feminine. But I don’t care. That assault of the earth, that moment when the flattened blade cuts the surface, as if ripping open an envelope with a long-anticipated letter inside, even when it clangs against a buried rock, is so intoxicating, I wouldn’t give it up to please anyone or to improve my image. I’m anti-feminist, but not anti-work, not anti-pickaxe. No one really likes to dig compacted earth, especially if it’s full of rocks and roots; that’s when you have to pry and pick and paw at the ground, begging for an opening. Men are better at this of course because they’re stronger, but I don’t have a personal chain-gang of diggers and I wouldn’t even want one. Digging is for lovers. Lovers of the ground. (more…)
LYDIA SHERMAN WRITES:
Here is an English translation of “Vackert Väder,” or “Beautiful Weather,” the Swedish hymn which inspired the song by the quartet Kraja:
In this sweet time of summer
Go out, my soul, and be happy for
The gifts from the great God.
Look, how the earth is decked
Look, how she, for you and me
Is in wonderful bounties.
SAGE McLAUGHLIN WRITES:
Eric writes in the entry on feminism and cooking that, “I am noticing a lot of cooking-type reality shows…I wonder how Hollywood turned meal preparation into a gladiatorial competition.” As a fan of cooking shows (though not the “reality” versions in which loud-mouthed, vulgar chefs abusively deride younger, less experienced ones), I used to wonder the same thing. But it’s not so complicated, really. The entertainment industry is now, much as it has always been, in the “dream” business. Selling visions of people’s dreams back to them is what television has been about for quite some time now, and even the element of competition is not so new, with game shows being one of the oldest and most successful kinds of programming. Look around at the prime time competition shows today and what do you see?
You see The Biggest Loser, a show about a competition in which people get to become rich and famous while losing lots of weight. Whoever thought of this wildly popular show—which has now spawned a line of books, food, videos, clothing, etc.—understands America better than most of us would care to admit. (more…)
THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU WRITES:
Aficionados of The Thinking Housewife do not need to be reminded how degraded commercial culture in Europe and North America has become, how a pornographic esthetic that sexualizes everything has pervaded all forms of mass entertainment including those aimed at children and teenagers. Those aficionados will be sadly familiar with the endless succession of tarted-up adolescent songstresses marketed in glitzy style by cynical promoters to young predominantly female audiences. When any counter-phenomenon appears, it is therefore worthy of note. (more…)
IN AN INTERVIEW in the latest issue of Harper’s Bazaar, Bristol Palin makes single motherhood look great. A baby is extra work, but doesn’t interfere with a woman’s independence. A few decades ago, popular culture celebrated the single young career girl, the Mary Tyler Moore or Marlo Thomas who got her own apartment presumably before getting married and settling down. Now that popular figure has a baby too. Bristol Palin is inspirational, not for abstinence but for the single woman who wants, or is compelled, to raise her baby herself.
Elisa Lipsky-Karasz writes:
… Bristol is hardly unhappy, despite her hectic schedule and lack of sleep. “I love my baby more than anything,” she says, which is obvious from the cuddles he gets. “He’s like a Gerber baby. He’s the cutest baby in the whole world.” (more…)
RESPONDING TO this entry on the decline of the family meal, Mabel LeBeau writes:
I haven’t figured out if by modern definitions I’m feministic or feminine or merely female in gender, but have found the most effective way to conduct a family meal is participation by the father figure. If Father is the one to initiate conversations, officially nod approval over the meal, settle disputes over who gets to pass the bread first, provide approval for individual family member’s self-validation and ‘say grace,’ it’s rather pointless to call it a family meal in our home if Daddy doesn’t show up. (more…)
THIS IS a famous, intensely evocative photo, taken in 1894, of Alexander Graham Bell, Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller (seated). Bell introduced Keller to her famous teacher. Keller wrote in her autobiography, The Story of My Life, about her first meeting with Bell:
Child as I was, I at once felt the tenderness and sympathy which endeared Dr. Bell to so many hearts. That interview would be the door through which I would pass through darkness into light…
… [H]e is never so happy as when he has a deaf child in his arms. His labours on behalf of the deaf will live on and bless generations of children yet to come; and we love him alike for what he has himself achieved and for what he has evoked from others.
She dedicated the book to him. (more…)