My Domestic Clippings

First up, this wonderful article on homemaking. It fit in well with my bloggings this week on the myth of the extended childhood!

Throughout history, women married young because they were finished with childhood and had the ability and the inclination to start a home of their own. Young men also were eager to build their own houses and have a wife and family. This was changed in the 20th century by modernists who thought education was more important than marriage, home and family. The focus would be on “bettering” oneself through education.

The whole post is so delightfully UN politically correct! and wise. Not just for women either. With a son entering his last year of high school we really are looking at all his options with a critical eye. He absolutely does NOT want to become saddled with debt and I do not blame him. But I suppose that’s another post…

Regina Dorman on simple things that make a home a delight!

TSO linked to a passage from the book, Designed to Fail: Catholic Educationin America, documenting problems with seminary formation and obedience to Rome back under John XXIII.

Relating to that same time, Catholic Pillow Fight did an informative piece on the purpose of Vatican II.

I have been troubled this summer with so many blogs announcing or mentioning that they are done with childbearing, and no more babies will be forthcoming etc. I have a big blog post planned about that for next week

But you know, everything has a cost – The risks of Vasectomy

CHICAGO — Twice a year in Chicago, a group of men diagnosed with a type of dementia called primary progressive aphasia (PPA) meet to talk about their disease.

They discuss its huge impact on their speech and ability to understand, and share the struggle of facing incurable dependent disability. It is a somber support group meeting.

So it was unusual when a 43-year-old patient rushed into the room at one meeting and blurted out: “Okay, guys, how many of you have PPA?” Nine hands went up.

Then he asked, “How many of you have had a vasectomy?” Eight hands rose.

It raised Sandra Weintraub’s eyebrows, too. A professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and of neurology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Weintraub had initially dismissed the support-group patient’s connection of his vasectomy to his dementia, but when he put the question to his support group she decided it was worth investigating.

Weintraub’s preliminary findings, reported earlier this year in Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology, are suggestive enough to warrant a larger national study.

Ah… so you can raise your children now, or you can care for your husband when he has the mind of a child later! HT Alicia!

Melissa Wiley gives us a number of interesting Harry Potter links.

Touchstone on How to Kill Imagination!

It used to be common for boys (I’m thinking of junkyards here, after all) to hang around grown men and pester them, or to overhear their conversations about bauxite, platinum, catalytic converters, drive trains, and cheap labor from Someplace Else. That was bound not only to provide them with a fund of general knowledge, but to stretch their imaginations — as was, likewise, their nearness to fascinating machines, like pile drivers or backhoes. People in general were proud of the cleverness of human industry: old-time postcards would include photos of coal-mines, fisheries, sawmills, lumber camps, and quarries. You understood that without such places, as “ugly” as some snobs might consider them, you don’t have that city with the bright lights and the fashionable people dining at Toots Shor’s.

I’m not sure what has happened to that fascination with the human mastery over inert and difficult matter. I am sure that school teaches next to nothing about it; if it does mention it, it is with a faint sniff of contempt or suspicion. In any case, the boys (I’m talking about junkyards, again; you could say analogous things about what girls used to learn by hanging around women doing their work) who are not at the junkyards of the world, who are not hanging around men-who-know-things, are having their imaginations stultified. Of that I am sure.

HT Fine Old Family Blog

If you want to be inspired this school year, you might want to pick up Elizabeth Foss’s Real Learning: Education in the Heart of the Home. (I have!) Amazon is abuzz about it!

From Get Rich Slowly – downsizing from a luxury condo to an RV!

So what’s it like living in an RV? It’s fantastic.

It’s very cheap. Utilities used to cost at least $500 a month since I was on the top floor and had floor to ceiling windows. Now I pay nothing — my solar panel generates enough electricity for daily use. Once a week I drive less than a mile to an RV park and dump my tanks and get new water. That costs $5. I have broadband internet access from Sprint which costs another $50. Full insurance is $100 a month, which doubles as car insurance. I get my mail through Earth Class Mail for $30 a month or so. That’s it.

I have a favorite restaurant that I eat at every day. It’s 1.5 miles from my old place, which was a bit too far to walk all the time. Now I park across the street and have had no problems with that at all. If I’m visiting a friend and it gets late, I’ll often just stay in their driveway and sleep there.

In retrospect it seems insane to have paid so much money for mortgages and rent. My quality of life has stayed the same or even improved, and I’m saving thousands a month.

HT Amy!

The creative Meredith with meals in a bag! This is something I might want to try for camping next year! It looks like a lot of fun!

The only thing is, the life of a self-employed, independent contractor, medical transcription usually entails transcribing up until the moment of departure, and hitting the keyboards the second we get back. But maybe Mr. Pete will be interested in giving it a try!

Meredith also outdid herself with this extensive frugal booklist!! Many interesting good reads here if you are interested in simplifying your life and living on less!

Check out these supersavers too from Tricia at Blogging Away Debt.

Tips for Losing Weight by the Incredible Shrinking Mom – who has maintained her weight loss very well and is looking to lose even more!

but once in a while, cake is okay too!

Shrinking Mom also linked to this article about our daughters and now to not pass on our body issues on to them!

Ebayers take note! Unexpected Finds at a Thift Store!

101 Ways to put $101 in your pocket! Love it! From Tricia at Blogging Away Debt!

I leave you with this lovely picture from Happy Hearts at Home!

and these wonderful summertime shots from Eyes of Wonder!

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