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I am a big user of Feedly  and use the app on my Android and Kindle too.

You can follow my blog on Feedly by joining here. 

Pocket at getpocket.com is the mechanism Feedly has in place for saving articles that you want to keep from your Feedly feed.  My Pocket page was getting quite full so here for your viewing pleasure are a few of my picks!

Storybook Woods shared a delightful post about her kitchen and her pantry – so charming!  I loved how she re-purposed this old urn!

Kkiturn

Darren Rowe with some great ideas about re-vamping your blogs via reviewing other blogs.

Let me finish by coming back to the motivation for doing blog reviews like this.What I’m NOT suggesting is that you review other blogs to simply steal other peoples ideas and replicate what they do.What I AM suggesting is that you will learn a heap by looking at how others blog.

He’s right.  Blogging has changed so much in the past 10 years and there are so many new bloggers that there is always more to learn.

Fascinating insights by Penelope Trunk. 

4. Forget about living with your parents in your 20s.Aaron Penn of Urbanophile wrote a great post describing the decline of work among Generation Y. One of the reasons 80% of Gen Y live with their parents after college is thattheir Baby Boomer parents are living in McMansions. The next generation will not have so big a house to come home to. And the unemployment rate for Gen Y is high, but it’s artificially high. They were raised to accept only a job that’s a dream job, so for Gen Y,going to their parents’ house is better than taking a bad job. And now they are unemployed.
Generation X invented the word McJob because they took a McJob when offered one. And their kids, Gen Z, will do the same. So unemployment will soon be a sign of being old and outdated. Gen Z will see this and take whatever job they can get.

Old blogging buddy TS wrote a meaty post a few weeks ago that has taken me some time to unpack.  This stood out to me, since I consider myself to be a casualty of Vatican II

Then read more of O’Malley’s history of Vatican II. The author is painfully biased on the side of the more progressive proponents of the Council but it’s a decent read as far as information goes. You do get a sense of how difficult the key issues were and I think to a certain extent both sides can now say, “I told you so.” 


Progressives can say, “isn’t this so much better, especially given Islam, how we’re on the right side of religious liberty? And that Catholics are reading and studying the bible now? And that they can understand the Mass better? And that with less clericalism the flock is better set up to understand its duty to evangelize instead of just relying on priests?” 


And the conservatives can say, “Oh didn’t I tell you? Look at how we’ve stripped mystery from the Mass, decreased reverence, undermined the authority of church leaders! Look at the statistics on Mass attendance, vocations to the priesthood and religious life…How much good did Vatican II really do?” 

It’s yard sale time here in Ohio and it will be for most of the summer.  The Simple Dollar had some tips to go over before hitting the sales!

Start in the rich neighborhoods. Generally, yard sales in expensive neighborhoods have somewhat higher prices, but the items are of much higher quality. I’ve found great furniture that I’m happy to have in my house thanks to yard sales run by affluent people.
It’s not worth researching average incomes in particular areas, but most people have at least some sense as to which neighborhoods have a pretty high average income. If yard sales exist in that area, start there

I would add to that – hit the old neighborhoods too because there are usually a lot of things that kids will sell that belonged to their parents.

Developing Your Child’s Gift of Art!
Our surroundings are important. Things don’t just magically appear on the walls. Artists create these things. How many beautiful and inspiring pictures or movies do we see? Every movie we watch has an art director. What we purchase at the store has packaging created by an artist; an artist who is familiar with the elements and principles of art. To have a child who is gifted in one or more of the arts is very special. The importance of giving these children a good foundation in art is also important for their success in communication. We need to provide opportunities for enhancing their communication skills.


The Importance of Developing your Child's Gifting in Art







And finally,

Loving Literature and Truth – (something that will be sorely missing in the Core Curriculum.)  By Anthony Esolen.

The other night I testified (via telephone) before the Alaska state legislature, on the standards their public schools are adopting for classes in English.  I’d read the standards but didn’t have them in front of me, so I was taken aback when one of the representatives plucked a directive out of all the verbiage and asked me whether I had a problem with it.
If I remember correctly, the directive he read was this one, for high school juniors and seniors.  It is the Prime Directive for classes in literature:  “Cite strong and thorough[sic; can evidence be weak and thorough?] textual [sic; what other kind of evidence is there going to be in a text?] evidence to support analysis of [sic; meaning: to show]what the text says explicitly as well as inferences [sic; is “inferences” another object of “cite,” or of the infinitive “to support,” or of the preposition “of”?] drawn from the text [sic; as opposed to “from thin air”], including determining [sic; what is doing the “including”? Who in the sentence is “determining”?] where the text leaves matters uncertain.” Translated into English: “Discuss what the author says most clearly, what he merely implies, and what he leaves uncertain.”
Anyway, the gist of the solon’s objection to my criticisms was that we want students to be able to cite evidence when they make a claim about anything.  My objection to his objection, as I was running out of time, was that, as worthy a goal as that might be, that’s not what a literature course is really about.  He was thinking about tests, and I was thinking about David Copperfield.  He was thinking of technique, and I was thinking about the imagination and truth.
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