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Post by rosa on Oct 5, 2010 23:12:16 GMT -5
Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. My copy of her book is battered and written in and stained and much-lent-out.
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Post by rosa on Oct 4, 2010 21:48:21 GMT -5
Fabucat, there are repeated waves of back-to-the-land movements in the US that predate the electrical grid, so you can't even call them all off-the-grid movements. There was an agrarian political movement in the post-Civil War depression, and another in the 1920s that got some legitimacy during the Great Depression - Ralph Borsodi, a self-sufficiency rural homesteading proponent, was also an official in the Roosevelt administration and there are two towns founded by moving destitute city people to rural areas where they could raise their own food and run their own industries (Greenbelt, Maryland was one and still exists, though it's all privatized.)
Plus, even in the '60s there were a bunch of naturalistic back-to-the-land Christians. Christian culture isn't that divorced from mainstream culture, no matter what they think - not only the Jesus People and all the various Christian cults of that time, but also individuals like Carla Emery, the author of The Encyclopedia of Country Living.
Actually, a lot of times reading about the Serena Joy types who make their livings teaching other women to stay home and not work, I think about Carla Emery. She seems (seemed? My edition of her book is from 1992, I'm not sure she's still living) like a very nice person, but she started this little home-based business of writing a book on a subscription basis while homesteading and cloth diapering and (I think) homeschooling...but then she got successful and famous and traveled a lot selling books and was on TV and her marriage fell apart, her homestead was neglected, and her kids missed her - because she was out selling the dream of her beautiful alternative family-centered life.
Of course, she's a real genuine, sharing person and told that story in her book as it went on, instead of disowning angry children and acting like all was well.
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Post by rosa on Sept 29, 2010 22:53:22 GMT -5
aside from the theology and the heartbreaking story:
I just want to repeat what liltwinstar said. I think it's the most important thing, and if I could go back in time and tell it to half the teenaged girls I ever knew I would:
"if she's not happy in a relationship, that's reason enough to end it, right there."
It doesn't matter if he's a nice guy, or if he really really really likes you, or if you acted like you like him and you don't want to let him down, or actually anything else about his feelings. He can do a better job of figuring out his own feelings. What matters to you is if you're happy.
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Post by rosa on Sept 22, 2010 9:02:51 GMT -5
Tapati said: "What test do we have to detect crazy, power-mad men at a single glance? "
The single best one I've ever found is the rule that if someone is disregarding your boundaries in small ways at the very beginning, or trying to control you ("You should cut your hair different" "I know you wanted X but I went ahead and ordered Y for you." "I am going to get demonstrative and clingy right when you're supposed to leave for work." "That band sucks, I'm throwing away this CD for you.") they're testing you to see if they can get away with worse.
It takes more than a glance, though.
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Post by rosa on Sept 19, 2010 12:44:22 GMT -5
Friends of mine who've had unjustified brushes with CPS - usually because an ex or a neighbor with a grudge called in false allegations - have found it to be annoying, but not truamatic. There's a bureaucratic process, and like any other system with lots of people in it (including the police, who have even more terrifying power and the same sets of common prejudices) it can go wrong. But it's not this horrible monster waiting to grab unsuspecting kids.
And of course in Ruth's story, knowing the neighbors were watching and had called CPS even though her parents were loud and angry about it gave at least one of the kids hope and trust in both the neighbors and the system.
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Post by rosa on Sept 19, 2010 12:39:43 GMT -5
I think we have a set of shared beliefs.
We believe that individuals should have the freedom to make decisions for themselves; we believe that good people can disagree about religion; we believe men should not be elevated over women just by their gender; we believe children exist for their own purposes, not just as tools/receptacles/reflections of adults. We believe that breaking a person's spirit or causing them to believe they are unworthy of love, freedom, or safety is wrong.
These don't look like beliefs because they're so basic, like air doesn't seem like one of the necessities of life because you always have it. But we've all brushed up against groups or individuals who don't share them.
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Post by rosa on Sept 13, 2010 22:06:07 GMT -5
Ladygrace, the government that sets the standards for textbooks is the state government, not the federal government.
Most states don't legally mandate that specific texts be used, but they bulk-buy the texts they approve and give them to schools for free; individual school districts can usually opt out but then they have to buy their own materials. And of course some states might actually have text standards, since it's up to the individual state legislatures.
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Post by rosa on Sept 8, 2010 17:36:00 GMT -5
I can't wait to see more of it written up!
Vyckie, fyi, comments are open on that one on the blog.
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Post by rosa on Aug 31, 2010 23:38:11 GMT -5
Personally, I find the washables a lot less gross than a garbage can full of disposable diapers or sanitary napkins, that typically sits for a week before trash pickup day.
And as for laundry grey water, the vast majority of homes around here, the laundry machine empties into a "laundry sink" because basements weren't built with laundry hookups the way they are in newer houses. Nobody washes these sinks. Lots of people also use them for handwashing, hair dying and washing, pet washing - and yet, we don't have outbreaks of typhus or other diseases you get from human waste or blood - because dirty laundry doesn't usually have that much of either, the water is also full of detergent, and most people don't have the diseases to pass on anyway.
Which is not at all to give Miss Emily a pass on her detergent-free soap nut kitchen diaper washing operation.
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Post by rosa on Aug 31, 2010 18:44:03 GMT -5
Jemand, the reasoning usually given for not reusing laundry greywater is that it may contain human blood or poop - there are some really low-tech systems for settling out solids & exposing them to air so they don't go into the groundwater and pathogens die, including running them out through a very slightly inclined, non-airtight tube of bricks w/a soil floor (that one is approved as a greywater system in rural parts of the UK, in the US things vary so much I don't know if it's approved anywhere here.)
Low-phosphorus detergents in general are safer for plants and bodies of water.
(greywater info from a TAP book called "Lifting the Lid, about 10 years old)
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Post by rosa on Aug 30, 2010 23:56:22 GMT -5
But that's why it made me wonder if it was part and parcel of the pronatalist package - if the anti-birth-control churches don't do more about later pregnancies than most churches do, causing an expectation of how people act about 3rd (and 4th and 8th...) babies that just doesn't translate into the rest of the world. That would reinforce the us vs. them feeling, and make moms of many feel like nobody (but the mom-love-talking QF congregations) values them.
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Post by rosa on Aug 30, 2010 21:57:44 GMT -5
Well, specifically in Vyckie's story it struck me as odd because I'm very nearly her age and I'm from almost exactly where she is - my dad lives not too far from where V lives now, I went to high school in a town that competed with the town her mom lives in for sports and debate, and I went to college where she was living when she had her first few kids - she mentions the health clinic I used for 5 years in one of her story installments. I grew up in the United Methodist church but I get invited to various other churches by evangelistic "friends", so I've probably been to services in some of the churches she mentions.
And the expectation for *most* people in those places is that they will get married pretty young and have at least 2 or 3 kids, but I've never been invited to a 3rd child baby shower ever. So I wondered where she got the expectation that people would make a big deal over a third pregnancy.
It might be different where Arietty lives, but I know Vyckie's areas pretty well.
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Post by rosa on Aug 30, 2010 20:48:54 GMT -5
And I'm sorry it hurt your feelings, Arietty, but even baby showers for *second* children are very rare in any place I've lived. Maybe meals for new moms - though even that isn't usual for stay-at-home moms unless you're related to them or they're having a problem pregnancy. A little babysitting of older children (though usually moms pay for that, if they need it - not professional babysitter rates, but "12 year old friend's child" babysitting rates), that's normal. But not baby showers.
In Vyckie's original story she talks about how sad she was nobody threw a shower for her third child, and it seemed really odd to me - is the expectation that each baby deserves a big bash something that comes out of the pronatalist ideology? It seems like outside of that, the assumption is that if you're having another baby it's because you were all set up - financially, time-wise, etc. - to do it. I have a work friend who had her kids very close together and pretty young (22 and 23) but since she was married and had a kid & kid stuff and a townhouse already, there was no baby shower - some of us gave her gifts, but it was an individual thing, not an organized one.
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Post by rosa on Aug 30, 2010 20:42:53 GMT -5
It seems to me that this comes back to the discussion we had about closeness, in neighborhoods or friendships or churches.
For most people, a church is actually not a family. Not a social safety net. Not even a group of very very close friends - though you might make close friends within it. It's a group that worships together. Sometimes churches spontaneously have these extra special close groups inside of them, but it seems to me that the only church that is super extra close loving to every single member, is a cult. And they accomplish that by booting out/shunning anyone who won't put in the level of effort they require to keep functioning at that level of closeness. Expecting the level of closeness and care you (might - my family certainly isn't like that) get from family or your best friend, from every member of a group of more than 10 or 12 people, seems unrealistic.
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Post by rosa on Aug 29, 2010 10:36:56 GMT -5
There's a time, though, when helping all the time is just enabling. People are entitled to make their own decisions, but they have to own the consequences, too - and part of being in a group that values that kind of freedom means other people get to make individual decisions too, about how much help they offer.
The lack of duty-bound help goes with the freedom. Back when the church was also the social network there was all sorts of punitive measures against needy people - they were forced into poorhouses, their children were taken away and hired out as labor, etc.
And there's only so much room in every small group for people who need all the time - one of the reasons we have professional paid social workers is because we recognize both that even people who deliberately dig their holes deeper and deeper deserve help, and that it's too hard emotionally for most people to stick with that through the long haul. But that kind of formal help comes with a loss of freedom - there are rules to follow, to get help.
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Post by rosa on Aug 28, 2010 0:29:55 GMT -5
That is so frustrating! It's like they don't really know what "friend" means. The problem is, they see those rules and think they don't apply to whatever the current thing is. They always claim it's not MLM. "Oh, this one is a really good product," "It's a real job, a sales position. No, there's no base pay. No, no taxes, they're independent contractors. But I said it's not multilevel! You just don't understand!" "But I'm not selling anything, I just want to educate you about the law! Oh, and you'll need to buy these forms..." And of course, sometimes it's not MLM, it's a straight up pyramid scam (like the "gifting clubs" (http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt056.shtm) - another one of my former friend's invitations. Or just straight up fraud. This is an old one i remember off the scam list from when I was at the paper as going through Christian circles, men's church breakfasts and such. I got to it by googling "christian scam endless energy" - the articles don't mention church connections but if this isn't the same guy, it's the same scam. Basically he claimed to have invented a perpetual motion machine that made energy out of nothing, and bilked people out of thousands and thousands of "investment" dollar. www.nashvillepost.com/news/2010/1/19/investors_win_26m_award_against_alleged_scam_artistI have finally trained a couple very credulous women in my life to check with Scopes before they forward me emails about miracles (tho one just stopped emailing me because I was "putting reason into what is supposed to be an affirmation of faith.") and my partner's dad just googles whatever + scam whenever one of her church friends wants her to invest in something.
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Post by rosa on Aug 27, 2010 23:13:33 GMT -5
Nobody wants moms to be happy with their choices. When I went back to work, all the moms were all "oh i'd rather be with my babies, i hate working, I miss them"...it made them really mad when I'd say I was working because I wanted to. But none of them had ever been stay at home moms, so they didn't actually know which they liked better (if I'd gone back to work 2 weeks after my son was born, I'd feel like I missed out, too.)
Arietty, my heart just aches for your friends. There are so many scams that go around Christian circles (and not just Christian circles - we've got a scandal locally where a man was going around claiming to raise money for Muslim relief efforts in Somalia and Eritrea, but was really using the money to recruit kids to go fight in the civil war there, and getting paid by someone on the other side as well.). People fall prey to all sorts of fads, and they trust anyone with the right religious stamp instead of applying the kind of skepticism you need for business transactions. I used to have a friend who was just a regular Baptist who got into one semilegal MLM after another - she finally got mad at me for never supporting her by buying stuff (or signing up to be incorporated as a business for tax dodging, or going on a diet so I could sell supplements, or whatever.) and stopped talking to me, but I see her sometimes and I know she's on another one.
I really think it would be a service if churches would investigate these groups and put some energy into protecting their members. It's not that hard - the newspaper I worked at just subscribed to an email alert list so we knew which ads to watch out for (they didn't allow MLM ads in the jobs, they had to be in business opportunities, and commission-only jobs had to say "commission only" in the ad - we didn't ban Eagle or Herbalife or anything, we just made them say who and what they were. Which they hate.)
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Post by rosa on Aug 24, 2010 20:06:59 GMT -5
Whoo! The first finished story, and it has a happy ending!
Thank you, Kiery, and you know we're all rooting for you too.
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Post by rosa on Aug 16, 2010 23:22:43 GMT -5
The logistics are totally hard But I do see, when I do volunteer work, women who work miracles to get themselves help - we don't see how they do it but women show up at the library having found a half and hour or an hour of time to see the volunteer lawyer, or at the settlement house to get a health care referral. (Of course, at both those places you can have your children along, if you can keep them with you...but then that's all those kids knowing what you're doing.) The number of children is a barrier but it seems to me that the homeschooling/home churching is an even worse one - women whose kids go places like school, sunday school, choir, etc have a lot more opportunity to make the time and connections they need to get help.
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Post by rosa on Aug 16, 2010 13:15:57 GMT -5
This isn't for Tess, but for anyone else who is reading who might be in a similar situation:
Planned Parenthood offers sliding-scale medical services for women: prenatal, gynecological, birth control, STD testing, etc. They'll take cash if that's what you have and they will take a fake name, as well. There may be other local health services, too, that offer sliding scale services - here in my neighborhood we have People's Health Clinic, and the YWCA also refers people to private practitioners who take sliding scale patients.
If you have no income of your own and no access to your partner's money for health care, the answer for "what is your income" is $0. If it's not a public agency you don't have to disclose your husband's income if you can't access it. They'll understand. Abusive men who don't allow their wives access to money are unfortunately not rare.
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Post by rosa on Aug 12, 2010 12:15:01 GMT -5
Amyrose, have you tried suggesting that God is punishing them for not budgeting for car repair/replacement, and the way to fix that is to have a better budgeting process as a weekly routine of "being right with God in my financial life"? I'm only half joking - I'm working with a friend on making her life less chaotic and talking to her about budgeting in spiritual terms (committing to paying all your bills on time is an act of honesty and faith in the future) has really helped her in a way that I would *never* have thought would work.
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Post by rosa on Aug 12, 2010 10:40:20 GMT -5
It's such a diminished view of God, too. That any random person has the power to prevent God from doing what He wants- whether it's by using a condom, or hiding sin, or listening to wrong music, or just failing to use the exact magical "name and claim" language and thought patterns.
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Post by rosa on Aug 11, 2010 21:54:38 GMT -5
I think I didn't say what I meant very clearly.
The thing is, I know a lot of women who had another baby (usually just one more than they originally planned) because they weren't ready to go back to work and there was a lot of pressure not to stay home once they "didn't have to"...but of course the 3rd or 4th or even 2nd child just increases the financial pressure.
It sort of seems, from the excerpts that have been posted here and some of the other sites I read, like the QF moms think it's not "real" mothering until you're up over 5, like the "worldly" moms are all TV and takeout pizza and that doesn't count, the way *their* mothering does. Which seems like it comes from a place of deep insecurity with the basic idea (they claim to believe) that kids do best with Mom at home. And that insecurity in the claim that mothering is useful work is something they share with the rest of the culture.
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Post by rosa on Aug 11, 2010 21:45:35 GMT -5
What Jemand said - there's a possibility hormonal birth control *could* prevent implantation, and how would you test for that? So it's on the insert, and it always has been.
Of course, it doesn't *always* or you'd never see someone on the pill have a baby. Nobody knows if it does at all.
And the main reason to refute the "fact" that hormonal birth control is "the same as" abortion is that the analogy to abortion - which many doctors don't perform for their own religious reasons - has led to pharmacists refusing to dispense birth control pills, which limits some women's access to reliable birth control.
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Post by rosa on Aug 11, 2010 14:31:06 GMT -5
I have a lot of friends like that, Arietty. Only with 1-2 kids, which makes it a 5-8 year phase (or shorter, if they go back to work sooner.)
I kind of wonder if the doing it all more more more has to do with the assertion that motherhood *is* important - if people don't quite believe it, so they have to make it a ton of work out of/around it, to justify not having a paid job. I have a friend whose (only) daughter just started preschool this year, and my friensometimes talks about having another baby or doing childcare for another child, because "it won't be worth staying home when she starts school." But if she really wants to stay home, or if she thinks its best for her daughter, she shouldn't have to justify it.
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