How much impact does a Stay-at-Home Mom have on the economy?

My husband is a small business owner. My parents own a small business. My grandparents both run small businesses. My good friends' husbands own small businesses. Do you see a theme? They are all very apprehensive of what is coming. How many small businesses do you know of that are going out of business or letting people go?

I can stimulate the economy if given a bit more of my husband's money! I have two daughters. They are both enrolled in a dance studio and a piano studio. Guess what? Both studios are small, local businesses owned by - GASP!- women! Hike up my taxes, keep letting gas prices creep up, let milk stay sky-high and I will not be able to support the local economy. And it is not just I alone. There are thousands of Micheles, spending their self-employed husbands' hard-earned cash to support local economies all over the country! Will we be able to continue?

I have not had my hair or the girls' hair cut in months. Guess who was cutting our hair? A mom of four operating a small business in her basement. Hmmm...

I am no longer employing a sweet lady to come and clean the bathrooms and change the sheets. Hmmm...

Will I be able to afford fresh produce at the any of the many small business fruit and vegetable stands this summer? Will they even be operating? And what about those incredible small business plant nurseries? The ones where you get plants and knowledgeable staff?

What about the local artist who supplements her art by teaching small children after school? I wanted to enroll my kids, but...too much of my husband's money is going to "swine odor studies."

I live in fear that the most wonderful cross stitch shop in the world (The Dogwood Patch) might ... I dare not even write it. I would willingly pump more of my husband's money into that woman-owned, small business, but I understand the money is needed to helped those swamp mice in California.

Before the "late unpleasantness," I stimulated the economy with great vigor and regularity! I bought my grains at a local, family-run, small business grist mill, I ate a local restaurants, I supported a local coffee house, shopped at small, local antique and junk shops, I took my girls to local theatre productions and ice cream parlors. I took my girls to museums, the zoo and the aquarium. I bought books like nobody's business. I bought homeschool supplies from small, family-owned companies. Oh, yes, I have supported homeschool companies! ;) All my appliances are the same brand; in the past 8 years, I have come to know the local (small business) repairman very well!

Take more money from small business owners, and you take more money away from their charitable contributions. More money is wasted and lost when the government gets involved and decides where the money goes. Small business owners can give the money more directly to local charities or the high school band and newspaper (thanks Mom and Dad;).

I worry about small businesses. My family is directly affected and so are the families of so many around me.

Oh, ye gods of Washington, I implore you to reconsider the crushing of America's small businesses! Give us our money, let us support other small businesses in turn!

I'm checking this out

http://www.answersincreation.org/

Looks interesting

Why not Young Earth? I'll tell you....

I use the Apologia Elementary Science series. I take quite a bit of ribbing about this. I do not teach my child that to be a Christian, to believe in the God of the Bible, one must believe in the Young Earth theory. I believe it is an intellectually dishonest theory. Young Earthers claim that because Christians believe God "did it," they can definitively know "how" He did it. That seems presumptuous on an huge scale. They have their theory and make all the evidence fall in line. Well, that's what the proponents of evolution do also! In our home, we observe nature and give thanks to God for it. We do not hitch our wagon to THEORIES!

Why do I use Apologia? Well, the elementary series is beautiful, and I like the scope and depth.

All this is to introduce you to, if you are not already familiar with him, Gerald Schroeder.

http://www.geraldschroeder.com/

Now, I do not pretend to understand astro-physics or whatever it is. But the little glimpses I have had of his work intrigue me. If you are at all concerned with the dating of the planet or the universe, I would strongly encourage you to check out his work. I can not do it justice, but I will tell you it has something to do with the age of the universe in the center of the universe. He believes the Big Bang was the moment of creation. He has some formula about the expansion of the universe and the time distortion. If you divide that by the age scientists give the earth (or maybe it is the other way around) you get an age of 6 days for the center of the universe. Does that make sense? I understand it if I cross my eyes and squint! Go look him up. It is an intriguing idea....

(What I find intriguing is that a man in my husband's Sunday School class did the math IN HIS HEAD when my husband tossed out the age of the earth and the formula for time/expansion! And this man makes great huumus. Amazing!)

Who is your neighbor?

We are very careful about saying, "Thank God!" around here - the whole Ten Commandment thing and all. But I said "Thank God" just now for all the right reasons. That adorable little 6-year old boy has been found alive and in good condition.

My husband gets very annoyed that precious news time is devoted to sentimental and/or sensational personal stories. He is an attorney, and sees family tragedies and dramas everyday. When I am watching a national-soap-opera-story on the news, he makes snarky comments such as, "Yeah, and what makes them special?"

I justify following these stories because it makes me more human. My daily life is not filled with rape, abduction, and spouses murdering each other. But I need to be aware that many are not as fortunate as I. These news stories cause me to count my blessings.

These are my Neighbors - in the biblical sense. They are real people suffering. I have an opportunity to pray for them and the hundreds of others in similar situations.

"There but for the Grace of God go I." Maybe we don't "rubber-neck" just because we are nosy or like the shock -value. Maybe we slow down and get a better look because we are suddenly struck by the realization that it could happen to us. Maybe we slow down and look because we are reminded of a communion we have with others on this planet.

Hmmm....

Pain in the Gas

In 8 days we have spent $161.08 on gas. And that is regular gas, which is all we can find around here right now. I think I am going to vomit.

I am looking at the check register, trying to figure it out. Yes, I am insane for insisting the girls stay in piano and ballet, but please! My outrageous expenses lately have been an $8 lipstick and $28 shoes at Walmart, and some songs I downloaded from Amazon for history class! Oh, yeah and the $4 parmesan cheese. I feel like I am living in a completely different world from a year ago. I see lots of problems, but I am blaming most everything on gas. This makes me dizzy. I am going to vomit.

We always made fun of my grandparents: never using new dish clothes or undershirts, living without central air, hanging the clothes out to dry, never replacing worn-out items - when they could afford to do so if they chose. But now I see it in a different light. They knew what it was like to live in a time when things were bad. They expected to go without, make do and grow their own food. And finally having a comfortable financial situation did not change the truth of the lessons they had learned before. My parents tried to teach me the value in frugality, but when you grow up in the 80s and 90s - well, everything I saw around me was fast and new. I heard something about gas lines and a joke about "Where's the beef?" but it had nothing to do with me. Hmmm...now I think my grandparents were right. Why get the newest, fastest thing available when you can get by with the old one? I have taken too much for granted. You won't be disappointed if you don't expect so much. Maybe that is the lesson here.

The English Major in me could not resist...

The Big Read

• The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.

  The Rules:

  1) Look at the list and put one * by those you have read.
  2) Put a % by those you intend to read.
  3) Put two ** by the books you LOVE.
  4) Put # by the books you HATE.
  5) Post.

  **1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
  **2 The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
  *3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
  *4 Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling
  *5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
  **6 The Bible
  **7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
  #8 1984 - George Orwell
  9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
  **10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
  **11 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
  **12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
  13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
  **14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (Yes, really, every line)
  **15 Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
  **16 The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
  17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
  *18 Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
  19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
  %20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
  **21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (Come on, I'm from Georgia)
  **22 The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
  %23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
  %24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
  25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams -
  ********************26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh -
  27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
  **29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
  **30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
  %31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
  *32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
  **33 Chronicles of Narnia- C.S. Lewis
  **34 Emma - Jane Austen (Does the movie count?)
  **35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
  **36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis -
  37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
  38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis de Bernières - (Is Nicholas Cage in the book? ;) )
  #39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
  **40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
  41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
  #42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
  43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
  **45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -
  **46 Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery
  *****47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
  48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
  49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
  %50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
  **51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
  52 Dune - Frank Herbert
  **53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
  **54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
  55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
  56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
  **57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
  58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
  59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
  60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
  62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
  63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
  64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
  %65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
  66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
  **67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
  **68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
  69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
  %70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville ( Currently reading)
  **71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
  **72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
  **73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
  74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
  76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
  77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
  78 Germinal - Émile Zola
  **79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
  ***********80 Possession - A.S. Byatt
  **81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
  82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
  83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
  **84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
  *85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
  86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
  **87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
  88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (I started it, and quickly lost interest)
  **89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
  #91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
  92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - in French
  93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
  %94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
  *******95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
  96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
  *97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
  **98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
  99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
  100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Any thoughts on this?

I thought it was pretty funny.

Sarah Palin and the "spark of the frontier"

Mona Charen wrote this today on the National Review message board about Sarah Palin


But she is also the opposite of the America Obama sketched last night. He wants us all to think of ourselves as broken, beaten, and in need of government help. He caricatures the conservative message as "You're on your own." Palin, of Alaska, still carries the spark of the frontier, the independence, and the spunk.

That sums up what I see as the "2 Americas." There are people who need help, and we should help them But the rest of us need to get off our tails and revive the "spark of the frontier."

We are studying 1730 - 1850 this year. I cannot wait to delve into all the great American stories with my children. I want to emphasise the American can-do spirit, pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. Yes, people in our country have done wrong, but that should not be the basis for an american history course. I want to emphasise the good, and the people and stories who exemplify the true American Spirit. I want my daughters to be compassionate women; I want them to see public service as their Christian duty. I also want them to have "the spark of the frontier, the independence, and the spunk."

"A Twisted Heart"

I saw this review of a new movie based on my favorite novel, "Brideshead Revisited," on the Catholic Exchange. This review is by Chuck Colson.

"On the surface, with its period settings and costumes, the new film Brideshead Revisited looks like a faithful adaptation of the classic novel by Evelyn Waugh. Underneath, it is anything but faithful. On the contrary, it presents a deeply flawed and inaccurate picture of the Christian faith that Waugh embraced.

Brideshead Revisited tells the story of the wealthy Flyte family as seen through the eyes of Charles Ryder, who attends Oxford with the troubled young Sebastian Flyte. Charles is an agnostic who cannot understand the Flytes’ Catholic faith and the strong influence it has over all of them, even over the family members who rebel against it.

Even though these rebellious ones often seem happy, fulfilled, and free from restrictions, there is still something in them that craves the simple belief in God that they knew in their childhood. The book is ultimately the story of those lost family members gradually returning one by one to the Church. In the end, even the agnostic Charles finds himself drawn to the faith.

As Waugh wrote, Brideshead “deals with what is theologically termed ‘the operation of Grace,’ that is to say, the unmerited and unilateral act of love by which God continually calls souls to Himself.” In short, grace and faith are at the very heart of the story.

But the movie makers seemed determined to do everything they could to undermine what Evelyn Waugh was trying to say. Original screenwriter Andrew Davies made headlines when he remarked that God would be the “villain” of his adaptation. Davies was later replaced by another writer, Jeremy Brock, who announced that God would not be the villain, but “theology” would. The story, to him, was largely about “religious guilt.”

True to Brock’s words, the film paints a very different picture of the Catholic faith than Waugh did. The religion of grace that he portrayed so powerfully in his novel is now shown in the movie as stifling and oppressive. Waugh was honest in his depiction of devout Christians as three-dimensional individuals with both faults and virtues, but the film portrays them as outright villains and fools.

The end of the book has Charles Ryder praying in the chapel at Brideshead. The film shows no such scene. Instead, it ends with Charles almost snuffing out the candle burning before the altar, then thinking better of it and walking away. Maybe that is the filmmaker’s way of showing at least a grudging respect for religion. But given the film’s poisonous portrayal of the Flyte family’s faith, I doubt it.

As Barbara Nicolosi of the Christian filmmakers’ program Act One puts it, “Every scene in the movie had the settings from the book, but with a twisted heart.”

Even the New York Times got it right in its review of the movie. And I quote: “In Waugh’s book . . . religious commitments and social relations were part of a thickly detailed, complicated and ancient lived reality. . . [T]his is what makes ‘Brideshead Revisited’ live and breathe as a novel. None of it registers with any force in this lazy, complacent film, which takes the novel’s name in vain.”

That is why the film is not worth your time. If your friends invite you to see the movie, instead invite them to read the book with you . . . so you can remind them that the Christian faith is not about guilt, but about grace."

Do you want to laugh really hard?

Cake Wrecks Go there. It is all about hysterical cake mistakes.

(warning: there are two posts about a baby's funeral.)

Teaching in Texas

New rules for grading in Texas:

•Homework grades should be given only when the grades will "raise a student's average, not lower it."

•Teachers must accept overdue assignments, and their principal will decide whether students are to be penalized for missing deadlines.

•Students who flunk tests can retake the exam and keep the higher grade.

•Teachers cannot give a zero on an assignment unless they call parents and make "efforts to assist students in completing the work."

•High school teachers who fail more than 20 percent of their students will need to develop a professional improvement plan and will be monitored by their principals. For middle school the rate is 15 percent; for elementary it's 10 percent.

Evolutionary Argument You Don't Often Hear...

My husband just read this passage to me from The Omnivore's Dilemna.

"Though we insist on speaking of the "invention" of agriculture as if it were our idea, like double-entry bookkeeping or the lightbulb, in fact it makes just as much sense to regard agriculture as a brilliant (if unconscious) evolutionary strategy on the part of the plants and animals involved to get us to advance their interests. By evolving certain traits we happen to regard as desirable, these species got themselves noticed by the one mammal in a position not only to spread their genes around the world, but to remake vast swaths of that world in the image of the plants' preferred habitat. "

Not on theTest

Click the title to this post to go to a short, hilarious, Tom Chapin music video about standardized testing, taking the humanities out of schools, etc...

Link to post by Rod Dreher

Here is a post about the effects of the earthquake on the country with the one-child-per-family policy. It is titled "Death of Generations."

Click on the title of my post for the link


Thanks Plaid Dad/Drew for pointing it out!

Excerpt from Fox News...Science vs. Magic

Kelemen this week told the story of anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, who detailed the thinking of Trobriand Islanders in his book, "Magic, Science, and Religion" (1948).

"He said the distinction between magic and science for those Trobriand Islanders was that for magic you only count confirming cases," Kelemen said. "And so, say you had this idea that earthquakes occur right before or after volcanic eruptions, so when that happens you notice and you put a notch in your stick or whatever. When there is earthquake that doesn’t occur with a volcanic eruption, you don't notice at all or say there must have been mitigating circumstances in this case."

Scientists can fall into the same trap.

"Scientists do an awful lot of what Malinowski would've called magic all the time," Kelemen said. "We filter data and come up with reasons why our [results] in one instance are not correct and that allows us to overlook that instance. Nevertheless, it's a trap."

World Gone Mad

My grammar is far from perfect. My writing skills are weak. I hope to improve as I go through the First Language Lessons series with my children. But will someone tell me please - who started forming all these plurals with an apostrophe? I have seen signs that advertise "taco's." I have received gifts from "The Thompson's." This week, my husband's law practice was ordering a new sign. My husband walked in on the two secretaries arguing over "Attorney's at Law." He was horrified. He suddenly had a vision that the sign was in the front with the horrible grammar gaffe -- and no one noticed!!! I live in the South; I am all for regional eccentricities. But this is not regional or eccentric. It is just strange! Will my grandchildren learn this usage as part of Standard American Written English? Will I send them card's, present's and Animal Cracker's???