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The farm projects are slowly finishing up for the year and that means more time to read! I’m excited to resume my Mother Academia studies as they’ve largely been on the back burner as our crazy life unfolded this fall. I recently heard the phrase, “To be a good teacher, you must also be a good student” and that really resonated with me. I’ll be using that as my motto as I dive back into the books. Here’s the beginning of my plans for this winter:
- AMERICAN HISTORY // I’m continuing on with my Civil War Era rabbit trail and hoping to make some significant progress!
- With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln by Stephen B. Oates
- Faith and Fury: The Rise of Catholicism During the Civil War by Fr. Charles P. Connor
- Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup
- GREAT BOOKS OF THE WESTERN WORLD // I started this list in April and have really enjoyed challenging myself to tackle books I normally would never have attempted. These are three more selections from Year 1.
- Shakespeare’s Hamlet
- St. Augustine’s Confessions
- Plato’s Republic
- UNMACHINED WORDS LIST // A new addition to the Mother Academia lineup! Starting with books on the list that I already own.
- Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford
- The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr
- 1984 by George Orwell
Hoping to document the abundance around me all year long!
Around here, abundance looks like…
+ completing the first hurdle in the floor remediation. The water mitigation company pulled out half of the dining room floors and installed dehumidifiers/fans for 72 hours. It was so loud and sounded like we lived in a wind tunnel! The next step is now to find a contractor to see the flooring and determine if it can be matched or if we need to replace the entire first floor.
+ a very weak showing for the Weather the Storm Challenge. Truth be told, I was in survival mode as my husband was traveling for work and we had all of the repairs being done in the house! Trying to embrace the ebb and flow of this project and not give up. (Especially when we had another household item die this week…oy.) This week, I:
- avoided the grocery store, only purchasing a handful of needed items
- made it another week without turning on the heat! (we actually had a bit of a heat wave)
- listed a few things on ebay/Poshmark/Pango
- made pita bread
+ finishing up Clutterbug’s 30 Day Declutter Challenge. This time around, I did something hard for me: I threw things away. My previous decluttering challenges have generally involved items in good condition that I was able to pass along to others. I hate waste but those holey/stained t-shirts and little bits of mostly-used up science kits were not being used. I’m not doing myself any favors by keeping trash in the house!
+ selling two unneeded items for the Car Loan Payoff Plan: one kids belt and one book. After shipping and fees, I made $6.45.
Reading //
- The Walking Rebellion: Restoring the Mind at Three Miles an Hour from Ruth and Peco Gaskovski at School of the Unconformed // “There might not be any natural remedy in the world as protective as walking against the deadening impact of our sedentary, chair-bound, screen-mesmerized lives. Walking is the original form of scrolling. Yet it doesn’t lead us down online rabbit holes, but past real rabbit holes. It keeps us grounded, literally by keeping our feet on the ground. It keeps us softly fascinated by ever-changing scenery. Walking is calming, head-clearing, and social and even spiritual when we do it together. If walking were a food, it would be a celebrated superfood packed with nutrients that feed our mind, body, relationships, and contact with nature—and it would cost nothing.”
- A New Preparedness Class from Patsi at A Working Pantry // “If you’re looking for a reasonable and sensible class geared towards women helping women learn how to live in and prepare for uncertain times as well as emergency type situations, then this class is for you. If you’re looking for a ‘dooms day, end of the world rush out and buy anything and everything you can find to ward off the zoombies’ kind of class then this class is not for you.”
- It’s Time to Declutter And Reduce Your Sensory Overload from Jennifer Guttman Psy.D. at Psychology Today // “In a study conducted by UCLA’s Center on Everyday Lives and Families researchers examined 32 California families and found that clutter had a strong impact on their mood and self-esteem. They determined there is a link between high cortisol levels in women and a cluttered household. The same was not true of men.”
- The Clutter Culture from Jack Feuer at UCLA Magazine // This stuff fascinates me.
New Additions to The List //
- No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880-1920 by T. J. Jackson Lears
- The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History by David Hackett Fischer
- Survivals and New Arrivals: Old and New Enemies of the Catholic Church by Hilaire Belloc
Watching/Listening //
- A precision approach to end Alzheimer’s Disease | Dale Bredesen | TEDxManhattanBeach // Fascinating. I need to pick up his book, The End of Alzheimer’s: The First Program to Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline.
- A Day in the Life of a Catholic Priest from the Catholic Diocese of Arlington
Loving //
- this quote from Just in Case: How to Be Self-Sufficient When the Unexpected Happens by Kathy Harrison:
It has occurred to me that I am only doing what every housewife did as a matter of course only a generation or two ago. She always preserved food for the coming year as it came into season and bulk-purchased staples such as sugar and vinegar. Our grandmothers did this not because they were paranoid, isolated survivalists, but rather because they had learned from experience that blizzards, crop failures, and epidemics happened. The prudent, prepared household prevailed. (p.13)
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