The Big White Farmhouse

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Bringing back this prompt once again.  (Here’s part one, part two, and part three.)  I love that it reminds me that there is much to love, even in the everyday minutiae.  Here’s my list:

Teenage boys and their pull-up challenges.  Watching how much Sammy (our Great Pyrenees) loves the baby piglets.  Getting so much out of The Divine Comedy!  Little brothers playing happily together.  Eating “pink lemonade” blueberries right off the bush.  Shady spots outside during boiling hot days.  Rain.

Hoping to document the abundance around me all year long!

Around here, abundance looks like…

+ the terribly unbearable heat!  It has been SO hot lately.  Our days have been focused on keeping the pigs cool with splashes of cold water, mud wallows and frozen foods.

+ selling two unneeded items for the Car Loan Payoff Plan: one reusable shopping bag and a shirt.  After shipping and fees, I made $8.14!

Reading //

• LOTS of new information in Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen, including this (less scary) fact:

In the 1950s, President Eisenhower created the U.S. highway system with this kind of dual-use in mind.  He modeled America’s original “National System of Interstate and Defense Highways” after “the superlative system of German autobahn,” he wrote in his presidential memoirs.  Not only could U.S. highways facilitate large-scale evacuation of cities in a nuclear war, but the broad, flat interstate lanes could be used as runways for takeoff and landings on bombing runs.  For setting down a helicopter in the median strip, or along the side of the road in the grass.  This is how many of America’s mid-century transportation systems were designed. (p.100)

• What City Kids Learn on My Farm from Larissa Phillips at The Free Press // “Here are some things I have taught the kids who visit my farm: animals don’t care about your feelings, and sometimes we kill them to eat them. It doesn’t matter how desperately you want to find more eggs, the hens don’t lay on demand. Tomatoes aren’t ripe in June. The stalls aren’t going to clean themselves. Cuts, scrapes, and stings aren’t really a big deal. And there will always be poop.”
• You Don’t Need To Document Everything from Freya India at Girls // “Influencers are of course the most extreme examples—but this impulse is so ingrained in everyone now. This pressure to post everything. And I think it’s a massive cause of anxiety for Gen Z. There’s a sense now that something didn’t happen if you don’t share it. There are young people who wouldn’t understand going to an event, travelling somewhere, being in a relationship, if they couldn’t post about it. They would not see the point. They simply cannot conceive of a life that exists without an audience consuming it.”

New Additions to The List // 

• What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael J. Sandel
• Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
• One Poor Scruple by Josephine Ward // another Melisa recommendation!

Watching/Listening //

• Harmed by Prescribed Medications: the Untold Story of Pharmaceutical Companies from Best Documentary // This was very eye opening.
• The Letter: Appalachia’s All-Time Classic Remastered from The Appalachian Storyteller
• Inferno Cantos 19-27 of 100 Days of Dante from Baylor Honors College

Loving //

• The Homeschool Printing Company // I needed a PDF file printed and spiral-bound and they did awesome work!
• dried mango // I’m obsessed.

This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission of any sale made at no extra cost to you.

If you didn’t think I was an odd duck before, this will probably convince you: I like to read the local obituaries.

With the exception of the occasional heartbreaking childhood cancer or teenage suicide, the majority of the obituaries share the stories of lives well lived.  A few examples (I removed some of the more specific information):

John, 95: “He was an avid reader and also enjoyed his extensive collection of old movies and many genres of music. He was an active member [in his church] and deeply valued these relationships.”

Stanley, 80: “He will always be remembered as a giver, mentor and support to those who knew and loved him. And besides his passion for his career, he could always be found on the golf course with good friends…Stanley was a devoted and loving husband, father and grandpa and was the foundation of his family. He was always there to support his family and friends, even if just to share a joke to make you smile.”

Barbara, 91: “Bobbie’s life was characterized by her strong Christian faith, devotion to family and her compassionate servant’s heart. She was active in her community throughout her life, serving [her local church]… Bobbie served for many years in various community and civic organizations. She was selfless, content in all circumstances and experienced great joy in caring for family, friends and those in need.”

Reading about these lovely people always makes me introspective: What will my legacy be?  What will my children write about me?

Those behaviors have to be cultivated today.  If I want to be remembered as “content in all circumstances” like Barbara, I need to practice that right now.  If I want to be known as deeply valuing relationships like John, I need to act like that today.  An important reminder to focus on what matters most.

Hoping to document the abundance around me all year long!

Around here, abundance looks like…

+ homemade decorations for the 4th of July.  I love the kids’ creativity.

+ fresh produce all over the kitchen counter!  Our onions and potatoes are ready and the tomatoes are ripening like crazy.  Time to include those ingredients in the meal plan.

+ selling four unneeded items for the Car Loan Payoff Plan.  This week, I sold one pair of jeans and three books.  After shipping and fees, I made $9.64!

Reading //

• The Greatest Gifts We Can Give Our Teens from Kathryn Whitaker at Mothering Spirit // “Please Jesus, let them make mistakes, I want to yell. By ‘helicoptering’ faith formation and mowing down all obstacles, we are preventing our children from the (often painful) experience of growing up and owning their own faith. The two greatest things we can give our children is the space to fail and a community to love them through it.”
• I Regret to Inform You That We Will All Grow Old, Infirm, and Unattractive from Freddie deBoer // A little crass, but interesting.  The comments were interesting too.  (And the whole conversation makes me think of one of my favorite books, Being Mortal by Atul Gawande.)

I personally think that another influence lies in the bizarre modern ideology that insists that everything that people have always done is so much harder now, against all evidence. There’s this pervasive cultural attitude that everything is so. damn. hard. now, that human beings have never faced so much difficulty just getting by. This notion is bipartisan, though I do mostly associate it with left-of-center culture, which for the record is politically ruinous. The reality is that it isn’t, actually, uniquely hard to live now, and if you are lucky enough to live as a healthy person in the middle class or above in the United States, you enjoy a life that 99.99% of human beings in history would look on with incredible envy. Which is not to say that life isn’t hard; life is very hard, for big-picture reasons that I’ve laid out many times. It’s just that life was always hard. It’s hard to be a person. Our existence is a cosmic accident, our lives are outside of our own control, and we inevitably die, so of course life is hard. But it was always hard, and that which is hardest about being a human is that which never changes. There’s nothing special about now. It’s just that a lot of people have made the bizarre choice to promulgate an elite culture in which everyone complains all the time about how hard everything is, to socially deleterious effect. (And, for the record, the only real escape from the hardships of life is to find the dignity to bear them without showy complaint, which is the opposite of what everyone is doing.)

New Additions to The List // 

• The Shoes of the Fisherman by Morris L. West // Thanks for the recommendation, Melisa!
• John Fisher and Thomas More: Keeping Their Souls While Losing Their Heads by Robert J. Conrad Jr.
• A Daughter’s Love: Thomas More and His Dearest Meg by John Guy

Watching/Listening //

• How to Make Architecture Great Again! Interview with Michael Diamant from Rewire the West // A really interesting conversation about classical vs. modern architecture.  I think I want to be a classical architect when I grow up.
• The Day Stockholm Became a Syndrome from Best Documentary // Fair warning: there is quite a bit of language, but I found it fascinating from a psychological standpoint.
• The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis: An Interview with Dr. Jason Baxter from The Commonplace // I LOVED this.
• Session Three of Wit, Learning, and Virtue: The Legacy of Civil Servant, Thomas More course from Belmont Abbey College
• Inferno Cantos 13-18 of 100 Days of Dante from Baylor Honors College // So good!