Tag: The War Between Men and Women

Men and Women – The Fish Pond Rorschach Test

photog Current Events, OCF, Reclaiming the Family , ,

I have known Camera Girl for about forty-eight years.  We met on a beach while each of us was skipping out on our respective high schools.  Physical attraction was the initial force that brought us together but over the years, we have interacted to the point where, we know each other as well as a man and a woman possibly can.  And yet our motivations, methods and objectives are, if anything, even closer to being diametrically opposed now than they were at the beginning.

I like to think that I base my plans on a somewhat analytical approach to accomplishing my objectives.  So, let’s say Camera Girl tells me that she wants a fish pond.  Before committing to such a project, I would first look at the pros and cons of such a goal.  I would ask my client what are the objectives?  How many fish and what type are desired?  What’s the budget for construction and maintenance?

Then I would look at the various options for constructing the pond.  Should it be a liner or a solid shell?  Should I build it or hire a contractor?  Where should it be set up with respect to the sun?  What safety considerations need to be weighed?  When does it need to be completed by?  What additional items (like a bench or some plants) are also required?  What modifications will need to be made to the property (power line, water line) to accommodate the pond?  And finally, how will the pond be impacted on by the surrounding wildlife?

Camera Girl, on the other hand, cleans out an old muck bucket that she has lying round the yard, buys a dozen “shiners” at PetSmart and tells me she wants me to buy a “solar” fountain on Amazon.com for $12.98.

I find this very disconcerting.  I explain to her that the “shiners” will probably die in the bucket over the course of the summer, the fountain is a piece of crappy plastic that will probably stop working after a few weeks and she’ll have to replace fish and water every few weeks.

This perturbs her not the least.  Our granddaughter will be coming over tomorrow and they like looking at the fish in the bucket for a few minutes every day.  And none of my arguments address this goal.

For she knows that if I were to undertake this epic project by the method that I favor, it would involve weeks of planning and months of installation.  Just digging the hole would take a week or two.  So, from her point of view my method has no upside.  A pond that was finished in September is worse than no pond at all.  The weeks when our granddaughter would be without the fish to interact with would be an epic failure.  Because by September she’ll be entering kindergarten and no longer around to enjoy the mega-pond that I would create.

So, shaking my head and grumbling under my breath I look up this magnificent “fountain” and find a plethora of companies selling this same crappy plastic fountain and select the one that will deliver it for a total of $7.53.  This is my consolation.  I paid five bucks less for a piece of junk that probably won’t last through June.

But when all is said and done.  She has logic on her side.  That muck bucket pond is almost an optimized solution to the mission.  A little girl will sprinkle some fish food into it and watch the fish come up to get it.  And even if the fountain stops working and even if the racoons and the herons eat all of the fish on a weekly basis it will have served its purpose.

But my pond would be much better.

14APR2022 – OCF Update-Camera Girl Finally Frees the Slaves

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Winter, Sony A7 III, Voigtlander 10mm f\5.6 lens, 22APR2021 – Photo of the Day

Today was a day of toil.  About a week ago Camera Girl was  in her garden, supposedly turning the soil with a pitchfork.  I say supposedly because after ten or fifteen minutes of effort the pitchfork was still stuck in the ground and the ground was having the best of the argument.

Finally she gave up and complained bitterly of her fate.  Being the gentlemanly parfait knight that I am, I mocked her.  I said, “Sure women are always saying how they can do anything a man can but apparently that doesn’t apply to pitchforks.”  She sot me a look that seemed to imply something about the quality of that night’s dinner.  So I displayed magnanimity.  I said, “You poor weak creature, I will turn the soil for you, only not today.

Well, apparently “not today” was today.  So I went out to the west field and starting singing road gang spirituals.  And to be honest, between the matted weed roots and the stupid liner that someone put in the soil was incredibly tough and heavy to turn.  But three hours of working like a hired field hand got it done.  About half way through it occurred to me that I could have rented a rototiller.  But by the end I was so satisfied with myself that it was worth it.  I showed up afterward in the kitchen drenched in sweat and covered with dirt but extremely pleased with myself.

I preened in front of Camera Girl and lectured on the difference between man’s work and woman’s work.  I mentioned that I left some clean up of weeds and liner next to the garden.  And that she should get that squared away as soon as possible.  She mumbled something under her breath but I pretended not to hear her.  Then I headed up for a well deserved shower.

Remarkably shortly after i finished working the skies opened up and it poured to beat the band.  Probably some of the seedling I put in this week may be washed away.  But some of them will make it and I ‘ve got more for next week too.  As long as we don’t have a repeat of last spring when it rained for forty days and forty nights, things will be fine in the garden.

This year we intend to grow a lot of butternut squash because Camera girl makes a great chicken soup with it.  And we’ll grow lots of zucchini and eggplant.  This year we’ll put in some thorn-less raspberries and I might move my blueberry bushes to make it easier to protect them from the birds.  Most years they get more than I do.  And I have to remember to put out the egg cases that the praying mantis laid over the winter.   I sure don’t want them hatching in the house.

So it was a work day but I’ll be sure to find something to be outraged about in the news when I check it out.  Enjoy your Thursday night.

Reclaiming the Family – Part 9 – Starting a Dialog Between Men and Women

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I poke an enormous amount of fun at Camera Girl.  I accuse her of all kinds of sins against logic.  But she is an excellent wife, mother and grandmother.  Echoing Proverbs 31:10, “Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.”  Now, I would have gone with star sapphires but that’s a personal choice.  A good wife and mother is the foundation of proper human existence.

But that foundation is crumbling.  Modern life has sought to trivialize the important of a woman raising a family.  Instead, feminism has substituted the working woman as the paradigm that young women should strive to emulate.  If motherhood is discussed it’s always in the vein of how it can be minimized.  It should be pushed off into middle age and its impact mitigated through daycare from birth and television and social media as babysitters.  The result is plummeting birth rates and latchkey children who grow up addicted to their phones.  And worse, now the substitute mothers in our children’s classrooms are brainwashing, mutilating and sterilizing our children to put an end to human life altogether.  It’s hard to imagine anything worse than where we are.

So, how do we get out of this trap?  I can only think that it will require an overt organizing of men and women to build a new foundation for relations between the sexes.  Nothing short of this will solve the problem.  In fact, if something like this doesn’t emerge, I’ll take that as a sign that our civilization is doomed.  We’ll have to wait for someone outside of Western Civilization to take the lead in preserving the human race.

I can’t claim that I’ve worked out all the details of what such an organization would be like.  I’m not even sure how it would begin its work.  I notice that of late there have been a few more women right-wing commentators advocating for traditional female roles.  The name that comes to mind at the moment is Peachy Keenan over at the American Mind, the on-line site of the Claremont Institute.  Maybe it would be possible for a panel of female pundits to engage the female audience on the Right.  And just as important it’s necessary to engage the other side of the equation.  A cross section of men on the Right need to get involved in the discussion.

Initially I don’t envision any quick solutions to these problems.  Society is pushing everything in the wrong direction as hard as it can.  Just getting young men and women in the same room talking about what is wrong with the current set-up would be a distinct improvement.  In fact, I think the opportunity for the young on the Right to mingle socially is part of the solution.  We need to re-socialize people.  They need to get off their phones and meet each other face to face.

As I said, unless this gets addressed in an organized fashion, we’re through.  For that reason, this needs to be pushed at the highest level.  The Republican Party should be addressing this at the national level.  It should be a plank of their platform.  The churches, any of them that aren’t already just arms of the trans-alliance for mutilating children, should be the focuses for this at the local level.  Every parish of the Catholic Church should have a committee of mothers who spend their time thinking of ways to encourage their sons and daughters to have children and raise them themselves.

I’ll say this a third time.  If we don’t get ourselves out of this feminist destruction of the family our civilization will be done.  And it should be.  A society that destroys the family has eliminated the main source of human happiness on this planet deserves to disappear.

Geometry and the War Between the Sexes

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On Mondays Camera Girl is in charge of Princess Sack of Potatoes.  Which makes me her errand boy for anything that needs doing.  So today she wanted me to get the memory card from the game camera so she could show her protégé what kind of animals had eaten the food she stole from me.  Now, sure, the scraps she gives the wild beasts living in the forest are probably not premium protein anymore.  Bits of chicken fat and skin and whatever doesn’t end up on the menu for me probably shouldn’t arouse my sense of outrage.  But in these days of skyrocketing food prices, I’m acutely aware of threats to my survival.

But I digress.  I brought the memory card in and popped it in the card reader slot on my laptop and reviewed the numerous files.  But what we discovered was that Camera Girl had miscalculated the line of sight of the camera.  She threw her largesse too close to the camera’s location and thus the viewpoint was mostly above the location of the food.  Therefore, mostly what we saw were the animals before and after they were feeding and typically at the edge of the photo and moving away from the camera.

I respectfully brought this situation to Camera Girl’s attention.  But she said she did what I told her to do.  I carefully and calmly reminded her that I showed her the line where the camera would see the action but assumed she wouldn’t put the food right below the camera because it was elevated from the ground.  She told me what she thought about my assumption using a popular breakdown of the spelling of ass-u-me.

I thought this distinctly unfair.  But what I decided was to provide her with a clear target.  I said, “Do you see the pole banged into the ground?”  She said yes.  I continued, “Do you see the rainwater drain that ends near the pole?”  Again, she said yes.  I finished, “The line segment formed by the pole on one end and the end of the drain pipe as the other endpoint is the acceptable area to put the food.  Do you follow me?”  She said no.  I slowly and calmly said, “Huh?”  She said, “That’s not clear.  How will I know if it’s on that line?”

I remained calm.  I could see I was dealing with a non-Euclidean geometer and she was trying to involve me in a topological debate.  Therefore, I changed tack.  “Imagine the two points I said were the endpoints.  Instead think of them as two opposite points on the circumference of a circle.  In your mind envision a circle with those two points on the circumference.  Anyplace inside that circle will be an acceptable target for your animal slop.”  She shook her head and walked away.

So why did I write about this?  Well, I think it represents a microcosm of the male/female dichotomy.  Men use logical simplifications to model the world.  We like reasoning our way through problems.  Women want simple concrete rules to follow.  They don’t want to discuss theory.  At least that is the way women used to be.  Nowadays I’m not sure what they are.  Maybe they’ve become like men.

But even if they’ve adopted some of the practices of men I doubt if they’ve changed their nature.  There is a difference in the way the brains of men and women work.  We go about things in different ways.  And from my point of view, I think there is an advantage to this dichotomy.  These two ways of looking at things provide checks on each other.  Too much theory can lead to error based on differences between the map and the territory.  But at the same time without the imaginative leap and the simplification that modelling can provide many problems would never be solved.

I started to expound on this dichotomy to Camera Girl.  She told me the garbage pails needed to go out on the road today and walked away.  And so it goes.

Renewing Camera Girl’s Contract

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I have often commented to Camera Girl that since people nowadays live enormously longer on average than people in the pre-modern era that the institution of marriage with its whole “’til death do us part” clause is behind the times and needs to be updated with more nuanced language.  However, I never say this when she’s holding a sharp knife.  She’s excitable.

But it’s fair to say that a fifty-year reevaluation event seems warranted.  We’ve got another five years before that milestone but I felt it was a good idea to start some preliminary exercises to determine if an emergency early intervention would be needed.

Today I went on an inspection to see how she was doing.  This morning when I came down for breakfast, I carefully examined the meal for signs of insufficiency or insincerity.  The scrambled eggs and pumpernickel bagel seemed up to snuff.  Check.  The breakfast conversation was satisfactory.  Check.  But the after-breakfast banter seemed to die away.  I was sitting in the living room working diligently on very important web site related work.  But there was none of the expected wifely encouraging, congratulatory pep talk that somehow, I think should have been there.  Maybe just a random “Let’s go photog!” thrown in every few minutes.  That seems reasonable.  Within a half hour my rage built up to the point where I actually got up and went into the kitchen to investigate this outrage.

Well, she probably heard me coming because she managed to throw up a smoke screen of cooking food.  As evidence she had a red sauce with meatballs on the stove and a pan of sausages in the oven and an Italian cheese cake under construction on the counter.  Well, okay.  Check, check, check.  She seemed to be busy.  Seemed!

I went back to the living room thinking furiously on what I had seen.  Well, the kids and grandkids were coming tomorrow for dinner.  I guess maybe cooking was a prerequisite for the meal.  Maybe it would be a little unreasonable for her to do all the cooking after I went to bed so as not to interfere with the very important wifely responsibilities of cheering on the king in his daily battles.  Could it be possible she was in the right?  Was it possible I was being selfish?  Me?  “I’m the Bad Guy?  How did that happen?”

Faced with this confusing thought, I retreated to first principles.  What would Ralph Kramden do?  Ah, that’s better.  Obviously, this pretend-hard-working act was a plot to undermine my sense of self-righteousness.  As such it qualified as disloyalty, the ultimate wifely sin.  Hah!  I knew it.  I’m the good guy.  I win again!

Well, once that had been worked out to my full satisfaction, I felt better and could afford to be magnanimous.  I went into the kitchen and patted her on the arm and praised her for the wonderful work she was doing.  This seemed to confuse her a little but she kept working and almost seemed to ignore my presence.  Well, sure.  Not everyone has my ability to multi-task.  I smiled tolerantly and made a silent benediction over her efforts.  A wise man once wrote that, “uneasy is the head that wears a crown.”  And so true it is.  I’m constantly employed providing guidance and useful advice on any number of things around here.  My inexhaustible supply of knowledge is always improving her efforts.  Noblesse oblige as the say.

I guess the outcome is I’ll let things lay for the next five years.  Sure, she tries to undermine my authority but she’s a hard-working member of the team and I like to reward effort.  Plus she’s related to my children and family is family.  Well done Camera Girl, well done.

Camera Girl Saves the World One Guinea Pig at a Time

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When I was a kid if you wanted to get a pet, you went to a breeder or a pet store and looked in a few cages or fish tanks and picked one out and passed a few dollars across a checkout counter and your pet was handed to you on a leash or in a small box with some holes punched in it.  And this time-honored arrangement served me in good stead for countless pets of almost every description.  Maybe sometimes the box was a plastic bag if it was an amphibian or a fish.  If it was a snake, it would be a cloth bag with a knot in it to prevent it from trying to squeeze out of a flimsy box.  But if it was any of the several types of rodents that I have owned; mice, rats, gerbils, hamsters, guinea pigs or chinchillas; there was no fanfare and definitely no discussion beyond what it ate and how to keep it from escaping.

Today I journeyed with Camera Girl across state lines to an obscure and truly annoying animal “adoption” center to be allowed to purchase two guinea pigs.  The fact that guinea pigs couldn’t be found at our standard pet store was inconceivable to me.  Guinea pigs like all rodents procreate at the drop of a hat.  They seem to be almost literally born pregnant.  How there could be a shortage of them sounded like a science fiction story plotline.  But being the mild-mannered and supportive modern husband that I am I only scoffed a little and agreed to travel to the ends of the earth to procure these rare and legendary beasts.

When we got there, I had my first nasty shock.  The nudnicks who ran this establishment required us to wear face masks to enter the sacred precinct.  Apparently, we had entered a medical facility where lockdown protocols were in place.  I asked Camera Girl if we should scrub up and put on our surgical gowns too.  She nervously shushed me and we moved on.  The surprising thing was that none of the highly trained animal adoption specialists were wearing masks.  I found this more than a little annoying.  This was the first of the little hints that I picked up that told me I was participating in a passion play.  We were performing a religious ritual where the High Priestess would coach us through our roles and provide the sacrament which in our case were overweight rodents.

The various stations of the cross included discussion about why we wanted said rodents.  I was tempted to relate a story about how a voice out of the sky told me to find the guinea pigs while I was mowing the lawn but I didn’t want to crab the deal.  So, I let Camera Girl describe her maternal fervor to save a poor orphaned guinea pig from a life of crime.  Then we had to prove that we could afford to care for these two new dependents.  I wanted to say that if the present menagerie had no complaints about the regularity of meals these two new freeloaders should be willing to roll the dice with me.  Once again, I bit my tongue.  I cautioned myself, “Patience, patience.  It will all be over soon and Camera Girl will be proud of me for being so tolerant.”  So, I held my peace while she answered all questions.  Credit reports were submitted, bank account statements were handed over, COVID vaccination papers were displayed.  Finally, it was all over.  Camera Girl followed the high priestess into the checkout area and I was left to commune with the rats while payment was made.  I felt virtuous for being a compliant chump through this embarrassing and absurd ritual and the payoff was imminent.

But after twenty minutes I was still sitting there with the rodents.  We had stared at each other a very long time and I could tell they were even less impressed with me than I was with them.  So, I cleared my throat excused myself to them with the alibi that I would make their space in the car more comfortable and went looking for Camera Girl.

I found her at the counter with the thirty bucks still in her hand.  But instead of grabbing the receipt and being on our way she was filling out a stack of paperwork and chatting amiably with the high priestess (HP) about the cutesy things that guinea pigs do when you give them human food.  So, I sidled up to her and gave her a quizzical look.  What I noted was that HP was handing out these forms one at a time with copious and completely unnecessary instructions on the minutia of how this information would be used to further the continuous improvement of rodent adoption.

I started glaring at Camera Girl to make it clear I was out of patience and needed to exit this building before I told HP what I really thought of the idea of “adopting” rodents.  I could tell that Camera Girl guessed that I was getting close to announcing to HP that most of my rodent associates were deep frozen rats and mice and even several hamsters that I would use to feed various snakes that I have from time to time kept and that if I wasn’t allowed to get on my way Rodent A and Rodent B were in danger of ending up as dinner for some future serpent inmate at my home.

And as hoped the pace of checkout speeded up acceptably and we were out of there in another couple of minutes.

On the way out I gave Camera Girl a very detailed lecture on what was wrong with allowing women to run anything and more particularly what was wrong with allowing women to confuse animals with children in their priorities.  Seriously a whole industry has grown up around the idea that dogs and cats and rats need to be rescued.  But what is actually happening is that suckering these women into “fostering” animals and then suckering some other women into “adopting” them had become a scam.  The shelters were hooked up with rescuers who were breeding the dogs either themselves or through some fellow scam artists and then charging the saps hundreds of dollars to save them.

I cautioned Camera Girl that from now on all rodents we purchased would be from people who didn’t name them but calculated their value by how much grain they had consumed during residence time in the system.  I just don’t have the stomach for dealing with scam artists and I don’t want to encourage Camera Girl to humor these maniacs.

The Babylon Bee Teaches Husbands How to Help With the Housework

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It’s this kind of good advice that every husband wants.  Painless chores.  The Babylon Bee has gotten to the heart of the timeless husband/wife work dynamic.  Basically husbands want their wives to replace their mothers and take care of all the chores.  And as a husband in good standing I say, “Don’t carry that heavy pile of laundry up the stairs, make two trips!”

https://babylonbee.com/news/how-to-help-your-wife-with-house-work-without-putting-too-much-effort-in

 

A Letter to Three Wives – An OCF Classic Movie Review

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IMDb lists this 1949 film as a romance drama.  Today we’d call such a film a “chick flick.”  The director,Joseph Mankiewicz  was also responsible for “All About Eve,” which was another movie that centered around women.  Mankiewicz received Oscars for both of them so it seems this type of movie was his specialty.

The plot revolves around three married couples, the Bishops, the Phipps and the Hollingsways.  They live in a suburb of New York City and the three wives Deborah, Rita and Lora Mae, respectively, all have an uneasy relationship with a fourth woman, Addie Ross who has always been admired by their husbands for her beauty, intelligence and taste.  As the story opens it’s the morning of the first big country club dance in town and the wives are in various stages of annoyance with their husbands.

Deborah is angry at Brad because he’s going on a business trip and doesn’t even know if he’ll return in time for the dance.  In addition, he has selected an evening gown for his wife for the dance that she has discovered is identical to a dress Addie Ross recently wore.  Rita is angry with George because he is dismissive of her job as a radio script writer whereas she resents that he works as a low paying teacher at the high school.  She is also surprised to see him leaving that morning in a suit, something he never does.  And Lora Mae is dismissive of her husband Porter strictly on general grounds.  Their relationship is a continuous stream of digs and jibes by both of them.

The wives are engaged that day as chaperones for the grammar school annual outing at the lake.  But right before the boat leaves the dock a letter arrives for the three women addressed from Addie Ross.  In it she ironically says goodbye to them as her three dearest friends.  She’s leaving town forever but as a memento of her life with them she says that she’s running away with one of their husbands.

The bulk of the movie is the reminiscences of the three women on their history together as wives, friends and rivals for Addie Ross.  Brad and Deborah Bishop are played by Jeffrey Lynn and Jeanne Crain.  Brad is the rich, handsome aristocrat of the story.  Deborah is a farm girl that Brad met in the Navy in WW II.  She has always been intimidated by the more sophisticated background of his friends and their shared experiences as longtime residents of the town.  Honestly, I find these two characters the least interesting of the six.  Kirk Douglas and Ann Sothern are George and Rita Phipps.  They are the intelligent couple.  He’s a school teacher and a wit.  She’s a hard-working career mother trying to push George into a more ambitious and better paying career.  Paul Douglas and Linda Darnell are Porter and Lora Mae Hollingsway.  Based on their way of speaking and information you learn from the story they are both from “the wrong side of the tracks.”  In fact, in a comical scene from her past we see that Lora Mae’s mother’s apartment was practically on top of the elevated train tracks adjoining it.  Porter is a very wealthy retailer with a chain of appliance stores and a mansion.  And when Porter and Lora Mae meet, she is his employee and he is a cynical divorced man on the make.  She is a painfully beautiful young woman to his gruff 35-year-old cynic and she skillfully uses her charms to negotiate a marriage.  And after he can no longer resist her, he grudgingly agrees to marry her but in terms so unflattering and unromantic that their married life is guaranteed to be a vicious cycle of hurt feelings.  Porter and Lora Mae are the most interesting part of the movie.  Paul Douglas’s characterization of Porter as the gruff regular guy and Linda Darnell’s Lora Mae as the wise-cracking shrew are very amusing.  And Linda Darnell is a remarkably beautiful young woman in this film.  A small supporting part in this movie is played by Thelma Ritter as a friend of Lora Mae’s mother and housekeeper to the Phipps.  Ritter is always the most interesting character on screen in any scene she is in and this movie is no exception.

The movie has a surprise ending at the country club dance when we find out that love can be found in unexpected places.

One of the things I find interesting about this movie is the “types” that the various characters represent.  Brad Bishop and apparently Addie Ross are the “to the manor born” aristocrats of the town.  They both have money and refined taste.  George and Rita Phipps are the educated middle class.  They are the product of the egalitarian World War II generation who believe in the virtues of enlightened modernism.  Porter and Lora Mae are from the working class and for both of them buying into refinement of the upper class is one of their highest motivations.  Porter is constantly talking about Addie’s “class” and disparaging Lora Mae for her lack of class.  And when she goes to Porter’s house for the first time Lora Mae tells Porter that she wants to be a lady so she can have a big house with a piano with a photo of her in the silver frame just like Porter has of Addie Ross.  Deborah Bishop is the farm girl who is completely intimidated by Brad and Addie’s sophistication.  Instead of aspiring to become like them she just fatalistically assumes that someday brad will cast her aside for her social superior, Addie.

Although Brad is obviously friendly with the Phipps and not noticeably a snob his character is very sparsely sketched in.  And likewise, Deborah’s inferiority complex makes her a very one-dimensional character.  The Phipps are a more fully drawn pair of characters and their husband/wife dynamic is also more believable and therefore enjoyable.  I especially like how Kirk Douglas describes his low status and not very well-paying job as making him a comic figure and almost unmanly.  George is the modern man, comfortable with his wife as a bread winner.  When she complains that he bought cheaper whiskey because he can’t afford scotch, she hints that she can afford to buy it instead.  To this George replies, “I forget sometimes that I’m merely the titular head of the household.”  But even Rita is insecure of George’s relationship with Addie.  When Rita forgets George’s birthday Addie sends him a present of a rare symphony recording that has a romantic inscription that inspires Rita’s jealousy.

But the most fully drawn characters are Porter and Lora Mae.  He is the self-made man who worked his up to success.  He is proud of his success and desires to be measured by his material possessions and by the “class” that he tries to surround himself with.  Addie Ross is his ideal of an aristocrat who wouldn’t covet his wealth and would add the class that he was born without.  He was formerly married to a gold digger and he assumes because Lora Mae forced him to marry her that she is looking for the same kind of “pay day” where she can divorce him for all she can get.

Lora Mae is a woman born poor but blessed with the gift of great beauty.  She likes Porter but she refuses to enter into an intimate relationship with him without the promise of marriage.  She knows this will torture him but she tells him openly that is her price.  When he finally grudgingly agrees, he tells her that she is making a “good deal” without any illusions of love.  The bitterness this statement elicits from her is the poison that haunts their every married day with each of them sniping at the other about their shortcomings.  Here is an almost Shakespearian scenario where misunderstanding blinds love on both sides.

The movie is quite enjoyable and is an excellent date movie for married couples since the war between men and women is on full display and is resolved very agreeably.  I highly recommend this film.

Actual Essential Personnel

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Yesterday was an interesting day.  Earlier I was commenting somewhat ironically on the essential, critical, crucial nature of the work I was able to accomplish on my dining room table.  The industry I work in is considered important because the products are critical to some individuals.  But I think it’s important to consider the circumstances under which certain work is done before throwing around words like critical.  Let me elaborate.

Yesterday was a bizarre weather day in my neck of the woods.  We had rain that varied from sprinkles to torrents without any rhyme or reason as to when.  There was also a wind advisory that quoted a range of wind speeds from 20 mph to 65 mph.  When I see a range that broad, I usually take it with a grain of salt.  To me that sounds a little like someone not knowing very much but employing a CYA strategy in case things do get out of hand.

Around noon yesterday I hear a loud cracking noise and then thesound of a high voltage line grounding itself through normal unprotected materials like trees, guardrails and the road.  We got one last loud bang and then the lights went out.  Luckily, we have a large emergency generator on an automated transfer switch that cuts in after a few seconds so life went on.  But looking out the window I could see a very large old tree hanging across the road and suspended in the trees on my side of the road.  This looked like a big problem.

I called 911 and the fellow there took the information and said someone was on the way.  And he was right.  Emergency vehicles of all description showed up.  There was a fire engine, a state trooper, some non-descript pick up truck with flashers, two power company cherry pickers and a big highway vehicle with a heavy-duty bucket on a big arm.

They were out there for a couple of hours without any indication that much was going on.  The fire engine and the statie left.  Eventually the highway guys started walking around and assembling some gear.  Now meanwhile the storm hadn’t abated much at all.  The wind was truly impressive as it shot horizontal rain in all directions with remarkable force.  Areas of my home that almost never even get wet were flowing rivers from time to time.  I even had to sojourn out into this mess when the sump in the lower driveway starting backing up.  Leaves in the sump that hadn’t caused any problem when normal rainfall was involved blocked the outlet line enough that about six inches of water was standing on the lower driveway and advancing to the house.  I freed the clog and that pool emptied into that six-inch pipe in an impressive way.  Luckily this was April and not February so the worst I got was wet.  But when I got inside, I was convinced that the highway guys would wait until morning to work on that tree.  After all nobody would freeze to death without power in 60 degree weather and working with chain saws on hanging trees in that wind and rain seemed foolish to me.

But about an hour later I saw the highway truck change position and the two power company bucket trucks moved over to the next two telephone poles beyond where the tree was located.  And then I could hear the chainsaws and see the trees pitching around as they took it apart.  Well those guys must know their stuff.  It took about an hour to down the tree and clear the road.  After that it took a couple of more hours for the linemen to rework the wires and restore power.  By then the wind was starting to die down.

Today I went out and checked out the aftermath.

 

Interestingly the wind didn’t crack that tree it pulled it out by the roots.  I’m not sure if that made clearing the road easier or harder.  But looking at the size and estimating the weight of the tree sections that the crew was working with in that lousy weather I have to admit I’m impressed.

So, to put an end to this post, I guess I’m just saying that there’s work and then there’s real work.  If we’re going to have a world where power flows through wires across the countryside, we’ll need some men who don’t shelter in place when things go wrong.  They go out in the wind and rain and snow and do hard work so everyone else can stay warm and safe inside.  Hopefully one day soon a lot more people will remember that and once again make it part of the way we address the world we live in.  Not everyone can do essential work from the dining room table or the local Starbuck’s.

Reclaiming the Family – Part 1 – Bring Back the Dowry

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One of my guilty pleasures every week is listening to the Voice of Saruman on his Friday morning podcast.  I refer of course to the mellifluous musings of the ZMan on his on his Z Blog’s Power Hour.  As with others on the Far Right, I find it easier to agree with his analysis of the modern world’s dysfunction than with his solutions to these problems.  So back on Friday I listened as he regaled us with the tragicomic details of the War of the Sexes or, as he called it, “Wammin’s World”.  And after enjoying the mockery of the absurd antics of the feminists I reflected on the takeaway message that the speaker was making;

“The thing about the war of the sexes is that it is really a war on normal women. When you examine the arguments from the Left and from feminists, not a lot of it is aimed at changing male behavior that is beneficial to women. Mostly it is aimed at eliminating the protections a healthy society has for its women. The resulting social breakdown creates more unhappy women, who can then be recruited into the coven of feminism.”

With that analysis I agree wholeheartedly.  But the ZMan doesn’t specify how this lunacy can be ended.  Being the pragmatic fellow that I am I tried to think what practical changes could be made that might move us in the right direction.

And the first thing that came to mind was something else that the ZMan touches on often; that the way that our civilization cannibalizes its less affluent members is by setting up institutions that monetize the social capital of the family in ways that end up destroying the family.  So, for example, parents bankrupt themselves to send their daughters to expensive colleges and this ensures that the daughters will attempt to recoup that investment by entering the economy as corporate drones.  And during their time in both college and the corporate world it will be drummed into them that their real value and their happiness is as drones, busily making up power point slides and decorating their cubicles with colorful diversity slogans.  And so, between working in the corporate environment and drinking the Kool-Aid of female empowerment they either never get around to marriage and children or they raise their one or two children by proxy with nannies and daycare.  And the next generation doesn’t even know what a normal family life even is.  This is social capital (families trying to do the right thing) being monetized by the colleges and corporations.  The schools and the corporations that use these women profit immensely from the process.  But the families that underwrite the whole thing are basically cutting their own throats by doing it.  And flooding the labor force with women depresses the value of labor for the men trying to find a place in the world too.  This along with the rampant female affirmative action makes it more than likely that a man will find his wife making more money than him.  This further degrades the likelihood of a normal happy family relationship for all involved.  Society might as well just turn us into Soylent Green and save the time.

So, the practical changes should be a way to avoid this whole family destroying cycle.  And the first change would be, Don’t send your daughters to college.  I could expand it to don’t send any of your kids to college but let’s start small.  As the father of daughters who went to expensive colleges, I can tell you that not doing this would first of all restore solvency to many an American family and also allow families to provide much needed help to their daughters when they want to get married.  In other words, reinstitute the dowry.  This might sound almost medieval but can you imagine if the money that a father spends on his daughter’s college education could be diverted to a down payment on a house?  That could be enough to allow his son-in-law to support his new family with just his own salary.  In other words, letting a woman stay home to raise her kids.  Additionally, if parents don’t have to bankrupt themselves to turn their daughters into childless drones then those parents will have the wherewithal to help the young married couples when the pitfalls of life intrude on their world; illness, unemployment and Acts of God.

And a non-financial benefit of this arrangement would be the restoration of the normal relationships within the extended family.  Parents would be respected and appreciated for the financial and familial leadership they would represent when decisions like home purchasing occurred.  Husbands as the primary bread winners would be appreciated by their wives and this would give the men the psychological reinforcement to value their roles that they currently lack.  But most importantly, it would allow young women to fulfill their most valuable roles in our world.  They would be the mothers that every child needs and deserves.  Modern society has denigrated and devalued the role stay at home mothers play in producing happy and sane children.  Anyone who has seen how children are raised today knows that it is a miracle that any of them avoid becoming psychopaths.  This alone would justify any productivity to our economy associated with women withdrawing from the workplace during their childbearing and childrearing years.  But another facet that people rarely discuss is the satisfaction that a woman gains from being a mom.  Now granted there are some women who are unsuited for motherhood.  I wish there were a blood test that could identify these poor things and redirect them to something where they’ll do less harm like loan sharking.  But for the majority of healthy well-adjusted women motherhood is fulfilling as well as extremely valuable to society.

 

Reclaiming the Family – Part 2 – The Family Business