A crow with a malicious twinkle in its eye suggested to a goat kid that it come play in some sewage run-off.

“But that’s sewage,” the kid said.

“Look on the bright side,” replied the crow.

“Well . . . it’s organic, and mostly water. I’d be 80% bathing in a stream. This is fine!” And in the kid went.

Moral: The wise man looks on the bright side of circumstances he cannot help. The fool looks on the bright side of circumstances he can.

There is an interesting passage in the Screwtape letters about folks who don’t think their appetites for food are disordered because instead of eating hyper quantities of food they are just hyper particular about the foods they eat. Vegans, basically.

Remember, appetites are good.

Babies won’t wait.

A feisty essay by a mother of 5.  Hardly a line it that I do not wish I had wrote.

For example,

There is no political ideology more vibrant these days than the baby-hating anti-natalist movement. It is pure No Lives Matter nihilism, dedicated to stopping humans from reproducing. It goes beyond abortion, even. Terminating children already in the womb is messy. This movement instead wants to convince you never to have them, and if you must, no more than 1.5. They wish to arrest potential children—those not yet conceived, the souls who exist as hazy figments in God’s imagination—from being willed into being.

 

It’s all the predictable result of 50 years of dual-income economic policies, anti-family social norms, abortion on demand, birth control pushers hooking prepubescents on the Pill, and climate harpies who see each baby as just another unwanted carbon footprint.

 

If you dare to visit mainstream millennial social media, like TikTok, you will encounter an army of self-sterilizing lunatics who shout their abortions, peddle their sex show livestreams, and brag about how many SSRIs they take. These young people, mostly girls, have been brainwashed into committing genetic suicide.

 

Even worse, they do it with joy. They are following the Pied Piper of Despair right over the cliff, along with the babies they’ll never have.

(more…)

This post is about sex.

Specifically, a concept called activation.

(This is a dry post.  Not a titillating post.  But use judgment if the post is not for you.)

The flesh has its hormones and its natural drive for sex, sure.  But its a mistake to think that sexual desire is just some kind of purely natural phenomenon.  Instead, sexual desire is often activated.

Activation means that thinking about sex, seeing reminders of sex, being exposed to pre-sexual activity or to stimulants, make you feel more sexual desire.

To an extent, sexual desire is like static electricity.  The charge comes from somewhere. (more…)

The President has suspended the au pair visa.  Consequently the market for domestic au pairs has boomed.  This is an opportunity for LDS girls.

An 18-year old I heard of just accepted an au pair position with a quality (non-LDS) family down in DC that she heard about from friends of friends.  She wasn’t even looking.  It will be wonderful experience for her being paid to practice motherhood and being able to see a second exemplary family (besides her own) from the inside.  All her needs are met so if she is thrifty she will come out in one year with somewhere around $15k or even more in savings. (more…)

Ideologies are rickety. Belief systems are rickety. It is impossible to do without one. You cannot understand the world without trying to make sense of the world, and you cannot make sense of the world without using a framework. The ideology is the framework. But it is rickety. It is not the world you are perceiving. The map is not the territory. This is true of our map also. “For now you see as through a glass darkly . . .”

Some ideologies are more rickety than others. But I don’t think there is any sincerely held belief system where a person cannot use it to perceive some angle on real truth and real beauty.

Imagine a bare, plain room. A kind of shed or warehouse. There is light streaming in from a high window and over there someone has built themselves a rickety little platform of stools and scraps. They are looking out the window and describing the wonders they see. You must imagine that they are choked in the throat and crying because outside is so beautiful. The people in that room are gathered around and what the man up there describes is so transporting that they are crying also. In their enthusiasm they devote more attention to building up the platform.

They first forget, and then cover, the window.

In the real parable of Plato’s cave, those who see the shadows do not reject the message of the one who went outside. They only confuse the message and the outside.

Sometimes you are ready for a scripture.

Come, my brethren, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters; and he that hath no money, come buy and eat; yea, come buy wine and milk without money and without price.

-2 Nephi 9:50

And then shall the righteous shine forth in the kingdom of God.

-Alma 40:25

In the late winter twilight there is a house across the fields of the valley that has light streaming out its window. It is almost intolerably bright in the gloom. You can’t look straight at it.

You walk towards it, because it is home.

As you get closer, your eyes start to adjust. The light appears softer. You can start to see inside. You walk up and look in. You see the warmly lit room, the happy family, the fire.

They open the door when you knock. They are excited to see you. You go in to the cheer.

In earliest biblical culture, the family was more than a parent and child unit. It included all who were related by blood and marriage. This kindred family, as I prefer to call it, was strongly linked by natural affection and the patriarchal priesthood. The elderly were venerated for their experience and wisdom. There were strength and safety in numbers, and, through love and support, members established solidarity and continuity.

-thus Brother J. Richard Clarke, Our Kindred Family, from the Sunday morning session of the April 1989 General Conference

“Strongly linked by natural affection and the patriarchal priesthood.”  That’s right.  (Read his whole talk, its good for the soul.)

Memory and the generations, that is what is best in life.  The kindred family is what you were meant for. (more…)

Inspired by the Yankee Republic.

Its a tree in the kids backyard in an old house their family moved to.  It is not young but not particularly old.  Big enough, just barely, to have a kid-sized hole in the trunk.  When the kids crawl in, they discover it is much larger on the inside.  They are on the top landing of a staircase that stretches down down down into a distant blue haze.  There are regular landings as far down as they can see.

They go down one level and see a hole to exit.  They crawl out and find themselves in the recent past.  But not exactly the past as we think of it.  The past of our present turns out to be a pale reflection of the real past.  Each time period has its own past appropriate to it that only echoes but is not the real past.  The further back you go, the more different the reality.

For instance, their first exit takes them to colonial times, which are much like ours, but with haunts and ghosties and more swashbuckle.  In the real past, George Washington had a scar down his face and was blood brothers with the Bear of the Woods.  He won the Revolution personally dueling Cornwallis in the final assault on Yorktown.

The real dinosaurs had deadly colors our eyes can’t see and every creature sang.  The T-Rex sprinted with a high shrieky bagpipe skirl while its prey rhythmically boomed.

The kids explore and have adventures at the different levels.  Each level down the tree is taller.  In the far past, the tree is too tall to be seen.  Its massive trunk, bigger than cliffs, disappears into the clouds.

One days the kids ask themselves why the tree is normal size in their own time.

Honor and glory to them all.  They built a great inheritance.  If we squander it, we can only expect that they, like the father of the prodigal, will still welcome us in when we return to truths they built.

Remember!

The pioneers lived like heroes. We should buy the mythic narrative about them. Yet their greatness was not that they were always great. (more…)

Read the Basilisk at your earliest convenience. You should not read it as a horror story.

Don’t give up because of the second letter. Read it until the end. Ask yourself what would possess a woman to write like that?

Handgun people debate caliber, grip, aim, ammunition costs. But they all agree that the best gun is the one you will take with you.

(more…)

We are excited to watch Poppy Hill when it gets here. John Mansfield got me with this:

This involvement connects to her relationship with her departed father, and the climax of the story takes the girl and a boy to the bridge of a ship in Yokohama harbor where its captain delays departure fifteen minutes to tell them of his admiration for their fathers, his friends that he remembers every day.

And so I have been thinking about the memories we leave behind us. I want my children to think of their time at home as the happy, golden years. That doesn’t come through indulgence. It comes through structure and discipline and light and love and water fights on the front grass.

Which brings me to eternity. (more…)

He said the Amish stop schooling at age 14 and start working full time to accumulate funds to buy their own place. Which he said they do early to mid 20s. They live at home so all their money goes to savings. That is an incredible model. Grubstake of $150k by the time you are ready to get married makes one heckuva difference.

-from here

It’s time to be serious. Education has its place. Though with way more caveats than the mainstream will know. Don’t drop out of school and work full-time (probably). You won’t accumulate $150k. But the Amish have the right idea.

Grubstake mindset. Parents should have the goal that kids contribute. We pay our kids no allowance and they have to work to earn the money for any extracurriculars they want to be in. Parents should be working with the child to accumulate a grubstake. Not to accumulate a college fund. Not going into debt in college is a huge goal, but paying tens or even hundreds of thousands is almost pure loss unless you have a very specific professional plan in mind. The grubstake is to get started in family, house, and career.

Imagine your daughter being debt free in college and having $20,000 to get married on. Once married, having the experience of looking for side projects to earn money, so she can make income in a way that fits into family life.

Imagine your son having the work experience and mindset to start businesses.

Your children should still be involved in home production. We pay our kids for the eggs from their poultry.

This is not to say that you as a parent should not offer any financial support at all. You absolutely should. Making them earn their own money is a tactic, not a principle. If you want your children to succeed, if you want grandchildren, you mustn’t be like the parents of the world and throw them out to the wolves of the world without real guidance and support. (Except, perversely, if they want to find themselves with a year in Europe or with a decade of playing video games in the basement.)

You should absolutely be willing to let your children’s young families live with you while they accumulate the funds to buy a home, start a business, finish up a valuable professional education. You should absolutely plan on paying for maternities and other expenses that will help your kids start a family right away.

We were comfortable and were feeling like we could rest on our laurels financially–until we started calculating how much we would need to really help our kids when they were having their first few children. Our budget got tight again. We are back to scrambling again.