Fried Green Tomatoes redux

The film at The Estates (formerly the Forum) on Sunday was Fried Green Tomatoes, a very popular 1992 retelling of Fannie Flagg's best setting novel (1987). All four of the women who star in it are winners--Kathy Bates (as Evelyn), Jessica Tandy (as Ninny), Mary Stuart Masterson (as Idgie) and Mary Louise Parker (as Ruth). It takes place in two eras, the 1920-30s and 1980-90s. Ninny tells Evelyn the story about Idgie and Ruth, thus bonding them as Evelyn slowly gathers the strength to become as strong as the two women in the story

 
It was funny in a sly way. Maybe more relevant in the 80s. In some ways it was a bit off putting because the story telling takes place in Ninny's residence--a nursing home, and Ninny is 83. It reinforces the image of the elderly--need I tell you what that image is? Or the image of blacks being victims, who rise up and destroy the dim witted, nasty white men. And women can't be real women with authentic friendships unless they are lesbians or brow beaten closet feminists with stupid, bumbling husbands (named couch).

I'm not playing the victim here, but the book is almost 40 years old and the movie almost 35. No wonder generations have grown up with this vision of race relations in our country. It's been a theme in their culture.

I worked on a grant from USAID!

I do recognize the USAID because it helped me build my career and move to the next step, which was from agriculture credit, to OhioNet, to veterinary medicine by working part time with hours that were convenient for my primary job--being a mom--when I was in my 30s. Never thought I'd see protests about it--but then I never imagined it would be sending my tax money to foreign LGBT groups, either.

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5122676-usaid-shutdown-elon-musk-doge/

USAID Controversy Explained: Why Musk, Trump Is Attacking Foreign Aid Agency

Mike Benz: There Is No "Aid" In USAID, It's Not A Charity | Video | RealClearPolitics

Because I subscribe to Academia.com (on certain Bible canon topics like Ben Sira) I also receive notices about my own publications on agricultural credit. These I did for Dale Adams in the 1980s the professor who had the USAID grant. I think I had written at least 4 or 5 annotated bibliographies, and one has been completely scanned so I can actually read it without getting on my knees and dragging out dusty boxes and collapsing from exhaustion. The publications were assembled on the living room floor in our previous house, on lime green shag carpet, because everything was written on note cards which were then alphabetized and organized on the floor. No computers, no Chatgpt, no reference organizer and I don't recall I even had a fact checker or proof reader.

Bless my Mt. Morris high school typing class, because I also typed all the entries.

Should I pay your child care costs?

The TV (Spectrum) was on in the background, but all I heard was not only am I supposed to pay their college loans, but I need to pay for their mom and dad's cost to go to work by paying for child care for their little ones.  Governor announces details on Child Care access program (spectrumnews1.com)

Let's think about this. I didn't have any college loans to pay back at high interest rates, and I didn't have any daycare costs because I didn't go back to work as a librarian until my kids were in school, and then only part time so I was home when they were. Many parents don't pay these costs--except for other's kids. Maybe they juggle schedules with a spouse or drop the kids off at Grandma's, or wait like I did. 

I have 2 female relatives who run a daycare in their homes so they can raise their own children, and they earn much more than they would if they were employed outside the home. Why? Daycare can cost from $27,125 a year in CT to $14,813 in SD. Teachers according to BLS make $71.93 and hour and nurses $72.48 (figures include benefits). Sounds like a lot of money unless you have child care costs that the Governor of Ohio wants me to help with.

I can hear the screams now. But you lived in ancient times (1980s) and probably only had one car, one TV and no contracts for internet, cable, phone, and never went out to eat at 5x what it costs at home. Yup. And now that I can afford not to work (because I saved and invested the maximum allowed when I did work), and can afford a pedicure, a cleaning service, a vacation, and someone to do home repairs, I'm supposed to pay off someone else's living expenses so she can be a wage slave at a salary I couldn't have dreamed of. Check the BLS figures.

Update:  When AI (Copilot) started giving me vague responses like consulting a government website, I wrote: "If I wanted to spend hours looking at government sites I wouldn't be asking Copilot." So it apologized and gave me more specifics. Is it OK to be rude and snarky for something that isn't human and just a collection of data and pixels? Does the Bible cover that?

Reaping the whirlwind

Ohio is now considering a parental rights bill similar to Florida's. One of the best reasons for schools NOT to indoctrinate small children about sex--how, why, when, and who--is what the schools have done with ordinary, tried and true, historical meaning and traditional instruction on biology, i.e. how babies are made. It's called grooming. If you look at the statistics, when serious sex instruction took hold (with parental objection) in the 1960s and 70s, the teen pregnancy rate and subsequently the abortion rate, really took off. It did the opposite of what was intended. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the U.S. teen pregnancy rates rose. They remained steady through the 1980s, even as sexual activity among teens increased, due to improved contraceptive use among those teenagers who are sexually active. (Guttmacher, arm of Planned Parenthood statistics). When overall birthrates declined, unmarried teen pregnancies soared. The conservative and religious push to link marriage and sex was just too old fashioned for the age of easy contraception. Just wasn't "progressive," but Uncle Sam made a very bad step father for generations of Americans.

People have such faith in "education." Why, I don't know. All the bad political and financial policy ideas are sowed in academe and fertilized in Washington DC. We the people reap the whirlwind. Prove me wrong.

"They have planted the wind and will harvest the whirlwind. The stalks of grain wither and produce nothing to eat. And even if there is any grain, foreigners will eat it." Hosea 8:7

Poverty simulation workshop at Ohio State

Another way for poverty pimps to earn a living--put on workshops for churches, non-profits, and academe. OSU is promoting yet another one. Participants get to feel virtuous by planning a budget using government programs guaranteed to keep people in their place--including the ones who sign up. It's an industry supporting the middle class.

There's nothing like a job to pull someone out of poverty, but consciousness raising never reduced single motherhood, or a poor education, or a prison record, or mental health challenges. Unmarried parents is the primary cause of childhood poverty. Back in the day (early 80s) when I worked for the state of Ohio and either attended or planned these gatherings (we didn't call it simulation then, just information on state and federal resources) we were told by those above us, our experts and leaders who lived on government grants, that one needed to earn at least $10/hour to go beyond what the state/federal programs could offer. For 1983 that was unheard of! Those of us earning our living doing this didn't make that unattainable salary. I don't know what the figure is today, but the 2019 median income for middle class was $68,703. The government, btw, has no official definition for middle class.

Leanne Brown is not a poverty pimp, but she wrote a hugely successful cookbook on eating well on $4/day SNAP budget. And she made it free. She's a Canadian. https://www.leannebrown.com/cookbooks/... I don't know if the OSU poverty simulation teachers will tell you, but I'm telling you, these are really great, nutritious and cheap.

Pray for Sonja and Phil

Sonja is battling breast cancer; our son Phil is fighting a malignant brain tumor.  These "kids" grew up together, attended the same church, UALC, and Upper Arlington High School in the 80s and they are friends on Facebook, encouraging each other. Let's keep the prayers coming.

 

Michael Stanley at Lakeside

Last night the program at Hoover was Michael Stanley and friends. ?? No, we'd never heard of him, but he was big in the late 70s and 80s, disbanding his MSB in 1986. He's sure popular around here (Hoover was packed) and he's still working in the Cleveland area on TV and radio. The group had a fabulous pianist, 3 guitars, 2 drummers, and our own wonderful Eddie Caner on violin who grew up in Lakeside. I'm surprised that violin didn't catch on fire he was so hot.

For years the rules at Hoover were no food or drink, but icy bottled water was being sold--perhaps because of the heat. First time I'd seen that. Not sure that's progressive or regressive. It's a huge clean up problem when that starts, and bottled water can't be good for the environment.

Kahina is Romanian and lived under Communism—posted on FaceBook

“By the time I was born, in '83, România, my country, has been a Communist country for three decades and Ceaușescu has been leader for 16 years. There was no legal private enterprise and no private property. All the factories and farms belonged to the state, and even a man' s chicken and milk cow were "state property". The peasants that haven't been arrested for doing too well had to either work in the communal farm or give milk, eggs and produce to the state. Intellectuals, factory and business owners, well off farmers, they were all arrested as enemies of the People and either killed or sent to work camps. The country 's brightest and most hard working were culled out.
After visiting North Korea and seeing the leader worshiping there, Ceaușescu insisted on having the same thing for himself and his wife, back home. If you browse YouTube you will find the sickening way he got fawned upon. And God help you if you didn't play along.

There was no such thing as free speech or freedom of association. They cut down the central park in my town so people couldn't sit on a bench and talk. More than 3 people talking together could be arrested for colluding, if one was known by authorities for making a bad joke 5 years ago.

And then food and energy got rationed.

You see, we were a great producer of grain before communism, and a fair producer even after. But Ceaușescu got it into his head that we needed industry, so he got several loans to buy old technology nobody knew how to use anyway, and got us into debt. And... He wanted to pay it in record time, so he can prove the Decadent West how well communism worked.

So he starved us.

My parents would wake up at 4 in the morning, go sit in queues reaching hundreds of meters. Rain or cold, everybody would file out, waiting to buy their ration. You would get half a bread per day. That was the main food, to this day we eat bread with anything. A kilogram of oil and sugar per month. A kilogram of meat and one of processed meat per month. Don't be fooled, "meat" doesn't mean prime cuts. Bags of chicken ribcages necks and claws were known as "tacâm". Pig's feet were known as "patriots", since it was the only part not exported.

You would also have the right of buying 166 kilograms of vegetable per year.

Whatever not on this list was illegally sold, and could bring jail or forced labour, both ending most often in death.

Coffee, sweets and other "luxuries" were contraband. Most couldn't afford them. Owning western music or listening to pirate radios that transmitted it could see you arrested too. Being arrested for Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds or some Michael Jackson... What a sham....

In 1989 I was 7. People have had enough and the powder keg blew over the arrest of a catholic priest in the west of the country. And then it just spread. The army decided to rebel, and it joined the masses. The dictator tried to flee, but he was caught, tried and shot on Christmas Day 1989.

I remember that day. Or the day after.

We left grandma's house to go back to our apartment. Armed people stopped us to check for guns, but everybody was grinning. On our way they saw a queue. Oranges, a very rare find. One of my parents stayed behind, the other took us home. Dad had a tree hidden away, and he chopped it, put it into place and we decorated it, and I got the first orange I remember, a pair of red stockings and Freedom that Christmas. A precious gift.

My country has discovered capitalism, if not the values of the Right. We are flourishing, though the tendency of giving the State all the  power is still there. We are still a left leaning society, though we work to improve.

Once given away, Freedom is hard to get back. And it always costs blood. And all those who tell you about the value of equality of outcome, about socialized health care, about "paying your fair share", well, they might mean well. But Evil, true Evil, comes in small steps and with the best of intentions.

I didn't like Trump. Personally, I still wouldn't have him over for dinner. But he is a great choice for you, as a president. Keeping the US great, keeping your freedom, remaining a beacon of freedom and hope for the world, these are true ideals. Good ones.

Thank you for fighting the good fight.

Freedom isn't free.”

Looking back on Alan Bloom looking back

In Alan Bloom’s book, "The Closing of the American Mind” (1987)--a book that began as an essay and became a best seller--he discusses how the meaning and acts of sex and sexuality changed between the 50s and 60s and the 80s, and that the college students he knew saw a sexual arrangement as convenient, but not lasting or a commitment. “They are roommates with sex and utilities included in the rent.” (p. 106). 

With the looming strike of women (they are angry about the election of Trump and mad at the Electoral College) and the January 21 Women’s March in DC, I think he missed his mark in thinking the “rights” push was over.  It’s not over because it's never over for the Left which needs a victim, and over 50% of the population are women and 57% of the college graduates since the 90s are women.  For the Left  no matter what progress women, homosexuals or transsexuals make, there’s always a new victim to be found which can be folded into the original goal.  The push to normalize sex with children is the most recent one, as polygamy or polyandry will just be too boring and acceptable since sex with adults has lost all meaning. Relativism, Bloom said, makes students conformist and incurious. Their supposed open-mindedness closes their actual minds. And that continues as the students of the 80s are the parents and professors of today's college students.

Bloom writes about relationships in the mid-80s: “Men and women are now used to living in exactly the same way and studying exactly the same things and having exactly the same career expectations.  No man would think of ridiculing a female premed or prelaw student, or believe that these are fields not proper for women, or assert that a woman should put family before career.  The law schools and medical schools are full of women, and their numbers are beginning to approach their proportion in the general population.  . . The battle here has been won. . . They do not need the protection of NOW (p. 107)  And he goes on to note that not only do his students have nothing to learn about sex from their parents, but also believe they have nothing to learn from old literature or history  [and I would add the Bible, but he doesn’t] so when they have problems with relationships, they have nothing to go back to.

Although Bloom's book was a best seller, other academics became alarmed--he was called a racist, sexist, homophobe (although he was probably gay said a close friend after Bloom died), a Nazi--well, you know the routine.  He was practically Trump!  After 200 reviews of the book, the academics began having conferences about it!  Which makes me think, maybe I should put it back on the shelf and choose another title to withdraw.  Since I've blogged about this a year ago (at my book blog) I'm not making much progress reducing the crowded bookshelves.

Friday family photo—down on the farm

Cousin Gayle and me summer of 1984

Happy Birthday Mom

Today is my mother's birthday--she would have been 101. Sweetest woman in the world. I’ve been cleaning out some things I rarely use—like cake pans. One last trip through the dishwasher then off to the resale shop.  I'll keep the coffee pot from the 70s I never use since it was a gift from Mom, but I make terrible coffee.  I think that was the reason for the gift—she was sure it must be the tool, and not me.

Fall 1983 when Mom and Dad visited us in Columbus.

Dear Mom and Dad, December 22, 1980

1980 has not been one of my healthier years. I went to the doctor today and had chest x-rays and blood tests. My chest is clear, viral bronchitis, he says, and gave me an antibiotic to keep it from becoming pneumonia. I get my glasses in a week, and that will be a relief. If life begins at 40, I'm in trouble.

We received your Christmas packages safely, and they've been put under the tree, to be felt, shaken and poked by two eager kids. We've been reading the nice Advent book and calendar Joanne gave us at breakfast.

We went to a tree farm this year and cut our tree. I wouldn't say it is quite like the TV commercials, but it was fun. There was a roaring fire at the barn, and lots of jolly people around.

We've had a few holiday get togethers. A neighbor had an open house, and the art league had a pot luck dinner, and the AIA had a reception (but I was sick) and the office party is tomorrow, but I may not be able to go. It will be a lovely affair--dinner at the hotel in the Ohio Village, a 19th century reconstructed village which is a nice tourist attraction. They have carolers in costume and everything is deorated like the last century.

Sure wish my mommy was here to make me tapioca pudding.

Alternative to coupons

I found the article--it was in the September 2, 1981, Upper Arlington News--about 28 years ago. Here's the points I made.

• I did the research after a conversation with co-workers who felt guilty that they didn't clip coupons, or didn't like it.
  
  
• At the time I was a librarian in the OSU Agriculture Library and had access to little known publications that provided the answers.
  
  
• If homemakers would use their time in preparation instead of coupon clipping and sorting and parties, they would save much more and serve their families better food.
  
  
• Coupons were most often available for highly prepackaged food which are the most expensive.
  
  
• I attributed women's (housewives) need to do this to being convinced they needed a paycheck to feel valuable (remember, we were only 10 years into the rush to go back to work as a result of the women's movement). "Clipping, filing, storing, redeeming--why it is just like office work, and you sometimes even get a check in the mail for your efforts. At last there is tangible reward for all your efforts," I said.
  
  
• Homemakers are given a false sense of contributing to her family's economic well-being by being convinced that she's saving money.
  
  
• The writer found my food budget very interesting--"she feeds her family of 4 (including a teenage son and daughter) for $50 or less a week. That's less than the government figures a family of four using food stamps must spend."
  
  
• I'd gradually changed my shopping habits to include more fresh items and I "shopped the walls" for produce, dairy and meat avoiding the sea of prepackaged foods found in the center aisles.
  
  
• I didn't drive around looking for bargains, read labels, bought generic brands.
  
  
• Our children thought "real cheese" tasted funny when I made the change, so I recommended making changes gradually and ease the family into healthier, lower cost eating.
  
  
• And of course, because I was a librarian, I recommended some books, "The supermarket Handbook" by the Goldbecks, and "Diet for a small Planet" by Frances Moore Lappe, and More with Less Cookbook by Doris Longacre. I still use the Longacre book occasionally.

I get a chuckle out of today's greenies who think they invented this.

Speaking of old letters--a 1981 thank you

I mentioned I found a 1993 letter I'd written to "The Lutheran" about 15 Health Care values and principles. I also found a 1981 letter thanking me for my views on coupons which apparently stemmed from an article about me in the Upper Arlington News (or possibly the Columbus Dispatch, don't remember). [Loyalty cards are just the more up to date form of couponing.] This woman "got it." But not many do. If there's anything harder than convincing the American public that the government doesn't create jobs, it's convincing them that businesses don't exist to give away their products. She wrote:

"Thank heaven someone has finally spoken out to say what I have thought about couponing for some time now! Although I am not a Northwest area resident, I work in the area, and saw the article about your views in this week's paper.

Since I am a working mother who drives 36 miles each way to and from work everyday, I don't have a lot of time to read anything other than the essentials, or to learn new skills (i.e. couponing), but I kept asking myself why everyone else seemed to be able to save so much with coupons (or at least that is what the avalanche of articles about couponing would lead you to believe), when I could rarely find coupons for anyting I buy other than Pampers.

I didn't think I was dense (I have a degree in home economics, although I am not working as a home economist at this time), but either I was not cooking like all those who were couponing, or I had missed the boat somehow, because I never found coupons for fresh fruits or vegetables, whole wheat flour, meat or frozen vegetables that weren't suced, friend, or practically pre-digested!

Thanks for your views speaking out for those of us who seem to be losing out to all the convenience food junkies. I can only guess that the myriad of articles pertaining to nutrition and good health are falling on deaf ears, if they are noticed at all. Why is it that the extremists always seem to get the most press? In this case, the convenience food freaks must just have more time for publicity than those of us who are spending time preparing good, wholesome meals. Thanks again for your well-reasoned input into a subject which has been irritating me for some time now."

Update: I checked this woman on google and found her at the Plaza of Heroines at Wichita State University to honor everyday women who are heroines in people's lives.

Good politics is bad history and bad economics

It's a toss up. The demeaning and foot shuffling dance of the United States abroad by Biden-Obama, or Obama's negative rhetoric at home to completely gut the spirit of the American people. What is he up to? Certainly there's no hope, no change in the constant barrage of negativism we've heard since November 4. He gets his stimulus package through duplicity and lies, and before it even gets to his desk tells us it won't work and there will be more! I don't know if a positive attitude helps cancer patients, but if I had stage one cancer, I certainly wouldn't be encouraged by being knocked to the floor with the stats and treatment regimen for stage four.

[Obama’s] fearmongering may be good politics, but it is bad history and bad economics. It is bad history because our current economic woes don't come close to those of the 1930s. At worst, a comparison to the 1981-82 recession might be appropriate. Consider the job losses that Mr. Obama always cites. In the last year, the U.S. economy shed 3.4 million jobs. That's a grim statistic for sure, but represents just 2.2% of the labor force. From November 1981 to October 1982, 2.4 million jobs were lost -- fewer in number than today, but the labor force was smaller. So 1981-82 job losses totaled 2.2% of the labor force, the same as now.

Job losses in the Great Depression were of an entirely different magnitude. In 1930, the economy shed 4.8% of the labor force. In 1931, 6.5%. And then in 1932, another 7.1%. Jobs were being lost at double or triple the rate of 2008-09 or 1981-82. Obama's Rhetoric Is the Real 'Catastrophe'

Friday Family Photo

There's a new Superman movie out with Brandon Routh. Superman turned 50 in 1988 and so did my husband.



Also in the photo are, from left, Fran, Connie, Marvin, Tony, Nancy and Margie.

Monday Memories: Did I ever tell you about: When my letters turned into a memoir?
When my children left home about 20 years ago, I was suffering from empty nest syndrome big time. I decided to gather up the letters I’d written to my mother and sisters and the ones they’d written me and excerpt the “crazy” time in our year--from about Halloween through January so I would have a written record of our family life. Both children have November birthdays, so that’s about the time things really heated up at our house.

After looking through the letters (which my mother had saved), I pushed the time line back another 10 years and started with my years in college until I had about 30 years worth of letters. And I added in letters from girl friends, cousins, and in-laws. (I never throw away a letter). It was hours of typing (at the office after work since I didn’t have a computer then) and careful editing out really personal stuff. My husband designed an artistic cover, and I had the little book reproduced and bound at Kinko's.

Although the collection recorded all the cute and interesting things about my children’s growing up years, it also inadvertently became a story about a group of women--with a few men around the fringes--who were keeping things going by following a few familiar holiday traditions. At the beginning, I'm a college student and my mother is 47 years old with three children in college, a married daughter and two little grandchildren. My niece and nephew are 3 and 2 in the first letter and then are parents of their own children at the end, and repeating many of the same traditions, questions, and yearnings we letter writers had. Some people who didn’t write letters are in the collection anyway--their health and well-being and activities reported by the women who tell the stories year after year.

These letters recorded the ordinary events of our lives to the faint drumbeat of the cold war, the civil rights movement, space flight, the VietNam war, political campaigns, Watergate, economic growth and slowdown cycles, the rise of feminism, employment crises, career changes and family reconfigurations. On and on we wrote, from the conservatism of the Eisenhower years, on through the upheaval of the 60's, the stagnation of the 70's, then into the conservatism of Reagan/Bush in the 80s. National and international events are rarely discussed in these letters as though we were pulling the family close into the nest for a respite from the world's woes. If you were to read the letters, you might miss that we were even aware of world events. Or maybe because, as one of my sisters noted in a letter, when you're struggling on the home front sometimes there isn't much left to give to others.

The edited letters became the rhythm of women's lives--nursing a dying parent, holding a sick child, putting up the tree, playing the old records, going to the post office, baking favorite Christmas cookies, helping with school work, going to holiday programs, creating crafts with the children, shopping for gifts, checking the sky for some sunshine, wallpapering the hall, folding the laundry, looking for that just right job.

E-mail and blogging will have an effect on family memoirs--it will be interesting to review this phenomenon in 30 years. Digital is much less permanent than paper. Print out what is worth keeping--your children will be grown and gone the next time you turn around. And when they ask you why you printed them out for safe keeping, tell them, "Because Norma said so."

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