So You Think You Should Go to Work

Victorian Mother and Her Three Children

Awaiting for Their Father's Arrival Home

(more pictures like this are available here.)

Good Day!  I just read a good post on Blessed Homemaking, and wonder if anyone would like to read it here.  I think it is good to support these quiet, diligent homemakers by leaving encouraging thoughts. Many of them work entirely alone, with no neighbors or even church members who fellowship them or call them from day to day. Blogging is a way of connecting with like-minded people. I left a comment there and I hope you will, too.

I have been trying to clean a room a day, but rooms end up being a room a month!  Also, I have listed other things as "rooms" to clean. A closet counts as a room, as does a book shelf.  A hallway is a room, if it has things in it that need sorting, putting away, cleaning. Storage shelves in bathrooms and kitchens are also "rooms" and require a day or more to clean.

The purpose, of course, is to get my home where I can find something when I need it, and to free up more time for creative things and also for making new posts!

Autumn Charm

by Michael Longo

I am listening to a cd called "Romantic Moments" which features classics by Beethoven. My favorites are:

Romance in F for Violin (Beethoven)

Also, try:

Concerto in C for Piano, Violin and Cello, "Triple Concerto": Largo  --be patient because after some rather slow introductory notes, it turns into a wonderful, soothing piece.

 It is similar to the music in the final, train scene in the British production of North and South, where Margaret and Mr. Thornton's trains meet at the station.  I can't help thinking there is a bit of Beethoven influence in that final, violin concerto in that train scene.

Mrs. Q. put a link in her post for the story,  "When Queens Ride By," and one for Taylor Caldwell's essay on Womens Lib, and I would like to add another one here that is an essential sermon for the theme of women in the home: Peter Marshall's Sermon, "Keeper of the Springs."

When Queens Ride By was written for an essay contest back in the 1930's and was penned in the form of a play, which was read in many ladies Bible classes. I think it would be a great one for Women's Studies Classes in colleges and universities. Wouldn't that be a surprise to the teachers and students, to read something quite the opposite of what is being taught in those institutions!  It was made into a film on the Loretta Young show in the early 1960's http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0631065/ and was shown on television, but has not been released to the public. I have seen it, and hope that others may see it too. 

The story focuses on a young woman who is burdened with her life as a wife of a farmer. Her husband is have difficulty making payments the land, and Jennie is so worried about it that she is unable to concentrate on being a wife, mother and homemaker.  She furiously picks their produce so that she may sell it and help with the expenses.  She neglects her appearance, lets the housework go, and does not give her children the attention they need from her.  All her time is devoted to the farm work.

In the midst of all this, a man and his wife are passing by the farm and have some car trouble.  While her husband works on the car, the wife comes over to the fence to talk to Jennie. She quickly detects the stress Jennie is under and tells her a story about a queen who lived in a land where there were sometimes rumors going on about problems in the kingdom. She tells Jennie how the queen reassured her subjects and relieved their qualms.  The story causes a deep change in Jennie, and when her husband arrives home that evening, work-worn and weary, he beholds a beautiful scene.

When Queens Ride By is a simple, lovely story for women today, as they worry as much as women did back then. It reminds you to look your best and focus on the home, even more when your husband needs encouragement.

Women's Lib by Taylor Caldwell, a prominent author of the 1960's, is her analysis of the women's so-called "liberation" movement, which destroyed respect for women, and caused some men to become lazy and dependent on working women. It robbed many men of their manliness, as they abandoned their protective feelings towards women and diminished their desire to marry and provide for one woman for a lifetime.  She said the women's libbers ruined part of the attraction between men and women and destroyed for many people what the first woman, Eve enjoyed: staying home and taking care of a husband so that he could more easily go out and work and take care of her .

Afternoon Reflection

Keeper of the Springs by Peter Marshall, is a sermon about the important place women have in the home, and how the 20th century moderns tried to bring her down , away from that elevated position of wife, mother and homemaker.  It includes a story of a village that hired someone to keep the water from being polluted. The keeper of the spring would see that debris was removed at the beginning of the spring, before the water came down to the village. One day, the villagers decided they no longer wanted the expense of paying the keeper of the springs. The story tells what happened to the water, and compares it to women being removed from the home, causing the waters of society to be polluted.  

Included in this sermon is his point about women becoming more like men, which was used as the speech of his wife, Catherine, in the movie, "A Man Called Peter."   "The twentieth century gave women the right to smoke, the right to drink, the right to swear... It brought her down from the high place in which she stood as a woman, and lowered her...." (Read the entire speech within the sermon. It was spoken by Mr. Marshall from the pulpit but put in the movie as script for the character of Catherine.) You can watch this movie free online here, instant play http://www.1channel.ch/movie-67716-A-Man-Called-Peter 

It is good to be reminded of these theme articles, and to teach them to the next generation of men and women, and for more stories of this nature to be written for today.

Here is another good message from a homemaker http://thequiethome.blogspot.com/2011/11/encouraging-hug-for-homemakers.html , which looks like a good blog to add to your blogroll.