Respite for the Weary

Perhaps you as I are a little weary of all the bad news these days. If the economic crisis wasn't enough to have you wallowing in worry, it is now the media bombardment of swine flu outbreaks. Although you can't live in a cave and avoid reality, you can try to escape now and then and find respite in something frivolous and light. So, how about it? Shall we peruse something to take our minds of the world and lighten the load with a little Etsy eye candy? 

Look at the Baby!

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Forever new, forever exciting, babies bring joy into our lives with their cooing rosebud lips, small and perfect little hands and feet and that shock of downy soft black hair!

To celebrate spring and life as all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, this is a little vintage baby tribute of items found on etsy.com by vintage sellers. No matter how far we have come with new fangled do dads and fancier and more technical gadgets, there is something sweet and wholesome about looking at how babies were brought into the world without all that stuff and did just fine.

Be All That You Can Be

The army slogan "be all that you can be" isn't only for the military. It is really an American mantra that is drilled into our progressive, workaholic minded culture.  There doesn't seem to be a balance between work and life and instead the lines become muddled in gray. Being a married woman with no children, the impact of this truth hasn't really hit me as hard as it could. I know that work is healthy, keeps you grounded and gives you purpose. However, when visiting our neighbhors recently to see their new bundle of joy, this truth hit home. Here was a family with their first child and the mom was going to stay at home and raise the child. I was immediately defensive and jealous. Much to my own dismay, I launched into a speech of how impossible it is for two parents to have this option, when the "option" was right in front of me. They were choosing to have this balance that I so yearned for, but everything around me told me it couldn't be, it wasn't right and so on. When did our culture stop valuing mothers for mother's sake? When did daycare take the place of what only a mother can do? I can't say, but I am sorry to see it is a different world than the older generation experienced. 

My mother raised six children on one blue collar salary. She tells me that it is possible and I smile and say in my head 'not true.' In an effort to be progressive and career minded, values have gone out the door. There are strangers raising the next generation and still with all the money, power and equality, people are more unhappy than ever. What will it take to "be all that we can be" for real? Take back your life even if in small increments and don't sell out the one life you have for the approval of those who don't have to live your life at all. This sounds so preachy, but is so true. The lack, the lack and the lack. Simplicity is so much more than just having less. It is taking less on to have more.

Consumer Rights Make You Want to Drink

Sundays always find me introspective, a bit pessimistic, and blogging. Curious to find if artists greatest work was accomplished on such a day when the weekend is over, the money has been spent, the late night partying optimism has been laid to rest and a keen awareness that Monday is right around the corner. 

Not that there has to be a storm cloud behind every sunbeam, but somehow when the winter is long and below zero is the temp for the 1st of March, it is hard to feel alive and light hearted. Today for the first time in a couple of weeks, I added some new items to my Etsy store. It is always like putting yourself out there into the cyber world to be viewed unabashedly by the consumer's critical eye. Feels kind of naked and vulnerable. My favorite are the convos with detailed questions that I quickly and thoroughly answer, but then never hear a bloody thing after that... not even a thank you. It is part of the consumer right - to inquire without obligation. With one my new posts today, I blatantly laid it out there that the item was flawed, but take it or leave it. I kind of felt like I had to defend myself with this disclaimer after all the critical remarks you get.

So, with that, there are Sundays contemplations and maybe time for a beer to end this with a bang.

Hard Times - A Modern Day Reflection of Dickens' World View

Charles Dickens or for the purpose of this blog, "Chuck" was all about enlightening us of what Hard Times meant to 19th Century English commoners. Faced with moral choices that separated man from beast, Chuck looked at what happens to people when they were hard up, out of luck, down and out... you get my drift.

As Americans compare themselves to others in the past who suffered a depression, it is interesting to compare and contrast what modern man views as hard compare to what was hard 100 or so years ago. Let's say you are Oliver Twist, David Copperfield or Pip. On hard times, you have to look to someone who may not be so kind or empathetic to your plight for your livelihood and existence. The dark, shadowy images of Dickens paint exactly what their world was - ashy, dirty, dingy and dismal. Did the sun ever shine in 19th century London or was the pollution and smog just blocking it? What a beautiful writer who gives us images of a world gone by and the people although fictional, true representations of a difficult time.

We may have it bad compared to our peers. There may be no money to go to the movies and instead our option is to be holed up in an artsy coffee shop with laptop and ipod going as our bleating hearts communicate via the World Wide Web of our misery and suffering. Droning musicians speak from the depths of shallow experience - life is so hard when you are a suffering artist, ,misunderstood and dealing with feeble minds. There may be no money for fancy dinners or designer clothes, but there is so much at our disposal that we have become completely out of touch. While connected to a virtual world and communication being an understatement with text messages, instant messenger and blackberries all making us so unified, we have become completely stunted in maturity and artistic growth.

Hard Times is about speaking from the dust and breathing life and hope into a bleak world. Although not at all acquainted with how this life looks except on paper, a shallow, pale comparison of philosophy is born from utube videos and blogs. Don't get me wrong, I am just as much to blame, but don't kid your self... it is hardly all that bad.

Post Valentine Reflections

Saturday afternoon involved running errands and lunch with my husband. Seeing as it was Valentine's Day on a weekend, my senses were tuned in to the sights and sounds of an international day of love. While saving a booth at Panera which was completely mad at the lunch hour, my eyes scanned the crowds of buzzing tables of people. Moms and dads with babies and toddlers in tow, multitasking by taking turns helping feed the toddlers, burping the baby and feeding themselves, Valentine's Day was probably anything but romantic at that table. Then there were girlfriends coming together over a healthy half salad and cup of soup to bemoan their similar loveless fates. Last but not least were the old, comfortable silver haired couples who sat in complete comfortable silence and didn't try to prove anything. 

As Panera gave me a good sampling of society, I tried to look into the souls of women of all ages and walks of life  to see if they would feel special on this day like no other. My ears were tuned in, my eyes were focusing on non-verbals and I left with only one obvious observation - a multitude of women dressed in red. Maybe that is what it took to remind the opposite sex of what sort of day it was. 

Being married myself for over four years, you would think I would have some great tricks up my sleeve, originality and just the thing to say "I love you." Well, I didn't. Racking my brain for something that was specific, intimate, said 'us' and our resplendent relationship, I fell back on all the old tried and true tricks the spelled out s-t-e-r-e-o-t-y-p-i-c-a-l. In a last ditch effort, a deep fryer called out from me from an alluring end aisle display. "OK," not sentimental, but definitely original. If a way to a man's heart is through his stomach, deep fat fried foods would land me in a sweet, clotted artery sort of place. So, with a sigh that all my creativity had failed me, I hauled my deep fat fryer to the check out.

Save a Children's Book & Save Our Past

In trying to keep up with this new CPSIA law that went into effect today, I have been pulling out my hair. There have been many tell-tale signs that the world is going crazy, but nothing quite says it like a law that is requiring books published before 1985 to be banned from stores, libraries, online selling,  and everything and anything in between. At first, it was like a bad dream... could it be that those who makes laws in our government have went off the deep end? 

My beautiful books with pages filled with some of the best stories ever written. Stories that cannot be duplicated, stories from writers long dead in the grave that had imaginations teeming with ideas and creativity. Not only are things not made like they used to be, but books are not written nearly as well either. I hardly bother with modern literature. It is either fluffy or over the top in abstraction and idealism. I want wholesome, true, and well crafted stories to fill my head. Writers from the past weren't distracted by all the things that consume us in our modern age. Louisa May Alcott - a homely, single country gal spent all her free time writing stories for children and adolescents about maturity, achieving adulthood and becoming a person of character. There are no Louisa May Alcotts any longer. Those days are gone when women writing under pen names and mousy exteriors produced magnificent masterpieces. We are not tried and true. We do not lead lives filled with hardship that gives birth to genius. We are too soft and so when I am told by my silly, empty headed, virtue-less government to basically throw those "contaminated" books in the fire, I shake my head with sorrow.

It seems so dramatic and ridiculous that people can't even take personal responsibility for what they  buy anymore. Someone needs to be the scapegoat. How can lawyers sleep at night who support such cases? It is a wonder that they line their pockets with the gold earned by degeneracy.  How sad that a generation from now will not be able to see and read of the virtues of the past, the wisdom passed down, the stuff that makes a people great.

With this said, please, please, please seize the moment and buy vintage children's books. If this law is going to be reinforced like it looks to be, then it will be a travesty of our age. 

The books pictured here are from Etsy.Com Vintage Sellers including myself :):

www.elizabethwrenvintage.etsy.com

www.inktiques.etsy.com

www.molehilltreasures.etsy.com

www.labrocanterie.etsy.com