Choosing Voluntary Simplicity » Miscellaneous

Progress, Perhaps… But an Intangible Something Has Been Lost

Shirley — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:12:37 +0000

It's actually starting to feel almost spring-like here. When the days are bright and sunny like this, and the temperatures rise above freezing during the day and drop down below freezing at night, this is sugaring weather! When I was a very young child, my parents "sugared" every year, and we spent many long hours wading through the deep snow to gather the sap, and even more long hours huddled around the fire waiting while the sap boiled. It was a lot of work... thirty-five to forty gallons of sap boils down to make just one gallon of syrup... but we had fun, too. Often we cooked our supper on the fire or toasted marshmallows while my parents kept an eye on the syrup's progress. Even a whiff of a certain type of wood smoke will still bring back happy memories of those times.

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“Any Citizen of the United States Has the Recognized Right of Paying His Respects to the President”

Shirley — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:09:58 +0000

I came across an amazing old book about culture and manners this weekend, and I found the tutorial on how to act when meeting the President especially interesting. The book is copyrighted 1890, so the President at the time would have been our twenty-third President, Benjamin Harrison. It's hard to imagine the President of the United States ever being that accessible to the general public.

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Have Necessities Become Luxuries Because of the Recession?

Shirley — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:25:41 +0000

I recently came across an interesting survey taken in April of this year about the recession causing necessities to become luxuries. One thousand and three people were asked to answer the question "Do you think this item is a necessity?" about twelve specific appliances and services. The answers turned out to be surprisingly different from the answers in a similar survey taken in 2006... "the year before the recession set in and marked the outer limits of America's housing bubble." It's important to remember that for the previous ten years, the percentage of people who ranked these twelve appliances and services as necessities had been steadily increasing. Not so in the 2009 survey.

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Do You Still Want To Shake Hands?

Shirley — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:54:30 +0000

Just in case you've managed to overcome feeling creepy about the bacteria-laden shopping carts, a recent report suggests that people actually have even more bacteria on their hands than scientists previously thought. And according to this study, even though women wash their hands more often than men wash their hands, women's hands test for the widest variety of different types of bacteria, as well as the largest number of bacteria.

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Don’t Touch That Shopping Cart!

Shirley — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:05:30 +0000

Did you know there is more bacteria on a shopping cart than on a public restroom toilet seat? According to several recent health warnings, swabs taken from shopping cart handles and seats have shown saliva, blood, fecal matter, mucus (and worse), plus Listeria, Salmonella, Staph, E. Coli, and general individual bacteria.

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Hulled Corn or Samp — What It Is and How To Make It

Shirley — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:21:23 +0000

Reader question... "My husband wants me to make something called 'hulled corn.' He remembers his mother making it but I have never even heard of it and can't find a recipe. Do you have any idea of what hulled corn is or how it is made?" --Bethany W.

Yes to both questions!

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