Vacation Pictures Part 2

                                                                   Limburg

                                                        The Joys Of Country Life

                                                        The View From Our Balcony

                                                                Cave Houses

                     An Old Ford (probably has been rusting in this field since the times of WWII)

                                                          Just A Nice View

                                                            Valkenburg At Night

                                                              Seven Hills Route

                                                                A Castle

(The last one was supposed to be a picture of our hotel but I decided not to post it due to privacy concerns.)

Retro Halloween

Even though we normally don't celebrate it...




If you watch it on YouTube, you can read the lyrics in the comments section. I especially like the maid:) Wish I had one like that:)

The Prejudice Against Housewives

So why is it that housewives face such a prejudice in our society? I was planning to write a long sophisticated post on this topic, but then decided to keep it short and not to go into too much detail. In a nutshell, the prejudice housewives face is the result of the relentless feminist propaganda which started somewhere in the 1950s and 1960s and has been going on ever since.

Consider these words by Betty Friedan: "Friedan describes housewives as failing 'to grow up', as 'mindless and thing-hungry' and 'not people'. Friedan describes housework as 'peculiarly suited to the capacities of feeble-minded girls'...Because a 'woman's work - housework -  cannot give her status', she must 'acquire her status vicariously through her husband's work,' and so 'becomes a parasite." (quoted from "Domestic Tranquility" by F. Carolyn Graglia, Spence Publishing Companny 1998, p.116).

Unfortunately, this attitude has pretty much become governmental policy in all Western countries. It is especially pushed by the so-called new Progressive Left, and the irony of the situation is that the traditional  (old) European Left was against the employment of (married) women:

As early as 1866, delegates to the First Socialist International “approved a resolution calling for bans on the employment of women. The measure’s sponsors reasoned that working women pressed down overall wage levels and displaced men; in their view, working women were the equivalent of strikebreakers”. Sweden’s Social Democratic Party adopted this view, and for many years it remained normative for Swedish “progressives.” (quoted from here).

Feminists will attack every dissenter, and will disregard scientific research when it disagrees with their views. Consider this article by Gavin Mc Innes. While being on Huffington Post Live, he had the audacity to say that men and women were different and wanted different things in life, and it didn't go well with feminists:

I live in New York, an elephant’s graveyard for ovaries. From where I sit I see women who put career over family and are now in their 40s, drenched in regret. I cited a study that said women are less happy since feminism took root. The professor called it a “fantasy study.” This study was all over the news a couple of years ago. How could none of them have heard of it? 

For the record, I know there are some women out there who are not interested in traditional feminine things, or to quote Mr Mc Innes again:

I would guess seven percent [of women] like not having kids. They want to be CEOs. They like staying all night at the office, working on a proposal, and all the power to them. But by enforcing that as the norm, you’re pulling these women away from what they naturally want to do, and you’re making them miserable.

That's exactly what is the problem with the modern feminism. They take an exception and try to make it a rule for everyone which not only doesn't work properly, but makes people miserable and wrecks the society in the process. However, I'm fairly optimistic about the whole thing. The truth will eventually come out, as it's impossible to build anything based on lies about human nature. It has ways of reasserting itself and the abundance of homemaking blogs and articles like the one above only proves my point.

A Sure Way To Career Heights

General incompetence of the politicians and government officials is hardly a new thing, as the musical number below proves:



If you have difficulty with understanding the lyrics, follow this link.

Vacation Pictures Part 1

I'm finally so far that I sorted our vacation pictures! I divided them into two groups, Aachen and Limburg.

                                                                    Aachen

                                                                Market Square

                                 Lebkuchen Store (which my husband found very interesting)

                                       The Cathedral of Aachen (where Charlemagne is buried)

Inside the Cathedral (normally it's forbidden to take pictures inside a church, but there you could do it if you paid 1 euro)

I publish the rest of the pictures later.

Marital Submission And Other Things

There seems to be a lot of confusion nowadays about what a traditional marriage is and the consequent duties of husbands and wives towards each other. Some people  seem to think that if we want to correct the excesses of feminism, we should go the other extreme and effectively state that the husband has an unrestricted authority over his wife and can command her to commit a sin, for instance, or what happens much more often, to earn an income. On the other hand, there are those who think that the woman can stay home and still expect her husband to do the cooking, cleaning etc, not occasionally when she is sick, but on a regular basis.

Considering all this, I thought it would be a good idea to post extracts from a Dutch wedding ceremony which is still used in our church. Written in the times of the Reformation, it presents a clear picture of what was expected in the traditional marriage from both spouses. It's very long, so I decided to translate some parts of it which deal with the subjects mentioned above:

...First, you Man will know that God placed you as the head of the woman, so that according to your capacity you will lead her with understanding, educate her, support and protect, like the head rules the body...Also you will love your housewife as your own body...live with her according to understanding and give her her honour as the weaker vessel because she shares in the inheritance of grace, so that your prayers are not hindered. And since it is God's command that the man will eat his bread in the sweat of his brow, so you shall work faithfully in your Godly profession so that you can support your family with God and honour and will have above that enough to give to the needy.

Second, you Woman will know how you according to the God's Word, will behave towards your husband. You will love your lawful husband, honour and reverence him, and also obey him in all things which are right and honest, as your Lord, in the same manner as the body submits to the head and the church to Christ...You also shall help your husband in all good and honest things, take a good care of your housekeeping, and walk in all modesty...without worldly luxuries so that you will give others a good example of decency. 

The preacher addresses first the bridegroom:

N, do you acknowledge here before God and this his holy church that you have taken and take N present here as your lawful housewife, promising to her that you will never leave her, that you will love her and faithfully support as a true and God fearing man has an obligation towards his lawful wife, that you also will live with her in a holy manner, being true to her and believing her in all things, according to the Holy Gospel...

And then the bride:

N,  do you acknowledge here before God and this his holy church that you have taken and take N present here as your lawful husband and promise to obey him, to serve and to help, never to leave him, live with him in a holy manner, to keep faith with him in all things, as a religious and faihtful housewife has an obligation to do towards her lawful husband, according to the Holy Gospel...

As you can see, both husband and wife have certain duties towards each other. The husband is expected to support his wife and family "with God and honour". I see nothing about stay-at-home dads in this passage, or even about wives contributing to making a living, but they are expected to take a good care of their housekeeping, which unfortunately, a lot of women are not doing nowadays. The text above also clearly shows that the wife is not obliged to obey in all things, but only in "right and honest" things, so if the husband asks her to help him rob the bank, she is not supposed to follow this type of a command.

In my opinion, biblical commands to husbands and wives, such as Titus 2 are pretty clear on their own, and yet so many people disregard them or get confused about the issue, so I hope that this post will be of some help.

Les Barricades

Some time ago I wrote a post about The Day Of The Jackal, a French film about the struggle between OAS and General De Gaulle. I became interested in the topic of French Algeria and while doing a research about it, found this video on YouTube:




A word of warning: it is a sad story and there are images which some people may find disturbing.

When War Was A Thing For Men

For those of us who love vintage ads, here are some from my personal collection with a military theme:

Housewives As Narcissists?

Today I read this discussion on Thinking Housewife:

The Virtual Home

One of the blog readers decries the abundance of homemaking blogs. She writes, among other things: "The blogs all seem alike. There’s a narcissism about them that is annoying." 

Is this a fair criticism? I would say that it depends. There are certainly narcissistic women whose only objective in starting a blog is to boast about how great their life is, but are they a majority? I doubt it. I read a couple of this type of blogs and personally I enjoy looking at the beautiful pictures and reading about what other ladies are doing with their homes. I find their example inspiring. Take, for instance this one:

Mias Landliv

I have linked to it before. Mia's blog is one of my favourites, it's so soothing, the photography is very beautiful and you just get a warm and cosy feeling after reading it. It brightens your day. How is it narcissistic? I would say that running a blog like this is a public service.

The reader further states: "...I sense that the legions of blogging homemakers are not a counterweight to feminism." Again, it depends. There are some homemakers who call themselves feminist progressive housewives or something similar and they are probably not friends to the traditionalist cause, even though their family life is fairly traditional, however, there are also plenty of conservative Christian homemaking blogs which not only post photos of their kids and houses, but also feature articles about homeschooling, marital submission, the importance of marriage etc.

Even if a blog appears to be neutral, like the one above, I still think it counts as a counterweight, because it encourages domesticity.

Laura wrote a rather balanced answer where she pointed out that a woman can get envious or angry by watching pictures of the perfect homes, and called it feminine pornography. Pornography sounds like a strong word to me, as I can't imagine anyone getting excited by watching the pictures on homemaking blogs, but then what do I know? Though it could just very well be that the problem is not with the one who posts the pictures, but with the lack of self-control of the one who views them. May be, if they get so frustrated that their own homes are messy in comparison to those they see on the net, they should get off computer and do something to clean the mess.

Two Recipes

I thought it was time to write a post about cooking:)

So here it comes: for the main dish - Chicken Curry

For 4 persons, you will need:

4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves (the original recipe called for 2 breast halves per person, but we don't eat so much meat)
1/2c flour
butter
2 onions, chopped
2 green peppers, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
2-3 tsp curry powder
1tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
2 cans diced tomatoes, undrained (I used peeled tomatoes, because they are cheaper. Just mash them with a fork)
parsley to taste, fresh or dry
1/2 tsp dried thyme (I used basil because I had no thyme)
1c water
3 tbsp raisins

In the original recipe chicken was to be baked in the oven, but I cooked it on the stove. Here is how you do it:

Dust chicken with flour and fry it in butter until light brown. Remove and set aside. Saute onions, peppers and garlic in drippings until tender. Add curry powder, salt, pepper and the chicken. Add tomatoes, parsley, thyme and water, cover the pan and cook on medium till low for +/- 20 minutes. Stir in raisins. The recipe suggests that you serve it with rice, but as you can see from he picture, I served it with potatoes and green salad.

Now for dessert: Cheesecake Without Crust (an original German recipe):

The recipe called for 1 kg quark, which I decided was too much, so I reduced the amount of all ingredients in half. This cake tastes really delicious! To bake it you will need:

Ab. 1 cup raisins
2 TBSP orange juice (the original recipe suggested rum, which I didn't have)
70g butter, softened
10-12 TBSP sugar (depending on your taste, the original recipe calls for 350g sugar for 1 kg quark)
1pkg vanilla sugar
salt to taste
500g (1 pkg) skim quark  (I think it could be substituted with cream cheese)
2 eggs
the juice of 1 lemon (I used bottled juice, ab. 2 TBSP is enough)
1/2 pkg vanilla pudding powder
1 TBSP semolina
1/2 pkg baking powder
1 TBSP flour
powder sugar

Wash the raisins and soak in orange juice, for at least 10 min. Grease a baking pan (26cm d) and set aside. Cream butter, sugar, vanilla sugar and salt. Add quark, eggs and lemon juice, mix thoroughly. In another bowl, mix pudding powder, semolina, baking powder and flour. Add raisins, drained. Mix together with quark cream, pour into the pan and bake at 180°C for 50-60 minutes or till golden brown. If it becomes too dark, cover with aluminium foil for the last 10 minutes. (I baked it at 200°C so it became darker in colour but still tasted good).

Dust with powder sugar. I served it with strawberry sauce. Enjoy!

Why I Support Patriarchy

Below is a guest post written by Jesse Powell

I am an atheist man living in the United States and I support patriarchy, I support traditional gender roles, in particular I support the traditional non-working wife.  To many in the West today “patriarchy” is a scary word; in particular among those not in a religious setting (such as myself) the idea of supporting patriarchy is just plain bizarre.  Still I am who I am; an atheist man in the West supporting patriarchy.  So why have I come to this point; how did I arrive at this radical counter-cultural perspective?

Going into a bit of my personal history; I found that the feminism I was raised in, that I was immersed in since birth, prepared me for the adult world, particularly my romantic purpose as a man, very poorly.  Basically as a feminist man I had no drive to offer support to women or contribute anything substantial to a woman’s life.  This led women to not be interested in me romantically so that a great barrier between me and women developed; a barrier I desperately wanted to overcome but didn’t know how to overcome.  So finally I came to the conclusion that it was my feminism and the inertia and apathy towards women my feminism led to that was causing my failure in the romantic sphere.  With this realization my attachment to feminism ended once and for all and I embraced patriarchy.

That is the personal side of how I came to support patriarchy but in addition to this there was also the social developments in my country that led me to the realization that I was not alone in my troubles; that difficulties between men and women were widespread and that they had grown tremendously over time.  My rejection of feminism came around 1995 and at that time in my country there was a great concern going on about rising out-of-wedlock births, rising crime and a drug epidemic among the black population, growing welfare dependency among single mothers, and social breakdown in general.  I was able to see that my personal troubles were part of a much broader breakdown in the family and in relations between men and women.  The cause of this breakdown I saw to be feminism as it was feminism that told me to not be a man; to shun and feel ashamed of my natural manly characteristics and drives and sense of purpose; that in effect told me I had no special purpose in women’s lives which is what led me to not seek an important role in a woman’s life in the first place thereby causing my romantic failure with women.

Family breakdown problems are happening all throughout the Western World (and actually globally if one looks carefully).  For example in the Netherlands, home of the author of this blog, the out-of-wedlock birth ratio was only 2.2% in 1975; this ratio rising to 15.5% in 1995 and up to 44.3% in 2010.  Looking at the divorce rate in the Netherlands it was 5.7% in 1965, 20.1% in 1975, 41.9% in 1995, and 44.7% in 2010.  Additionally the fertility rate in the Netherlands went below replacement level in 1973 and has been continuously below replacement level ever since.

Feminists will try to tell you this disaster in family life is simply women’s liberation; women free at long last to pursue their dreams no longer being “forced” to be only good wives and mothers as if being “only” a good wife and a good mother is beneath them.  Feminists further claim that patriarchy, the social system that existed when divorce and out-of-wedlock births were shockingly low by today’s standards, was a time of brutal and unending oppression of women and women should be oh so glad those dark days of the past are behind them.  Don’t be fooled by these lies and distortions.

Keep in mind here what patriarchy actually is.  Patriarchy is Chivalry; Chivalry defined as the male duty to provide for and protect women according to the collective judgment of men as a community and according to the conscience and sense of purpose of each individual man ultimately under the authority of God.  Yes patriarchy does have male domination as a component but the male domination serves a purpose; to protect the man’s investment in the woman so that the man will feel secure and motivated to invest in the woman.  Without male domination there cannot be high male investment in women as a man will not invest in a woman who uses the man’s investment in her in a way he does not intend.  If you look at feminism in practice you will see that as women become “empowered” and “more equal to” men male investment in women disappears as can be seen by soaring births outside marriage, soaring divorce, and soaring numbers of married women working.  No more male power means no more male support. 

Also it should be remembered that in a patriarchal social system each individual man is always under men collectively; under the law; and that the man always is considered to be under God, obligated to use his authority for the Godly purpose of supporting and guiding his family overall.  Patriarchy has never been based on male selfishness; it has always been based on male sacrifice and male service.

So I am not ashamed to openly advocate for patriarchy.  Patriarchy is exactly what society needs to undue the great damage feminism has done.  I am part of a group called the TWRAs or Traditional Women’s Rights Activists.  My blog is at Secular Patriarchy.  In particular I recommend the following article at my blog exploring some of the themes mentioned in this essay:

 Masculinity and Man’s Purpose as a Man

The statistics mentioned regarding the Netherlands come from Eurostat.

More On Housewife And Politics

I'd like to draw your attention to this blog post by Lady Lydia:
Tranquility at Home

Lydia writes: "...I feel it necessary to caution women at home from being too caught up in the daily reports of impending disaster. As Christian homemakers, it is very easy to let such news be our undoing. It can rob you of your contentment at home. The sound of the world's bad news can make you physically ill or mentally unstable when exposed to it daily."

Through the years I have discovered it to be true. It's very easy to get caught in the political problems of the day and lose your focus on homemaking. Most of the news we hear or read daily is negative, and even sometimes shocking or repulsive, and it can absolutely make a woman depressed. The same goes for modern entertainment where extreme violence seem to be a must for every action movie. It's interesting that men can usually better cope with it, probably because, as a friend of mine put it, they are supposed to be warriors and not so easily shocked.

Lydia further notes that "... the housework never changes, no matter what the world news is." That is a very wise observation. There are lots of women (actually men, too; but for the purposes of this article I'll concentrate on women only) who keep pining for the good old days. Such person often will say "I guess it was all right to be a homemaker in the 1950s, I wish  I lived then, but now the society has changed..." Now guess what, the society has changed, but God's Word didn't. Titus 2 was not only meant for those born before the WWII, it's still relevant now. In the year 2013 housework still needs to be done!

To quote Lydia again: "There are still things to be cleaned up, put away, and taken care of. There are meals to be prepared on time, and a husband to help. There are responsibilities at church, and our help is needed in the lives of our children and grandchildren"

Lydia goes on to describe how she tried to redeem her time and how worrying about the current political situation interfered with her domestic responsibilities. I will freely admit that I have been guilty of the same thing myself. It's easy to say to yourself that you will just read this news item, and then visit that forum, just to stay informed, and not to be " an ignorant housewife who does not know who is the president" and then you realise that the most productive part of the day is gone. More so, the political situation won't change because you read alternative news and conservative forums, but your housework and your peace of mind will surely suffer. 

Lydia points out that we shouldn't be trying to correct the whole world, because we can't. It's better to concentrate on things we can influence, such as the well-being of our families. There are too many women nowadays who have what I call a saviour complex. While they are out and about trying to improve the world, their own households are neglected. I believe that Love your neighbour quite literally means the person living next door to you, and we should concern ourselves with people close to us, not far away. 

I especially liked this quote:  "Most of us know a lot about the evils of this world, but not enough of the Bible."

That is something to ponder about, isn't it? Lydia suggests that while the wordly news stations are broadcasting all the negative things, we should "broadcast good news by our presense" and concentrate on creating a lovely life at home. Last time we went on vacation, I noticed one thing. We stayed in a family hotel in a small village, and spent several days without watching TV and with limited internet access and it felt wonderful. Life just went on, though I wasn't informed about the latest shenanigans of the corrupt politicians, liberal attacks on the family and other negative things. 

Here I feel obliged to put a disclaimer, saying that even a housewife should be aware of what's going on around her (as I did in my previous blog post on the same topic), but twenty minutes a day is probably enough to learn about all the major news, unless some disaster has happened. I'm also trying to avoid reading blogs which concentrate too much on the negative things, without giving a counterbalance.You know, the type which someone dubbed "despair porn" which is, in my opinion, a fitting name, as some people seem to be positively turned on by writing about doom and gloom. 

Finally, Lydia stresses that all this negativity can ruin your health: "Having your mind on too many problems is bad for your hormones, bad for your blood circulation, bad for your digestion, bad for your posture and unhealthy all around. The Lord told us not to think of the things of darkness, but to think on things that are lovely (Philippians 4:8) and to cultivate the fruit of the Spirit (Galations 5:22)"

 Or, as my husband puts it, women should get interested in gardening and knitting and leave politics to men (please don't throw stones at me:)