You da man.

This and this reminded me of my four year search for a wife.

For men that are serious about finding a wife, the situation on the ground is complex. There are things you can do to make your way through these landmines. CH's advice is sound, but the key is the attitude. The single greatest thing you can do is realize you are doing the interviewing, not the other way around. It's very similar to going into a job interview. If you have the attitude that you are interviewing the potential employer about whether or not you want to work for them, the interview will go better. Not only that, but you will be much happier long term if you are making sure they meet your standards. I'm speaking here of both employers and potential wives.

A couple of things I would add:

“Are you a player?” I replied with, "I don't lie to anyone. They choose what they do with the truth." The important part here is that you don't lie. You must be honest about your intentions. I let potential mates know that I was looking for a serious relationship and they had two weeks to prove they were worth it to me. The last point didn't always happen immediately. It absolutely happened by the third day. This was before texting.

“I have a boyfriend.”This one is too easy. "It's not serious." Works every time. If it is serious, they go away. If it isn't, they engage. You follow up the statement while looking around for other prospects.

Many of the examples CH has should never happen if your attitude is being the employer vs. employee. If you don't have the confidence to think that way, then you need to fix your issues. I will grant that the exact words can vary according to existing pop culture. However, the basic principle is that you, as the man, must be in charge mentally. You are doing the interviewing. Women younger than you are going to be more likely good long term prospects. The half your age plus seven years is a good measurement.

Finding a spouse is an on-purpose activity. You are deciding with whom you will raise children and spend the rest of your life. I see men spending more time and effort on what type of phone to get than defining the characteristics of the wife they want. The characteristics you want are a separate issue, however you need to have a game plan about what you want out of a wife. To think your spouse will magically be dropped in your lap is ridiculous. You are living in the Disney-happily-ever-after mentality. This is the biggest decision you will make in your life. Consult those you respect. Develop a plan.

Remember, you da man.

Why won't Atlas shrug?

Many people that are disgusted by our society's current situation are sitting on the sidelines observing the fall. They have no interest in helping to fix Western society. They want things to fall apart. It will justify their existence. This situation sounds eerily familiar to someone I read about in the Bible.

There is this guy named Jonah in the Bible. It is quite the story. He hates the people of Ninevah so much that he refuses to tell them to repent on God's order. Why does he deny his calling? He doesn't want the Ninevites to repent. He knows they will and be spared God's wrath. He desperately wants them to pay the price for their disobedience.

As we read the rest of the story of Jonah, we find out that God won't leave him alone. Our plans and desires mean very little to God. His will be done. As much as Jonah wants the Ninevites struck down, God won't. When Jonah finally does warn them, he waits outside the city to see the results. Then there is the vine thing that happens, which is really cool. I won't ruin the ending.

I encourage you to pray and find out what God wants you to do in life. It might be as simple as fixing your marriage (not always so simple). If you have a good family life going on, you will be called to do more. Embrace God's will in your life. It can be scary, but that is what makes life so fun.

Our country is still majority Christian. There are still enough men and women willing to build the new foundation of the future. We keep finding like minded individuals that God puts in our lives. The reward is still there. Ayn Rand was an atheist. She never understood the thinking of Christians. She understood the evil of communism, but she never understood Christianity. That is why Atlas doesn't shrug.

Love is the command, not trust.

The men I have known that have committed adultery on their wives have problems with their conception of what caused it. Too often men blame themselves for the adultery as a result of their lustful desires. A man doesn't accidentally stick his love rocket into another woman's love chamber. Much has happened in a marriage that should have been fixed before the lust came to fruition.

I agree that women should trust their husbands that what they say is what they think and mean. At the same time, I think men need to be trustworthy husbands for their wives, no matter what kind of man they are (alpha, etc.) In my opinion, trust and open communication are two major components of a healthy marriage, and when trust is broken, it can be very difficult to repair the damage. I should know...as a currently single male, I was unfaithful to my spouse, and this caused us to separate. So I think in order for wives to trust their husbands in a healthy marriage, men need to step up and be trustworthy to them.  
-Anthony
This is how wives frustrate their husbands.


The problem with Anthony's analysis here is that he isn't looking back far enough to what started the issue. His untrustworthiness more than likely started earlier than waking up in marriage one day and deciding to lie to his spouse. Usually the fault of cheating men is the failure to love their wife.

I will pause for effect and outrage from the MGTOW stalkers.

Most of these men fail to love their wives enough to discipline them. They are fearful of their wives. They are fearful of the courts. Eventually, they feel so restricted in their decision making abilities they just indulge their base desires. Cheating/porn/strip clubs. Whatever the means to display individualism, they remain unwilling to love their wives. It's hard. They would rather lie to their wives about their own sins than tell them the Truth of their wives' sins. It isn't easy to love your wife. However, it is what God told us to do.

This is how wives frustrate their husbands

In my recent post: Please, don't make them talk. Just let them look pretty. I presented three different videos. Two of them are ladies from the most recent Miss USA pageant and one is Miss Teen South Carolina from 2007.

My premise for the post, that I thought I made clear with the title and the content, was to point out how ridiculous it is that these beautiful pageant contestants who have worked hard, put in long hours with coaches, and have earned the top sought after titles, are asked these political questions by liberal judges. I question whether it is for the judges to learn the ladies' political bent which is irrelevant and should have nothing to do with the judges' decisions.

Wendy Malick, a liberal feminist asked the question regarding the recent NSA surveillance scandal to Miss Alabama in the first video. Miss Alabama has no challenge answering it however her answer was quite apropos considering the post RLB just wrote, End women's suffrage. The foremost reason why we believe women should not have the privilege of voting is because they tend to trade liberty for security, as Miss Alabama quite literally stated in answer to the question.

Nene Leakes, a liberal, former stripper, and single mother, asked Miss Utah the question she stumbled all over on regarding what the wage gap between men and women has to say about society. And Aimee Teegarden, a liberal environmentalist/animal rights activist actress, asked the question of Miss Teen South Carolina about the state of education in the US - her answer has, for years, been a joke in our home. When ever someone says something stupid, we say it's because they don't have maps - come on, we can't be the only ones, that was hilarious!

I attempted to convey my point with a little humor and one double entendre but commenter, Renee, missed my point completely with this comment:

Hey now, don't act like men don't have their moments of stupidity. Not to mention that these women had to answer these questions on the spot in front of millions of people.

Some people can do it, many others can't. It has nothing to do with them being women.

Nowhere in my post did I compare these women to men. Where did I suggest that fumbling on answering a question is exclusive to women only?

I respond to commenter, Marie, regarding her comment to Renee and I attempt to clarify my position with the following: 

Well, Marie, one really only needs to listen to Joe Biden for a short while to hear any number of stupid gaffes. It's even more disgusting then. Or when our president can't even speak without teleprompters and when his people forget to lay out his written speech. "Uhhh...Uh...Uhhh People!" That's pathetic on a totally different level.

Dear Renee suffers from defending team women when there really was no comparison of women to men.

I actually have compassion for these women. They have their platforms and the wonderful good things they'll do should they be crowned. But pageantry is hard work. It is ludicrous to expect her to answer questions regarding the day's politics when she needs to focus on her poise, charm, self confidence and articulation. Should these women have been asked about their platform they would have done a great job. It's the questions that were stupid to begin with.

Renee answers with:

I'm not defending "team women". You made it seem like the amount of stupidity displayed at the Miss America pageant was exclusive to women, and it's not. Like I said, some can do it and some can't. 

Noticing a pattern here, that Renee is going to stand by her erroneous assumption of what my post was intended to be about, I say the following:  

Hey now, don't act like...
You made it seem...
I highly recommend your assessment of what I have to say be made using the words on the page.
To do otherwise can only be projection.
I understand, it's a normal response (illogical men do it too), one of my goals is to make it evident how often this is done and how often those assumptions are wrong.

She responds with this:

My assessment was made based on the words on the page. No projection from my end. You basically said that based on the women in question, that it's proof that all women shouldn't be allowed to vote. I just pointed out that idiocy is present in both men and women.

And what's with "illogical men", as if men as a whole only come either as illogical and logical?

I started to contemplate a response, reread all that had been said because I was a bit confused and then it hit me; this frustration and confusion has got to be the very same thing RLB went through when I used to do this to him.

Nowhere have I ever claimed that women should not be allowed to vote because they are stupid. Nowhere have I said that fumbling on an answer to a question in a high pressure environment is exclusive to women. In fact, don't I give examples of the two highest profile men in our country doing the same?

So what is going on here?
- Is it a woman's inability to admit her assumptions were wrong?
- Does she need me to understand how she felt about what I said and make the mindhurt/feelbad go away?
- Am I to make amends with how she felt even though what she felt I was saying wasn't what I was actually saying?
- Because her perception was that I "was acting like," "made it seem," and "basically said" something, does that make it true?

Ladies, we do this. I do this. I try very very hard not to do this.

I remember when I started stopping myself from doing this. RLB was no longer going to participate in it. If I felt that he said something he in fact did not say, he walked me through it, while laughing at me. When I'd get emphatic about how I knew exactly what he meant even though it wasn't what he said, he'd laugh and tell me that I suck at reading his mind. This was combined with me reading Vox Popoli where there was always a debate going on where I could see the same type of exchanges between Vox and an interlocutor.

I initially made myself become aware of this, not out of respect for logic, but so he would stop laughing at me. The respect for logic followed but it took some time.

It can be done. Women can separate their knee jerk reactions from their responses. They must pause, ask for clarification if needed, pray, and proceed trusting the words on the page or the words spoken.

There certainly are times that our gut instinct will alert us that there's more to a story than what's being told, especially with teenage daughters. But in our marriage relationships, ladies, trust your husbands that what they say is what they think and mean. That no hidden agendas or messages are present. Stop allowing feelings and false assumptions ruin the communication between you and your husband.

I am a forced birth advocate

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She's concerned with the Republican party losing women's support (riiiight) because of their obsession with overturning Roe v. Wade.

“They’re obsessed with this idea of making women — this isn’t pro-life; this is forced birth. They are obsessed with this notion of shaming, compelling, coercing, whatever they have to do to make women give birth."  - Joy Reid

Yes, you moron. I too am obsessed with insisting that babies not be murdered. It is so hard for me to comprehend how evil or insane this woman must be to advocate for the dismemberment of babies.

Women should not vote.

Losers are going to lose.

Matthew 7:6.
“Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you."

Losers are going to lose. It's what keeps their delusional world together. Wasting time on them is just that...wasting time. They don't want solutions. They want company in their misery. Succeeding is hard. Anyone who has accomplished anything in life knows they paid a price for it. You didn't accomplish what you did by making excuses.

Those of us who have succeeded in life turn a certain age and want to dispense knowledge. We can't fall for the loser that has tried everything and still can't succeed. They waste our time and they will turn on us. I'm not saying you shouldn't help those who are willing. The willing are a very different type than the excuse-a-plenty loser. I have been drawn in by these losers in the past. It is an ugly situation. It is Satan playing on your weaker sympathies.

Matthew 7:17.
"So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit."

Banishment for Serena?

Serena Williams is fascinating to me. You'll see a lot of this 31 year old reigning tennis champ in the news over the next few days and the reason for it is ridiculous.

Because MPAI (Most People Are Idiots), they'll not actually read Rolling Stone's interview with her.  Instead the hand waving and feminist attack machine will blather on and on about how insensitive she is. How dare she say what she said! She's a role model!

Her mindhurt/feelbad crime? She has an opinion and dared express it. From the piece:

We watch the news for a while, and the infamous Steubenville rape case flashes on the TV – two high school football players raped a drunk 16-year-old, while other students watched and texted details of the crime. Serena just shakes her head. "Do you think it was fair, what they got? They did something stupid, but I don't know. I'm not blaming the girl, but if you're a 16-year-old and you're drunk like that, your parents should teach you: Don't take drinks from other people. She's 16, why was she that drunk where she doesn't remember? It could have been much worse. She's lucky. Obviously, I don't know, maybe she wasn't a virgin, but she shouldn't have put herself in that position, unless they slipped her something, then that's different."

She has the same opinion I do so it will be impossible for me to get the vapors from her opining on the situation. I'm a proponent for teaching teens the effects of alcohol, the avoidance of risky behavior, and the necessity of always having a designated thinker with them during all social interactions where drinking is involved.

So we'll hear the cries that she's blaming the victim, she's insensitive, a rape enabler, and the herd will cast her out - Banished!

Though she may be pressured to recant her position, I won't believe it. I don't think Serena cares what the herd has to say, and for that, I adore her.

As a woman, she has a logical perspective and understands that she can not "have it all":

"I've thought it would be cool to have a baby young," says Serena. "You know, be my road dog – like my dogs, they travel the world – but there's always something you have to give up for success. Everything comes at a cost. Just what are you willing to pay for it?"[...]

"I had a panic attack," she says with a shiver. "I was like, 'I have no idea what I'm going to do next.' "
Then there's the whole kids thing. She's only 31, but she can hear the clock ticking.
"I've seriously thought of freezing my eggs – no joke. I've thought about it, but with all the drug testing, if you do that, then you can test positive or something. Maybe I'll check into it again."

She has also gotten over the fact that life is not fair. She's never going to be a size 2:

"I had to get comfortable with knowing that one of my weaknesses was my weight," says Serena, eating a sandwich with no cinnamon-bun chaser. "Especially growing up with Venus, who's so tall and slim and model-like, and me, I'm thick and hips and everything." A teenager comes over for a picture with her, and Serena poses and then continues. "I used to feel like I wanted to be her. I wanted to be thin, but it wasn't me, so I had to learn that I'm going to have larger boobs. I'm going to be bigger, and just enjoy that. So I think it's good for a lot of other girls who are curvy or more bodacious to be confident in themselves."

She's fully aware her mood swings and outburst can negatively affect her game.

There's been an uneasy truce between the many faces of Serena for two years. Serena followed her 2009 U.S. Open outburst with another one in 2011, when she accused a chair judge of being "the one who screwed me last time." (She wasn't.) Serena knows she doesn't play best out-of-control angry and talks frankly about what it has cost her. When we met, she had won the French Open only once, and she blamed near misses on her psyche.
"I've choked a lot there," she says. "I should have won a few years ago. Just not playing well when the pressure is on. I just get too far ahead of myself, and I crumble."

And she's no advocate for big government. She knows first hand what our welfare state and culture of violence has wrought:

Serena's Hannity-like take on the case isn't her only rightward lean. She is baffled by the tax rate in France. "Seventy-five percent doesn't seem legal. Nobody does anything because the government pays you to be broke. So why work?"
Agree or disagree, Serena's no-­safety-net political philosophy is rooted in her Compton childhood, one where there wasn't a lot of money and where gun violence claimed her older sister Yetunde in 2003. Today, Serena mother-hens every expenditure. "I'm an athlete and I'm black, and a lot of black athletes go broke. I do not want to become a statistic, so maybe I overcompensate. But I'm paranoid. Oprah told me a long time ago, 'You sign every check. Never let anyone sign any checks.' "

Press on Serena! Don't cave to the herd! And, go get number 6 at Wimbledon next week - I may even watch this year.

Please, don't make them talk. Just let them look pretty.

A beautiful example of why women should not vote:

Isn't she pretty?

Prior to that Miss Utah was asked:
"In 40% of households, women are the primary earners yet they continue to earn less than men, what does this say about our society?"

Men, you are the leaders of this, it's time to

"Create Education Better"

I understand, there's a lot of pressure involved. Sometimes it's hard to get our brains to work, especially if you don't have maps. Who could forget the darling Miss Teen South Carolina from 2007:

Why can't one fifth of Americans locate the US on a world map?

"Some people out there in our nation don't have maps and I believe that our education such as South Africa and the Iraq everywhere like such as and I believe that they should, our education over here in the US should help the US er should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and Asian counties so we will be able to build up our future for our children."

 

Why do they do this to these young beauties?

End women's suffrage

Do you want to do something valuable as a man? Any MGTOWs out there looking for a way to make positive change? Convince a woman she should support the end of women voting.

Don't start with a liberal, that will get you no where. If you are married, convince your wife. Convince a conservative woman. If you have Christian based conservative beliefs, it is quite easy to support taking the voting rights away from women. Read these links:

Thoughts on Female Suffrage and in Vindication of Women's True Rights:

We acknowledge no inferiority to men. We claim to have no less ability to perform the duties which God has imposed upon us, than they have to perform those imposed upon them. We believe that God has wisely and well adapted each sex to the proper performance of the duties of each. We believe our trusts to be as important and sacred as any that exist. We feel that our present duties fill up the whole measure of our time and abilities; and that they are none but ourselves can perform. Their importance requires us to protest against all efforts to compel us to assume those obligations which cannot be separated from suffrage; but which cannot be performed by us without the sacrifice of the highest interests of our families and of society." [...]

This question of female suffrage is an outcropping of socialistic doctrines, and here we are answered by the many and confused voices of its teachers. Communism is an essential part of their grand scheme. “The family relation, the inviolability of marriage, the home-life,” these, for them, are effete. The new heaven - the Shibboleth - is the State. Let all be made productive for her alone. It is a waste of material and a misappropriation of labor, for each woman to devote herself to the care of her own progeny. Let these, with various other children, be gathered into communities where one or two women may perform the office for many, and let the many devote themselves to other objects. A grand utilitarian age this! We almost go back to Sparta of old; and when our women are allowed to encroach, as theirs were, upon the public and civil life, in the process of Pagan hardening for this Juggernaut state car, then will our women, maidens and wives become as shameless and dissolute as died theirs, Then Sparta fell! [...]

For that which alone distinguishes our civilization above all others is, that it is Christian.  Now, female suffrage, dragging women into that sphere of duties incident to man’s life, must speedily destroy the perfect balance, the nice adjustment, which produces the harmony of the Christian plan. Nor can we destroy any portion of this plan and preserve the rest intact. A common ruin and relapsing into Pagan codes will be the result. Already, as a corollary to these doctrines, we are told that children must be given up to the State to educate. The precise practice of the old Pagans. Christian mothers, are you prepared for this?

The warnings of the authors prove eerily prophetic when we look at this study titled, The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness: 

By many measures the progress of women over recent decades has been extraordinary: the

gender wage gap has partly closed; educational attainment has risen and is now surpassing that of men; women have gained an unprecedented level of control over fertility; technological change in the form of new domestic appliances has freed women from domestic drudgery; and women’s freedoms within both the family and market sphere have expanded. Blau’s 1998 assessment of objective measures of female well-being since 1970 finds that women made enormous gains. Labor force outcomes have improved absolutely, as women’s real wages have risen for all but the least educated women, and relatively, as women’s wages relative to those of men have increased for women of all races and education levels. Concurrently, female labor force participation has risen to record levels both absolutely and relative to that of men (Blau & Kahn, 2007). In turn, better market outcomes for women have likely improved their bargaining position in the home by raising their opportunities outside of marriage.

Given these shifts of rights and bargaining power from men to women over the past 35 years, holding all else equal, we might expect to see a concurrent shift in happiness toward women and away from men. Yet we document in this paper that measures of women’s subjective well-being have fallen both absolutely and relatively to that of men. While the expansion in women’s opportunities has been extensively studied, the concurrent decline in subjective well-being has largely gone unnoted...

In: Why don't women have to vote, Vox Day writes:

1. There is no evidence that women voting has been a positive development in any nation in the world. Should someone like to submit some for once, I'd be happy to examine it. I find it telling that no supporter of women's suffrage has yet been able to respond with anything but naked and unsupportable assertions.

2. There is no correlation between voting and the defense of life, liberty and property rights. The two countries which top the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom, Hong Kong and Singapore, have severe restrictions on voting and political representation. In Hong Kong, only one-third of the legislative council is elected. In Singapore, voting is considered a privilege, not a right. Meanwhile, voting is permitted and even required in most of the countries that make up the bottom ten, including Cuba and Zimbabwe.

3. History shows that the women's vote is inextricably tied to a substantive loss of individual freedom. Only 22 years after women received the right to vote in Switzerland, that country passed an amendment to its constitution giving the federal government the right to pass legislation relating to firearms. Within four years, legislation had passed requiring permits for weapons purchases, permits for bearing arms in public and banning handguns, in direct contradiction of its centuries-old militia tradition, and now the militia system itself is under attack by the SDP, the Swiss Socialist Party.

4. The opponents of women's suffrage have been proven correct with regards to their predictions of a) increased divorce, b) increased abortion, c) sexual promiscuity, d) increased paganism.

5. John Lott has demonstrated a strong correlative link between women's suffrage and increased per capita state expenditures. The average increase in voter turnouts of 26 and 33 percent that occurred 25 and 45 years after the enactment of women's suffrage in a US state mirror the 24 and 31 percent increases in state spending over the same periods of time. He also concluded: "The two consistent results were: allowing female suffrage resulted in a more liberal tilt in congressional voting for both houses, and the extent of that shift was mirrored by the increase in turnout due to female suffrage. The effects are quite large."

And in Defense of sexual predilection he writes:

Consider the fate of Switzerland.  Women were not permitted to vote there until 1971, much later than the rest of Europe.  This is the primary reason why Switzerland retains its sovereignty whereas neither democracy nor national sovereignty presently exists in any of the member states of the European Union, which is ruled by an unaccountable, unelected European Commission.  But even in Switzerland, it only took 28 years post-suffrage for the national constitution to be modified to permit the passage of gun laws, and for extensive restrictions to be placed upon the ownership of firearms.  As for the EU, note that in Italy, even the pretense of popular rule was abandoned in 2011 as the government is headed by an unelected, EU-selected Senator-for-Life.
It is easy to establish an objective metric to consider the effect of female suffrage on a nation without waiting to see how long it takes for female suffrage to be followed by the complete cessation of democracy or the loss of national sovereignty, which I note took as little as 19 years in the case of the German Weimar Republic.  A law is, by definition, a restriction on a human activity.  So, to prove that female suffrage is not inimical to human liberty, all that is necessary is to show that the number of laws being passed post-suffrage is equal to or less than the number of laws being passed pre-suffrage.  Alternatively, one could compare the lifespans of sovereign democracies and/or republics where women are, and are not, permitted to vote.

...and research the subject. In particular, focus on liberty vs. security.

If you convince one woman that she should support ending women's suffrage and arm her with knowledge, imagine the consequences. She will raise daughters with the same thought pattern. In the meantime, they should vote strictly as their husbands vote or their fathers if not married.

How do I know this is effective? I convinced SD that women shouldn't vote several years ago. It took some time (years). However, now she is a champion of the cause and is raising daughters with the same thinking. That really pisses off feminists. Winning the war takes time, invest the time.

Wedding Ducks

We learned of these wedding ducks when we lived in S.Korea. The tradition is as follows:

THE KOREAN WEDDING DUCK

   Selecting the man who will carve a daughter's wedding duck is not an easy task. The man chosen must be a pure and honorable man, as well as a good friend. He must be the fortunate possessor of all of the FIVE FORTUNES. Above all, he must be truly willing and happy to perform the task when asked by his friend. The carving of the traditional wedding duck is a custom not taken lightly, for the man selected to carve the wedding duck shares his spirit and his fortunes with the lucky young couple. The personal traits of the carver (not his ability as a carver) are crucial, because it is his spirit, which enters into the symbol as well as his FIVE FORTUNES which are being shared with the bridal couple.
   The carver may not accept money for his work, but rather must agree to carve the duck for the honor of the task. On the other hand, a prudent man must be careful nor to carve more than one duck in his lifetime, for with each duck he shares his own FIVE FORTUNES, and he cannot "share his fortunes" away. This may explain the crudeness and folk quality of some of the carvings. The FIVE FORTUNES of the carver are: 1. He must be rich, 2. He must be perfectly healthy, 3. Among his family (including his relatives) there must have been no divorces, 4. He has to have a "good wife" and 5. He must have many sons.
   The significance of the sons is in keeping with the Confucian emphasis on family strength and continuity, but this FORTUNE carries an additional condition. For a man to have five children, but have only two watching him when he dies, means he can count only two children as his real children. He cannot count the others. To have all his children watch him die is part of the FIFTH FORTUNE. The duck-maker applies his whole spirit and energy to his task. While working with his knife, he prays in his heart that, generous portions of true happiness, luck and good fortune will bring peace, prosperity and many children (just as the duck has many eggs) to the bride and groom.
A daughter's wedding is a time of festivities whether the wedding occurs in Mexico, the United States, Europe or the Orient. Each country has its own customs, which make it a special time for the entire family. These times are no less exciting in Korea than in other countries. In Korea, though, a family prepares for this day from early childhood, for this is a special day in the daughter's life.
   When it is time for the wedding, the duck must be wrapped with different colors of cloths (except the neck of the duck) and it is carried to the ceremony. The duck is placed on the table as soon as the daughter arrives. When the ceremony is over, the bride and groom bow to the groom's mother and father two and a half times. Then the groom's mother throws the duck to the apron of the bride. If the girl catches the duck, she, according to the tradition, will have a boy as the first child. If she missed, the first child will be a girl.
   Next, the groom's mother throws several handfuls of jujubes to the outspread apron of the bride. These are good for the health and are used as a medicine. It symbolizes a healthy future. Finally, the mother of the groom throws some chestnuts to the bride. These are hard and strong and are a symbol of the strong sons to be born. The quantity caught is an omen of good health and many sons.
   The duck is carried to the new home of the bridal pair and is displayed where they can easily see it. If the couple quarrels, one will point to the duck, which reminds them of the peaceful wedding, and will stop fighting.
   The duck will be handed down from mother to daughter through the generations. The wedding duck symbolizes three things: 1. Peace, 2. Many children, and 3. No separations.

I've also heard it told that if the marriage is happy the ducks will remain displayed facing each other, if the marriage is enduring hardships, the ducks will be displayed tail to tail. The blue and red strings tied around the female duck's bill symbolize her submission. It seems the ridiculous concept of mutual submission has affected the duck making tradition as RLB and my ducks came with strings tied around both bills.

While they are cute keepsakes of our time spent in Korea, leave it to the Americans to make light of the tradition. On any given day, this is how you'll find our ducks displayed, courtesy of RLB:

Foresight

Thirty years ago I was the same age as my youngest daughter. My father was the same age as I am now. It was the height of federal government lending to farmers. Money was almost free. There was a catch. You had to get big. The money was not available for small farmers. Land prices rose. Farm implement dealers sprung up everywhere.

My father wouldn't take the money. He didn't believe he could make it work as a larger farm. Money for small farmers was tight. My parents couldn't even get a credit card for much of my childhood. They had claimed bankruptcy earlier in their marriage and lost one farm. The first time around they had their first baby hospitalized and the medical bills ate them up. This was their second go at it. He had a much more conservative attitude about farming this time.

It was frustrating to watch the local farmers buy more land and get new machinery. Swimming pools and satellite dishes started springing up on all those farms as well. New boats and cabins on the lake were the norm for these farmers. A bad year just meant you went back to the bank and borrowed more money. It should come as a surprise to no one that successful farming requires discipline and foresight. There is little discipline in a farmer that can keep borrowing money.

As is wont to happen, bubbles crash. Milk prices dropped. Actually, they fell off a cliff. Things got tough for us, but things got ugly for the big farmers. The payments caught up to them and bankruptcies came in a hurry. My parents managed to sell their farm over time to their youngest son (not me). It was a very fair price and a fair deal for my brother. Now my parents are in their 70s and can afford to buy a brand new $40k car. They travel when and where they want to. They see their grandchildren all the time. Meanwhile their peers that went big on the farm loans are no where close to the same lifestyle.

There are a couple of things to take from this, but the biggest is for men to understand that politicians and banksters don't have your best interests at heart. Please read The Return of the Great Depression. If you understand TPTB's motivations, you have a better chance of surviving.

Thank you Matt Birk

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness;
Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!

Isaiah 5:20

 "Thank you, Planned Parenthood. God bless you. God bless America." - Barack Obama

God Bless you?

How?

The irony of our first black president saying these words when these were the words spoken by the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger:

"[We should] apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring." - Woman and the New Race, ch. 6

"Article 1. The purpose of the American Baby Code shall be to provide for a better distribution of babies… and to protect society against the propagation and increase of the unfit.
Article 4. No woman shall have the legal right to bear a child, and no man shall have the right to become a father, without a permit…
Article 6. No permit for parenthood shall be valid for more than one birth." - “Plan for Peace” from Birth Control Review (April 1932, pp. 107-108)

"We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities.  The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members." - Woman, Morality, and Birth Control. New York: New York Publishing Company, 1922. Page 12.

Quotes taken from Life News.

Then there's this guy:

Photo from CBSsports.com

The Baltimore Ravens rolled into D.C. on Wednesday and hung out with President Obama in celebration of their Super Bowl victory. Not everyone was able to make it -- Cary Williams skipped for Eagles training camp -- but one name really stood out: Matt Birk.
That's because the former Ravens center, who announced his retirement in February, disagrees with a political stance taken by the President.

"I wasn't there," Birk said Thursday on KFAN-AM in Baltimore. "I would say this -- I would say that I have great respect for the office of the presidency, but about five or six weeks ago, our president made a comment in a speech and he said, 'God bless Planned Parenthood.'
"Planned Parenthood performs about 330,000 abortions a year. I am Catholic. I am active in the pro-life movement, and I just felt like I couldn't deal with that. I couldn't endorse that in any way."

Makes my heart smile

An excellent wife, who can find?
For her worth is far above jewels.

Proverbs 31:10

Same goes for hairdressers. 

I drive an hour to mine. I have sifted through many and found them lacking. The excellent one I found moved her shop an hour away to work close to her new home with her husband. So once every five weeks I make the trip. 

A side note, not related to this post, my seeking out the best hairdresser has little to do with me and a lot to do with RLB. He asked me several years ago to keep my hair platinum blond. I told him how much it would cost to maintain and how tricky this hair color can be, that a very skilled stylist would be needed along with some top notch product to maintain the health of my hair. It was all an investment he has happily made. 

I've been going to her for a long time but somehow had never asked her how she met her husband. I did today and her story just made me beam. See if you can identify the solid evidence of game theory. 

(A note to all doubters that good women exist out there, you are sadly mistaken. They most certainly do. As will be clear in this story, good men attract good women.) 

J had gotten a young woman pregnant and was now a father with visitation. M was a single, Christian, 25 year old, successful hairdresser who owned her own home in a small town. A friend of M's who was married with a six year old boy invited her to her son's T-Ball game. J's son was on this T-Ball team and J was the coach. M's friend had in mind to introduce the two of them. M was hesitant: "I'm going to watch T-Ball, not meet a man." M's friend was persistent. M bought a new outfit and went on her way to the T-Ball game and found coach J quite attractive. They all went out for dinner after (J brought backup qualifiers, a friend and his fiancee). The next day J asked M's friend for M's phone number.  M said, "I've not missed a T-Ball game since." 

M and J lived over an hour away from each other and were getting to know each other long distance by phone for the most part. M said, "You want to know how I knew he was a great guy? I'd ask if he'd like to go do something on any particular weekend, and, instead of saying 'no, I've got my kid...,'  he'd say, 'Nope, I get to go get little man that weekend, we'll have to postpone until the next weekend.'" 

When M first moved her business down to the city they live near, she was working out of a commercial space. She had her first baby at the end of last year. We'd have long conversations about her being a stay at home mom. I remember earlier this year saying to RLB, "This is just ridiculous, I'm talking with the best hairdresser I've ever had about giving up her job so she can stay home with her baby. Even to my own detriment I can't help myself!" 

J is a small business owner, a lumberjack of sorts, he runs a tree service business. For a long while he waited tables on the weekends as well. They were a young, newly married couple, who now have full custody of J's son, and they were struggling to make ends meet. Giving up her income would be a challenge. 

For the first few months, M brought their baby to work with her. But month after month it wore on her. This was no place for a baby. A baby needs to be in her home. Instead of giving up all of her clientele, M and J got to work and transformed a room in their home to be her workspace. 

She told me today, "After my first client left my home, I couldn't stop smiling. This is how it should be. My baby in her own home, with me. Napping in her own crib. I schedule my clients around her needs and I'm home. I can keep the house clean and meals made and maintain my clientele."

They live in the neighborhood he grew up in, his parents just a couple of blocks away. I teased her today about what a slice of American pie they have in this quaint little town. 

It's beautiful to see. The early makings of a wholesome family who has their priorities straight. God Bless them!

Because it's our 18th Anniversary and because it's my blog:

“My beloved responded and said to me,
‘Arise, my darling, my beautiful one,
And come along.

 ‘For behold, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone.

 ‘The flowers have already appeared in the land;
The time has arrived for pruning the vines,
And the voice of the turtledove has been heard in our land.

‘The fig tree has ripened its figs,
And the vines in blossom have given forth their fragrance.
Arise, my darling, my beautiful one,
And come along!’”

-Song of Solomon 2:10-13

 June 3, 1995

It wasn't long after meeting you that I knew. I knew I wanted to marry you. You challenged me, you excited me, you were fun and you were passionate. You made me laugh, you made me cry, 

and then you made me whole. 

 

You asked me to come along with you and I am so thankful I did. I could never have dreamed that day that we'd have lived what we have or where we have. And here I am today, eighteen years later, still challenged, still excited, still in awe of your passion. Still laughing...still crying - tears of joy. 
Still whole. 

 And as much as I want this to be our song: 

I know, it will always be this song: 

I need you more than a sailor needs a breeze, I need you more than an Eskimo freeze.   

I love you RLB. Happy 18th!