Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >Your assurance that all can be fit through mindful daily homestead activity
> reminds me of the "how to be a good Evangelical Protestant wife" books I
> read in my dark distant past.  All the presumably fit authors advised that
> nothing more than stretching while vacuuming the curtains and daily sweeping
> the porch would maintain a trim waistline.

Cathy, I've caught a lot of flack from this list over thim because of my 
advocacy of doing things by hand rather than by machine.  One of my main 
reasons 
for advocating that is that it is just about impossible to get much out of 
shape when you engage in manual labor on a regular basis.  Comparing it to a 
fastidious housewife vacuuming the carpet and dusting the drapes is 
ludicrious.

It seems as if people, even homesteaders who ought to know better, have a 
disposition to want earnestly to believe that it isn't so.  Failing that, 
they 
want to believe that there are just a few odd and rare people who can do it 
and 
the rest are excused because of their genetic makeup or some extremely rare 
disease (or seven) that struck them in their prime unawares.

What I'd say is that whatever dispositions and determinants we were born with 
are trifles compared to how we choose to live.  The sort of 'made by hand' 
life I am talking about has a great number of benefits.  If you (generic) 
don't 
want those benefits, if those benefits aren't terribly important to you, 
don't 
live like that.  It's that simple.

Likewise if you (generic) are convinced that genes, bad luck, the stars, 
alien implants (and little odds which) prevent you from a certain ifestyle, 
accustom yourself to doing without the results of that lifestyle.

As for me, I think it has little to do with "blaming" or such that ususally 
enters the discussion.  Rather it's a matter of you do A  to get the results 
of 
A and B to get the results of B and C to get the results of C.  Choose the 
results you want, and then choose the things that get you there.


James