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It seems Anna T yearns for the life of the Ingalls


YPestis

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Anna T's latest post talks about her frugal wishes. The last item caught me off guard:

ccostello.blogspot.com/2013/09/some-frugal-i-wishes.html

I wish we lived at a time and place where a person could walk through an empty area, pick a piece of land, and build a house there without worrying about permits, building regulations, or paying off a mortgage. So many people could do very well if they were just given a plot of land and a pair of hands. Sometimes I watch historical films with adorable huts in the middle of a forest, for instance, and think to myself, "these people might have had no plumbing - but they had no mortgage to pay off, either!"

Now, Anna has always been one of the more thoughtful fundies, certainly better informed than the Duggars and not a misogynist as SSM and Lori. I do appreciate her focus on green living but the above comment seems jarring. She's a Russian-born Israeli so she probably doesn't have the same perspective about "settling" as maybe the Little House book reader that I was.

First off, I thought it was really childish and/or wishful thinking that a person could just walk up to a patch of land and say 'it's mine". Prior to the discovery of the New World, when was this really feasible most places? "Empty" chunks of land was usually owned by a king or lord. Farmers may own pieces of land but that was always bought or rented. With the settling of the Americas, early settlers were allowed to claim desirable lands, but again, it wasn't empty, we just kicked the Indians out and declared it ours'. Land is a form of wealth. The "taking" of a piece of land is like the taking of money. Her "wish" that she could be given a piece of (desirable) land is the same as my wish of winning the lottery (or stealing someone else' wealth).

Second, mortgages may suck, and Anna may think living without indoor plumbing is preferable to paying for a mortgage, but life that early American settlers lived was extremely harsh. Does she realize there's a difference between not having indoor plumbing and electricity and living like Laura Ingalls? I feel like Anna T is channeling the Vision Forum people who think the good ol' days were so wonderful because all women had to do was have tea parties and knit dollies. I don't think I want to spend an entire day of my week washing clothing by hand, another day churning butter (by hand), making every scrap of item I own (by hand), walking miles to the nearest neighbor.

And those pesky permits and regulations? Maybe Anna doesn't realize that permits and regulations were put in place precisely because someone (and probably a bunch of someone) died because there were not rules. The "cute hut" she sees in documentaries tended to hold a myriad of dangerous animals and disease. Her dream of living in an unlicensed home, built with no inspectors may mean unsanitary drinking water, disease ridden plants and collapsible houses. Maybe she'd appreciate regulations and inspectors if she suffered three bouts of malaria like my dad.

It irks me when people who grew up with clean drinking water and electricity talk about how "quaint" the good ol' days were. My parents grew up in a third world country. They knew farmers who tilled on land, who lived in "quaint" huts and didn't have mortgages. They would be the first ones to laugh at Anna's idea of being a stay-at-home-mom or the Botkin's fantasy of having dainty tea parties. No, children were helping to plant rice paddies from about age 8, and every able bodied person worked until they were too old to work. Babies were cared for by 5 year olds and grandparents too old to work for physical labor. Work was hard, life was short, and no one knitted dollies.

If money is such a concern for Anna, maybe she should consider getting a part time job (and keep the indoor plumbing).

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Even the Ingalls couldn't just do something like that. They had to leave one house because it was legally part of Indian Territory in Kansas, abandoned another due to dire poverty which forced them into the town of Burr Oak, Iowa, and ended up settling in De Smet, in town, because they couldn't make a living off the claim. Anna's dreaming.

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I live right up the road from where the Ingalls' homesteaded! The town that Laura and Manly started out in was razed by a tornado about 20 years ago or so. You can buy empty lots there for about 50 bucks. She can go on and start that homestead RIGHT NOW! What's stopping her?

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The Little House books don't talk about the babies who died, the people who starved to death during the long winter, the chronic health problems probably caused by malnutrition in early childhood that plagued Carrie and Grace for the rest of their lives, the fact that Manly (Almanzo in the books) was a semi-invalid after his bout with diptheria. Oh, good times, for sure, Anna.

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While it is true that Charles Ingalls did pick out his patch of land in South Dakota because he was there first it is totally false that he didn't have to do any paperwork for it. He had to file a claim. It talks about that in "By the Shores of Silver Lake."

The official government record. Not breaking the link because it is the Bureau of Land Management. I hope it works. I've never linked directly to this before.

http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/details/p ... TabIndex=1

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Life was so tough back then! Does she know how many things people HAD to make with their own hands? We don't have those skills anymore, because we don't need them.

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Back in the Ingalls's day the average life expectancy was 45, infant and child mortality rate was sky high, health insurance, Social Security, FDIC was unheard of, the economy was lazzi faire capitalism, robber barons like Carnegie, Morgan, and Rockefeller stepped on the working class and had no regard for safety, and Reconstruction was still going on. Yep the 1800s were great!

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While it is true that Charles Ingalls did pick out his patch of land in South Dakota because he was there first it is totally false that he didn't have to do any paperwork for it. He had to file a claim. It talks about that in "By the Shores of Silver Lake."

The official government record. Not breaking the link because it is the Bureau of Land Management. I hope it works. I've never linked directly to this before.

http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/details/p ... TabIndex=1

Neat find, Snafblatt!

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Even the Ingalls couldn't just do something like that. They had to leave one house because it was legally part of Indian Territory in Kansas, abandoned another due to dire poverty which forced them into the town of Burr Oak, Iowa, and ended up settling in De Smet, in town, because they couldn't make a living off the claim. Anna's dreaming.

Yes, this! Claim-jumping wasn't a crime restricted to gold country. You had to sign on the dotted line, and you had to prove up your claim,* and as the Ingallses found out, possession was not nine-tenths of the law.

*And this involved a hell of a lot of hard work. The last homesteader in the United States proved up his claim in the '70s in Alaska. You had to put a house on your land, and it had to be a livable house. You had to actually live in it to prove that you were working the land in some fashion. This without any utilities besides those you produced for yourself and often without road access. Unsurprisingly, the Last Homesteader moved into town when he got older.

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I remember in "The Long Winter" a part that described Pa having to shovel snow of Mary and Laura in the morning because it had come through the roof over night while the slept in their bed. I'm glad my dad never had to shovel snow off of twin1 and I on cold winter mornings.

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Neat find, Snafblatt!

Several years ago I visited the National Archives, and they had this document in a glass case. When I first looked at it, I didn't see Charles Ingalls' name right away, and I thought, 'Oh, this is the sort of document Laura's father must have gotten when he went to the land office when they were living on Silver Lake'--and then I saw his name. Luckily no one else was in the immediate vicinity, because I started crying. :cry:

Anna is clearly in la-la land.

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While it is true that Charles Ingalls did pick out his patch of land in South Dakota because he was there first it is totally false that he didn't have to do any paperwork for it. He had to file a claim. It talks about that in "By the Shores of Silver Lake."

The official government record. Not breaking the link because it is the Bureau of Land Management. I hope it works. I've never linked directly to this before.

http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/details/p ... TabIndex=1

He had to file a claim and then had to live on and work that land for 5 years to "prove" up the claim.

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I can't see Anna T. having the energy to do all the chores Laura Ingalls and her family had to do to survive! Planting/harvesting, preserving food, washing clothes & dishes without running water, taking care of animals, making candles, cooking with only fire (and sometimes a cast iron stove if you were lucky), sewing your own clothing by hand, etc. It may sound romantic and fun on paper but it was freaking hard. Anna T. was exhausted from just working part time outside her home. If she was living the quaint life she imagines she wouldn't be able to nap or have the quiet time she loves. She would be working her butt off from sunrise to sundown. She wouldn't have time to worry about being lady like, although Ma Ingalls tried! Women on the frontier had to work just as hard as the men and often did "men's work" to help their family. Foolish woman.

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I love the Laura Ingalls Wilder series. It is one of my guilty pleasures and I still read the series every year. That being said, the life of a woman in that era was pure hell. It was work 24/7. She had a full day's work whether or not her husband did, even in the winter. Those quaint little houses were tiny, one room and freezing during the winter. Eating bread and potatoes for most meals, with a little salt pork on a good day, would get boring after awhile. There are no vacations or breaks of any kind. The most you got was to rest on Sunday after church, which meant the men just fed the animals and the women only had to cook on a wood burning stove. Not my idea of happiness. I look at it this way, if the old ways were so awesome, why was Ma Ingalls so happy when Pa bought her the sewing machine? Because sewing the family clothes, sheets and blankets by hand suck monkey balls.

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Anna T who is exhausted by her life with two kids and all the usual modern conveniences? She'd have starved by the end of the month.

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I love the Laura Ingalls Wilder series. It is one of my guilty pleasures and I still read the series every year. That being said, the life of a woman in that era was pure hell. It was work 24/7. She had a full day's work whether or not her husband did, even in the winter. Those quaint little houses were tiny, one room and freezing during the winter. Eating bread and potatoes for most meals, with a little salt pork on a good day, would get boring after awhile. There are no vacations or breaks of any kind. The most you got was to rest on Sunday after church, which meant the men just fed the animals and the women only had to cook on a wood burning stove. Not my idea of happiness. I look at it this way, if the old ways were so awesome, why was Ma Ingalls so happy when Pa bought her the sewing machine? Because sewing the family clothes, sheets and blankets by hand suck monkey balls.

Silly women. I'm sure they'd be horrified just by the fact that if you were working class in the 1800s you were lucky to have more than 3 changes of clothes. 1 new dress a year!

Little House on the Prairie inspired me to try and make butter by hand when I was 10, and it was fucking exhausting. So much work for so little butter!

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Anna T who is exhausted by her life with two kids and all the usual modern conveniences? She'd have starved by the end of the month.

Anybody who is enamored by the romantic days of rugged farmers living the independent life off the grid ought to read "The Sad Irons" by Robert A. Caro.

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The note in her recent posts seem to point to some financial stresses about money. Understandable in our modern world. However, it's stupid to start romanticizing the past. It's not like the early settlers, farmers, even the comfortably well, didn't have money issues. Back in the "good old days", financial stability was even more difficult to come by, and those that fall out of the money zone are in real danger of starving living in squalor. The problem, and this is not just Anna, is that fundies admire so much of "the past" that they take for granted what they currently have.

The fact that Anna has a constant supply of food that is safe and saves her time (i.e no grinding her own flour or churning her own butter) already puts her ahead of the hut dwellers she so romanticizes. It's the same ignorance shown by those ridiculous tea parties that VF puts up, as if women back then spent their days having tea and chatting nicely with each other.

I guess this romanticizing of the past gets to me because as a child, I would visit my grandparent's farm in China and had to put up with no heat in the winter, air conditioner in the sweltering summer, indoor plumbing, drivable roads, and a place that didn't smell like sewage, and my grandparents were considered pretty well off back then....

I think if we dropped Anna (and certain other fundies) off in the middle of a scrap of land and let them fend for themselves, they'd be clamoring to go home by week's end. Of course, Anna will have already collapsed in exhaustion after the first day of doing the washing.....

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The farming life doesn't free you from the cash economy unless you go a long way down, down to where people used wooden plows and wove their own cloth after shearing their own sheep and retting their own flax. At that level you wear shoes made from tree bark and your teeth are generally gone by the time you're sixty. The mountain man/hardy frontiersman life depended on cash--and on the railroads, and the telegraph, and organized law enforcement and banks. Most all of those hardy frontier guns, sunbonnets, and clean-cut button-up shirts came out of the Sears, Roebuck catalog.* But, let me guess, Christianist history books don't teach that, do they? :evil-eye:

*As far as clothing goes, they may have made most of their own, but they got the cloth from shops and catalog companies.

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I think what's so depressing about these people is that the things they idolize about the past are things they could never achieve.

They seem so exhausted by modern life, and yearn for a ~simpler time~, but they imagine themselves as the very, very wealthy of that time.

It might have been nice to have a wet nurse, and servants, and a governess, and farm hands etc., because then you really could focus on you know, having tea and shit. In terms of their current economic status, these people would have been working their asses off in a way they can't even fathom. It's depressing.

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Ah, yes it seems to be such a lovely life where one bad storm, too much rain or a drought during the summer meant no food in the barns = family and farm animals will starve. There were no foodbanks to save people in the 1800's. And Anna T wouldn't have been able to take a nap every afternoon.

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Ah, yes it seems to be such a lovely life where one bad storm, too much rain or a drought during the summer meant no food in the barns = family and farm animals will starve. There were no foodbanks to save people in the 1800's. And Anna T wouldn't have been able to take a nap every afternoon.

I asked my late MIL, a farm kid from Oregon during the Depression, what the grown-ups did on Sunday after church, and she said, "Slept." Because farmers were always sleep deprived, and on Sunday the Puritan work ethic relaxed just enough to let them admit it.

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She needs to spend time with Stephanie/Mountain Mama. I doubt Anna would last a week with her. Despite her quirks, Stephanie works hard and admits it without trying to glamorize her lifestyle.

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Silly women. I'm sure they'd be horrified just by the fact that if you were working class in the 1800s you were lucky to have more than 3 changes of clothes. 1 new dress a year!

Little House on the Prairie inspired me to try and make butter by hand when I was 10, and it was fucking exhausting. So much work for so little butter!

OH MY HEAVENS!! Me too! I think around the same age. I filled a mason jar with cream and shook it for hours. I also made sourdough bread inspired by the books

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