Blog Stats and Betty Friedan

I actually managed to stay off the computer nearly all weekend (apart from helping Brennan with a paper a little on Saturday.)  I'm shocked at how hard it's been to let go of the computer - the constant contact of email, the opportunity to satisfy curiosity in an instant with google, and just having something to do.  It's something I reach for without thinking when I have a free minute, like smoking.  I've never smoked, not even once, but you get what I mean.

Do you know about blog stats?  I'm totally new at this, and I thought it was really interesting.  Apparently, my computer, or my blog or whatever, tracks you.  Yes, you.  It knows what internet service you use and what country you live in.  I have 2 readers in the Middle East, and 15 in France.  Fifteen.  I have to assume those are Roddy friends, in which case "Hi Camille, Romane, Sophie & Jeanne!!"  I'm sure I don't know anyone in the Middle East.  It's fun to know people in other countries are reading this.  Can I come visit?

Kind of scary that my computer knows all this though, isn't it?  It has these little charts showing - hour by hour, I swear - how many people are reading the blog.  And they can't all be just family!  I topped 1,000 pageviews tonight.  Seriously?  The numbers keep changing and I can't quite figure out how.  Does it do the same when I read a blog?  I'm sure it does.  Big Brother is just around the corner and we're all happily blogging away, posting on Facebook, friending and commenting and toasting our cookies - where are we headed?!

I'm starting to look ahead to the end of this project.  It'll be next Sunday at 3:00.  When the last Civil War battle is over and the public leaves, I will dive into my tent and re-emerge in jeans.  Woo-hoo, no more corset!  I have a plan for eating my way around the world every day next week in a glorious ethnic food-fest.  But I know I'll miss parts of this project too: When I come downstairs in the morning and light the woodstove, is when I feel the most immersed in the 1800's, and is such a peaceful start to my day.  Wearing a dress everywhere is cumbersome, but also really, well, feminine.  I like pretty cotton handkerchiefs and oil lamps and the smell of candle wax, and Willow Ware dishes and even meat pie.

I also really like cooking on the wood stove.  Its' a bit tricky, and I get such a feeling of accomplishment pulling off meals as good as those I could make on my modern stove.  I like having mastered the fine art of feeding the fire.  I've learned a lot in a few weeks!

The evenings are the nicest part of the day.  (After I arrive back home from driving kids around to activities, which is not only totally modern, but pretty uncomfortable in my clothes.)  The house glows, the edges are softened.  We've finally mastered evening lighting: a candle in the bathroom, one in the kitchen, and several scattered around the livingroom to provide a balanced light.  The first night we all gathered in the livingroom, we put all the lights on the coffee table, and then huddled up next to them, trying to read our books.  The rest of the room was dark, and the seating was uncomfortable.  But tonight my kids are in the livingroom playing piano and violin and apparently they can see okay, because they're hitting the right notes.

When we leave the house in the evening we have to remember to leave a candle and matches by the back door.  In the evening as we all head up to bed, everyone takes a candle lantern or a candlestick, and slowly the lights are all extinguished.  I was a bit worried about giving the kids candles, but I think they've all gotten used to them at Civil War events already.  I love the way the rooms look by candlelight.  I feel a bit like a character in a movie taking a bath by candlelight, and my usually boring bedroom glows with even one small candle.  I hope we'll continue to have some candlelit evenings in the modern age.

I even like doing the laundry this way.  (Not that I'll likely continue.)  The clothes smell fresh and clean, but without that perfume-y, chemical smell they normally have.  It's actually very satisfying work.  I think it's funny that we've given up aerobic clothes-washing in favor of performing the exact same motions in a gym stuck in front of a tv screen.  I would so much rather build my muscles by being out in my yard doing something useful!

After college, I read Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique.  It wasn't at all the bra-burning manifesto I expected it to be.  From Wikipedia: "For her 15th college reunion in 1957, Friedan conducted a survey of college graduates, focusing on their education, their subsequent experiences and satisfaction with their current lives. She started publishing articles about what she called 'the problem that has no name'."  Friedan writes: "The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning [that is, a longing] that women suffered in the middle of the 20th century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries … she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — 'Is this all?"

I can totally relate.  If all my life consisted of was making beds and folding laundry, I'd be hitting the valium too.  But doing those chores in the 1800's is somehow different.  There's a greater sense of accomplishment in turning out a load of laundry or a well-cooked meal because it's difficult, and absolutely necessary.  There are no safety nets in the 1800's.  If I don't master these chores, my family will starve in filth.  And there have been a few times we've eaten dinner pretty late because of my poor planning.  If (when, because it happens) I don't manage to get dinner on the table in 2012, there's always the pizza place, and we're never more than an hour away from clean underwear.  Because my 1800's housewife job is difficult and critical to the health and well-being of my family, I feel valued.  I don't think Ma Ingalls, my current heroine, had any angst about her role in life, like Betty Friedan's friends, (though she may well have had issues with Pa over having to live in a hole in the creek bank!)

Autumn