70 Years of Gallup Polls: Americans Still Christian, Still Attend Church As Much As They Did In The 40s and 50s

Here is a good example of how the media is influencing what we think, without us even realizing it. All over the net, ministry-consultant websites quote the common belief that "church attendance is down" and "America is post-Christian".  Yet, study after study shows that Americans overall are still faithful to Jesus Christ, and still believe their religion is most important to their lives.

Gallup results in 2013:

"Americans are no less likely to report having attended church in the past seven days today than they were in 1940 and 1950 -- albeit with many fluctuations since that time, including higher reports in the mid-1950s to the early 1960s. Americans' self-reports of the importance of religion are also no lower than at points in previous decades. "

The Pew Research Center has not been tracking this long enough to be able to make wise comparisons with our fathers' and grandfathers' generations, but the Pew survey in 2014 mirrors Gallup's 2013 & 2014 findings.

Despite this, Pew points at their 2007 results to claim that Americans are "becoming less religious". I think the Gallup research shows that statement to be somewhat an example of interpretive bias: looking at the same numbers and finding a different result. While Pew did have some differences between 2007 and 2014, the Gallup data points over the years show the futility of using two recent years to predict trends reliably.

70% of Pew's 2014 respondents continue to confess Christ as their Savior, while  Gallup found 75% of Americans are Christians in 2014, with 50% being Protestant. Gallup noted here, too,  that this is mostly unchanged over the past 70 years:

"In the 1950s, Gallup surveys showed that up to 71% of Americans identified as Protestant, and small percentages had no religious identity. Then, as now, however, well more than 90% of Americans who express a religious preference identify themselves as Christians."

Pew has an interesting survey that also shows the vast majority of Christians of all denominations are involved with their congregation. While the title proclaims, accurately, that "Church Involvement Varies Widely Among US Christians", the most pronounced variation is between high involvement and medium involvement. Only 12% overall "seldom" attend or are not currently members. Dark blue is "high involvement", light blue is "medium involvement":

 "Those who are members of a congregation, attend religious services at least weekly and attend a prayer or scripture group weekly or monthly are categorized as having a “high” level of congregational involvement, while those who are not members of a congregation and who seldom or never attend religious services and small group prayer or scripture-reading groups are in the “low” category. All other respondents are categorized as having a “medium” level of congregational involvement.
Among U.S. adults who are Christian, three-in-ten have a high level of congregational involvement, while 58% have a medium level and 12% fall into the low category. "

Please always dig into the actual results on any studies like these. Look past the headlines and past the data-point blurbs to see the facts for yourself. You will usually find that the real American world is still alive and well, despite the sensation and insanity reported by the news or pushed by politicians and activists.

Christians are standing firm against the forces that want to deceive us and destroy our faith. Remember this in your own personal battles: you are not alone when you stand up for Jesus. You are surrounded not only by the "great cloud of witnesses" Peter told us about, but also by the faithful men and women and children of America today.

Be of good cheer! When it comes to the Church in America, be heartened: souls are still being won to Christ Jesus, and most of us are still worshiping together on Sundays in the church building. Let us pray for each other and run with patience this marathon that God has set before us!

A Little Fact About Social Security....

If you invested $360 a month starting at age 20 at 6% compound interest, by the time you are 65, you will have $1,000,000. 

In the same way, if you have paid in $180 a month in FICA tax for your Social Security (which your employer matches for a total of $360), starting at age 20, by the time you are 65, you could draw $1,000 a month for 83 years before the government had paid you a similar amount. 

None of us are going to get back anything like what we would have if our FICA had been invested where Congress couldn't steal it. Don't let any politician get away with claiming otherwise: Congress needs to stop spending our retirement savings that we have been paying in all of our lives.

I am a Christian and I stand with Chick-Fil-A

I have been commenting on a couple of blogs that the Chick-Fil-A matter has gone far past "Freedom of Speech" and is now a "Freedom of Religion" issue.  Red Stick Rant (whom we are delighted to have back in the world of active blogging after a bit of a hiatus) put it very bluntly, asking: "Should we make them sew on little yellow crosses?"  Harsh?  I wonder. The vitriol being bandied about in too-high places is excessively vicious for the subject. Is this how pograms start - with politicians & "thought-leaders" using any excuse to scapegoat people who are faithful to God?

Here's my comment from Pundit & Pundette's great round up article on the matter:

[Worse than the conservative intellectualizing about Dan Cathy's right to believe in traditional & Christian morality] is the desire to make this about "freedom of speech" instead of "Freedom of Religion", which it absolutely is: this is persecution. These mayors who are declaring against Chick-Fil-A are persecuting Christians in their capacity as agents of government. The refusal of Obama to issue insurance waivers on religious grounds is also direct and blatant persecution. Persecution includes - and usually begins with - monetary penalties, proscribed locations, withholding of permits solely because of religion. The whole reason that Freedom of Religion is our First Freedom is because the American Colonies were tired of the abuse by governments against Christian denominations that didn't fall in line with whomever held political power at the moment. Even Texas' own Declaration of Independence from Mexico gave tyranny against their free worship of Almighty God as cause.

We need not be mean or unChristian in our response, but we must stand up for Christ however we can as individuals when our brothers and sisters are being persecuted, reviled and mobbed.  This time it is easy: we just eat chicken, and keep patronizing Chick-Fil-A this whole year.

But if we ignore this one, what is next? If we do not, who will stand up for us when our time comes?

Barbarian Days: A Family Doctor's Home in the 1920s & 1930s (the Home of Author Robert E Howard)

A couple of weeks ago, we went to Cross Plains, Texas, and toured the Robert E Howard home as part of their "Barbarian Days Festival".  Howard's father was Dr. Isaac M. Howard. This simple frame house served as the family home, and, also, sometimes, doubled as Dr Howard's office where patients were seen. The home was continually in use as a place to live for various families from the time Dr Howard sold it until Cross Plains' Operation Pride recovered it for preservation in 1989.

 Since that time, they have worked to furnish it with period furnishings and house those artifacts they can obtain (such as the camel inkwell that stood on Howard's desk - a gift from Cecil Lotief, local Cross Plains  dry goods merchant - and first Texas legislator who had been born in Lebanon. He was first elected in 1932). Other furnishings are close copies of items either known to have been there, or true to the period.  Below is a photo of Bob Howard in front of this house, circa 1925.

My main interest was that I enjoy touring simple historical homes: the kind of house in which ordinary citizens lived a hundred years ago. In this case, the home of an ordinary small-town family physician. During that epoch in American history, there were similarities among all Americans of frugality, economy of space and furnishings, and natural closeness of proximity to household members and neighbors, that is readily apparent when we walk through such a home and consider how life would be lived in it.

 By today's standards, the author's cell-like bedroom/study (below) is tiny, cramped, and simple. But by the standards of the day (continuing even up into the 1970s in most of the country), it was probably much like the rooms of Howard's own unmarried peers. The room offered simple comfort, privacy, a bright and airy place in which to write and attend to the voluminous correspondence an author would keep up in that era when postcards and letters would be mailed daily for the same purposes email and messaging would serve today. 

The bare bulb was a common feature of most homes until new homes built in the prosperous 1950s and 60s popularized inexpensive, built-in light fixtures. My grandmother's house had several while I was growing up.  Our current house still had bare bulbs in the mid-1940s during WWII, when Rita's family first moved here, and it was the first time they had electricity. This house at that time had 4 rooms - and her family rented one of them out to a soldier and his wife, who kept all their household goods in that one small bedroom, brought pots out to cook and went back into their room to eat their meals! This gives an idea of how economically indoor space was used during these earlier eras.

 Porches were converted into bedrooms more often than not - and existing windows and doors were just left intact. During pre-electric times, such windows and doors still had use for ventilation and light, just like the transoms found above interior doors in so many old homes. If not needed to carry daylight and breezes, these unused windows and doors were often covered permanently with a heavy curtain or drape to block light and drafts, and furniture would be placed in front of it as though it were a solid wall.

My mother's house, of similar or slightly earlier vintage as this one, has two such converted porches: one very similar to this one resulted in her kitchen having a window-to-nowhere (well, technically, a window-into-the-next-room). Her kitchen also has another window that faces into the remaining screened "sleeping porch" that could have been, if needed, similarly converted. The other converted porch left a door-to-nowhere behind the sofa in her living room (but alas, there is no "door into summer"!).

Not only were bedrooms added to accommodate growing families, but also young adults tended to live at home until they married, and were given their own space by adding a room or converting a porch. Our house has a converted porch that we now use as the laundry room. but which once turned a crowded 4-room house into a three-bedroom home  and housed a family's sons, who had previously slept in the living room.

From the back, it is each to see the flat roof of the addition - also very common for what is known as "lean-to" add-ons. Our house has a similar flat roof over the portion added in the 1970s.
 

 I was particularly interested to see the plate block for Dr. Howard's original bookplate (or Ex Libris as some call them). It is a linoleum cut and bears the doctor's own signature. A corresponding print from it is framed with it, but I couldn't tell whether the plate was designed to make prints onto gummed paper for application, or to print directly onto a book's fore-leaf.

 The docents at the museum, all members of Cross Plains' Project Pride, were wonderful, and I appreciated their friendly guidance through the tour. Here is one of these nice ladies with the Cross Plains Centennial Quilt, displayed in Mr and Mrs Howard's bedroom of the home, to which she had contributed a square. Each block was made by local women to celebrate the town's history, and its recovery from the devastating wild fires that burned 130 homes and killed two people in 2005.

 We wrapped up the day with the Barbarian Festival in a lovely, oak-shaded park, complete with live music, free watermelon (courtesy of AMA-Techtel), Conan the Barbarian artwork, and fabulous food. There was even a car show. This is an annual event and it was a lot of fun. I hope we will be able to go again from time to time!

Much more about Howard, his writing, his family, and life can be found at various places, including REH: Two-Gun Raconteur, REHupa (the Robert E Howard United Press Association), and the Robert E Howard Foundation.

7/4/12 Update: Thanks to OpiningOnline.com for the link! :-)

Dr Margaret Mead, on Today's Headlines

Anthropologist Margaret Mead is often quoted as saying "I do not believe in using women in combat, because females are too fierce." It's called out with glib bravado, as though it were a Helen Reddy song. But never with thought to why this odd sentence from a champion of feminist mores.

Dr.  Mead's full statement about the danger of allowing women to participate in combat is not often quoted, but it is important - and sobering:

"Women should be permitted to volunteer for non-combat service,… they should not be accepted, voluntarily or through the draft, as combat soldiers…. We know of no comparable ways of training women and girls, and we have no real way of knowing whether the kinds of training that teach men both courage and restraint would be adaptable to women or effective in a crisis. But the evidence of history and comparative studies of other species suggest that women as a fighting body might be far less amenable to the rules that prevent warfare from becoming a massacre and, with the use of modern weapons, that protect the survival of all humanity. This is what I meant by saying that women in combat might be too fierce."
      Margaret Mead, Some Personal Views, ed. Rhoda Metraux, pp. 35, 36 (1979): response when asked her opinion on drafting soldiers for the military, June 1968.


Warfare has changed in the decades since she explained her opposition to "women as a fighting body", a curious stance from one who otherwise championed the idea of "nurture" over "nature" as the primary source of sex roles, but her concerns remain grounded in her lifetime of study and her groundbreaking experience as a clinical observer of human societies.

We are also reminded that Dr Mead opposed eugenics, euthanasia and abortion, and had this to say about attempts to force doctors into these roles:

"This is a precious possession which we cannot afford to tarnish, but society always is attempting to make the physician into a killer — to kill the defective child at birth, to leave the sleeping pills beside the bed of the cancer patient. ... It is the duty of society to protect the physicians from such requests."
      Margaret Mead, Introduction in M.P. Levine, Psychiatry and Ethics (New York, Braziller, 1972), vi-xvi.

I wonder what Dr. Mead's reaction would be if she saw how the language and principles of her field and her politics have been usurped by today's academics and progressives?

Incandescent Light Bulbs, and What Went Before

Why do incandescent light bulbs matter so much?  There are many reasons our government should never ever have ventured to ban these miraculous Edisonian inventions, not least of which is that they embody, in the history of their invention, in the way they changed our world, all that is best about the modern, industrial, fossil-fueled, coal-powered, broad-shouldered, optimistic, brightly-lit, global Age of Western Civilization.

Rita, who lived in my house during WWII, in the 1940's, told me it was the first house her family had ever lived in that had electricity. They had always lived on a farm, and the rural electrification project still had a long way to go before completion. She said her mother hurried to get it connected. When her father came home from work the first day, he took a match to light the kerosene lamp that sat in the center of the table in the kitchen. But her mother said "Wait. Look." and reached up, and pulled the chain that turned on the bare bulb that hung from the ceiling. An incandescent bulb, that lit the entire kitchen. Compared to the old kerosene lamp, it looked like the sun.

If you ever wondered what people did at night before electricity, what it was like to eat supper by lamplight, to study by an oil lamp, these photos were taken by the Works Project Administration (WPA) in about 1939, in Oklahoma, in a setting and house very similar to what our little "Cottage at Pecan Corner" was like at the time.

This is what the world was like before the incandescent light bulb. And what it will be like again without oil, coal, incandescent bulbs, and working power plants.

What Did People Do Before Blogs? The American Amateur Press Association (AAPA) is 75 Years Old This Month!

This is
A Printing Office

Crossroads of Civilization
Refuge of All the Arts
Against the Ravages of Time
Armoury of Fearless Truth
Against Whispering Rumour
Incessant Trumpet of Trade
From this Place words May Fly Abroad
Not to Perish on Waves of Sound
Not to Vary with the Writer's Hand
But Fixed in Time, Having been Verified in Proof

Friend You Stand on Sacred Ground

This is a Printing Office

Beatrice Wade -1932
Printed in the Heritage Center Print Shop
Lancaster Pennsylvania

"Printed by AAPA members Mike Donnelly, Ken Kulakowsky, and
Rich Rtladge on an O.S. 8x12 C&P treadle driven platen press."

                                                     
                                                                     ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Interested? Check out the American Amateur Press Association,* now celebrating its 75th year of hobby journalism & printing arts. Don't let the word "Amateur" fool you - some of the finest professionals in their industries have published in these bundles  (and in eJournals)for simple pleasure since the AAPA was started by a bunch of teenagers in 1936. The AAPA welcomes writers, printers, publishers, editors, artists, illustrators, cartoonists & poets of all ages, from home schooled students to newspapermen to professional printers to true amateurs.

The great forerunners of blogs, amateur press associations have played a part in the lives and career choices and hobby pasttimes of thousands of ordinary Americans during the 20th century. In the AAPA, monthly bundles mailed to each member, annual Laureate Awards, and an annual convention bring everybody together.  Clean, friendly, and just for simple fun.

(*Please note, effective this month, dues have risen to $25 per year, to accomodate a move from bulk rate to 1st Class mailing. To receive a trial bundle, contact the secretary.)

UPDATE:  Linked by And So It Goes In Shreveport. Thanks! :-)

How to Prevent Weevils & Pantry Moths & Get Rid of Them Forever

In Home Economics class, they taught us how to sift flour, but never owned up to the real reason sifters were invented: to remove weevils from flour back in the days when throwing it away might have meant starvation. Some people call them flour moths, mealy bugs, Indian Moths, pantry webs... lots of names because good housewives everywhere have been plagued with them for centuries.

I will never forget how horrified I was in my first home when weevils were in my flour. It really freaked me out. That was when I talked to my grandmother to find out what to do. She told me 3 things: (1) Put a bay leaf in everything, (2) store in airtight containers, (3) if you have them, clean thoroughly to get rid of them, then follow (1) & (2).

Getting weevils in grains or moths in the pantry doesn't mean you don't keep a clean house but once you know how to keep them away, you never have to cope with them again. 

(1) Put a bay leaf or two (a dried, culinary Bay Leaf) in each canister or bag. It will not put out any flavor or odor to the food, but will prevent weevils or moths. Mema told me that weevils come in the flour/grain, and that the secret is to keep them from hatching. That prevention is what the bay leaves do, and they really work. Even an airtight container may not prevent weevils, but the comination of a bay leaf in a closed environment well.

(2) Store everything in airtight containers. I like clear containers so I can see what I have. Otherwise I forget. And I like plastic because I'm a klutz, but glass is superior otherwise. Clear plastic, clear glass, or brand-name zip storage bags (like Zip-Loc heavy-duty gallon bags) are all fine. Tins and opague plastic, such as Tupperware, will work great too so long as you can remember how to find things.

I leave things in their original package, and use a container big enough to just drop them down into. The Bay Leaf can then go into the container and doesn't have to be directly in the package of flour or barley. Plus that way I can remember what brand I bought.

Keep birdseed and pet food in airtight containers too. These are notorious and easy to forget. If possible, keep both of these items outside the house, in the garage. Rubbermaid tubs are super for large quantities or for storing several kinds of items in their original packaging.  Airtight & watertight, Rover and the red birds will love you for keeping their food fresh. Birds don't mind the protein from the bugs but still I'm sure they'd rather have the sunflower seeds!

(3) To get rid of a problem with them if you already see pantry moths or weevils, empty the pantry and brush it thoroughly, including the joints, with a stiff brush, then vacuum using the crevace tool or a dust buster- including the joints. If you don't have a vacuum, use a whisk broom or other stiff brush and give it a good brushing on all surfaces.

If it won't hurt the pantry to get it damp, wipe it down after that with soap & water and allow to dry completely. Don't use pine oil or anything with a strong scent as foods might pick it up. Just use soapy water and wring out your washcloth well. No need to rinse - the soap residue will also help keep pests away.

When you put things back, put them into containers with a bay leaf first. Inspect the stuff you took out to be sure it doesn't have weevils before putting it back. Telltale signs are small holes in the packaging, webby
clumps in flour or meal, and of course, weevils themselves.

All of this may sound like a lot of work, but it's not really. Once you get the pantry set up, it's only a matter of keeping it up. So when a new bag of flour comes in, straight away it goes into the flour tub. New boxes of cake mix can go into the same Zip-Loc bag the others came out of. Easy-peasy.

And it doesn't have to cost much at all. Some will be free: recycle containers you'd otherwise throw away. Start one at a time, with flour and grains, as you get a container, put something in it. Any kind of containers that fit your budget are fine. My stuff is stored in pickle jars, Zip-Loc brand bags, mason jars, cannisters that rice came in, Tupperware from garage sales, big cannisters from the dollar store, sugar in a plastic sherbet tub.

Voila! Vintage living at its best: no more bugs, no more waste, and no poisonous pesticides. Just clean, all-natural remedies and a tidy house.

Cooking at Home: How to Feed A Family Well on $___ a Month

The cost of essentials just keeps rising. To keep up a good standard of living even during tough times we often change our approach. Food prices are expected to climb during the rest of this year. How to avoid an empty larder and keep the pantry full when money is tight? How to keep those boys with hollow legs filled up and keep the lights on at the same time? One way is by stocking up and cooking at home. Make it an adventure! Think of economizing as "vintage living".

During the 1990's, we fed our family of 5 plus the assorted houseguests and friends that three teenaged sons brought home for around $300 per month. I think that would be about $450 a month in today's food dollars. We didn't have a garden, and we didn't receive food stamps. If one does have food stamps and/or a local food bank, there is still a need to make those resources stretch further.

Angel Food Ministries didn't exist at that time, but it is a neat way to save on your food budget and still buy high quality food. AFM is a Christian food ministry that operates on the order of a co-op: everyone qualifies, no applications or limits, and anyone can buy groceries through Angel Food Ministries for about half the usual cost of the items in each month's box.

What we DID have that "saved our bacon" in the food budget, then and now, were:
(1) a commitment to stocking up & eagerness to watch for bargains
(2) a Freezer
(3) a willingness to cook from scratch & eat only homemade meals
(4) a willingness to forego chips, sodas, cookies & other packaged foods

I love to grocery shop. Since I first married, that has been my favorite household task. So I go to all the stores and go up and down every aisle, just looking at things. If I see a bargain on something we use, I buy a lot of it - depending on how well it keeps & where you can store it, sometimes you can buy enough to last a year. I once bought a 50 lb bag of rice. That was a little much. I think I stumped my toes on the cans we stored it in for a couple of years. Ooops.

It's not good to overbuy, but you'll get to a point where you're always nicely stocked up and only have to buy when it's on sale.

For example, Alco recently had canned wild Alaska Salmon with an expiration date of July 2015. We don't use salmon that much so I only bought 5 cans. Had it been canned tuna, I probably would have asked for a whole case. On the other hand, canned evaporated milk does not keep well past its due-date, so I only buy a few cans at a time so that we can be sure to use it up before it expires.

One thing we do use a lot in our cooking is canned mushrooms. We buy the least expensive "stems and pieces" because there is absolutely no difference in the flavor. Big Lots has them right now at 50 cents a can (a savings of about 69 cents each over regular price in the grocery store), with an expiration of April 2012. I bought 20 cans! We're assured of mushrooms til March.

I don't know how families with children survive without a freezer. Ours has always made such a difference for us. I never have to buy meat that isn't an excellent bargain. Tonight, we had a lovely Boston Butt Pork Roast that I bought in July for $1.49 a pound. More than 4 pounds of meat for a little over $6.00. Paul cooked it in the crock pot and it is so tender! The two of us will get 3 or 4 meals from this - & we could stretch it further if needed. Over the next few days, we'll have easy Moo Shu Pork, a catch-all pork fried rice or stir fry, Mexican style in adobo sauce... 

Because we have a freezer, I was able to buy several roasts and put them away. If I had bought one today, not on sale, it would have cost twice as much. I wouldn't've bought a roast at that price, so it's not that I "saved" money so much as that we are able to eat better quality food while staying on a small budget. Here's a link to the USDA's website on safe food freezing practices, including how to save frozen food in case of a power outage. When our freezer is not full of food, we use bags of ice to take up the remaining space & help it operate most efficiently - this reduces electricity use & helps protect against loss in case the power went out.

Eating out is very costly over home cooking, but it is so hard to get off work and still put a meal on the table every night. The freezer saved us during those years because we could cook up meals in advance to pull out and reheat after working all day and having no time to cook. Beans ( I love pintos) freeze great and taste far better than canned. Sauces for pasta, chicken & egg noodles, enchiladas, meat loaf, casseroles, soups and stews...all will make you smile when you pull them out of the freezer for supper. AllRecipes.com has a special category with hundreds of "Make Ahead" recipes.

Even cooked hamburger patties, grilled chicken, and other chopped cooked meats in the freezer can make it easier to put a casserole or skillet dinner together than to fight traffic getting to & from the fast food joint. With sauces made up in advance, we could have pasta at the drop of a hat. German sausage was also a mainstay for nights we forgot to thaw something.

We also froze things for the boys to nuke in the morning for breakfast.  Paul used to make huge batches of pancakes, sausage patties or bacon, then put portions into baggies for the freezer. Ethan could heat them up and have his breakfast while waiting his turn in the shower.  Ditto with sausage biscuits, banana nut muffins, german sausage tortilla wraps, breakfast tacos ...

Our current freezer is a small, 7.2 cubic feet chest type Frigidaire. These cost between $250-$300. For more encouragement about how a freezer can help your food budget, read the reviews on the small freezers at the Frigidaire site. Lots of ideas for where to keep the freezer and stories about how people use them.

Cooking at home made a difference in more than our budget. We noticed that our tastes changed, and our sons became adventurous eaters. They liked eating healthy. They liked eating at home. Nicolas would make a salad for his after school snack. Ethan was on the swim team, and made ramen noodles when he came in - essential carbs and fats for energy. Canned tuna (in water, they requested), peanut butter sandwiches (no jelly), scrambled eggs in the microwave (lower in fat, they said) gave them protein between meals.

Now that they are adults, they all still cook for themselves and their families. And we all have a lot of nice memories to share about the shopping and cooking and eating we did together when they were growing up.

Display Ideas For Vintage Recipe Booklets

A lot of my collections are made of paper. Vintage advertising recipe booklets are one such, and I have a few I just couldn't part with. Colorful and witty, those cute little recipe folders are just too fun to leave in a drawer.

I mean, in our Tex-Mex kitchen, who could resist 1920s and 1930s "Tasty Tested Anglo Recipes", "Gebhardt's Mexican-Style Foods" and "Walker's Red Hot Chile Con Carne"? The Walker's one, red with a bright green sombrero, is actually from 1918, the WWI era.

The company was based in Austin, Texas. Gebhardt is also an old Texas company - I still use their chili powder today for general cooking (I use Morton's Chili Blend for actual chili). And Anglo not only made canned hams and corned beef, but also advertises Deviled Ham, Deviled Tongue and Liver Spread!

One of the little projects I've had on my list was to find a way to display them that didn't take space away from some other wonderful thing that needs a prominent home!

Inspired by my new cabinets, I finally got around to it last month.

This is a super-simple project. I used the hard clear cases that sports cards collectors use, and glued a piece of sheet magnet on the back. It's a good use for those magnetic business cards we keep long after the realtor pictured has moved on.

Voila! (which is how the word "Walla!" is spelled!)

Refrigerator magnets that can be changed out, and the keep the booklet available, just in case we suddenly decide to try that recipe for jellied liver tea sandwiches.

Aren't they cute? If you have other ideas for showing off vintage paper, please share! There's always something cute that needs just the perfect treatment....

A Few More Examples of Vintage Mexican Pottery

For those of us in the Southwest, the fusion of cultures has always been evident in our lives, and a big part of the reason we are so passionate about the places we live.

Who are we? We're Texans. We aren't Swedish-Texans or Mexican-Texans or African-Texans or German-Texans or Vietnamese-Texans or Spanish-Texans or Californian-Texans or New Yorker-Texans. No matter where we're from or how we grew up, we aren't hyphenated: we're all one. The American Melting Pot is alive and well and still doing its good work in Texas.

This applies to our decorating styles as well as the way we live and go about our business every day. And Mexican pottery is a part of the exuberant style that characterizes Texas homes of all sorts.

Some of Pecan Corner's more popular posts, week in and week out, are about collecting vintage Mexican pottery. So I thought I'd show off some more of my collection, and add a little information about the styles and types.

The pieces that stay with me are special in their own right - my focus has always been simply whether I love the individual piece. As antiquers, though, we've sold a lot of it over the years, and I tend to sell things if the price shoots up - mainly so I don't have to worry about breaking something valuable! So while I never needed to learn about it in order to collect, I did learn some things in order to sell those pieces that don't need to stay in my house.

There was a time where Mexican pottery chicken casseroles were as common in Texas homes as Singer sewing machines. For years, we bought them weekly and sold them just as quickly. So many of them have moved in to larger collections now that they are harder to find. This one was a present from Paul a couple of years ago. We think the "come hither" look in her eyes is adorable.

This pottery skillet is done in a style called "Fantasia", for obvious reasons. Most commonly found in the blue decoration on cream colored background like this one, it can also be found in other colors, such as green
on terracotta ground. The all-over pattern of stylized florals and animals in a single color is the telltale characteristic. Paul loves this, and is partial to the blue-and-cream.

The urn-shaped vases in this group are my favorite type of ware, called "Petatillo". The detailed crosshatching filling all the space surrounding the main images make it immediately recognizable. Written in pencil on the bottom of the largest one is "Guadalahara Bought in Tampico 1939". The middle-sized one has the partial remains of its original paper label "La Casa Del _____ Monterrey".

This colorful wall plate is purely decorative, and made of "burnished ware", meaning the partially-dried clay was rubbed, or burnished, to a sheen with a stick. Probably made in Tonala, this technique was shared by pueblo Indian potters, including the famous San Ildefonso wares. It isn't as highly fired as the lead-glazed redware that is my favorite, so it didn't last as long, but it has a character all its own.

My bean pots are just that: bean pots. Made for households to cook in, utilitarian but still decorated to make the work a little more pleasant. we all love pretty dishes, no matter what culture we come from. And that may be almost instinctual - pottery making was one of mankind's earliest arts, and those early pieces are identifiable because they are decorated.

In our globally-uniform professionally-marketed designer-driven retail culture, everything is the same, no matter where it is from. Machine-made or hand-made doesn't change that, and we can find ourselves driven from novelty to novelty in a fruitless search for the authentic and original.

This old pottery is both of those things. Authentic and produced by people who sold it to make a living using the materials at hand and the techniques developed by their grandfathers, original in the work of each artist that painted it using his own ideas and natural talent to express himself that day.

It is what it is. There's very little we can truthfully say that about these days.

6/6/11 Update: Thanks to Pat @ SIGIS for the link! :-)

Refinishing the Bath Tub

As I mentioned in the bathroom remodeling post, our choices with the worn-nearly-down-to-metal porcelain enamelled cast iron tub were to (a) bring in a cutting torch and cut it in half to enable two power-lifters to carry it out through the door or (b) tear out the entire exterior wall of the room including removing the weight-bearing framing in order to hoist it out that way.

We chose (c): give the ugly tub a make-over and restore its erstwhile beauty.

I had planned to have a professional come refinish the tub, but no one local does this. So, I bought a two-part spray epoxy kit called "Magic ReNew Tub and Tile Refinishing", and did it myself.

Some years ago, I used spray Appliance Epoxy to paint a built-in oven exterior with good and lasting results. So I figured, as bad as this tub was, I certainly couldn't make it worse by trying.

If we only had one bathroom, we'd have had to arrange to shower at a friend's and brush our teeth in the kitchen for the couple of weeks this project required. As it was, we have two so just kept the door shut on this one.

The hardest part was cleaning and prep. This took a long time (several repetitive hours over the course of a week), but the final result will not work if the preparation is not scrupulous. Any residue of soap or oil hidden in a scratch will prevent the epoxy from adhering and cause it to peel.  I was careful not to stay on my knees too much and did as much work as possible from a crouch or sitting position.

I removed the drain cover and overflow cover before starting. The I put on my goggles, my rubber gloves, and set to work. I scrubbed, cleaned with TSP (per directions on refinishing kit & using all precautions listed on the TSP package itself), sanded, steel wooled.. then scrubbed, cleaned with TSP, sanded, steel wooled... some more for at least three times. I'd work on it after work each evening until I gave out, then start over the next day.

After the final final rinse, I let it dry for several days. That's another essential - absolute dryness.  Then I  masked EVERYTHING.

Seriously, this job can't be done without covering everything from the floor to walls with sheets and paper, as the spray paint will drift and settle and is impossible to remove. I left it all masked until the whole job was finished.

I followed all instructions carefully, especially the safety instructions, and including the interesting chill one/heat one method for mixing the contents of the two cans.

This task requires an experienced hand with canned spray paint. It would be wise to practice by repainting a set of wicker lawn furniture or something until one gets comfortable with the on/off, back/forth motion that covers without drips. I applied the several coats of epoxy over a course of days in the evenings, and closed that bathroom off completely to allow the full length of time to cure undisturbed.

While I will not be volunteering to do this for anyone else, and I still would recommend a professional if you can possibly get one, I am VERY happy with the results for a "homemade" job of it.

A Leader Shows the Way: Sarah Palin goes to Israel

Via Professor Jacobson at Legal Insurrection (good blog, linked from my sidebar), comes Andrew Sullivan's important points about Sarah Palin's common links with other great women leaders such as Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, and Elizabeth I, and thoughts on her upcoming visit to Israel (more at Texas for Sarah Palin).

Palin's trip to Israel is vital, and I believe, will in future be seen as a decisive event. She needs no election to serve as an effective ambassador for Americans like me who love Israel, and who hold great hopes for a blossoming future of true liberty for all people in the coming years.

Sarah Palin is in good company with her support for the Jewish homeland:

"Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity. I see Israel as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality. "
Dr Martin Luther King Jr

"Israel was not created in order to disappear - Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom."
John F. Kennedy

"Today we should all recommit ourselves to ensuring that the miracle of a Jewish state endures forever."
Sarah Palin, 2010

Sullivan's article at The Atlantic is illustrated with the ill-fated Celtic Queen Boudicca, but the image above is Lady Liberty herself, here depicted in her WWI era garb as the ardent American defender of the Armenians against the 20th Century's first genocide.

Three Kings Cake For Epiphany, Vintage Bisque Dolls, & the Industrial Revolution

The Kings Cake celebrates the arrival of the Three Wise Men who brought gifts to baby Jesus. A tiny doll, or a coin or almond, is hidden in each cake and the person who gets that piece is king for the day, and believed to have luck all year. One piece of the kings cake is set aside, the "piece for the Virgin" to be given to the first needy person who comes to the door. That part of the tradition reminds us to be good neighbors - and that need may be right on our doorstep.

The Kings Cake isn't a tradition in our family, and that's unfortunate. It is for my grandson, because his stepdad Francis is from Louisiana, and he buys a King Cake every year. In the South - and especially in Louisiana - the King Cake tradition is an important part of the Mardi Gras season up until Lent.

When I found this simple recipe for one using canned cinnamon rolls, I decided to try it for our Christmas breakfast this year and it was a big hit. Traditionally, you'd have this cake on January 6th, Epiphany, which is "twelfth night" or "the twelfth day of Christmas". Click here to see the original recipe at www.holidays.net

It is very easy to make your own colored sugar using food coloring, 3 separate little bowls (custard cups work great). I use toothpicks to stir with so I can just throw them away. Just stir one drop of color into a couple of teaspoons of regular granulated sugar until it's mixed in and the sugar is the color you want. Maybe two drops, but you don't need much. Red and blue mixed together (2 drops red, one blue) make purple.

Shape the canned cinnamon rolls into an oval ring, and hide a miniature baby doll in the dough. Bake as directed on the package, and use the icing that comes with it. After icing it, sprinkle with the 3 colors of sugar you made up, and serve immediately! Use 2 or more cans to serve more people. I used one of my tiny antique bisque dolls for this (an unpainted bisque one for safety since these are antique). Do be careful to warn everyone if you are using a bisque doll, so they won't break a tooth by biting it! Plastic would be better but I didn't have a plastic one.

You could also use a dried bean, a whole almond or a coin - that would be quite traditional and just as much fun. In fact, it is most likely that a coin or a bean probably were in use for centuries before the little "king babies" began to be used instead. These miniature dolls were called "pudding dolls" in England (because they were put into the Christmas pudding), and "feves" in France (Feve is french for Fava Bean, which originally represented the baby in French "Galettes des Rois" or "Couronne"). They might also be referred to as "santons", "Epiphany dolls" or "frozen charlottes" (although frozen charlottes are not always pudding dolls).



I'm no expert but the tradition of using a little doll probably started in the Victorian age. This is when the Industrial Revolution made mass production possible. Before the Industrial Revolution, most goods were handmade, and made locally. Only the wealthy could afford imported products made elsewhere that weren't necessary to life. But when machines began to be invented, the creation of factory jobs and markets meant ordinary people had money to spend on something other than necessities. Trinkets and toys were suddenly inexpensive to make and the availability of money generated more commerce - locally as well as between regions and nations.


In France, the tradition of the baby in the cake really took off, and whole sets of little people in different costumes, called "feves" were made and used in the cakes. The various costumes represented each of the people in the village, who also would have visited the baby Jesus during the Nativity. Bakeries encouraged sales by putting a different figure in each cake. I always wondered why the popularity of those little sets. Now we know what their original purpose was!

Most of my little porcelain and bisque figures were made in Germany or Japan in the 1920s through the 1950s. I wonder how many of them were originally used in Kings Cakes, here in the USA?

Collecting Vintage Mexican Pottery

Show and tell time! :-) I started collecting old lead-glazed mexican pottery in the late 1970s, back when no one was interested in it. Most of the pieces I like best were made in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. My collection is not huge, because I only keep those pieces that are my favorites. Over the years of course it has become popular and may sometimes be very pricey. But great pieces are still out there, and you can still make a nice collection without much investment.


While it is probably ok to handle it (you can wash your hands after), lead-glazed pots should not be used to serve food. Although the risk of lead leaching into the food is small (most people today in their 50s or older who grew up or lived in the southwest - not to mention Mexico - have eaten out of this stuff before learning it was not wise to do so), it is better to be safe than sorry.

Lead glazes were not used on all old mexican pottery. Many types, including burnished ware, were free of lead. Also, newer redware and yellow-ware pots do not have lead in the glaze and are still beautiful, so they are also an option. "Redware" and "Yellow Ware" refer to the color of the clay the pots are made of. The bean pots below are "redware".



The main thing I love about mexican pottery is that it makes utility beautiful. With each piece, natural talent shows in the way it was painted or formed or glazed. I love when I can see the
fingerprints of the potter or glazer in a finished piece. I love the detailed paintings that reflect natural talent - trained perhaps in pottery but not in art. I love the flaws that make it perfect.

Here are two recent additions to my collection. The little nested ashtray set is just right for Fall decorating, with its black crow. I think it is the only piece I have with a black bird on it (though I
have many with birds - birds are probably my favorite animal in art). I found it in a local secondhand shop.


This ADORABLE little turkey casserole is the latest. He was my birthday present from Paul (Thank you honey!). Our friends had gotten him recently at an auction, and had put him up for sale. So thanks, too, to our friends for selling it!

We used to find chicken and turkey casseroles often, out in West Texas. We sold a lot of them! I only have one chicken casserole and now this turkey one in my collection. Prior to that, the only chicken I had kept for any length of time was a Tlaquepaque one that eventually got too valuable to keep!


Tlaquepaque is the name of a region in Mexico. Mexican pottery - actually nearly all pottery from any country - is classified by the region in which it was made. I am not snobbish about the regions I collect, because monetary value has nothing to do with why I love these pots. So I don't study them and I am no expert. I just buy what I like.

I love them because they were a part of the ordinary work and life of ordinary people. For all of us who live in the Southwest, they are a part of our heritage. Our Melting Pot American Heritage!


12/23/10 - updating to add a new tag and link to a newer post on Mexican Pottery. Thanks for visiting and I hope you'll tell me about your own collection too. :-)

Maple Furniture and Llama Fur

Picking up on the post below about the Little White House, here is one of our beds. This one is quite similar to the beds in FDR's getaway home, and it dates from the same era: my grandparents bought the suite for my mother when she was a young child.

Actually it is Nick's bed - he has the dresser and chest of drawers that go with it, but uses a different bed. The dresser you see here was Thelma's (my mother in law).


The quilt was a mark-down somewhere (tip: always buy "all cotton" when it comes to quilts - cost is a bit more but it is so worth it) several years ago, and the shams I bought last year at Walmart. That cute little bolster I found at a yard sale. Check out the detail on the ends:



That is just printed fabric on the ends but it looks embroidered. Isn't it pretty?

And the Llama pillow... well there is nothing softer than llama fur, so that is a sneaky way of getting a stuffed animal on the bed in a home that is between cats! :-)

FDR's Little White House: A Simple American Home

Last summer, we went to the Little White House, in Warm Springs, Georgia. This is where President Franklin Delano Roosevelt spent much time during his presidency, and where he passed away in April 1945.

The thing that most struck me about this house is how very ordinary it is. Anyone's grandmother could have lived here. There was no ostentation, no luxury. It is a simple home with maple furniture, twin beds, well-read books near the fireplace, and the comfort of homeliness.


The kitchen had no cabinets, only open shelves along the walls. The things we would put into cabinets were stored in the pantry/closet - it was lined with shelves and is shown in the first picture, above.

They told us the living room is exactly as it looked the day he passed away. The nautical decor was a favorite of his, as he was a Navy man.
President Roosevelt's bed, on which he was lying when he passed away suddenly from a stroke. The room is very small, with a single bed, and the furniture you see is pretty much the whole of the room. It is located right off of the living room.
This was Eleanor's room, with a pair of twin beds. The guide told us that their children especially enjoyed coming to The Little White House, and would stay here in Mrs. Roosevelt's room when they came.
The Dining Room is not separate, the table is simply across the room from the living area, with the hutch sitting opposite the fireplace shown in the living room photo. Even so, the whole room is rather small. The proportions of the furniture help keep it from feeling crowded.


This unfinished photo is the one for which President Roosevelt was sitting when he passed away.


There is a small garage apartment over the garage that is labeled "servants quarters", but these were a cook/housekeeper, and a driver/butler whose assistance was necessary to our paralyzed president.

The live-in housekeeper was not unusual even for middle class families who didn't have a grandmother living with them in those days when labor was cheap and goods expensive. Without the labor-saving devices that became common after WWII, help of some kind - whether family or hired - was essential. Notice in the kitchen photos how bare of "things" the kitchen was. Yet nearly all food was made from scratch or preserved at home, so much more time was involved in the preparation.

Oh, he and Mrs Roosevelt had luxury in their lives - both were from wealthy families and they did live in the White house, after all. But this little place where he escaped for treatments at the natural hot spring spa up the road in Warm Springs, and where his children came to spend time with him after they were grown, is by far the best example of an American Home of the era.

Although I am not decorating my little cottage in this same style, I do find much inspiration, and comfort, in these rooms.