The title of this post, "Learning from the past and changing to what makes more sense".
Many of you have read my blog for years and some of you are new and so I am going to explain just a little here that my husband Charles, and I, love studying history. We live somewhat the era we study, not by clothing but by skills and things that make sense to us. There have been some clothing changes that I have made to what I feel more comfortable wearing. Some of the clothing from the past is very pretty.
We have grown to love the old ways and old furnishings. We are middle class American, I am retired, Charles is still working but will soon retire and that will put us into a lower income level living on retirement. We have been preparing for this.
We have been preparing for full retirement by slowly moving back to our early years and using methods from our generations before us. We worked hard to get out of debt. The best way to do that is to stop spending.
We do not have a desire to travel, Charles did his traveling when he was younger and I have always been one to stay close to home. We enjoy reading and woodworking, sewing, Knitting and gardening. We also enjoy researching our family genealogy and visiting cemeteries and documenting where our ancestors are buried. Our history studies is another entire part of our life. That is enough to keep us busy, actually keeping a house maintained is enough to keep us busy.
Pictured above, chicken with onions, radish and turnip roots cooked in with the broth from the chicken, rice, and brussels sprouts.
We converted a utility closet into a pantry and preserve food. We started another version of a hope chest and we call it a retirement chest where we have added replacement items that we know will wear out such as underwear, socks, sheets, towels, fabric, thread, yarn and spare parts for our tools. Each day, we continue to work towards being more sustainable.
We do the things that have made more sense by undoing all that we can that comes with an attached fee and drains our money. That happened when we were just working and doing what everyone else was doing until we realized this was not going to work.
We can see more clearly now how we have been prodded along to change, to spend, to keep changing. It was time for us to stop and return to better times.
My Grandparents on both sides were born in late 1800 and very early 1900's, my "Great" Grandparents were born in the 1860's and 1870's. Two of my Great grandparents were still living when I was born, we called them Mama and Papa, I was a teenager when Papa died. He lived the longest of all my Great Grands.
My Grandparents were born as the Victorian era was ending, and here in the United States the new age of 1900 would be call the Gilded age or the Progressive Era. I wish we had a more romantic name for this era but there does not seem to be one.
Several years ago here on my blog I named my era the Vintarian era. I made up a word for where I might fit in. It is my name for the collection of the old history from the past and where we are now. It is a fill in for embracing our roots.
Charles and I are a collection or library, as some of you are the same. We the generation of what is left of the stories from our generations of the past that went through the change of the century of 1900 and many years of sickness and wars and financial hardships. Recessions, the Flu Pandemic, world war 1, another recession the roaring twenties that led to the great depression and then world war 2. I know these were difficult times but I am amazed at how they normalized their families as much as they could during these times.
World war 2 ended, my brother and I were born only 14 months apart, and another war caused us to lose more soldiers. The Korean war, a war that I feel is overlooked because it followed so close after world war 2 ended. The United states lost over 33,686 soldiers in the Korean war and there is another figure on this that adds to this count but I do not know what that number is. We had over 100,000 wounded Americans in this war.
The next war, my brother and I were old enough to be affected, the draft into the Vietnam war. We were both married at this time and stationed at different bases across the country. We wrote letters home to our mother and father and to each other because that is how we communicated back then. Both of us had our first child born on military bases.
Charles and I study why and how things happen and how things are done from the past, Charles studies the wars and troubled times as well as all of the Presidents. He has books on many of the Presidents, he does not study any certain party, he is very unbias and has a growing collection. Our family gifts him a Presidential book that he does not have on special occasions. He will be reading well through his retirement. The current book Charles is reading is William Howard Taft. Taft was a judge before becoming President and several years after his Presidency he served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
With our history studies changing the way we look at things, we do not affiliate with any political party. We vote on research, prayer and gut feeling each time we vote.
I am very in awe of Charles because he lives in a way that he is truly himself and does not let others persuade him. He does what he feels is right and does not follow trends. It took a long time for him to give up his plaid wool tie. It will probably come back in style one day.
He is not quick to judge and looks at the whole picture. I wish others were like Charles, he has become a one of a kind. Those he works with respect him because it is difficult to not respect someone with years of experience and makes sensible decisions like he does. They do not want him to retire and I understand why.
As time has gone by with our studies, Charles has become very interested in the home front study because this has required a very different way to research and we have learned so much that is not so freely talked about and found in books. We had to find other ways and somewhat a financial investment to obtain some of this information but we feel it important to share this the best way we know how.
Our home has become a collection of the past. I wore aprons long ago and went back into aprons when they started making sense again. I enjoy dressing the table, creaky screen doors and rocking chairs. Homemade meals and sitting at the table, homemade bread, pies and cakes.
*********************************
I was just asked a question from Andrea, about the diary of Lena from my last diary post. The question is, how did two people eat so many pies.
There are several factors to consider, study the photo above, and one is the size of the pie pan. Lena's diary is 1943 and she is in her 70's. Her pie plates most likely had been around for a long time. The photo above I took this morning of two of my pie plates. One on the right I have had many years but considered more modern compared to the one on the left that I have from 1930's which is most likely the size of Lena's. Her pie plates were probably much older than the old ones I have.
This is a 1930s juice glass.
There was a pie plate considered large pie plate which is in the MIDDLE. The one in the middle is another of the 1930's pie plates. Both of them are much smaller than the old pyrex I have had for a long time. When we studied the 1930s I was curious about the size of dishes and such and I ordered these pie plates from the great depression era.
Besides the pie plates being smaller, people ate different than we do now and serving sizes were much smaller. Being that Lena's diary is from 1943, and was in her mid 70's, she would have been born in the late1868-1870. Look at all of the things she had been through during her lifetime. People knew how to use up and stretch their meat, vegetables and fruits and often these were in Pies.
Another factor is what did she use to make a pie, did she have a small pan she used to make pies for Richard and herself?
During the early 1900s they frequently had visitors and they also visited others , we do not know how many visitors Lena had or if she wrote about them other than when she was sick. As we have figured out she is very independent, goes everywhere by walking. We do not know if she shares pie but probably does when someone comes for a visit. My thoughts are their meals were small and so were her pies :). We will never know the answer to this question and we all can speculate. Anyone have thoughts about this please share and thank you Andrea for this question.
Someone recently asked me what kind of board games we play. We enjoy Domino's which is not a board game, we like checkers, chess, backgammon, monopoly. And, I have a old post from 2016 that I did on pick up sticks and how to play the game the old way. I will link it here. https://gdonna.com/living-like-the-past/pick-up-sticks/
Also an older post on Pin Curls and Paper Dolls, the paper dolls for entertainment, not always just for children. Anyone can enjoy paper dolls.
https://gdonna.com/living-like-the-past/pin-curls-and-paper-dolls/
Here is a link to the post in 2017 that I named our era simple Vintarian. https://gdonna.com/living-like-the-past/simple-vintarian/
I enjoy all of your comments, I cannot answer all of them but I do read them first and then release them to the blog. If I am sleeping or away from my computer, which I am a lot then as soon as I read the comment I will release the comment.
*** I welcome your thoughts, and memories and questions and I hope everyone is reading the comments because we are learning so much from each other around the world and it gives us a good information about how people live today and their memories of the past.
Grandma Donna
