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March Newsletter is Up!
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Author Archives: Barb
When I Don’t Buy Based on Price
I usually try to get the lowest price on everything. This works fine for most things, but it occasionally backfires.
Take chicken, for instance. I always bought large quantities of it and froze it when the price was right. I didn’t care what brand it was, I just went by price.
Then I started to see Amish chickens for sale in the grocery several years back, and I thought, what a rip off! Why should I pay several dollars a pound for chicken when I can get it for 89 cents a pound? Who buys that stuff anyway?
Before long, I started seeing articles about the chicken sold in groceries and how it contains all sorts of antibiotics that are reducing our immunities, and hormones that are making little girls mature too early. And I got to thinking, maybe I should be watching what kind of chicken I buy….
One week the local Piggly Wiggly put the Amish chicken on sale and I splurged on some (even the sale price was higher than what I usually paid for chicken). When I baked it, the whole house soon smelled wonderful! And when we ate it, well, all I could think was that this was like I remember chicken tasting when I was a child in the 1960s.
I thought it was all in my head, but the next time we had chicken, it was my usual sale-priced store brand, and it tasted like nothing compared to that darned Amish chicken.
Since then, I’ve gotten hooked. I try to stock up when Amish chicken is on sale. Sometimes I run out before it goes on sale again, so I’m stuck with the regular stuff, which I still buy, but I don’t like nearly as well.
I’ve noticed a few name brands are now offering “all-natural, no hormones, no antibiotic” chicken, and the price is better than the Amish chicken. But you can’t match the taste. There is nothing better than Amish chicken, I’ve decided. So I buy it when it’s on sale, and I pine for it once I’ve used it all up…….
Two Great Bogart Movies
I used to have a poster just like this one on my wall, because when I was a teen, my favorite movie star was Humphrey Bogart. The fact that he died the year before I was born made no difference to me. I grew up watching his films on television and thought he was the best actor ever.
Since then, I’ve widened my knowledge of films and the people who appear(ed) in them, but I still enjoy his work. This past week, my husband and I watched two of his films with dd17 in hopes of teaching her how to recognize and appreciate good movies. (Note: we tried this with our older two with mixed results. Hopefully, three’s the charm!)
First up, “Casablanca.” This very famous movie was made during World War II and includes a wonderful cast beyond Bogart, including Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Raines, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre. Romantically bittersweet, it has a theme of personal sacrifice. It’s a terrific film and well-worth watching with your teens.
Next is “Sabrina,” a Billy Wilder film about a chauffeur’s daughter who finds romance in the wealthy family that employs her father. Many believe that Bogart was miscast in this film, and I admit that he often seems uncomfortable. The climax of the film is quite unbelievable. And yet somehow it works.
By the way, “Sabrina” is a showcase for Audrey Hepburn, and a great introduction to her work if you don’t know much about her. My daughter already knew who she was, having seen her recently in “Roman Holiday” (another great movie about personal sacrifice) and “Charade.”
While “Casablanca” would be of interest to both sexes, “Sabrina” is more of a chick flick, although I’m sure someone as poised as Audrey Hepburn would have come up with a more elegant way of describing it. 😉
Carnival of Homeschooling: The Top Ten School Supplies Edition
Renae at Life Nurturing Education is hosting the Carnival of Homeschooling this week, which is based on the theme of Top Ten School Supplies. She has an nice variety of posts, too.
Public Education and President Obama
Elementary School Children with Heads Down on Desk During Rest Period in Classroom
I don’t get it. If something doesn’t work, why would you want more of it?
President Obama recently spoke about his goals for public schools*. He acknowledges that American students have fallen behind young people in much of the rest of the world, but his solutions include longer school days and a longer school year. He said this even though he also admitted that his mother had to augment his own education by making him get up to study at 4:30 a.m.
I’d go on about this but someone else has already done a fine job of it. Check out Judy Aron’s take comparing President Obama’s speech to hearing a real expert speak about what’s wrong with public education: your friend and mine, former public school teacher and homeschool advocate John Taylor Gatto.
* where he chose not to send his own children