Brom Bones and Ichabod Crane, Hero or Victim?

I'm currently reading another book by Dr. Leonard Sax, author of Boys Adrift. This book is called, Why Gender Matters: What parents and teachers need to know about the emerging science of sex differences.

As I'm reading and going through my day, I keep noting little things that people do (myself included) and how it relates to the gender differences elaborated in the book.

Today, for example, I took my three little boys to see a student musical version of The Legend Sleepy Hollow. It was exceedingly well done, not surprisingly, because I know several of the performers and they have always put on a great show.

The thing that struck me about this particular show was the way in which Brom Bones and Ichabod Crane display the archetypal boy and the anomalous boy.

Brom Bones is tough, rather lunk-headed, strong, and self-centered. He's quite knowledgeable about farming and horses, but is not an intellectual, nor is he very good at telling Katrina his true feelings (if he even has feelings). He is a trouble-maker, and is known around town for playing pranks, including one which caused the last schoolmaster to leave town.

Ichabod Crane, is lanky, intellectual, superstitious and self-centered. He's quite knowledgeable about history, (particularly the history of New England witchcraft) and other standard school subjects. He's good at wooing the ladies with his amiable manner and quick wit. In fact, the ladies of the town seem quite taken with his culture and refinement.

Katrina, the love interest of both men, is taken in by Ichabod's culture and charm and Brom Bones is jealous and angry. He tells Ichabod to lay off his girl and to leave town, but Ichabod is committed to stay in Sleepy Hollow.

Just how and why Ichabod finally leaves Sleepy Hollow is the main tale being told, but Brom Bones is no wimp when it comes to the manly arts (courage, strength, risk-taking). While Ichabod, it struck me, is quite good at practicing some of the feminine arts (charm, culture, refinement).

I never really understood who the hero of this story was supposed to be. It always struck me as rather tragic. Until I watched it in the light of the science of gender study. Now it all makes sense!

To confirm my suspicions, I asked a group of boys, ages 7-13, who had just seen the show, who was their favorite character?

"The strong guy," was their nearly-unanimous answer.

After all, who wants to be the victim?

Notre Dame students respond with powerful video

Our Lady's University is set to honor the most radically pro-abortion US president on May 17th when Barack Obama comes to Notre Dame to deliver the 2009 commencement address and receive an honorary doctorate.

Students and alumni from Notre Dame have voiced their concerns and have created this video message.


Sign the online petition now.

Mary, the Mother of us all (even yahoos)

May is the month of Mary, so I'm dedicating some postings this month to Our Lady.

First off, some pictures I took from our trip to California last August. This is the statue outside the Shrine of Our Lady of Peace in Santa Clara. The 32 foot high statue can be seen from highway 101 in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Some different perspectives on the same statue:

In the picture above you can see the Yahoo! building in the background, but in the picture below it looks significantly larger. I was quite surprised when I got home and looked again at my pictures. The only explanation I can come up with is that I took this second one with the zoom lense, from a distance. But you can clearly see that Our Lady looks out for all of us yahoos!

Smile! Mary and Jesus love you.

Update on When Mom Goes to War

My friend, Eileen, who is the stay-at-home-Navy-reservist-Catholic-homeschooling-mom-of-five, recently updated us on her activities.

After being told she was going to Iraq for a year, Uncle Sam has sent her to Afghanistan instead.

Here's an excerpt from her latest email:

Hi everyone and greetings from Afghanistan!

All is going well here. Sorry that it has taken me a while to write. I kept thinking that I would do it this weekend, but there really is no "weekend" here per se. We work 7 days a week, about 14 hours a day. That and a workout is pretty much the whole waking time. I did go to Mass today, which was nice. 10 folks, no singing or anything. I did the 2nd reading. The priest is nice - perhaps from the Caribbean somewhere?

...Now that I am here work is fascinating and crazy busy. My room is a wooden shanty that looks like it could have been built by my 7 year-old son but what are you going to do? Plus, did I mention TINY. I mean TINY. It has a twin bed and that is how deep it is. I'll have to measure it to see how big. But you know, I pretty much go there to sleep and that is it. The days are FULL!! There are no dressers or anything, just these wooden or metal shelf type units with sort of cubbies. Interesting but making storing stuff a little tricky...

Things are good here. The people are nice. The work is interesting and I am busy. It is all going fast. Of course, I say that except I just realized that this is only my 3rd day and in many ways I feel I have been here for weeks. Crazy.

Please say a prayer tonight for Eileen and her husband and five little ones awaiting her safe return.

How to keep your son from being a mama's boy

Boys Adrift: Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men by Leonard Sax

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I started reading this book after hearing about it from a mom of a teenage boy. Her son is a good kid: good student, practices his faith, athletic, mannerly, but she saw warning signs of how easily good kids can go astray when they don’t have someone to help guide them. If she was concerned about her son, I figured I ought to be concerned about mine, since I have five, and three of them still have many years before they enter the turbulent teens. Best to be prepared.

It didn’t take long before I couldn’t put the book down. Dr. Sax relates stories of real boys, told by real parents, and how they were often intelligent kids, who lacked motivation for school or life outside of video games. I could easily imagine any of my boys, given free reign, could easily turn into video zombies. Girls might spend too much time chatting with their friends on Facebook, but boys like to play action-packed video games until their eyes glaze over and their heads drop to the keyboard from lack of sleep. Neither food, nor school, nor senior prom can propel them from the game machine unless a parental foot on the backside gives them an extra boost.

So it was with a great deal of expectation that I read Dr. Sax’s book on the “growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men.”

I suspect everyone knows at least one (or dozens) of 18 to 30 year-old males who seem to have no motivation for doing much of anything with their lives, but are often content with their low-paying jobs and single status, quite frequently still living at home with Mom and Dad. Before you call me judgmental, look at the statistics: Women now outnumber men on college campuses and in medical and veterinary schools. The number of women entering traditionally male fields, such as engineering and technology, is increasing, while the number of men entering those fields is decreasing. Where are the men going? They’re dropping out of college, or not even entering in the first place.

Dr. Sax lists five reasons for the alarming trend of unmotivated males. No, it’s not all the fault video games, although that is the first reason he lists. The others are: the feminization of education, overuse of prescription medication (for ADHD), endocrine disruptors in the environment, and the devaluation of masculinity.

He makes compelling arguments for each of the five reasons and all parents of boys should educate themselves on these topics. The one I found most interesting, and the one I’d heard nothing about was endocrine disruptors in the environment. These are environmental pollutants caused from a variety of sources, including phthalates found in plastics such as plastic water and soda bottles, pacifiers and baby bottles. These endocrine disruptors have been shown to cause early onset of puberty in girls, while having the opposite effect on boys. According to Dr. Sax, “The overwhelming majority of modern chemicals that mimic the action of human sex hormones, curiously, mimic the action only of female hormones.” They have also been linked with the disruption of brain function in the area of memory and motivation, as well as ADHD, again, affecting girls differently than boys. He also refers to these chemicals as “environmental estrogen,” as they mimic those female hormones. Dr. Sax further gives evidence that the increase in childhood obesity can be directly linked to these environmental estrogens. There are other alarming symptoms as well: male genital abnormalities, lower testosterone levels and male infertility.

Another pollutant in our environment that affects males far more than females is pornography. (See my book review on The ABCs of Choosing a Good Husband). Men no longer need women for sex, just as women no longer need men for babies. As a result, men and women are putting off marriage until much later, or in many cases, forsaking it altogether. Dr. Sax cites the number of men ages thirty-five to forty who have never been married has tripled in the last thirty years. Just twenty-five years ago it was 8%. It currently stands at 22% and is rising rapidly.

Dr. Sax also mentions the rise of contraception as a cause of the divorce of marriage from sex. (Once again, Pope Paul VI was right). Dr. Sax says, “More and more boys are discovering that they prefer a sexy image on a computer screen to a real live woman with expectations…” Some of the physical results of this dependency on pornography are the increasing number of men who need Viagra or Cialis.

And now the good news:

Dr. Sax gives hope to concerned parents (and disaffected young males) by giving concrete examples of young men whose lives were turned around by some simple changes. Enroll in an all-boy school. Get off unnecessary medications. Get unhooked from the video games and get involved in athletic competitions. Have examples of manly behavior from men. Experience the real world by getting outdoors. Do something physically demanding. Sweat.

For more information read the book and go to the website: www.boysadrift.com and www.singlesexschools.org.

View all my reviews.

What Doctors Don't Know About Menopause

What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause: The Breakthrough Book on Natural Hormone Balance by John R. Lee

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I'm still reading this book, but so far I'm impressed by the common-sense holistic approach Dr. Lee takes when it comes to treating women who are experiencing change of life and hormonal issues associated with menopause.

I've been having some dermatological problems for about 1 1/2 years, during which time I've been to a nurse practitioner, family practice primary care physician and numerous visits to a dermatologist. I began to suspect my problems were hormonal when the powerful medications, ointments and creams prescribed by the above medical professionals failed to give me much relief and the skin problems appeared about the same time I experience an increase in my middle...even though I was exercising frequently and I had just completed a swim marathon (26 miles in 4 weeks), I seemed to have developed a "life-saver" of padding around my waistline. I figured it was due to swimming, so I laid off swimming and went back to aerobic exercise and weight-training. Some of the padding came off, but I still seem to have more of "me" than I would like.

I had a few other minor symptoms of pre-menopause, so I started thinking maybe my skin issues were hormonally caused.

Dr. Lee's book makes mention of these and other symptoms being helped by natural progesterone cream. (Note: not all creams are created equal, so he gives a list of some of the "good" ones in the back of his book).

After only one day of using the cream, I feel incredibly better. I think my skin looks better too. Even my husband said to me this morning, "You look more hopeful than you have in a long time!"

I realize this could be the placebo effect, so I'm taking my time and keeping notes before I announce a "miracle cure," but if this can help another woman experiencing hormonal issues, I wanted to get the word out.

By the way, I have used this natural progesterone cream made from wild yams once before in my life. It was after a particularly debilitating miscarriage after 14 weeks of pregnancy. My midwife recommended it to help prevent another miscarriage, as I wanted to get pregnant again soon. I used it and was pregnant very soon after the miscarriage. That little boy is 9 years old now.

View all my reviews.

What makes a good husband?

The ABC's of Choosing a Good Husband: How to Find and Marry a Great Guy by Stephen Wood

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
At first glance, the cover and title of this book and its partner book, The ABCs of Choosing a Good Wife were off-putting to say the least. It seemed juvenile to think one could just apply a list to select a spouse. In fact, everyone I've known who has a "list" for a spouse, usually ends up disappointed because the "perfect" partner doesn't exist except in our imaginations.

However, once I got into this book, I found the ideas riveting and somewhat frightening. The reason they were frightening is because the author, Stephen Wood, makes sense when he speaks to young women about what qualities make a good husband. Unfortunately, many of these qualities women hope their future husbands will have, such as being self-giving, considerate, patient, affectionate, generous, honorable, humble, strong, caring, responsible and mature, are often qualities that young men today are lacking. Sometimes women will fall in love anyway and hope to "change" their husbands once they're married. The truth is marriage isn't the force to change their behaviors. In fact, marriage can sometimes exacerbate underlying character flaws such as irresponsibility, immaturity, narcissism, and selfishness.

The most frightening chapter of all is chapter 18, "Ruinous Effects of Pornography on Your Future Marriage." I recently chatted with a priest friend at a party and he told me he is concerned that so many young men today have a warped view of sexuality due to pornography that they might not be able to make and keep a sacramental marriage. The plague of pornography has become so widespread, that some experts suggest as much as 70% of all college-aged men use pornography and some of these will go on to be so addicted to it that they will prefer pornographic experiences over real women.

According to Stephen Wood: "Annual porn profits exceed the combined revenues of all the professional football, basketball, and baseball franchises." And, "Every thirty-nine minutes a new porn video is created in the United States."

As if those statistics aren't scary enough, he goes on to outline the extent to which pornography has affected Christian men. "In a 1996 survey, 53% of Promise Keepers (Christian men) admitted to viewing porn within a week of attending a PK event." And, "In a (Protestant) pastors.com survey, 54% of pastors said they viewed porn within the past 12 months."

He goes on to say the pornography crisis is even worse among Catholic men. It has affected Catholic men in all walks of life, from priests and deacons, to seminarians (even at the "good" seminaries), to youth group and campus leaders and students on orthodox Catholic college campuses to Catholic homeschooling fathers. Some estimates are that half of all the men attending your parish are ensnared by pornography. He estimates at least two-thirds of all eligible Catholic men have a problem with pornography. That's scary.

Pornography is addictive to men particularly because it causes chemical changes in the brain. Technology has shown us that when pornography is viewed, there are at least a half-dozen neuro-chemicals released into the brain which not only gives the viewer pleasure, but also permanently etches images in his memory. Like other addictions, greater extremes of pornography must be viewed in order for the brain to register the same feelings of pleasure. Ultimately, the man has become a slave to pornography and will choose the pictures or videos over being with his wife.

There are other issues that can kill a marriage, and Stephen Wood lays them all out, in ABC order, to help young women navigate the way to a happy and healthy marriage.

I highly recommend this book to parents as well as young women and men who are contemplating the vocation of marriage.

View all my reviews.

I like a good cry every now and then

If you haven't heard about the recently discovered sensation, Susan Boyle, of Scotland, then you MUST watch this video:

Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent
by dwarthy

Caution: Reading this blog may put you at odds with the Feds

Today is Tax Day. A day rued by many hardworking patriotic Americans. Peaceful protests have been planned in major cities throughout the US and those on the left are steamed. Code Pink and others are planning some tea party "crashes," and left-leaners have blamed Fox News for organizing these gatherings of "right-wing radicals."

Unfortunately, the Obama administration has linked the terms "patriotic" with those who feel it is their duty as "patriotic citizens" to pay more taxes. The Obama administration is already using our patriotic tax dollars to fund more abortions overseas, in addition to forcing doctors and nurses in our own country to participate in these procedures against their consciences. As Planned Parenthood says, the United States is going in a "new direction," and Planned Parenthood is poised to play a "unique role" in shaping the administrations "health agenda."

If that wasn't enough to give us indigestion, someone in the Department of Homeland Security (probably one of those "right-wing nut-jobs" leaked an official document earlier this week, which warns police and security personnel to keep a vigilant watch on "...those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, [and]...individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration." Michelle Malkin has a great synopsis on her blog.

It's enough to make you want to dress up like an Indian and dump a load of something into Boston Harbor!

I'll be there in spirit (and truth), if not in person, as I have mommy driving duties to fulfill that prevent me from actually driving my 15 passenger van downtown, to pay $10 to park, then herd my darling children to the steps of the capitol for the second time this month. (We already made our appearance with roughly 2,000 other homeschoolers at the capitol on April 3rd, for Homeschool Day at the Capitol...

If you want to find us in the crowd below, I'm in the bright green shirt, with a knapsack, leaning to my left to talk to my daughter in the bright red shirt, right of the statue, near the front of the crowd. Thanks to J. Will for taking this great pic and posting it on the web!)

Okay, so maybe you can't see me, but I really was there!

Urgent! Email Dept of Health and Human Services Today

The public is allowed 30 days to comment on the Obama administration's proposal to rescind the regulation which forbades the coercion of health care workers to violate their consciences when providing "health care" such as birth control, abortion, euthanasia, sterilizations and gender re-assignment to patients.

Please inform yourself about this anti-freedom, anti-life, ANTI-CHOICE proposal and make your comments known.

As Susan Wills, the assistant director for education and outreach, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, writes in her article, Conscience Rights: From Choice to Coercion:

Despite all their talk of "choice," the abortion industry and its supporters are determined to eliminate the choice of medical professionals and entities to not become accomplices in killing unborn boys and girls. Despite all their talk about "privacy," the abortion industry and its supporters are determined to trample on healthcare professionals' innermost zone of privacy, that "secret core and sanctuary" known as conscience. It is no longer enough, in their eyes, that women and girls can obtain potentially abortifacient drugs in virtually every pharmacy in the U.S. or that women and girls can have abortions on request in every city where there's a profit to be had. They will not rest until every pharmacy, hospital, healthcare provider, and taxpayer collaborates in the culture of death.

Amen.
The 30 days for public comment is coming to a close this Thursday, HOLY THURSDAY, April 9, 2009. Just go to the Regulations.gov website to electronically submit your comments. (Click on the little yellow balloon next to the "Add Comments" tag).
Here's what I submitted electronically:

I would like to strongly voice my concerns that the provisions to allow for a conscience clause NOT be removed or amended in any way. Health care workers MUST have the freedom of conscience to be allowed to recuse themselves from any procedure OR REFERRAL which in any way conflicts with their personal, moral or religious beliefs. Birth control, sterilization, abortion, euthanasia and gender re-assignment are all examples of the types of so-called health care that should not be coerced upon medical workers. No health care worker of any type should be forced to violate their conscience. Please DO NOT remove this clause.

Mea Culpa: my revised book review on the Duggars

The Duggars: 20 and Counting!: Raising One of America's Largest Families—How They Do It by Michelle Duggar

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
Here's my revised review:


I have to correct some of the things I wrote after my initial read of this book. I confess I found myself falling far short of the cheerful and organized family I was reading about in the book and I was a tinge jealous of their huge house and amazing children. I wrote: "Tiresome! I like to read books by and about large families...trying to get some ideas for a book I'd like to write someday. What I definitely want to avoid is the 'holier than thou' preaching I found throughout this book. I also want to try to avoid the 'I know everything because I'm a mom of (fill in the blank with however many kids Michelle Duggar has at the moment).'"

Okay, so maybe that was a bit harsh and judgmental...

After some examination of conscience, I felt I needed to apologize for that untrue remark. Michelle Duggar is not "holier than thou." Her only fault might be in her unadulterated cheerfulness at being one of the most unabashedly fecund mothers currently living on the planet.
I did take exception to a few of her comments, specifically the sidebar that quotes her saying that breastfeeding doesn't prevent you from getting pregnant. I believe she misunderstands the concept of breastfeeding on demand and breastfeeding for comfort as well as for food. This was the only way I found breastfeeding to accompany infertility. Since there are photos of her newborn with a pacifier in her mouth, Michelle Duggar obviously isn't breastfeeding her newborns for comfort, thus she isn't using breastfeeding to space her babies.

Michelle has certainly taken her share of criticism for her large brood and I don't want to add to that. She also has some good ideas for feeding many mouths. But I don't see the need for "industrial" sized everything. Most of us "normal" families with more than 2.1 kids don't have the money or the space for an industrial sized kitchen or laundry room and we have to make do with the normal sized kitchens and laundry rooms we have. Most of us don't have the 10,000 square foot home the Duggars have either. And most of us don't live in rural Arkansas, where we could afford to buy the land to build our 10,000 sq. ft dream home either! I love the Duggars, but I just wish they were a bit more like my family so I could relate to them better.

Still, I think I can learn a thing or two from Michelle Duggar, that is once I get over the fact that her husband is named "Jim Bob" and each of their 18 children has a name that also begins with "J"!

View all my reviews.

Deadly Earthquake in L'Aquila, Italy

Please pray for the people of L'Aquila, Italy today as they are searching for bodies from the deadly destruction of an earthquake that struck early this morning. The quake, which measured 6.3 on the Richter scale, is one of the worst to hit the region since the deadly quake that hit southern Italy (including Naples) in 1980, killing 3,000 and leaving hundreds of thousands of people homeless.

My husband called me from work to tell me the news. We had visited there as a young couple when we lived in Naples, Italy in the late 80's. I remember L'Aquila as being a gorgeous medieval city built in the mountains. It is no wonder there is such destruction as most of the buildings are centuries old and built of ancient stone. I took the above picture on our visit to L'Aquila around 1986. It was one of countless picturesque scenes of the ancient city.

Please pray for the people of L'Aquila, the survivors and the aid workers.