Is your home trying to kill you?



Filmmaker and mother Jessica Solce was frustrated by the difficulty of finding healthy, all-natural products for herself and her family. To make it easier, she created the Solarium, which curates trusted, third-party-tested foods, clothing, beauty products, and more — all free of seed oils, endocrine disruptors, carcinogens, and other harmful additives.

In this occasional column, she shares recommendations and research she's picked up during her ongoing education in health and wellness.

Your refrigerator is filled with unprocessed, natural foods. Your medicine cabinet is free of toxic pharmaceuticals. Your faucets dispense filtered, chemical-free drinking water.

In other words, you've optimized your family's home life for health. But what about the home itself?

Pillows, sheets, and furniture also contain toxic flame retardants, a grimly appropriate name given their tendency to reduce IQ and cause developmental delays.

Sadly and shockingly, virtually all houses harbor seemingly innocuous products and materials that silently poison us, day in and day out.

Take your bed, for example.

You spend a third of your life sleeping, so get a good mattress. This is solid advice. It also happens to be incomplete. A restful night's sleep shouldn't mean eight to 10 hours inhaling microdoses of toxic, flame-retardant forever chemicals.

But that's exactly what you get with much modern bedding.

And the situation in other rooms is generally no better.

To go through all of what may be poisoning us in our homes would require an article of epic proportions; it would also be overwhelmingly depressing for me to write and for you to read.

I encourage you to do more research and to consider the specifics of your own situation. In the meantime, for the sake of both of our sanities, I’ll limit myself to outlining the major offenders — as well as what to replace them with.

My hope is that I can give you a good start in ensuring your home is a haven for healing, not a den of disease.

RELATED: Grass-fed steaks, unprocessed salt, and more chemical-free picks from the Solarium

  Getty Images/Camerique/The Solarium

Starting slow

Spend any time on health-oriented social media, and it feels as if every week brings news of some new toxic product ready to kill you, from paint and plastics to petroleum-based perfumes.

So when we first set out to evict the enemy from our abode, we quickly realize the hydra-esque task we've taken on. No sooner have you rooted him out of one hiding place than you discover him popping up in two more.

As someone who's navigated this kind of purge myself (inspiring me to create an online marketplace of healthy products to help you do the same), I strongly advise against a scorched earth, “No Impact Man” approach.

Rather, you should employ a method of gradual change where you make small, conscious swaps for healthier alternatives. Trust me, it’s easier on your wallet and your mental well-being.

No impact, man

That said, the aforementioned 2009 documentary is an eye-opening watch. “No Impact Man” is the story of a New York City family — journalist Colin Beavan, his wife, Michelle, and their toddler, Isabella — undertaking an experiment to live for one year, while making as little impact on the environment as possible.

One scene in particular floored me: when Michelle throws away all of her makeup and bathroom and beauty products.

It wasn't that she voluntarily parted ways with her precious and pricey creams and unguents but the sheer amount of them she'd managed to stockpile in their small Manhattan apartment.

Imagine how much more the bathroom of the average American house in the suburbs holds. Unfathomable amounts of money spent on unfathomable amounts of toxic junk.

As thought-provoking as "No Impact Man" is, I'd advise against going to such extremes, at least at first. Above all, you want to make sure this is something you can sustain.

In my experience, that becomes easier the more you learn how to spot these home-borne toxins — and the more you understand the potential damage they can do once they get into your lungs, bloodstream, and cells and mitochondria. Removing them from your life will not feel like a burden but a no-brainer necessity.

Here are some simple first steps to get you started.

Open your windows

Even without getting rid of anything, this age-old method of improving ventilation and air exchange can have a major impact on the health of your home.

A 2020 review of 37 separate environmental studies found that elevated indoor carbon dioxide levels associated with poor ventilation impaired high-level decision-making and reduced cognitive speed, especially on complex tasks.

Remake your bed

As mentioned, where you rest your head at night is very important. We sleep an average of 2,700 hours a year, or 114 days out of 365. And it's not just your mattress you need to worry about.

Pillows, sheets, and furniture also contain toxic flame retardants, a grimly appropriate name given their tendency to reduce IQ and cause developmental delays.

They can also cause metabolic problems like obesity and insulin resistance, while endocrine disruptors they contain cause thyroid problems, infertility, hormone disregulation, and hormone-related cancers. Nasty stuff.

Because kids tend to put their hands on everything and everything in their mouths, they're even more prone to ingesting these retardants. Especially when they're in the pajamas they wear!

One retardant ingredient is formaldehyde. You know ... embalming fluid. Many of us are sleeping on literal deathbeds.

So what can we do?! For pillows and comforters, find goose down or wool. One excellent option for pillows is the wonderful U.S. company the Woolshire. Avocado is a great source for mattresses. You can find 100% cotton and/or linen at a wide range of prices, from made-in-America luxury brands to Target's in-house bedding line.

Clear the air

Nothing like lighting a scented candle or two to make a home feel clean and inviting. Just make sure you know what you're burning

While marketed as "natural," many soy candles contain synthetic fragrance oils and chemical additives that release harmful pollutants. A pair of recent studies found that scented candles emit formaldehyde, benzene, and other carcinogens, with risks to lung and nasal cancers, respiratory harm, and cognitive decline.

The aforementioned chemicals are known as volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, not because they are organic in the farmer’s market sense but because of their specific chemical properties.

“Volatile” refers to their ability to turn into gas at room temperature, “organic” refers to their carbon bases, and “compounds” means they’re highly complex — all to mean these things are absolutely not fit for human consumption or contact. If they are in your home, they can “off gas” into your air without being heated or physically disturbed.

In addition, the European Commission’s Scientific Committee confirms that fragrance ingredients are among the leading causes of allergic contact dermatitis (allergies, eczema, rashes) in Europe. Another study confirms that regular indoor scented candle burning “can expose us to dangerous levels of organic pollutants” and ultra-fine particles.

These harmful VOCs are not inherent in the unburned wax but formed as byproducts of incomplete combustion when the candle is burned; the additives, wicks (sometimes made of lead!), and added fragrances and dyes increase the levels of VOCs. Synthetic scents can also trigger asthma, allergic reactions, and breathing problems.

A 100% unadulterated beeswax candle with a cotton or paper wick and no added dyes or fragrance is the way to go.

This is the cleanest candle possible: not 100% free of VOCs but with significantly lower emissions. It's also completely unprocessed — made of wax that comes straight from the beehive.

Along with the lovely natural scent, beeswax candles may also produce negative ions that help settle positively charged particles like dust, pollen, mold spores, and some airborne toxins.

"Why can’t I just get some air fresheners from Walmart?" Don’t bother. They emit a cocktail of carcinogenic VOCs and phthalates (endocrine-disrupting semi-VOCs). If you have these in your home or in the car, this is step one: Get rid of them pronto.

Once you stop using chemical air fresheners, you’ll start noticing how foul and unnatural they actually smell. As luck would have it, we now have a nice, natural option thanks to the small French company &Eden.

The scents you put on your body can be just as harmful, especially considering that you absorb them directly through your skin as well as through your lungs. When you are ready to make the swap, consider these cleaner, nature-based soaps and fragrances.

Let the light in

The convenience of artificial light comes with a major cost: the disruption of our body’s innate circadian signaling and repair processes.

Moreover, our bodies our designed to absorb the entirety of the sunlight spectrum, from infrared to visible to ultraviolet. But our ubiquitous screens isolate and maximize our exposure to certain parts of the spectrum. The computers, phones, and tablets we use indoors continually bathe us in unnatural amounts of blue light.

One way to mitigate this constant onslaught is by wearing yellow-tinted blue-light-blocking glasses while at the computer.

You can also change your lightbulbs to more closely resemble full spectrum sunlight. I did this first in my bedroom, creating a warm, amber glow like candlelight. I highly recommend it.

There are emerging tech solutions as well. The Daylight Computer can be used outside without glare issues and eliminates the blue light problem by harnessing ambient light or using red light for a backlight. Its display resembles conventional E Ink displays but with a faster refresh rate.

If you want to learn a whole lot more about blue light, you can read my three-part series about its effects on your body.

Clean house

Say goodbye to the likes of Mr. Clean, Lysol, and Formula 409. They all come with excess baggage: quaternary ammonium compounds, or "quats" (antimicrobials that can cause skin and respiratory irritation), synthetic fragrances, preservatives, and ethanolamines.

RELATED: Trump EPA takes aim at forever chemicals

  Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

In addition, common cleaning products often contain endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) that can impair fertility in both sexes. The phthalates found in many synthetic fragrances have been strongly linked to reduced sperm quality, lower testosterone, and altered ovarian function.

Instead, make your own all-purpose cleaner with vinegar, water, essential oils, and a glass spray bottle. You can also experiment with different combinations of baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, isopropyl alcohol, and lemon juice.

Other fertility disruptors that may be lurking in your home include:

  • Bisphenol A (BPA), a common ingredient in plastic products and thermal receipts, which has been connected to reduced egg quality, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, and implantation failure;
  • PFAS, or "forever chemicals," in stain‑resistant fabrics, non‑stick cookware, and some cosmetics, which are associated with longer time-to-pregnancy and lower fertility rates; and
  • Household flame retardants present in furniture and electronics, which have been linked to failed embryo implantation and decreased sperm motility.

Pesticides, particularly organophosphates and glyphosate, have been associated with reduced fertility, hormone disruption, and increased miscarriage risk. Which leads us to our next step ...

Weed out pesticides

According to NASA’s famous Clean Air Study, certain houseplants do more than just look good — they can help filter common indoor air pollutants often released by furniture, cleaning products, and household materials.

This is technically true, but ventilation is still more effective; it would take a huge number of plants to make a difference in home air quality.

Then again, I do think that cohabitating with plants benefits us in less quantifiable ways, such as fostering a healthy sense of connection to nature.

Just be aware of the soil you use — inside and outside the home. Conventional soils are filled with synthetic pesticides like herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides as well as synthetic fertilizers that alter soil biology, killing nutrients and introducing heavy metals (arsenic, lead, cadmium) into your gardens and eventually into your body.

Kids play outside, roll in the grass, and jump into leaf piles. They also come into close contact with pets who do the same. This soup of pesticides gets on their skin and is inhaled, raising their risks for blue baby syndrome, colorectal cancer, birth defects and sexual deformities, neurodevelopmental harm in children, and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

A 2015 Harvard School of Public Health study determined a 26% increased risk of leukemia in children exposed to herbicide. Indoor insecticide exposure showed a 47% higher risk of leukemia and a 43% higher risk of lymphoma. Even parental exposure before conception can raise cancer risk.

Most of us have heard of Roundup, the notorious herbicide that's cost Monsanto billions in legal settlements with people who claim it gave them cancer.

Despite this, the EPA continues to approve the use of Roundup, which kills weeds while sparing crops genetically engineered to resist it. The problem is that weeds tend to develop their own resistance.

The common solution is to add 2,4-D, a pesticide I'd never heard of before researching this article. Despite mounting evidence that 2,4-D is at least as harmful as Roundup, the EPA approved the use of this combination in 2014.

This is all the more reason to prioritize buying pesticide-free, organic, and regenerative soils for your indoor and outdoor plants. It's also important to stick to meats and vegetables raised on such soil. What our food sources eat and consume, we consume, entering us into a cycle of life and vitality or death and degeneration.

What I learned from having 3 kids under 3



Implausibly, October is here. My eldest turned four yesterday. Dare I say that disbelief at the pace of the passing of time — whether the unbearably long days or the unfathomably short years — is a universal maternal experience?

Oh, the melancholia of motherhood ... the slippery seconds, the diamonds raining from the sky, the inability to catch them in your hands for longer than a moment.

Because our social lives as moms have been so hollowed out by technology and the changing participation of women in the workplace, all of these little things in their little ways now require courage, consistency, and creativity.

Now that I no longer have three three and under, I thought I’d share my lessons learned from the experience, because people often ask how I manage.

I don’t know if I’ll ever feel fully qualified to proffer parental wisdom. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and my kids are underbaked. But in terms of keeping one’s sanity and smoothing day-to-day operations, I think I have some helpful tips to share. My advice boils down to three virtues: courage, consistency, and creativity.

Courage

Victim mentality is the antithesis of courage. It is pervasive, and it is practically, spiritually corrosive. Reject it.

One of the defining spirits of the modern age — unfortunately for everyone — is that which defines the self as a perpetual victim of circumstance and makes appeals to others, for pity or provision, on those terms.

This is the heart of identity politics, and of leftism generally, and so plays a major role in formal political discourse domestically and internationally. But the political right is not a stranger to this pattern of thought. In fact, self-identified right-wing people often indulge it while they denigrate it in others.

Take for example the ascendant “meninist” movement, which in many cases has retained the icon of victimhood but simply switched its subjects from women to men. As a Catholic, I cringe to see the same tendency in reactionary traditionalist movements that seem to relish their status as perpetually persecuted. Social media enables it by structurally prioritizing talk over action.

Victim mentality is dangerous, especially at scale. I would argue that it paves the way for totalitarianism. This mindset arrests the individual’s capacity to self-govern and achieve real things in the real world by redistributing responsibility through externalizing locus of control. It relieves persons and groups of the culpability and consequences of their actions.

To a mind colonized by a victim narrative, free will is alien, and the triumph of the will over challenges big and small is regarded as impossible. If someone succeeds, it must have been either a matter of luck or corrupt scheming.

But rarely does victim mentality result in true openness to the circumstances of life; instead, it encourages what Nietzsche called slave morality: cowardice, passive aggression, pathological consumption, and parasitical claims on the goods and services of others to compensate for one’s own impotence and discomfort.

Modern mothers are no exceptions to the zeitgeist. We are all subject to mainstream media and cultural narratives encouraging us to indulge our own sense of victimhood when things get hard. The nature of modern technology encourages passivity. And if we aren’t careful, we can wallow. Life is unfair. No one is helping me. My husband doesn’t do enough for me. Society doesn’t do enough for me. My kids don’t do enough for me. There’s no sense in trying; things will never get better. This is too hard.

It’s easy to indulge because it’s plausible and because selfishness is wired into humanity’s genetic code. Raising children under the current socioeconomic conditions can be a real challenge.

Sometimes our kids scream through the grocery store from entry to exit without ceasing, responding neither to discipline nor to desperate pleas for cooperation. Sometimes our husbands disappoint us. Sometimes our efforts seem futile, and the “payoff” for maternal investment remains unclear for a very long time, by definition.

But it has been so unspeakably important, in my experience, to resist the temptation to indulge these kinds of thoughts because they lead directly to passivity, despair, and consumerism.

We can confront and negotiate the problems in our lives, and even the selfishness of other people, without allowing ourselves to self-identify, explicitly or implicitly, as victims. In order to resist, we must put ourselves in the driver’s seat.

  • Stop complaining. This is the one-way street to victim mentality. Realize that however much we may be disappointed by others, we disappoint them too. If we must negotiate our problem, orient speech toward action.
  • Evaluate circumstances objectively, and wonder at, first and foremost, possibilities for action. Seek, and ye shall find. If you seek reasons to despair, you will find them. If you seek reasons to push, to reach higher, to go deeper, to forebear, to love, and to have courage, you will find them. This is a fundamental mindset shift toward positivity and production rather than negativity and consumption.
  • Find the courage to fail. Believe in the possibility of action and results, and make goals — but choose action despite the possibility of failure. Objectively observe your own role in the order-to-chaos ratio of your life. How can you improve for the sake of improvement regardless of how you might be immediately gratified?  

Consistency

An object in motion stays in motion. Take this literally and figuratively.

One of my earlier essays covers how retraining my brain to operate like an athlete’s made me a better mom. In terms of mindset, this dovetails perfectly with what I’ve just written about victim mentality and goes farther to emphasize the importance of literal physical activity.

I cannot overstate the degree to which prioritizing my physical health, mostly by lifting heavy almost every day, has given my days structure and magnified my energy in every other area of my life. This principle works just as well for intellectual goals as for bodily goals.

Whenever I feel depressed or anxious, exercise is the silver bullet. But how do you find the time?

Simple: Choose it, and stop making excuses. Establish routine and structure, buoyed by the resolute determination to get out of the house every single day. Holding myself to this simple principle by continuously making the choice to embrace the annoying transition from the house to the car to the stroller and back again has done wonders for my mental and physical health. If you can simply make consistent movement a habit, it compounds. Over time, it becomes pleasurable.

Creativity

Find your community, no matter how unconventional the means.

The final helpful lifestyle shift that I believe is foundational to a good motherhood experience is twofold: creativity and community. These things go together. Creativity fosters community, and community fosters creativity. When you find what you love to create, it attracts like-minded people. When you find people you love, you will be energized to create on their behalf.

To make community work in the modern world, one must be willing to be creative in pursuit of it. A combination of the previous mindset shifts (“I have agency over my circumstances, and I can move freely in the world to achieve my goals”) must be present as well as a willingness to try new things in order to meet people and maintain friendships.

Loneliness is one of the primary factors in poor mental health for modern moms. Isolation feels baked into the cake of American society, but this isn’t inevitable! No one ever said fellowship would be easy.

The victim mentality would have lonely people believe that they are lonely because no one is reaching out to them. The couch potato mentality would have lonely people believe that because getting out of the house to commune with friends is difficult that there is only one way of doing this and that it is unworthy of doing.

Here’s where all the principles dovetail together. The COURAGE mentality encourages lonely people to find friendship in the world despite potential rejection. The CONSISTENCY mentality fosters a willingness to fail or to be rejected, and once friends are found, keeps them close through a sense of mutual duty and sacrifice. And CREATIVITY helps on the front end to find your people, and all throughout, to keep in touch with them.

Start the group chat. Start the playgroup. Ask someone to work out together. Attend birthday parties. Bake the cookies. Deliver the postpartum meals. Volunteer. Throw the cocktail parties. Buy outdoor art supplies for the kids and invite moms over for tea.

These actions seem mundane, perhaps antiquated. Because our social lives as moms have been so hollowed out by technology and the changing participation of women in the workplace, all of these little things in their little ways now require courage, consistency, and creativity. Despite whatever difficulties I endured moving from zero to one, they are what have made my life as a young mom of three boisterous little children not only bearable but deeply enjoyable.

Hope these were helpful. I’d love to hear your perspective in the comments section: What helps you persist in motherhood?

Tupperware: 1946-2024



Tupperware — America’s plastic kingpin, the Michael Jackson of kitchenware — is no more.

Earlier this month, the brand filed for bankruptcy.

Wise’s genius was in recognizing the untapped potential of housewives as both customers and salespeople. In living rooms across America, women were given new authority over their homes — and their finances.

Like Jackson, it was once a star, pioneering multilevel marketing and reaping profits in over 100 countries. No kitchenware made it big like Tupperware. But today, it’s more relic than revolution.

For decades, moms, grandmas, aunts, me-maws, and church ladies swore by their Tupperware, its cracked lids and warped bowls symbols of household lifetimes. In the 1950s, these inflexible bowls became a quiet catalyst for cultural change, advancing women economically and socially in ways few could have predicted.

The burping bowls that changed America

Forty years after the invention of plastic, Earl Tupper unveiled his airtight plastic containers. They must have looked like something out of science fiction. Vacuum-sealed with a "burping" lid, Tupperware reshaped the way food was stored. Suddenly, home cooks could keep ingredients fresh longer, experiment with their menus, and stock more diverse fridges.

But even a brilliant product needs more than innovation to survive.

The narrative goes that in postwar America, as men commuted to work, women felt marooned in suburbia, trapped in a loop of loneliness, grocery lists, and kitchen chores. By the late 1940s, clever minds at Tupperware decided on a radical marketing shift: They pulled the product from retail shelves and brought it straight to the consumer — one doorbell ring at a time.

Tupperware parties

By the 1950s, Tupperware wasn’t just a product; it was a movement. Brownie Wise, the savvy saleswoman who revolutionized Tupperware's business model, pioneered the “party plan.”

The majority of Tupperware customers were, and always have been, women. So instead of sending salesmen door-to-door, Wise mobilized the most powerful force of all — women gathered in each other’s homes to buy, sell, and chat. These parties weren’t just about bowls and lids; they were social hubs, a festive remedy for suburban isolation.

Wise’s genius was in recognizing the untapped potential of housewives as both customers and salespeople. In living rooms across America, women were given new authority over their homes — and their finances.

Feminism in plastic

The same forces that fueled Tupperware’s rise — the restlessness of suburban housewives and their hunger for autonomy — would soon lead to its decline.

The postwar isolation these women faced, compounded by the numbing glow of daytime TV and a potent cocktail of tranquilizers, fostered the "problem that has no name," at least according to the second-wave feminists who painted the entire era as hellish.

For a brief moment, though, Tupperware offered an escape hatch. These communal events were political, in the traditional sense, where Greek citizens would sit around gabbing. But for the 1950s housewife, Tupperware parties were so much more.

They transformed female friendship and offered women a glimpse of what it meant to be an entrepreneur, opening up a new space between housewife and "career woman."

Sealing the lid shut

Ironically, the very empowerment that Tupperware fostered helped hasten its downfall. By the 1960s, as more women had entered the workforce, the cohesive Tupperware gatherings lost their magic. The '80s brought microwave-safe containers, expired Tupperware patents, and the death of Earl Tupper.

Tupperware would never return to its mid-century heights. By the time the new millennium rolled in, the tides had fully turned.

Convenience culture demanded single-use, disposable packaging. The environmental movement painted plastic as a villain, and Tupperware found itself stranded on the wrong side of history.

The pandemic dealt the final blow to Tupperware parties. Once the brand’s lifeblood, they were now relics of a bygone era.

In June, the last Tupperware factory in the U.S. shut its doors. What once symbolized American ingenuity and entrepreneurship now seems a cautionary tale, a reminder of how easily the disruptors can become the disrupted.

The joy of spontaneous hospitality



There are many words that might be called magical, but I think spontaneity might be at the forefront of the list.

I should be socially awkward. I'm the oldest of twelve children. We were home-educated, and when I was a teenager, we lived with the Amish for three years. All my best friends were pen pals. I didn't do sports or sleepovers — I went to work days and butchered countless chickens or canned applesauce and okra pickles with Amish girls.

The home has turned into a stage for Instagram portraits. I want to reclaim it as a sanctuary ... as a step toward the kingdom of heaven.

I never learned the words, "Text me first."

In those days, we didn't have phones; my mom had one, but it was always dead. So people just dropped in, and when they did they would stay awhile ... a couple of days, a few weeks, a month or two. We were stunned if they came just to leave right away without having eaten with us. There was always plenty to share, and nothing was ever planned.

Sometimes girls my age would drop in and spend the afternoon with me. I couldn't stop doing my chores just because a friend had shown up. So we would plant broccoli together while chatting, or make eggnog and popcorn for everyone, or work on the pile of mending. I never simply sat and visited — still can't. There's something about being able to look at something you're working on that eases out the awkwardness in conversation lulls.

Eventually I had my own home, my own schedule, and a phone. I still didn't live within cell range, so the words "text me first" remained an unprogrammed part of my vocabulary. I met a lot of friends at literary and music events. I would give them my number but tell them, "Don't call me," and proceed to give them directions to where I live. Many would show up, always when I thought, "Tonight will be quiet."

Sometimes I would have to swallow down a moment of "I wish for some peace tonight." I was glad for the unexpected visitors once I hugged them and asked them to sit down for a cup of tea and we started talking. I would forget myself and my supposed needs and feel that God was blessing me, my home, and these guests. They would leave, saying, "Coming to your home is like having a break from the world. Thank you so much for keeping your door open."

I want friends — and strangers — to enter my home and find what they've been searching for at church. I want them to be seen and heard and to be fed and nourished. I want their doubts to have a space to be aired. If I see them fidgeting with their fingers, I want to offer them some knitting needles: "Would you like to learn?"

The home has turned into a stage for Instagram portraits. I want to reclaim it as a sanctuary ... as a step toward the kingdom of heaven. A place where someone can get relief for a cold, a sore heart, a raging appetite. Home is where the heart is, they say — and a beautiful heart is always open.

I don't believe this is a work for a select few. I believe we are all called to spontaneous hospitality. The gospel doesn't divert for the extrovert or introvert. It remains the same for all of us. It matters not if your home is clean — clean it after your guest leaves.

We are all called to make sacrifices, to love our neighbors — and all men are our neighbors — and to be waiting, always waiting, with open arms, saying "Thy will be done," living by faith, not fear, for whatever and whoever God brings to us.

There is nothing more sweet than opening your door to find a friend standing there, to allow them inside, offer them refreshments, and invite them in on what you were currently doing ... be it deep-cleaning under the upturned couches, finishing a batch of bread, or clearing away a pile of papers so they have a place to sit. It doesn't matter if you feel ready, or if the floors need to be mopped, or if there's nothing substantive to eat.

A wondrous thing about becoming spontaneously hospitable is how it blots out all imperfections and pride and makes a way for the gospel to thrive within our neighborhoods, and those who might never have gone to church get to experience the power of the Holy Spirit after all.

FACT CHECK: Did Private Investors Buy 44% Of All Single Family Homes In 2023?

Private investors, both big and small, purchased 44% of all flipped homes in 2022, not 2023

Time blocking: The harried housewife's secret weapon



Before we were married, my husband and I agreed that I would stay home to raise any children we had. I suppose this was partly a rational decision — Jordan Peterson's pro-family exhortations and Erica Komisar's "Being There" were influential — but mostly it just felt right. He wanted to give me a house, and I wanted to make him a home.

When the time came to abandon my fledgling career, I felt something between the relief promised by the traditional housewife lobby and the grief the girlboss brigade had led me to expect. While work wasn't "fulfilling" in any meaningful sense, neither was it "soul-sucking." It gave me a pleasant sense of purpose and an outlet for my talents, not to mention money and the social status gainful employment confers. Moments of real interest and thrill made up for the mild drudgery.

Motherhood wasn’t accurately described by ideologues, either. Unlike my job, it was deeply fulfilling in a way words couldn't quite express, but at the cost of profound isolation and crippling lassitude. I never resented how much my children needed me, but I couldn't ignore the sense that my options had irrevocably narrowed.

I suspect most women live in this ambivalence, torn between the rational, remunerative, public world and the maternal, eternally minded, private world.

We're often told this inner conflict is the inevitable result of trying to "have it all"; simply commit to one or the other and peace will follow. But what if the work/home dichotomy itself is false — a relic of a centuries-old wedge between man and woman, and the notions of secular and sacred, that eventually became the sex war?

That's certainly the thesis behind how I structure my days. The goal is to honor my duties to family while also participating in public life and commerce in my own small way.

My favorite tool for achieving this is time blocking, or what I like to call “rigid flexibility.”

I separate my day into one- to three-hour blocks and assign those time blocks with time-sensitive, measurable, focused, appropriate goals.

I am as rigid about timing as I can be, but because the blocks are a generous amount of time to reasonably accomplish what I need to, I don’t feel that rigidity in the moment.

When the time block is over, I simply move to the next item. Whether or not I’ve done it perfectly, I’ve done something. The sense of momentum and accomplishment helps me get through the day and sleep at night.

When I started doing this, I mapped it all out on paper, in my calendar. Now that it’s been about a year, it’s a habit. The rough edges are smoother than I could have ever imagined.

So, here’s a day in my life, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. PS: It takes me 15 minutes to get anywhere I need to go.

7-9 a.m.

Wake up. Usually one of the kids has gotten us up at some point through the night. Whoever had kid duty the previous night gets a nap while the other spouse makes breakfast. Fried eggs and a French press. My favorite routine.

Next, everyone needs dressing. Everyone’s weekday wardrobe is extremely simple: athletic clothes. I’m not fussy, because the next thing we do is leave the house, usually for some kind of sporty activity. For me: sunscreen, perfume, light makeup if I slept poorly.

Before we are out the door, I start a load of laundry.

9:15 a.m. to noon

Every weekday, these hours are devoted to some form of social recreation. That could mean going to the YMCA for a workout while the kids play at the Y’s kid center, or going to a playgroup, where a regular set of moms can share coffee and let our kids run free with their friends.

It could also mean a one-on-one playdate with a friend in need of some extra emotional support or a field trip to the library, the farm, or the museum.

For these, I prioritize moderately stimulating, come-as-you-are venues that don't require more than the kind of low-effort supervision that allows you to check emails or take phone calls if need be. The kind of place where one mom can easily handle all the kids while the other takes a bathroom break or replenishes the snack supply.

Most important is to seek the kind of enjoyable, relaxing environment in which parents and children can develop real friendships in tandem.

This time block is generous enough to fill everyone’s cup for the day but limited so as not to drain us of energy for what comes next.

12:15-1 p.m.

From noonish to 1 p.m., the kids have lunch. This may happen in the wagon while I’m making a grocery run, which requires some forethought and a packed lunch. Otherwise, we’ve just arrived home, and they’re eating last night’s leftovers.

While they’re eating lunch, I switch the load of laundry. Go back, pick up the bedroom, and quickly tidy the bathrooms. It’s a very fast pass because of the mess the kids are bound to make unsupervised while eating, but it’s enough to decrease the chaos just enough so that the end of the day doesn’t feel overwhelming.

1-3 p.m.

At 1 p.m., the littlest kids take naps, and my three-year-old has about two hours of quiet time. She can play quietly or listen to an audio book or lie down and watch a movie while her siblings nap.

This was a routine that took some work, as my eldest is highly energetic and social. So, I trained her. Sometimes training them to do something they don’t want to do is uncomfortable and annoying in the beginning. But it’s better for everyone that she rests. Eventually, she came to expect and look forward to quiet time.

This is tea time and a work block for me. I’m just checking work items off my to-do list here. Usually writing.

3-5 p.m.

Littles wake up. Light snack and time for outside play. At this point, the two eldest kids go in the backyard and make something of their boredom. I often give them a little treat to smooth over the transition, but especially since the weather has improved, they hardly need encouragement.

So, while they are playing outside, I’m once again free to wrap up my work. By 4 p.m., I need to prepare dinner and tidy for bedtime.

From 4-5 p.m., I’m drinking kombucha, cooking, and answering emails or scrolling X.

5-7 p.m.

Dinner, bath, and bedtime for the kids. Husband and I divide and conquer.

7-10 p.m.

After 7 p.m., I have another work block. I’m writing, usually. Podcasting, sometimes. But not alone. Usually curled up with husband. It’s been a long day.

We’re both tired. Sometimes I’ll get carried away and write until 10 p.m., which isn’t ideal, since that’s my preferred bedtime. Frequently, if I’m up all night with a fussy kid, I’m writing in the middle of the night, too.

None of that is ideal, again, but I’m not clocking in and clocking out like a typical working person. It’s great to get paid, but it’s even greater to build a community of like-minded women. Sometimes that means I can’t let inspiration escape me when it comes. Another point for rigid flexibility.

Postscript 

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the key to making time blocking work, at least for me: the willingness to accept supernatural help.

As trite as this may sound, an attitude of gratitude and surrender is essential to surviving what can sometimes feel like an unending onslaught of responsibility as a mother. We are painfully human, and we rely on grace to do anything, let alone anything excellent. So, we should ask for grace. Frequently.

Prayer, I think, is different for caretakers of littles. We may never find ourselves in positions to pray without interruption, but that doesn’t mean we can’t pray constantly. Our children’s cries are our church bells, a friend once told me. It’s a unique blessing to be with them each day, as their small voices can remind us of our Creator. Frequently!

The domestic church calls each member to different roles. But like the mystical body of Christ, with all our myriad talents, personalities, abilities, and disabilities, we are united in spirit. If you want to work while being a mom, you must retain a positive attitude within this whole-person, whole-home, whole-church framework. It’s a radically countercultural, anti-atomistic worldview.

You build this worldview day by day and choice by choice. Having to interrupt an urgent professional task to tend to an even more urgent blown-out diaper can trigger resentment. Or, it can prompt reflection. While everyone’s needs and desires may seem to compete in acute moments of distress, they are never mutually exclusive in the sense that they all point toward the same end: happiness and holiness.

To raise children requires its own kind of excellence. More wide-ranging and flexible than that demanded by the workplace, perhaps, but no less disciplined. Motherhood is a noble and challenging vocation. Preparing for it as such is the best shot a mom has at maintaining her sanity in a family-unfriendly world.

John Fetterman, who supports Israel, responds perfectly to pro-Palestinian protesters chanting outside his home



Israel-supporting Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania) came up with a perfect response to pro-Palestinian protesters who showed up outside his home late last week and chanted that he supports "genocide."

"Fetterman, Fetterman, you can't hide! You're supporting genocide!" the left-wing crowd hollered.

But the freshman senator had the ideal rejoinder under his sleeve, getting on the roof of his abode and holding up a huge blue-and-white Israeli flag which wafted in the wind high above the angry throng.

— (@)  
 

According to the Daily Mail, the protest took place outside his residence in Braddock, which is near Pittsburgh. While the brick structure in the video may not look like your garden-variety home, Fetterman's website indicates that he, his wife, and their three children live in a restored car dealership in Braddock.

The scene was reminiscent of another headline-grabbing moment in November when Fetterman trolled anti-Israel protesters being handcuffed at the U.S. Capitol simply by walking past them while waving a miniature Israeli flag.

How are folks reacting?

It appears many commenters under the X post above are either Democrats or pro-Palestinian or both, and they weren't happy:

  • "We must thoroughly study this heel turn to make sure we see the signs in the next popular 'progressive,'" one commenter wrote.
  • "What an embarrassment to my home state," another user said.
  • "So Fetterman is a foreign agent serving a foreign country. Got it. US politicians should never wave a foreign flag. This guy should be removed from office," another commenter said.

Although, at least one responder seemed into it: "Stop making me like John Fetterman."

Anything else?

Fetterman of late has been behaving in a number of eye-opening, non-woke ways:

  • Earlier this month, he blasted the hypocrisy of South Africa going to international court against Israel for the Jewish nation's "genocide" against Palestinians in Gaza.
  • In December, Fetterman declared he's "not a progressive," reportedly called the gigantic number of border crossings "astonishing," and said that such concerns aren't xenophobic — and repeated his belief that Democratic New Jersey lawmaker Bob Menendez should be expelled from the U.S. Senate.
  • In October, Fetterman called out lawmakers from his own party who jumped the gun to blame Israel for a Gaza hospital bombing when it was soon revealed Hamas was behind the deadly act.
  • That same month, Fetterman also announced he would highlight the identities of those Hamas abducted: "My office will display every last one of the innocent Israelis kidnapped by Hamas until they are safely returned home. We won't stop sharing their stories until then."
  • Fetterman also said in October, "Now is not the time to talk about a ceasefire. We must support Israel in efforts to eliminate the Hamas terrorists who slaughtered innocent men, women, and children. Hamas does not want peace, they want to destroy Israel. We can talk about a ceasefire after Hamas is neutralized."

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Free-Think Friday: MK Ultra and the Threat in Your Home | Guest: Boone Cutler | 12/8/23
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Free-Think Friday: MK Ultra and the Threat in Your Home | Guest: Boone Cutler | 12/8/23

 

'One of the most egregious cases': Police arrest former editor in chief of leftist news site on child porn charges



Slade Sohmer, who helmed the leftist political site the Recount up until last month, was arrested Friday and charged with two counts of possession and two counts of dissemination of child pornography.

The 44-year-old, who lives in Otis, Massachusetts, is accused of possessing "hundreds of child pornography images and videos," including a compilation video of boys as young as 3 being raped. Sohmer is also said to have trafficked at least two illicit files, reported the Berkshire Eagle.

Sohmer pleaded not guilty to all charges and was released on $100,000 bail Monday,

According to his LinkedIn page, Sohmer served as co-director of Camp Power for the past 13 years. The organization purportedly "provides kids from NYC's most underfunded and underserved neighborhoods with freedom and encouragement that are often lacking in their communities back in the city. [Their] signature program is a weeklong camp."

The camp operates out of New York and Pennsylvania.

Between camping excursions, Sohmer worked over the past four years as editor in chief at the Recount, a struggling left-wing political site recently acquired by the News Movement, a video news organization started by former BBC and News Corp. executives.

The Recount told the Eagle in a statement, "Slade Sohmer is no longer Editor-In-Chief of The Recount following a company restructure exercise in early October to focus on our editorial and commercial plans."

Sohmer left footprints elsewhere in left-leaning virtual spaces, serving as editor in chief at HyperVocal, co-hosting the "Politics Powered by Twitter" program on SiriusXM's POTUS 124, and running the anonymous social media app Whisper's news service.

A newly deleted BuzzFeed article, entitled, "People Are Touched by This Writer's Conversation with a Bunch of Fourth Graders," revealed Sohmer has not been averse to broaching the matter of sexuality with children. The article provided the leftist's account of how he brought up his gay relationship with a bunch of 10-year-olds he had just met for the first time.

"Am I about to come out of the closet to these kids? At this point I looked to my mother, who kind of nodded and mouthed something like 'go ahead.' So I said, 'I live with my boyfriend,'" wrote Sohmer. He later noted his outing was well received.

"It's not like I ~misjudged~ these kids or had any preconceived notions," Sohmer told BuzzFeed. "I just don't know what today's fourth-graders know about love and sexuality and gender and all its modern permutations. I'm glad it went down the way it did."

"If adults would stop teaching children that queerness of any stripe is wrong, especially transgender folks, the world would be an infinitely better place," added the alleged pedophile and critic of Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

The Berkshire Eagle indicated that police arrested Sohmer several weeks after seizing multiple electronic devices, which allegedly were loaded up with child sexual abuse images. They also searched his home on Oct. 18.

According to court documents, the investigation started with a tip from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to the Massachusetts State Police Cyber Crime Unit that on Sept. 30, 2022, an individual circulated a video of an adolescent boy masturbating. The victim was identified and the video traced back to the IP address associated with Sohmer's home internet account.

Police found that 53 videos sent from one of Sohmer's phones were potentially child pornography.

First Assistant District Attorney Marianne Shelvey told the TheWrap that this is "one of the most egregious cases" she has ever come across.

Shelvey indicated more charges are likely coming, especially since Sohmer allegedly recorded a video call where he had a child perform sex acts.

"We went from just dissemination of child pornography to production of child pornography," Shelvey told Judge Danielle Williams of Southern Berkshire District Court on Monday, reported the New York Post.

Police indicated that in a 2021 conversation on Telegram with a user identified as "Zeph," Sohmer allegedly noted his "ideal age range" was 13-16, reported the Eagle.

TheWrap reported that Sohmer allegedly detailed how to kidnap and rape a child in text chats, which Shelvey suggested added "a level of extreme cruelty" to the case.

The criminal affidavit claims Sohmer admitted on Telegram to having "baited" a 14-year-old boy while posing online as a teenage girl "a couple of years back." While the boy showed up at their planned rendezvous, Sohmer allegedly said he "chickened out" and did not go forward with his scheme.

If convicted of the charges he presently faces, Sohmer could do anywhere from five to 10 years in prison.

The Boston Globe indicated that Sohmer's attorney, Andrew Levchuk, declined Tuesday to comment on the case.

While Sohmer is not due in court again until December, Judge Williams has barred him from using the internet, making contact with minors, or traveling without giving notice in the meantime.

Sohmer can be seen below hosting the Recount's "Chatterbrain" trivia show.

 Chatterbrain: The News Game Showyoutu.be

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The root of economics is no dismal science



One of my favorite rhetorical techniques is when speakers get to the bottom of an idea through etymology. At a wedding I attended over the weekend, the priest explained the meaning of “sincerity.” During the Renaissance, Spanish sculptors who made mistakes while carving expensive marble often patched their flaws with “cera,” wax. A statue that had no flaws and required no patching was hailed as a sculpture “sine cera” — a sculpture "without wax.” The phrase eventually came to mean anything honest or true.

Sine cera. Sincerity.

The other morning, I was reading the transcript of Erika Bachiochi’s incisive remarks for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s American Economic Forum, when it struck me that economics, a field that historically has dealt heavily in abstraction, could use this kind of clarity. The word "economy" is derived from the ancient Greek word oikonomos: οἰκο- “house” and -νόμος “rule, law.” In short, the word once meant "household management."

Bachiochi writes:

That our economics and politics will reap the “dividends” of “investing” in social “capital” gives the impression that human sociality is merely instrumental to econometric or democratic ends. ... But that framing doesn’t get human nature quite right, it seems to me. And the question of nature is an essential starting place for conservatives; for though we certainly aren’t looking, as progressives are, to create out of whole cloth the ideal regime, we do want to orient our politics and economics toward the real goods of human flourishing …

Too often, policymakers think in terms of the individual, the market, and the state. And even if “mediating” institutions are remembered, as with [Robert] Putnam, it’s not the work of nurture and care in the family that is given pride of place in our political imagination; no, that work, that work of the “private sphere,” has been far too often taken for granted. But if human beings really are to flourish, then … the health of our families where infants are nurtured — and both children and their parents are formed — must be at the very center of our politics and economics.

The bitterly ironic heartbreak of mothers everywhere is that the places and people in life we most easily take for granted are also the formative ones. In order to be formed in a space, by another person, in a certain sense, the space and the person must be taken for granted. That is the nature of a foundation. To support without credit. To provide the stability and permanence that make higher-minded activities possible.

Homo economicus does not emerge ex nihilo as a rational being. He was a child who sprang from a womb and was formed by a family. In the words of Katrine Marcal, “Adam Smith got his dinner because his mother made sure it was on the table every evening.”

One cannot demand gratitude from children for the things they do not yet understand. But just as a parent’s duty is to support their children until they understand, it is an adult child’s duty to remember his father and mother.

I think excessive abstraction in political discourse comes from, but also reinforces and enables, a failure to remember. All forms and technologies of abstraction — from offshoring and globalization to the internet — have the same flattening effect on the memory. We forget how things are made from the ground up. We forget the mundane exercises and habits that form good things, good friendships, and a good society: excellence! The home is the first place where we learn to be human. It is also a place where memories are formed, stored, and recalled. I think these have something to do with one another.

Despite the promise (sometimes fulfilled) of sublime clarity, unbounded abstraction ultimately confuses us about who we are. Bachiochi implores conservatives to remember the mothers à la Abigail Adams. If conservatives cannot be motivated by what may resonate as a feminist position, maybe they can remember that patriotism itself springs from the same piety that impels adherence to the fifth commandment.