Reinforcements

Miss Verity has had a thought which she is finding difficult to articulate, but which can be summed up as: people seek out companionship–in whatever form–that helps them shape the world they want to live in, and that reinforces their own values.

Which can, obviously, be a negative or merely stupid thing (as with confirmation bias), but which can also make life just that mush easier to live. It’s comforting, and pleasant, to sometimes have like-minded people to turn to.

And so religious people seek out others of their faith, not just for worship but to share recreational time and inspiring books and items.

Or, to take a destructive example, people stricken with eating disorders sometimes try to find fellow-sufferers, and too much of that reinforcement and you end up with those ghastly pro-ana sites.

And this, it suddenly occurred to Miss Verity this morning, is why she craves websites that share a sense of gentle modesty, of quiet femininity, and of a slightly old-fashioned bent–but not ones that, in the pursuit of those values, are strident or angry or overbearing. It is because, of course, she wants to be able to do the same thing online that she prefers to do offline: surround herself, at least sometimes, with those who have similar values.

A Most Perplexing Correspondence

Miss Verity appreciates that maintainers of communities, even mere virtual chatteries, wish people to be talkative and to contribute–except, of course, for those sites which wish people to ‘lurk moar’ and to learn the rules and social norms at the site before leaping in.

She does not quite think that this gentleman’s method is entirely efficacious, however–it is, alas, hard to work up much enthusiasm for resubscribing to a service when one knows it is counting one’s silent days against one, having decided in advance to throw you out not for misbehaviour but for reticence.  Not, she concludes, her type of lounge at all.

Dear Sir/Madam,

Your account at the Smoking Lounge message board has been deleted.

This has been done either because the unusual spelling or your
username of choice and/or email address has led us to suspect your
account is used as spambot, or because of a complete lack of posting
activity for more than six months.  Are you in fact no spambot, and/or
do you wish to be an active member of the Smoking Lounge, we do beg
your pardon for the removal of your account and compel you to
re-register with us.  However, we ask your understanding in this
matter, for our forums have recently fallen victim to high quantities
of spam, plus a great number of accounts with zero post count takes up
unnecessary space of our database.  I wish to urge that you are most
welcome at the Smoking Lounge, if you are indeed a real person, and
hope that, in that case, you might consider joining us again!

Yours sincerely,

Ottens (Administrator) <n.ottens@gmail.com>

Dear Sir or Madam,
Thank you for your kind offer that I spend my time signing up again for a message board which I had not yet had time to actually use. I am sure you can understand why I do not wish to do so–when I do have free time, I prefer to use it at boards that welcome and appreciate people who take their time about joining in conversations with strangers, and not at a website which rather petulantly scolds one for silence and then deletes one’s account.

Perhaps one of the dear gentlefolk who have been similarly unsubscribed might know of such a place? In a spirit of hopefulness I have included them in my reply, and I eagerly await their suggestions.
~Miss Verity

The Search Continues

Miss Verity is still looking for websites and blogs and podcasts she might find agreeable. Suggestions of feminine, cosy, or slightly old-fashioned corners of the web are welcome. She has found some agreeable sources of “modest clothing” and of delightfully pretty crafts, but what she wants are sites for reading, not sites for shopping. She has too much temptation to shop as it is.

Miss Verity has also discovered she has no idea how to reply to comments here; if she replies with another comment on her own post, does the person to whom she is speaking get notified? Replying to the person via email seems almost intrusive, since she doubts casual commenters really want email. To be honest, she sort of imagined she was typing into a void here, and hadn’t thought she’d have anyone to reply to beyond the people she already knows, who can use the telephone (or show up on the doorstep) when they want to talk. Thank you, though, to those of you who did take the time to comment!

Speaking of shopping, is this not adorable? No, Miss Verity is not the one selling the dress, and she isn’t bidding on it, either, as it wouldn’t fit her. But it’s very pretty, so she thought you might enjoy seeing it.

In Search of the Feminine

Miss Verity has been looking for websites to read, or podcasts to listen to, which are feminine without being insipid, materialistic, or bossy in their religiousity.

Please don’t misunderstand: Miss Verity does, goodness knows, have plenty of intellect-light moments of her own; she does own, and take pleasure in, a number of things; she has nothing against faith, and usually prefers the company and writings of people who have some kind of interior life.

But femininity can’t be reduced to shopping, surely, no matter how pretty the items offered for sale? And frankly, Miss Verity finds “celebrity” gossip distinctly unfeminine.

Also distinctly unfeminine: strident flouting of one’s religion in that horrid, pushy, “I know the mind of God, and here’s how he told me to tell you to dress” way. There’s nothing particularly modest about presuming to have detailed access to the inner workings of the Almighty, and Miss Verity wonders a little about the sort of people who think that judging others on their clothes is an appropriate expression of piety. (And Miss Verity seldom lets the public see her ankles, so you can skip right on past the part where you start implying things about her wardrobe, thank you very much.*)

Is Miss Verity the last person on the planet who was raised to think that religion is too personal and sacred a thing to be debased by constantly talking about one’s faith instead of quietly, and without fanfare, living it? She cannot possibly be. She dearly wishes she could find the blogs of some others, though.

*Miss Verity will also just state, for the record, that the sort of men who think the sight of female flesh is a temptation, and that women need to remove said temptation from their path, ought not to be let out in public until they’ve acquired a more robust flavour of “personal responsibility.”

Summer is here

And to that end, Miss Verity has been grocery shopping. She has red wine (two of her favourite labels: Goats Do Roam and Fat Bastard); she has cold beer; she has Jagermeister, for after evening meals, and Underberg, for when the Jag just doesn’t taste bitter enough; she has salad ingredients, and strawberries, and cereal.

She also has bags of organic black earth and cedar chips, and will be spending the afternoon weeding. Somehow, the more dire the news regarding global warming, oil prices, and food shortages, the more time Miss Verity finds herself spending in the garden. It’s very calming. For one thing, there’s no television out there.

She sees she’s not the only one to have made this particular leap, either, and urges you to check out Revive the Victory Garden. It may not actually inspire you to start gardening, but it’s soothing reading nonetheless.

Miss Verity also recently discovered a podcast she rather liked, called An Old-Fashioned Girl (named after a book she also rather likes); said podcast is now, alas, defunct, and their wordpress page appears to be as well. It wasn’t exactly what Miss Verity wanted–slightly too clothes-oriented, for one thing–but it was sweetly feminine and pleasant to listen to, and she’s sorry it ended. Miss Verity frequently has this experience, of discovering things that slightly interest or suit her only to find that they’ve vanished into the aether.

Further War-Poster Prettiness

Miss Verity continues to amuse herself by wistfully browsing propaganda posters–would that she had any artistic talent! If she did, she’d whip up a few in praise of her own pet causes.

But since she has not, she can only admire the artistry of others. This one, for instance: without coming out and actually saying so, it manages to hint that amongst the pleasures of Service Life one will learn a standard of grooming (and possibly make-up) that will put most actual women in the shade. Oh, yes, and there will be sports–or gorgeous sporting outfits, anyway, which is the main thing.

Childcare

Miss Verity has never been particularly interested in babies–she’s got nothing against them, and thinks they’re pretty to look at; she just prefers the company of older children and adults–and therefore has only a passing familiarity with the care and feeding of the little dears.

Nevertheless, she does know one ought not to feed them arsenic. Food adulteration being one of the ghastlier aspects of Victorian life, she’d prefer not to see it revived. There are undoubtedly many people to whom one feels tempted to administer arsenic, but babies ought never to be among them.

War Posters

Miss Verity has always liked war posters; there’s something touching about their straightforward patriotism. All the animals get trotted out: war-bond funded beavers for Canada, a startled-looking kangaroo for Australia.

And there’s that sense that ordinary decisions–conserving coal, preserving food, using less and investing more–can be important. Governments no longer seem terribly chuffed about that sort of thing, do they? ‘Use Less Oil’ or ‘Start a Victory Garden’ just isn’t their thing anymore. Pity.

Mind you, by WWII the women on those posters had apparently lost some of their earlier calm, cheerful demeanor. The poor girl in this last poster looks as though something’s gone dreadfully wrong with the canning, possibly over-fermentation or argot contamination.

Femininity

Miss Verity found herself at a loss this morning as to what phrase would be equivalent to ‘girly girl,’ but with reference to adult ladies rather than children. She’d thought perhaps ‘traditional femininity’ might prove helpful in locating the sorts of blogs and websites she wanted.

Alas: she’d miscalculated. Three of the first four results wish to alarm her about the dire psychological consequences of being both feminine and traditional, and the fourth wants to laud a dramatized critique of ‘housewives.’

Words

Miss Verity, having apparently awoken in the throes of a delusion that her blood pressure isn’t high enough, is amusing herself by making a list of words and phrases she loathes:

• Infotainment. Miss Verity likes to be entertained, but she begs to be spared details of the personal lives of actors and singers, though given the choice between that and having to listen to their “political opinions” she’d…well, actually, she’d throw herself out a high window.
• Differing voices, as used in practically any context other than when describing a choir or an audition.
• Love him or hate him, or any variant thereof. Miss Verity is, she regrets to inform you, most often merely indifferent.