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Isn't this picture divine? I love mid-century children's book illustrations. Reminds me of Edgar Eager.

This past Saturday I unearthed all my old choral sheet music- and spent the morning alone, with the rest of my family at art classes, in my bathrobe with a cup of pomegranate raspberry green tea, warbling Sing Dem Herrn at the top of my lungs. It was a v. refreshing experience. I'm a soprano, but tend to be very wobbly and breathy in the lowest registers and harsh in the highest ones...I haven't really sung in ages, unless you count shrieking the theme song to Snow White and various other silly imitations. So it was encouraging to hear I do have an okay voice when I really try.

Also, a few nights ago I watched Much Ado About Nothing from BBC's ShakespeaRetold, a modernized adaptation set in a tv studio. It was surprisingly funny, and the guy who played Benedict was hilarious. He and Beatrice always remind me of Ron and Hermione. I like the fact that, although Beatrice is the typical "shrewish old maid" she isn't punished for her behavior, actually Benedict loves her for it.

"Oh that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market place."

But anyway. This will be a short entry. I just wanted to note a disturbing trend in, specifically, the Christian homeschooled teen girl community. I know, I know, it's such a specific category, but my friends and I do fit pretty well into it.

Idolizing the past. You know what I mean. "Oh, if only I lived during the Regency era, back when men were chivalrous and gentlemanly, when women were genteel and spent their afternoons playing piano or arranging flowers, strolling about the verdant English countryside." "Oh, back in the 50s, the irrevocable superiority of the nuclear family...the rosy-cheeked tots, the strong-jawed clean-cut fathers, the slender homemakers who labored for hours over the perfect meatloaf and apple pie...." "Ah, but during the Civil War, society was so different. Southern women, with their elegant manners sitting on the porch stitching and sipping sweet tea, powdered and sweet, not a hair out of place. A slower, more comfortable time." This usually leads to a treatise on the foibles of modern society. Women aren't sweet enough, submissive enough, accomplished enough; they no longer spend their afternoons perfecting the buttermilk biscuit or engaged in quiet conversation with their fellow ladies. Men are no longer the models of chivalry, decked out in greatcoats and bounding through the forest to hunt, their numerous hounds accompanying them.

Ah, but I'm different. I know it. My very soul belongs in the past. I do not belong in these harried, modern days of iPods and American Idol and McDonalds. I am a child of another generation. I would fit right into the Edwardian society of pompadours and powdered cheeks and puffed sleeves. No wonder my favourite books are Betsy-Tacy and Anne of Green Gables. (And of course, I forgot to add, the British spelling is absolutely essential. It's so lovely and old-fashioned, after all. So quaint.)

I think you get my drift. It's so ironic, to read blog entry after blog entry written by girls desperate for a little escapism, and channeling their discontent by complaining about, say, the dearth of really chivalrous men out there. "Alas. I'm still waiting for my Mr. Darcy." (Who are we kidding, really? Dress up the average teen guy in a cravat, throw a few rifles and hunting dogs at him, and he'd do perfectly well.) Why this romanticizing of the past? Why the incessant talk of LM Montgomery, Emily Dickinson, and other authors that naturally only you, a true Bibliophile, can appreciate? Why use an English phrase when French does it so much better? Why do so many girls let their longing for love or their discontent with mundane modern life lead them to proclaiming, "I'm not your average girl. I've got a horrid crush on Heathcliff instead of Orlando Bloom. I'd rather read Louisa May Alcott than JK Rowling. I'm not like my peers. I am a rose amongst the daisies. I'm different- just like everybody else."

Please. I understand their difficulties- after all, I'm the first to start boasting about my penchant for tea, my rabid Anglophilia, my love of classic literature. The wall above my bed is plastered with vintage postcards, a 50s advertising calendar, a poster of James Dean, and my favorite romantic quotes. I love Northanger Abbey as much as the next person. But the whole thing is rooted in dissatisfaction. It's all about coveting what you can't have. It's about presenting a false "persona" to the world. Not to mention the whole ridiculous idea that you're oh, so alone in your deepest soul longings for Beauty and Gentility and an Old-Fashioned Lifestyle.

It's time to stop dwelling in an imaginary, idealized past- one that likely never existed- and start finding fulfillment in the present. We need to stop victimizing ourselves as the poor-little-misunderstood-teens whose souls truly belong in the 19th century. Believe me, I'll be trying right along with you.

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