Bear Valley Blog

Photoshop photo courtesy of Freakingnews.com

MSN.com has a MoneyBlog called Smart Spending, and by clicking the link you will go to a blog piece written by Donna Freedman, a veteran journalist in Washington who contributes to the blog and moderates the message board.

In the piece she writes about the differences between this recession (there I said it) and the last one that my grandparents lived through. She illuminates jarring contrasts between their ability to "make do" with theirs and she does it with sharp insight and good humor. I don't know about you, but I have to keep my wits about me right now as well as my sense of humor.

One of her more salient points, and one that is close to my heart, is that we don't have the physical space, or the zoning, to plant a garden or raise pigs. She states that we are limited to what we can buy in stores and food prices are soaring. Our grandparents ate what they had, which was often flour and lard, but we, on the other hand, don't know how to make biscuits and are afraid of lard.

It's a good read and allowed me to consider that our grandparents may have had an easier time of living through financial adversity. Their recession was certainly not any more fun than ours, but things were simpler back then.

The photo-shopped picture above was created from the famous "American Gothic" painting shown below. Created in 1930 by Grant Wood, it is one of the most familiar images in 20th century American art.