Category: Home Schooling

Letter From Matt Bracken Re: A Home-Based Business–Your Ticket to The Boonies

Jim, Here is another terrific home business idea which “sells itself,” requires only a minimal investment, has a high profit margin, and can be done in one’s spare time. Install front door peep-holes. A number of years back I was visiting in a large townhouse complex where my wife used to live, and a gentleman rang the doorbell. Upon opening the door, I met the man holding a peephole in his hand. He almost didn’t need to say a word. It literally needed no sales pitch, it “sold itself.” He had the tools etc to do it on the spot. …


Three Letters Re: A Home-Based Business–Your Ticket to The Boonies

Jim: I thought the point was to have a home-based business that could survive in the boonies…?   I don’t see much need for a locksmith, gunsmith, or alarm installer in the boonies where most structures are on huge acres of land with fences and who knows how many dogs on the property, let alone a cantankerous old coot with a heavily worn double-barrel shotgun… <grin>   Even repairs are pushing it when neighbors may be a mile or more away… that is a SMALL customer base.   How many guns near you in the boonies that need custom gunsmithing? …


A Home-Based Business–Your Ticket to The Boonies

The majority of SurvivalBlog readers that I talk with tell me that they live in cities or suburbs, but they would like to live full time at a retreat in a rural area. Their complaint is almost always the same: “…but I’m not self-employed. I can’t afford to live in the country because I can’t find work there, and the nature of my work doesn’t allow telecommuting.” They feel stuck. Over the years I’ve seen lots of people “pull the plug” and move to the boonies with the hope that they’ll find local work once they get there. That usually …


Odds ‘n Sods: An “Easy” Quiz

I found this short quiz floating through the ether of the Internet: The world’s easiest quiz: 1.) How long did the Hundred Year War last? 2.) Which country makes Panama hats? 3.) From which animal do we get catgut? 4.) In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution? 5.) What is a camel’s hair brush made of? 6.) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal? 7.) What was King George VI’s first name? 8.) What color is a purple finch? 9.) Where are Chinese Gooseberries from? 10.) How long did the Thirty Years War last? …


Letter Re: State Boundaries (Expanding on “The State Line Game”)

Hi Jim, Your comments on building a house straddling a state line brought me back to my Navy days in Pensacola, Florida. It may be difficult to build across a state line but not impossible. There is a bar that straddles the state line between Florida and Alabama called – of course – The Floribama. As I recall it, there was a different last call time on opposite sides of the bar as the two states had different alcohol serving times. In any case, if it can be done with a commercial establishment (particularly a bar!) it can be done …


Letter Re: State Boundaries (Expanding on “The State Line Game”)

I’d like to expand on a topic that I mentioned briefly in a SurvivalBlog post on August 25, 2005:  “The State Line Game.” Many folks have discovered how to play the state line jumping game: Living near a state line to take advantage of a lower tax or other advantage in one or more adjoining states. For example, you can live in the Idaho panhandle (very low property tax, car registration, and car insurance), work in eastern Washington (no income tax), make your day-to-day purchases in Idaho (5% sales tax) and your major purchases (trucks, wood stoves, generators, gun vaults, …


On Preparing Your Children

Introduction Let us review the basics of child rearing. Children are a gift from God and we are to bring them up in the fear and admonition of the Lord. All preparedness means nothing if we have prepared our children for the eternal fires of hell. God, in His eternal wisdom and grace, providentially provided His son Jesus to restore us to a loving relationship with the Almighty. God provides covenantal blessings for those who obey Him and curses for those who don’t. With that being said it is imperative that all our worldly preparation be first and foremost spiritual …


Richard S. Goss on Free Education (Or at Least Cheap)

The old saying is that if you think education is expensive, try ignorance. Being a proponent of a self-reliant lifestyle like most readers of SurvivalBlog, I find it is sometimes costly to get the training we need to make ourselves better informed. Being basically frugal (read: cheap) I’ve searched out some ways to get the knowledge I wanted without a large outlay of money. My first stop in my hunt for knowledge was at the Human Resources office at my place of employment. I discovered that there were several American Red Cross (ARC) first aid and CPR classes offered. The …


From The Memsahib: Book Review of “Why Gender Matters”

Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences. by Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D. During the years that I was growing up, parents were told that boys and girls were the same. Supposedly it was only the stereotypical way the children were treated that made girls bad at math and boys aggressive. If children were treated just the same, girls would excel at the sciences and boys would be able to express their feelings. In Why Gender Matters, Leonard Sax, using 20 years of research documents how sex differences are significant and …


The Return of Jonny Quest (on DVD)

Jonny Quest Not only are we home schooling our kids, but we are also raising them without television. I can think of no better gift for a child than an upbringing WITHOUT broadcast or cable television. Current-day television is geared toward the beer, wrestling, and MTV crowd. As The Memsahib says: “Televisions have brightness controls, but they don’t work.” We do let our kids watch some carefully selected movies and TV shows on DVD, but NO broadcast television. We don’t even own a television set. But we can watch DVDs on our Mac computers.  Most recently I bought our kids …