Pretty Little Homes

Photo courtesy Flickr

Sometime on the afternoon of July first, KEXP broadcast a song that used the phrase “pretty little homes” several times. Perhaps the phrase was "pretty little houses". Half-listening, it seemed to me that the piece is 2010’s answer to the Sixties’ “Little Boxes”, but a deeper and more sophisticated rejection of Domestic. It brought to mind the recent film “Crazy Heart”.

A wise older friend who could have lived anywhere raised her daughters on Telegraph Hill not far from the San Francisco coffee house where, I believe, Malvina Reynolds wrote her musical inditement of cookie-cutter family life. Bonnie told me in one 1981 breath that yes, I was pregnant and no, I did not have to go and live in Baby Land.

Since my female elders were deceased, I had been free to make my very own foolish decisions about where and how to live, and it was comforting to hear Bonnie’s respect for them. I still don’t know whether those decisions were wise, but I’m not unhappy with the results. Life style is so enmeshed with individual family and personal values and with economics that it takes a sociologist and anthropologist to look at the wider issues.

Think of the household as a means to an end rather than as an end in itself. Sylvia Porter’s money management books, that span the Sixties through the hyper-inflation of the Eighties, cast a rational eye on the economics of owning versus renting. Remember to borrow money only for things that gain in value, and remember that a credit card is borrowed money.

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