This Week's Miscellany (02/13/24)

The Arts and Healthy Masculinity, George MacDonald, Mean Girls

Hi, I’m Haley! Book midwife (editor) and author. Hello to new subscribers and welcome all to another edition of This Week’s Miscellany. TWM is full of my favorite things from around the web, typically trending literary.

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Before we dive in to TWM I wanted to let you know that tomorrow the one week Valentine’s Discount on our Pilgrimage to Belgium and Germany begins!

I know you’ve heard me talking about the pilgrimage my husband and I are leading with Fr. Harrison Ayre this summer. It is nearing capacity (we are closing the trip at 30 people to keep it small and intimate). But we have a handful of spots left AND Select International, the tour company we’re using to organize the trip (I’ve been on three other trips with them and they are fantastic), is offering a discount starting on February 14th and lasting one week.

Here are the details:

Register for the pilgrimage between February 14th and 21st with your spouse (or a friend that you’re sharing a room with!) and you and your travel companion will save a (combined) $300.

You can check out the registration page: Heavenly Hops Pilgrimage with Fr. Harrison Ayre to Belgium and Germany.

The Arts and Masculinity

My son has the same choral teacher as I had in high school. His name is Mr. Leaman and he is the best. A couple of weeks ago, my son joined choral students from all over town for a Tenor and Bass Day. They were bused to one location where they spent all day learning music, rehearsing, and then performing in the evening. The youngest students were middle schoolers, the oldest were college students.

It had been a long time since I’d heard an all-male choir and I found the performance quite moving. The final sound was all the school choruses from middle school to college students singing this song together. It was beautiful. My husband went to work humming the same tune and one of his coworkers joined in. “Where’d you learn that?” he asked. “Oh, I was in chorus in high school and we sang it with Mr. Leaman at Tenor and Bass Day.” He still remembered.

A few days later we were at Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans and I was moved again by the school marching bands, again mostly male musicians, performing along the parade routes. They practice all year for this and they look so proud. They should be proud. They are part of a great tradition of musicians and you can tell that they know this and it makes their hearts soar.

While I sometimes feel like rolling my eyes a bit at the discourse of how hard everything is for boys these days, there is no denying that masculinity is in a bit of a crisis. It’s evident both from the way boys are failing to succeed and keep up with their female peers and in the rise of misogyny and toxic masculinity. I wish I could tell you that Andrew Tate wasn’t revered by my son’s 8th grade peers last year at our Catholic school. MIDDLE SCHOOL BOYS, y’all, thinking a rapist and sex trafficker who grifts off his misogyny is a hero. Did I mention this was at a Catholic school? (Parents, please check who your kids are being influenced by on YouTube.)

There’s much more to be said on this topic than can be covered here, but my point is that seeing all these boys singing together was significant to me. The middle schoolers looking up to the high schoolers, the high schoolers looking up to the college students and the older kids knowing that someone is looking up to them—that’s powerful. A chorus of male voices joining together in song is powerful. It’s a celebration of the male voice. And making music together is one of the most human things we can do to celebrate being alive and being in community. It made me think about how the arts can be a celebration of healthy masculinity.

I don’t have an easy answer to this crisis for boys, nor do I think there is an easy answer. But I think there’s something special about the arts, about being part of a tradition that you can participate in with pride. And while SATB choruses are glorious, perhaps there’s also something positive about celebrating the male voice and the female voice and how each is wonderful and distinctive. I suppose what I’m saying is, let’s get more boys singing.

Links

I was delighted to be a guest on The Great Books Podcast to talk about one of my favorite authors!

George MacDonald’s The Golden Key on The Great Books Podcast

And I haven’t seen the new Mean Girls but enjoyed this reflection on the experience of entering the big world after being homeschooled—an experience I connect with as a former homeschooler who went to public high school (and which my kids connect with to varying degrees as they were all homeschooled before beginning brick and mortar schools two years ago).

Mean Girls and the New (Home-schooled) Kid in Class by Alissa Wilkinson

But as many home-school alumni of my generation will tell you, if you grow up to spend your life in more mainstream society, there’s always some bit of you that feels different, a whole lot like Cady. A song comes on at a party or a ballgame, and everyone sings along, and you have no idea what this song is. You see long button-down denim skirts come back into fashion and know, in your heart of hearts, that you absolutely cannot bring yourself to ever put one on again.

And don’t forget about the deal that starts tomorrow on the pilgrimage!

Or listen to us share all about the details with Fr. Harrison on his podcast.

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Thanks for reading!

Haley

(Editor of Word on Fire Votive, Author, Former Podcaster)

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