This Week's Miscellany (03/16/24)
Manifesting, Omaha, Jim Gaffigan, Homemaking, Poetry, and Tech
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.
This email is free for you to read, but took time and energy to create. Consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support this work and gain access to exclusive content:
This Lent has been much lenty-er than usual. I’ll spare you the laundry list of all the unpleasant things that have happened but even my favorite burger place closed down without warning. Not even a chance to order a last burger! But to be fair, the weather has been beautiful so this Lent has also been full of walks around the lake with my two older daughters in a world was abuzz with birdsong and the movement of Spanish moss and the the fresh green leaves on every tree. We’ve seen osprey and hawks and alligators sunning themselves.
This past week I traveled to Omaha, Nebraska (a state I’ve never been to) for a work project. I love going to new places and Omaha wasn’t at all how I imagined it would be. It’s bigger than I expected with lots of charm and amazing food. And I got to hang out with these wonderful gals, so 10/10 trip.
After several weeks of being frantically busy and dealing with several curve balls from life, I can feel my nervous system starting to settle down. I think I’ll take another deep breath after my surgery is over in April. But I have high hopes for this weekend because I’m driving my teen to Albany, GA to see Jim Gaffigan. I got us tickets for his birthday and tonight is the night!
Links
I finally wrote out the long version of why we switched from homeschooling to conventional school for paid subscribers.
“All the homeschooling moms I followed when I started homeschooling like Haley and Rosie and Blythe and Kendra aren’t homeschooling anymore! Why did this happen?”
I saw this question posed in my retired podcast’s Facebook group. And it’s actually the question I receive most often anytime I do Ask Me Anythings. I can’t speak for everyone else’s experience, but I can shed some light on why we shifted to brick-and-mortar school, how it’s worked for our family, and what I miss about homeschooling.
I’ll read Tara Isabella Burton on any topic she wants to write about. This is an excellent dive into “manifesting” which has quite a history.
The Long, Strange History of “Manifesting” by
But this Gilded Age optimism about human potential had a dark side. After all, if anyone could achieve health, wealth and success simply by wanting it badly enough, logic held that the converse was also true: The poor, the sick and the vulnerable had brought their conditions upon themselves by failing to possess the requisite will to change.
This is a beautiful piece about poetry and serendipitous meetings with nuns:
Dust to Dust: W.H. Auden Writes Poetry for a World Marked by Death by Helen Rouner
I remember looking at the sky and recognizing that, surrounded by epitaphs, I was married to a poet and a philosopher and a believer, and here was an agent of Christ before me, real and forceful, wishing me to receive Christ’s grace.
Leah Libresco Sargeant reviews two intriguing books and reflects on some of the questions that keep me up at night.
And when boys and girls come into contact on dating apps, they interact in a way guaranteed to drive them further apart. Women get a high volume of creepy messages (augmenting their fear of men), and men get a high volume of rejections (augmenting their resentment of women).
Boy do I have thoughts on Instagram trad wives and the value of homemaking, but until I have time to write them up, enjoy
‘s excellent piece:How to Be a Homemaker by Claire Swinarski
And then, finally, it comes: the post where she explains that it’s an honor to stay home with her kids, and that every mom should prioritize their housework above all. That developmentally, it’s essential for kids to have their mother in the home catering to their every whim 24/7. That moms who “outsource” cleaning or childcare are “outsourcing” their motherhood, and that—
Well. That’s when I slam the laptop shut.
And last, a response to Matthew Walther’s claims about poetry.
The Patient on the Table: On the Somewhat Exaggerated Death of Poetry by James Matthew Wilson
That poets are prolific in our age is not in question; what is in question is whether any of that work is any good and whether there is an audience for any of it sufficient for us to speak of poetry as a living art.
Time is running out to join us this summer!
On the fence about coming to Belgium and Germany with Fr. Harrison Ayre this summer? Now’s the time to sign up! 🇧🇪 🇩🇪
If you’re looking for a small group to travel with, daily Mass, beautiful cathedrals and abbeys, and the best Trappist breweries in the world, join us! We have 6 spots left before we close the trip at 30 people. And time is running out to reserve your spot!
⛪️ 🍻
We’ll see the stunning Ghent Altarpiece (The Mystic Lamb), go on a canal boat tour of Bruges, pray at the Flanders Field American Cemetery, visit the crypt of St Damian Molokai, go to gorgeous Belgian abbeys (and taste the beer from their breweries), see cathedrals in Germany (Aachen and Cologne), and more!
We’ve been anticipating this trip for two years and I can’t believe it’s just around the corner. Half of the pilgrims on our whisky pilgrimage in Scotland in 2022 are coming back for Belgium which just goes to show you that the experience of traveling with Select International Tours is something special. I can’t wait to see them and meet new friends and this year we’re even bringing our teenager for his first overseas trip.
You can check out the registration page: Heavenly Hops Pilgrimage with Fr. Harrison Ayre to Belgium and Germany.
And below you can view the full itinerary (except one update is that we’ll be flying home from Frankfurt rather than Cologne):
Wishing you all a wonderful week! And a huge thank you to all those who upgraded to a paid subscription this week. This is a reader-supported newsletter so if you enjoy getting these emails, please consider supporting this Substack by upgrading to a paid subscription with the button below.
Thanks for reading!
Haley
(Editor of Word on Fire Votive, Author, Podcaster)
Haley’s books
Haley’s Children’s Mystery Series about Mouse Nuns
Thanks for the share, my dear friend!
So many great ideas here, Haley! Thanks for this round up!