Teach me to care and not to care.
For years, feminists have claimed, “If men could get pregnant, there would be abortion clinics on every street corner.”
And yet, within two years of the zeitgeist warming up to the risible idea that men can get pregnant, abortion clinics are closing.
“It is hardly surprising if we are driven by the blasts of storms when our chief aim on this sea of life is to displease wicked men.”
-Boethius
“As with the fidget spinner fad, our “need” for water bottles has a tissue-like connection to “science.” I put that word in quotes, because the science behind our need to “stay hydrated” is even thinner and more tawdry than “the science” behind wearing two masks. Remember that one? Most of the people claiming it’s important to “stay hydrated” are simply repeating something they heard a friend say over brunch.
I also put quotes around “stay hydrated” because “staying hydrated” is no longer about drinking a reasonable amount of water every day. “Staying hydrated” is now a euphemism for bringing a titanium punch bowl to class and loudly microdosing fluid every ten minutes. How much water is a student sipping from his punch bowl over the course of an hour? Four ounces? Six? Eight? At present, he is drinking this water in the most distracting, obnoxious manner possible. If he wants to “stay hydrated,” let him drink eight ounces of water between classes. Let him drink a pint of water at lunch.
Be reasonable. If you’re going to argue water bottles are necessary in the classroom, how did we do without them for centuries? How did we do without them fifteen years ago? What sort of problems have we eliminated since bringing water bottles in the classroom? Every teacher can certainly tell you about the problems we’ve created since bringing them in.”
-from my latest for CiRCE
Last night, I had dinner with Frank Chilbert, the lower school principal at Mainline Classical in Bryn Mawr, PA. He told me that Mainline Classical did not allow students to have smart phones and neither were students permitted to have social media accounts while they were enrolled.
Have a look at their website. It can be done. Do a little digging and you’ll see it can be done really well, in fact.
This week, mid-level Christian intellectuals the nation over are trying to decide whether to say anything on social media about the fall of Roe. The options are to say nothing about it or to say something positive about it.
For most mid-level Christian intellectuals (10k followers to 100k followers on Twitter, say), saying something positive about the fall of Roe is going to mean significant blowback. Perhaps as much as a 5% audience decline. For such intellectuals employed at universities, the blowback will be even more intense.
These same intellectuals are also tempted to say nothing. The justification for saying nothing is gymnastic: “It’s not a sin to say nothing. The Bible actually says more about the importance of silence than the importance of talking. Besides, I’m really not political. I really try to stay out of political discourse and the fall of Roe is obviously political. I may have made comments about political stuff in the past, but all the political stuff I have commented on has a cultural angle, as well, and I’m really more on the cultural end of things than the political end of things. Besides, a soft answer turns away wrath. I need to pause, say nothing, and really meditate on what to say here. I may have immediately written responses to politi-I mean cultural events in the past, but this is one I really want to linger over before speaking. I need to come up with something conciliating, something peaceful, something…urbane, something that will get pro-choice people to really think. There’s no sense dogpiling on them.”
Thank God Roe has fallen.
Jon Paul introduced this record to me on a recent trip to New York City. At times, it sounds like Jules Massenet’s Les amoureuses sont des folles, at times it reminds me of Anne Briggs, at other times it sounds like nursery lullabies.
It is fascinating to think of Nick Drake listening to these songs, all originals, when a child.
Registration is now open for Paradise Lost for Beginners (Fall 2022) and Wisdom Literature for Beginners (Spring 2023).
Both classes are open to high school students and above. A good number of adults sign up for Gibbs Classical classes.
You can read more about both classes at Gibbs Classical.
Neither Elena Kagan nor Sonia Sotomayor are married. Kagan never married, and Sotomayor divorced almost forty years ago. And neither of them have any children.
“Classical Christian schools overhaul their writing programs around every three to four years. This means there is a good chance your school is overhauling their writing program this summer. Before you make any new curriculum purchases or draft new writing requirements for teachers to follow, allow me to humbly suggest you talk through the following writing program discussion guide.”
-from my latest for CiRCE
I should note that if anyone thinks piece is cynical, they haven’t been in the trenches lately.
The more we talk about the importance of loving yourself and being yourself, the more prescriptions for antidepressants doctors have to write.
There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.