I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this is another young woman describing a crisis of meaning & right wingers jeering at her have lost the plot
What I love about English interiors is they’re so forgiving of the natural clutter that happens in a lived-in space. It’s maximalism for all seasons of life, & is friendly to the play of children! Imagine a marker or ketchup stain in a greige Pinterest house
I’m Syrian-American Christian & reported on this for several years, have had ostensibly “conservative” media tell me the topic is a ratings killer. More Americans than you think are ignorant of this & can’t count the # of times ppl have asked “when we converted” from Islam
Something disturbing I’ve become aware of as I’ve befriended more moms is how many of these women were given a lot of grief by their own mothers about having more than 2 maybe 3 kids. How much of this is parents actively discouraging their own kids from having kids?
No paid maternity leave. No paid childcare. Worst maternal mortality rate of developed countries. Little to no postpartum medical care. Gender wage gap, gets worse when you take time off for child bearing and rearing. Average cost of living is almost double the average salary.
This is why so many woman are choosing to have a natural, at home birth 🪷
1. 𝑰𝒕’𝒔 𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒖𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒚 𝒔𝒂𝒇𝒆𝒓, 𝒃𝒆𝒍𝒊𝒆𝒗𝒆 𝒊𝒕 𝒐𝒓 𝒏𝒐𝒕.
Your chances of having a smooth and “easy” delivery are higher when you have a home birth. One reason being, there are
I share this every year:
My great grandfather, an Orthodox priest, took in an Armenian refugee who fled through the desert, her husband & kids killed. She raised my grandma & when she died, was buried with the diaper she clung to when Turks grabbed her baby from her to kill him
Today marks Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.
This map shows the death march roots into the Syrian desert. About 1,5 million Armenians were systematically murdered and countless others were forcibly removed from their homes by the Ottoman Empire.
This is the church I was baptized in, my dad’s hometown in Syria. The last picture is what’s left of my mom’s village, historically Orthodox & Catholic, which once housed Armenian genocide refugees. My great grandfather was an Orthodox priest. These are ghost towns now
Conservatives reacting to this, this is extremely innocuous. Focus instead on the fact that as PA AG Shapiro sued the fed govt to force the Little Sisters of the Poor (Catholic nuns who serve the elderly) to provide contraceptives in health plans, in violation of their faith
My Catholic friends: if the man who delivered the Roe victory and his trad Catholic running mate are not good enough for you, maybe the problem is you.
I’m a simp for anything Ralph Lauren does including Team USA’s uniforms which are so Americana
The Oxford button downs, the tricolor blazers, the denim. Iconic fixtures of American fashion that are both unpretentious & ennobling
Sara Haines calls the traditional Latin mass “extremist,” “cult like” and comparable to “religions in the Middle East.”
This is nothing but pure, unadulterated bigotry against Catholics.
I was once told about a conversation someone had with an Ethiopian Christian:
Q: "Was it recently that you and your people became Christian?"
R: "My ancestors were worshipping the Triune God when yours were still painting their faces blue and eating each other."
Love these photos of Syria in the 90s that I found at my parents’ house 📸
My great uncle in my dad’s village and my mom’s sister in front of the ruins of Palmyra
We are now saying the quiet part out loud: For adults under 50, the primary argument against having children isn’t an economic one. It’s cultural.
“I just don’t want to.”
If you believe that children are essential to building a good, dynamic society, you’re about to learn
My great grandfather was a priest in Syria & his family took in an Armenian refugee after Turks killed her husband. On a death march through the desert the Turks killed her infant children in front of her. She raised my grandma & was buried with her baby’s diaper, all she had.
I’m a Catholic convert from Orthodoxy & grew up in a church that was 95% Syrians (including my family). Part of the reason I converted was the fellowship I experienced @ on-campus Catholic groups in college, & then the TLM I now attend. Was welcomed & saw great spiritual growth!
During a 10-hour flight, she was heading from Seoul, Korea, to San Francisco, USA.
This mother distributed more than 200 passengers on the plane a plastic bag to each one. The bag contained candy, chewing gum and earplugs as a kind of advance apology for use in the event that
Thinking about this painting by one of my favorite artists, Joaquín Sorolla, ahead of Mother’s Day. Aptly named “Mother”
If you’re familiar with him, this piece is distinctively different, featuring his wife & newborn daughter. Very subdued but so tender
Russell Kirk, the pro-life father of American conservatism, would allow pregnant women in need to live with his family indefinitely (something he also did for the homeless and refugees)
Remember & pray for the Orthodox Christians in the Middle East this weekend, who make up roughly half of all Christians in the region (other sizable population is Catholics) & whose populations have precipitously dwindled in the last 20 years
And yeah no offense to all of the people suggesting that there are material solutions to this like getting a roommate or getting inflation under control or whatever but this is metaphysical
My latest restoration project… a ~century old antique cabinet with art deco windows and dovetail joints that I found in Steubenville OH
It smells like a chain smoker’s fingernails but nothing some dish soap, hot water, wood cleaner, wax, Brasso, & Rub n Buff can’t fix 🤞
Would be very grateful for prayers for St. Gerard’s intercession as I’m due to have my baby any day now and am experiencing a lot of discomfort (and just want to meet him outside the womb!)
My grandma in Syria isn’t doing well & my mom hasn’t seen her since pre 2011 war (her town is rubble now). I saw family there in 2017 & to get there we need to fly to Beirut. We wanted to go soon & now we’re desperately hoping we even see them again. Pls pray for them &my parents
I interact with students regularly and the most notable recent thing is how eager the most self-aware are to be given firm, authoritative guidelines/direction for their lives, the kind you’d think parents & mentors would be giving them. They want to be tethered to something
is the next vibe shift a Gen Z religious revival?
this tiktok has 2.1M views & 382k likes, with comments like:
“I started praying”
“I got baptized”
“I went to church last week for the first time in my life”
what’s going on? 🤔
The plight of Arab Christians is politically inconvenient. There are so few left in many historically Christian cities through Iraq & the Levant now that those of us in the diaspora actually try to encourage relatives to stay so that our ancestral homes aren’t totally abandoned
I’ve met many Americans who look at me with a blank face when I mention the existence of Arab Christians. They don’t even know they exist. This must be some kind of tremendous propaganda triumph.
The best thing I ever did for my mental & physical health was begin walking at least for an hour a day outside (usually after dinner) without listening to anything, music or podcasts. We need to normalize American suburban passeggiata
Moderate activity, like walking 30 minutes 5 days/week, gives you more than 2/3 of the health and mortality benefits obtainable from exercise.
1. Any physical activity is better than none
2. You don't need to train like an athlete to get most of the benefits of exercise
I love that there’s a subculture of crunchy moms normalizing baby minimalism e.g. not needing to carry around 600 things for your kids & just letting them drink out of normal cups & eat normal adult food. I was already doing this bc I’m lazy disorganized & busy
I share this every year, but I hadn’t heard of the Armenian Genocide until I was in college & my mom told me her Orthodox priest grandfather took in refugees from their death march through the Syrian desert. The US didn’t recognize the genocide until 2021 bc of a Turkish gag rule
Today is Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.
Map shows the roots of the death march into the Syrian desert. Approximately 1.5 million Armenians were systematically deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths by the Ottoman Empire
Was in the UAE ~2 weeks ago and was struck by how clean the metro stations were and how respectful everyone was. Rode the metro many times & no one let me stand for more than 30 seconds before insisting my husband and I sit after seeing I was pregnant. Was family friendly & safe
I just spent 5 days in Portugal. Cities were safe and clean. Very few people sleeping on the street. No open drug use.
Back in NYC I was 5 seconds off the Airtrain from JFK at Jamaica before I saw humans suffering and a zombie like woman walking toward me in house slippers.
Always thought the suburbs were tacky but then got married and pregnant (after living in cities) and priorities completely changed. “Finished basement,” “large backyard” and “within short driving distance of shopping area” are now music to my ears
To be fair, Russell Kirk (not a minor character in the American “right”) was a vocal critic of the two bombs, and wrote in a letter immediately after the bombings “It will not be long before we are reduced to savagery. We are the barbarians within our own empire”
🚨 Tucker Carlson on the atomic bombs
"My 'side' has spent the last 80 years defending the dropping of nuclear bombs on civilians...like, are you joking? If you find yourself arguing that it's a good thing to drop nuclear weapons on people, then you are evil."
-Tucker Carlson
I love toddlerhood, it’s better than the newborn stage and it’s life changing when your kid hits the 1.5 year mark and starts understanding you almost 100% & even saying some words. Here’s my toddler gardening (he’s Wendell Berry pilled). “Beware of toddler” is Fake News
idk if i’m in an anti-natal bubble but everyone was like “watch out, having a toddler is going to suck” and it’s actually so much fun. in the mornings i drink my coffee in the backyard while he pretends to bbq.
by far the biggest lifesaver baby products we’ve bought (that I wish I knew about sooner!)
-Noise machine
-Wrap/baby carrier (I wear my newborn all day & get so much work done. He sleeps immediately in it and baby wearing has countless benefits for mom/baby)
-Velcro swaddle
If you can afford to, buy the good baby gear. Our baby Bjorn stuff still going on our third kid. Also if your kid doesn’t take to something, still keep it. Our middle child didn’t like the rocker, but first born and latest baby do. You never know, don’t toss stuff.
Awful staging and photography. I’ve said it before but the right needs to invest in cultivating photographers who have a creative, stylish eye. Very little effort made in this area (and would that talent even be recognized in the first place?)
Arab Christians live on periphery - too Arab for the right, too Christian for the left, haunted by the reality that this ends with me if I don’t pass Arabic to my kids as we’re subsumed by adoptive homes. My parents are haunted by their memories of a place that’s now a skeleton
The Satanic Temple is the leading beacon of light in the battle for abortion access. With Roe v Wade overturned, a religious exemption will be the only available challenge to many restrictions to access.
Learn More⤵️
I watched The Passion the first time in years this Easter & the scene that made me the most emotional was when Jesus fell while carrying his cross & Mary had a flashack of Jesus falling as a child & going to care for him. Becoming a mom made me feel this pang of Mary’s sorrow
@matthew_petti
Yep, I saw an Instagram post yesterday by a cousin in Syria having a baby gender reveal party, American music playing. Our grandparents’ generation didn’t even keep track of their own kids’ birthdays & couldn’t tell you what they are, let alone celebrate them
Fr. Jason is a friend & a pillar of the Catholic community in Pittsburgh. He’s also a hero who rescued 22 orphans from Ukraine & is spearheading a shrine in Pittsburgh to Our Lady in thanksgiving for the overturning of Roe that offers shelter to at-risk pregnant women
The opening prayer of the campaign rally in Pennsylvania, where Trump escaped the assassination attempt, was led by a Catholic priest, Father Jason Charron.
Video:
@CatholicVote
My grandma is the daughter of an Orthodox priest in rural Syria & had 11 kids, a family donkey & farmed tobacco, grapes and livestock. She listened to Um Kalthoum lol
–Your grandma wore very short mini skirts, thin panties, high boots, and no bra...
–She listened to Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Janis Joplin, and Rolling Stones.
–She rode on motorcycles and fast cars.
–She smoked tobacco and other things...
Just learned that a man my age from my hometown was found in a tent under the I-5 in Seattle, dead from a fentanyl OD. It appears he’s been homeless for years, but regularly checked in with his mom to express his love for her & his brothers. His name is Colin, please pray for him
"Let’s work together to identify young talent on the Right and give them some money. Then let’s turn them loose on the world to find what is to be found, see what is to be seen [...] and write it down, as stories." — Michael Anton
One of my favorite Christmas pieces, Bruegel’s “The Census at Bethlehem,” often credited w popularizing snowy landscape (& was a departure from more common Nativity & Adoration of the Magi paintings). Love how he reimagined this narrative in 16th century Northern Europe
Could you guys pls pray for the intercession of St. Christopher that my aunt who will be traveling to Beirut from Syria to finalize Visa paperwork to come temporarily live with us in the US is safe
Lebanon: On Oct. 17, 2023, the
@StateDept
raised the Travel Advisory for Lebanon to Level 4 – Do Not Travel due to the unpredictable security situation related to rocket, missile, and artillery exchanges between Israel and Hizballah or other armed militant factions.
The Travel
This is what’s happening with Syria’s Christians. This is the country where some communities still speak Aramaic, where there are sites that date back to the inception of Christianity
This doesn’t mention that most midwives understandably only take on patients w low-risk pregnancies. I had an amazingly talented team of midwives & doulas, a healthy pregnancy and read allll of the Ina May Gaskin books. I understand why a woman in labor would want the epidural!
Zak always wanted a cookie cake for his birthday so I made the Mother Of All Cookie Cakes 🍪
From bottom to top: Chocolate chocolate chip, classic chocolate chip, and funfetti, with buttercream icing 🎂
🚨 We’re excited to announce that
@michaeljknowles
will be joining the lineup at the
@ISI
Honors Program this year, teaching a subject you probably haven’t heard him address at length: Dante!
Undergrad students, request an application today & complete it by the Feb. 4 deadline
Our Honors Program applications are open! Select students will join mentors including
@IVMiles
,
@PatrickDeneen
, Susan Hanssen, Andrew Jones, Khalil Habib, & more TBA for deep study of Russell Kirk’s “Roots of American Order”
More information! 👇
It’s official:
@ISI
will hold its last debate of the year at the University of Pittsburgh on April 18
Come see
@michaeljknowles
and Dierdre McCloskey debate transgenderism & womanhood
Sign up here to attend in-person or to livestream:
could you guys please pray for my brother’s gf who has been going through a hard couple years with grief & found out today her dog has Lyme disease? She’s also interested in the Church & was raised outside of it & prayer has been efficacious so far on this front 🙏
Would be very grateful for prayers for St. Gerard’s intercession as I’m due to have my baby any day now and am experiencing a lot of discomfort (and just want to meet him outside the womb!)
I’ve always known co*munism was evil but I’m 600 pages into this brilliant and tragic book & I’m continuously needing to pause while reading to reflect on the terror and carnage this diabolical ideology inflicted on mankind
During the Spanish Civil War, Communists dug up the bodies of nuns and put them on public display for mockery. This exhibition by the far left took place in Barcelona in 1936.
One of my most lib-coded opinions is NYC is the greatest city in America & CA is the most beautiful state (which makes the decline of cities like SF all the more depressing) & denial of this is cope, sorry not gonna respond to any mentions xx
It was a great end to a great week with
@ISI
Honors students and faculty — students journeyed through Kirk’s 5 cities that built Western Civ &
@michaeljknowles
& I concluded by including them in a journey through the afterlife with Dante’s Divine Comedy 📚
Really interesting to see the “politically prudent” folks on the right smearing pro-lifers with scruples ahead of an incredibly tight election in ~2 months instead of trying to persuade them
My family home, a beautiful coastal house with wrap around marble balconies with fruit trees that are always ripe, has peeling wallpaper and was falling into disrepair when I saw it in 2017. My grandparents died, my cousins left for Europe, my aunt is coming to live with me
Unpopular truth,
All you married mommas need to do a better job of selling your lifestyle to young women.
Conservative dudes can keep doing it till we’re blue in the face, but girls won’t buy it until they see it from women.
Boss babes and feminists are a thousand times louder
Perhaps my favorite book. We held an
@ISI
seminar in Nov. on The Leopard and we had several students comment about how their minds were blown (one Ivy student who studies Italian said it never was assigned to him as part of the curriculum!)