5 Quick Things #328 ✍️

commonplace notebooks, distributism, men + poetry, & support your local bookshop

Hey there,

I don’t know where you’re at while you’re reading this (mentally and emotionally, I mean), but if you’re a metaphysical neighbor of mine, you’re spent. My boys have two weeks left of classes and three weeks left of homeschooling with me (hello, Vietnam War, end of the Cold War, and 9/11 — so, low-key chill topics), Tate comes home from her first year of college in two weeks, I have four weeks left of teaching my online high school class (The Gulag Archipelago — so, another easy beach read after a unit on Flannery O’Connor with The Abolition of Man and Lewis’ Cosmic Trilogy before that), and I’ve also got an insane backlog of unanswered emails and texts, plus the typical May calendar rigamarole that comes with having school-age kids.

Let’s just say there’s a reason I asked Kyle for an early Mother’s Day gift of 24 hours by myself just to read and rest, which he blessedly bestowed upon our family calendar and which I get to enjoy next week. (Huzzah!)

All this to say: If you’re feeling swamped, depleted, overly depended on by those who otherwise mean well, and other forms of Over It …I’m with you. Summer’s on the horizon and I am HERE FOR IT. Palomas and authors a smidge lighter than Camus¹ for the win!

Picking Flowers in a Field (1875), by Mary Cassatt #

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5 Quick Things ☕️

1. 

Annelise Roberts

is giving all of us a treat with a well-researched, multi-essay series on stress: how to deal, where to trace its origin, why it rears its ugly head. It’s long, but so far it’s well worth the time: here’s part one; here’s part two.

2. Seeing as this newsletter is called The Commonplace, I always appreciate a good reminder of the beauty of a good old-fashioned florilegia: a commonplace notebook.

Elise Boratenski

recently filled up her first one, so she’s reflecting on this milestone with reasons this is a life-giving habit (one we should all keep, I say!): “When I commonplace, my attitude is more humble, and more thoughtful. As I decide what to record, and later what to write about, I am thinking about what I can, and have, learned from those whose works I have read, and what I can share with others about that learning.”

3. Need a free two-hour philosophy class? Of course you do. I always like seeing Alex Plato’s name show up, so I immediately hit play when I saw that he’s back on Pints this week. He unpacks distributism, how we should think about tech, and more (I’m still listening). Really good, worthwhile stuff.

4. Attention, men (and the women who love them): men need poetry!

Chris Yokel

says it well in his recent reflection on the benefits of poetry, especially in typically stoic-leaning men: “Reading poetry has given me language over and over again for feelings I didn’t even realize I had, or felt but couldn’t articulate. And writing poetry has helped me do the hard work of excavating my own complex emotions that I could not otherwise express or articulate.”

5. And finally… Save the Shop Around the Corner! (I hope you read that in Birdie’s voice from You’ve Got Mail.)

Claire Swinarski

reminds us that, in light of National Independent Bookstore Day tomorrow, we should do our best to buy from our local bookshops whenever we can. I completely agree with this, and it’s why I stopped linking to Amazon for book recommendations several years ago², even though it meant a loss in affiliate sales for me³. (This reminder also dovetails well with last week’s mention of the Smuckers’ latest purchase!)

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Currently Reading, Watching, Listening 📚

The Habsburg Way, by Eduard Habsburg⁴

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Quotable 💬

“A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor — such is my idea of happiness.”

-Leo Tolstoy

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Which literary quote best describes your attitude about spring? 🌻

I was just in the mood to ask something in a different way this time… As for me, even though I appreciate all of these, I think I’m Team Tolstoy this week.

• “When you’ve got spring fever, you want—oh, you don’t quite know what it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!” - Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain: 31.7%

• “Spring is the time of plans and projects.” - Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy: 24.2%

• “In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” - Bluebeard’s Egg, by Margaret Atwood: 17.1%

• “Aprils have never meant much to me; autumns seem that pleasant season of beginning.”- Breakfast at Tiffany’s, by Truman Capote: 16.8%

• “I enjoy the spring more than the autumn now. One does, I think, as one gets older.” - Jacob's Room, by Virginia Woolf: 10.3%

Find this week’s poll here.

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Quick Links 🔗

• 📐Create your own Rule of Life

• 🎧 Listen to A Drink With a Friend

• 📖 Read my books

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Question(s) For You to Ponder… 🤔

What local business could you support this weekend?

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Have a good weekend,

- Tsh

p.s. Yep. (Bless our sheepish hearts.)

1. We read The Stranger before Lewis. A lighthearted English class this is not.

2. I’ve admittedly done so a handful of times since then—as in, I could literally count on one hand the amount of times I’ve done so—when a book I highly recommend truly can’t be found for purchase online anywhere else.

3. Which is why I switched my book affiliate promotion to Bookshop.org, who supports indie bookshops every way they can. It’s still not perfect, but it’s better.

4. Literally just started this today, but it’s been on my TBR pile for months.