5 Quick Things #333 🍦
homemade ice cream parties, summer bored boards, our universal love of fiction, & and the habits we choose
Hey there,
This past week I spent almost all my work time prepping for my summer screen sabbatical — which starts tomorrow! I’ve officially loaded 13 weeks of mini versions of 5QT, and I think you’ll really enjoy them. It was, however, interesting to read issues of years past (I actually started writing them seven years ago on a different platform). I was tempted to just bury the old ones for several reasons: I’ve gotten better as a writer, my ethos and purpose of 5QT has shifted a bit, and my worldview and values about what I share have changed. But… I’ve decided to just keep these older issues here, and to even promote some of them in my upcoming emails to you this summer. I think it’s good to remember earlier iterations of ourselves (within reason), so long as they serve as timestamps for who we were and how we’ve grown.
If you’re a paying subscriber, I’ve also prescheduled book and gratitude chats for you to enjoy together! Even though I won’t be part of them, I’ve seen how you guys encourage and enlighten each other, month after month, and I have no doubt that’ll continue throughout the summer. I’ve said it for seventeen years, because it’s true: my readers really are the best of what the internet offers. I’m so grateful for each of you and the hopeful ethos you bring to online discourse.
5 Quick Things ☕️
1. New episode of A Drink With a Friend! In this last one of the season, I talk with Zack Kibodeaux of the band Blue Water Highway. We talk about the objective beauty of art, what it means to make a living as a working artist, and how to navigate secular art spaces as a Catholic Christian. Plus, the episode ends with a sampling of his band’s delightful work! It was a great way to tie up this season — as always, more episodes will be coming this fall.
2. Earlier this week I shared our family’s Bored Board list with subscribers, and I’ve just made it free for the public. It’s way too easy for teens to spend way too much time on screens during the summer, partly because of a lack of ideas. Keeping an easy list out in the open helps quell some of that: “Learn how to grill, learn how to bake a pie, tend a backyard garden, volunteer with a local group, create a dinner club with friends (rotate houses and take turns cooking for each other), learn to cook one three-course meal from scratch, take a class at a local community college or center (woodworking, photography, pottery, etc), ride your bike around the neighborhood...”
3. I was delighted to join my friend Autumn Kern on her podcast, also called The Commonplace. In this episode of her delightful show (seriously, go subscribe!), we chat about how our practices should aim at our telos, how the historic Church has practiced this, and some of our favorite practices to bring into your home. As Autumn says, we know it’s important to consider the ideas we take in because they form us deeply, but have you ever considered how what you act out forms you just as deeply? The practices we choose to make habits (or the ones we unintentionally form as habits) shape the story we tell ourselves about God, ourselves, and our lives.
4. Why do we love fiction so much? Tolkien had a few ideas as to why, and they ring true in my experience. Keela Dee with JRR Jokien unpacks why Tolkien’s observations seem universal: “Creating something in your mind that does not exist in this primary world is an act of sub-creation… He claims that sub-creating requires special skills, labor, and thought, ‘But when they are attempted and in any degree accomplished then we have a rare achievement of Art: indeed narrative art, story-making in its primary and most potent mode.’”
5. And finally, I loved Dixie Dillon Lane’s story sharing her recent experience hosting a homemade, hand-cranked ice cream party for a gaggle of kids — it was a good reminder especially for those of us introverts who lean more pessimist/realist: “I now can see, whether the experience goes beautifully or our best-laid plans go awry, hand cranking ice cream with a few dozen kids is a whole lot more powerful than dithering in paralyzing despair. As always, and as we so often forget, the light wins out. And there’s no greater light than the smiles of children gathering together to eat big scoops of ice cream that they made themselves.”
Currently Reading, Watching, Listening 📻
My Summer 2024 Playlist (and I’ll add more to it throughout the summer!)
Quotable 💬
“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald
(Finally) Announcing the 2025 Pilgrimage ⚓️
I’m thrilled to finally announce next summer’s pilgrimage location: We’ll be exploring the region along the Rhine River! Yep, this means our main mode of transportation will be a leisurely riverboat cruise (so shed from your mind right now any picture of a Caribbean barge-like floating hotel) as we explore the winding mountains and valleys of the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Switzerland.
I absolutely love this part of the world, and fingers crossed my entire family will once again join me on this pilgrimage. But this time, I’m also co-leading this trip with my friends Dr. Michael & Alexandra Foley and Daniel & Haley Stewart! You may know Michael & Alexandra from their podcast or from his beloved Drinking With the Saints (and adjacent) books, and you’ll know Haley from her books, podcast, and newsletter. As we explore cathedrals, sample wine, and witness snow-capped mountains, our topic of contemplation and discussion will be living liturgically. What does this mean? How do we adopt a daily posture of liturgy in our ordinary lives? And how can we structure our family’s rhythms around the time-honored liturgical calendar?
I’m so, so very excited about this trip, and I have a feeling it’ll fill up fast (the speed at which this year’s Greece trip filled blew my mind!) — so if you’re remotely interested, I recommend making your deposit asap. Older kids are welcome, as well as folks from all walks of life. …I already can’t wait to share this time with you.
Which one is correct?
See, I knew I had the smartest readers on the internet.
Over: 92%
Under: 8%
Find this summer’s poll here.
Quick Links 🔗
Question(s) For You to Ponder… 🤔
What could you start doing this weekend that, by the end of the summer, you’ll be really glad you did?
Have a great summer! If you’re a Commonplace subscriber you’ll get my prescheduled summer emails, and I’ll be back here with you again in a few months.
Talk to you again before you know it,
- Tsh
What a beautiful, fruitful trip this looks to be! So excited to see it announced.
I'm really happy you enjoyed my ice cream piece. Thanks for sharing it! And I'm glad you'll be keeping the community discussions here at the Commonplace going during your break; I bet it will be gratifying to see, upon your return, the ways that things will have kept on going in charity and shared support.