5 Quick Things #334 🪴

educating boys, working with our hands, returning for the fall, & shooing away mosquitoes

Hey there,

Like I said earlier this week, it’s good to be back! And overwhelming, if I’m honest. Remind me next year not to launch a local homeschool co-op and return to publishing on the internet on the same week, okay?

There’s a heightened sensitivity gained to a screen sabbatical, similar to walking through a crowded festival after leaving a library… it is LOUD out there on the internet, where people graciously share and listen to each other’s political worldviews without quick judgement or hasty assumptions. Y’all… it’s a madhouse. I know you know this, but it really does take a break from it all, however brief, to really recognize the lack of nuance and heightened volume.

Here’s to sanity, to tomatoes still on the backyard vine and warm enough September weather to dip in the local watering holes. I clink my mason jar with yours.

Tableau impressionniste français d'une scène de café avec des personnages en Provence, by Guy Benard #

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5 Quick Things ☕️

1. New episode of A Drink With a Friend! Short and sweet, this week I’m introducing a new season of laid-back conversations with friends new and old — some voices you’ll recognize, some you’ve yet to meet. I’m stoked to bring them to you! (Subscribe if you haven’t yet and you won’t miss the next one.)

2. In case you missed it, earlier this week I unpacked some of my haphazard thoughts after a summer away from publishing online… “This sabbatical reminded me that I care more about writing books than continually saying something relevant on the internet (as much as I enjoy writing this newsletter). It was a check on my ego, the reminder we all need that the smart insight we have about whatever-it-is today, no matter how true, doesn't always need to be said for all to read.”

3. As I’m typing this I’ve got one 16-year-old boy doing a college economics class from the kitchen island and another 14-year-old boy doing biology from the living room couch. I concur with these thoughts from

Ivana Greco

: “For devoted readers of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, this dynamic will be familiar. When Calvin is playing outdoors, he is acutely interested in ideas and the world around him; he is fully alive. In scenes where Calvin is in school, he is a tragic-comic figure, trapped at his desk while his teacher drones on and he escapes into fantasy daydreams.”

4. The idea of purposely weeding with a scythe reminds me of when I would line-dry all our laundry for a long while when we first started remodeling our old home and had no laundry facilities. It seems slower and harder — and it is — but in some ways that’s the point. We shouldn’t always make efficiency the goal. I resonate with Aston Fearon’s praise of physical work: “We live in a world that values the novel and technological. When we are told that manual and physical aspects of work are drudgery, this is often a precursor to selling us a high-tech solution or outsourcing the work cheaply to make more profit. But the good work that the body engages in does have dignity, whether that’s playing the piano or planting a garden, washing the dishes or building a house, crafting a table or baking bread.”

5. And finally, a mosquito bucket as a surefire way to eliminate those bastions of this fallen world? I’m here for it.

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Currently Reading, Watching, Listening 📚

A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens (also on Audible!)

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Quotable 💬

“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”

― F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Rhine River 2025! ⚓️

After our family’s pilgrimage to Greece and Turkey this summer, I’m convinced that this excursion with newfound friends is just about my favorite thing I do all year. We ended our time together immediately psyched about summer 2025!

I’m so very excited about next year’s pilgrimage! Alongside my friends Haley Stewart, Alexandra Foley, and Michael Foley, my family and I will voyage down the Rhine River from Amsterdam to Zurich, letting God speak to us through all its beauty. We’ll visit monasteries and cathedrals, windmills and villages, making cheese, sampling wine, learning how to make cuckoo clocks, taking a train through the Alps, and more. Along the way, we’ll talk about what it means to live liturgically: how do we adopt a daily posture of liturgy in our ordinary lives?

There’s already almost thirty people signed up and this pilgrimage will be fully booked before too long (the Greece trip was sold out by last Christmas!). Make your plans now to join in — you truly won’t regret it. All are welcome!

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After the Rhine River, where should the next pilgrimage be? 🎒

Speaking of — I asked you back in May (remember?) where you’d love to eventually go on a pilgrimage. You didn’t disappoint! These favorite locales are also on my horizon… coming soon to a calendar near you.

• Scotland: 26%

• Portugal & Spain / Camino de Santiago: 22%

• England / Literary London: 18%

• Holy Land: 12%

• Italy: 10%

• Danube River (Budapest, Vienna, Munich, etc.): 7%

• France: 4%

• Mexico: 1%

Find next 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

• 🛶 Join me along the Rhine River

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Question(s) For You to Ponder… 🤔

What might you miss if you took a short screen break? Is missing it worth it?

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Have a great weekend,

- Tsh

p.s. - Juggling from a different perspective.