Welp, I got whatever virus is going around... Right now I’m writing this from bed with a swollen sore throat and a healthy dose of aches and pains. Blergh. It’s bound to happen with how much I’m around kids, alas. 🤒
I’m hoping I’ll recover enough so that Kyle and I can keep our dinner reservations this weekend—our twenty-fourth wedding anniversary was on Monday, and while we’re hopefully going camping later this month to celebrate, we at least want to enjoy some good conversation over a couple steaks this weekend. Most years I try to write some thoughts on marriage, but what with Kyle’s dad having passed a week ago (expected, but still hard), cross-country travel because of it, Hallowtide, school year busyness, the election, and a host of tiny other things that make up a busy season—I just didn’t have time. So, here’s a reflection from a few years ago.
Obviously, I’m still so grateful for our marriage! We’re hoping to get in some good celebrating for our twenty-fifth next summer in Italy... 🤯 (which, hey: you should join us!).
5 Quick Things ☕️
1. New episode of A Drink With a Friend! Favorite guest Faith Moore is back—she shares with me two more books that have shaped her life, along with two formative places… as a New Yorker who also spent her childhood in London, she’s got no shortage of magical options.
2. I love anything Sarah Clarkson writes, and this recent essay of hers about quiet and paying attention is no exception: “Quiet was not, I realised, the subtraction of distraction, needy children, and my own exhaustion, it was the homeland within my own heart to which I could return in the very midst of the many crises around me.”
3. If you’re in a stage where you wish you could create more (specifically write, but any sort of creative endeavor applies here), but it’s just not realistic these days, then Chloe Langr’s reflections might be a balm to you—this was certainly me just a few years ago: “When farmers let their fields go fallow with a regenerative mindset, they don’t just skip planting one area and leave the dirt bare. Instead, they make space during fallow seasons for active, biological rest. They plant living fallow species or cover crops to continuously feed the root system of the field.”
4. Now living where we have for a decade now (the longest we’ve lived anywhere in marriage, by far), I really, really appreciate the simple-but-not-always-easy practice of staying put.1 I appreciated 𝐝𝐢𝐠.’s reflections on what it means for his family to stay put in his community and the benefits it reaps, even if/when it’s not perfect: “The only thing you bring with you, really, is the ability to decide to stay. Staying is what allows a place to tell its story. Once you begin to hear it, the role you have in it grows louder.”
5. And finally, fellow Gen-Xer pal Shawn Smucker is writing fifty (!) poems in celebration of his upcoming fiftieth birthday—read one, and then click through and read them all. Beautiful.
Currently Reading, Watching, Listening 📖
Inferno, by Dante Alighieri — Jason M Baxter’s new translation in particular, which is excellent2
Quotable 💬
“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”
- Albert Camus
What’s the worst Halloween candy? 🍬
Always an amusing annual question, and one that feels kinda distant for me this year, since this is the first time we didn’t end the day with a bowl of candy in our home from our kids. Aside from a few bits of candy our youngest collected from his workplace, we had zero candy in our house. Wild!
None of these are good and all of them taste like some sort of lab-grown plastic, but I’ll go with Tootsie Rolls this year—they’re never not disappointing.
Circus Peanuts: 34%
Good & Plenty: 18%
Necco Wafers: 15.6%
Candy Corn: 10.7%
Bit o’ Honey: 7.9%
Twizzlers: 7.2%
Tootsie Rolls: 6.6%
Find the next poll question here.
Summer 2027: The Tuscan Region of Italy 🍝
One excursion from next summer’s pilgrimage itinerary: the Accademia Gallery in Florence (home of Michelangelo’s David3)—we’d love to have you join us!
Quick Links 🔗
Question(s) For You to Ponder… 🤔
What are three things, big or small, you’re grateful for today?4
Have a good one,
- Tsh
p.s. - Two for $6.01.
Or as I remind us in Create Your Rule of Life, the Benedictine’s vow of stability.
This is the translation I’ve assigned my students this year—it’s a great blend of capturing the spirit of the language, as the first major work written in the local vernacular, as well as the spirit of the meaning of the text. It’s been a pleasure to read.
I cry literally every time I see it.
This is the annual question for each week in November, so be prepared.
Ugh. I hope you feel better soon, Tsh. Hopefully you got it out of the way before the holidays at least.