Reading · The Commonplace

Right now I’m sipping a new-to-me drink from my beloved neighborhood coffee shop (and it’s on the ‘secret menu’): it’s an aerocano, and I can’t quite explain it, but it’s delicious. Another surprise is their summer citrus syrup, which you wouldn’t guess would be good in coffee, but you would be absolutely wrong. Make it iced, breve, and half-sweet, and it positively tastes like an adult creamsicle. …Delightful.

This next week we’re taking our second-born up to college (🤯), then the following week we’ve got our co-op’s fall kickoff, my birthday the next day, and my next round of book edits due a few days later before my first day of teaching classes the following Tuesday. -When’s fall break?

…It wouldn’t be the second half of August if it wasn’t wildly nuts. **sips aerocano for sanity

*Summer Late* (1890), by John Henry Twachtman #

1. This week we’ve been sharing what we read in July and what we’re currently reading in August (stop adding book ideas to my eternal pile!). If you’re a subscriber, join in the chat.
2. This summer I started weight training again, and it’s been really good to get back at it—I’ve been hitting up my friend’s garage gym, and I often go with one or two of my kids. It’s been a treat! Anyhoo, I’ve been embracing this idea of needing to practice only seven basic movements, and I suppose it’s too soon to tell, but so far it’s making me enjoy working out again.
3. Arguably one of my favorite reasons to homeschool is the second (and much better) education I’ve received myself. Here’s a good reminder that it’s never been easier to not deprive yourself of closing up any education gaps with all the many resources available to us now: “The future of liberal arts cannot depend on whether elite universities recover their former prestige. It must depend on something much older and more hopeful: ordinary people who continue the pursuit of knowledge for what is good, true, and beautiful.”
4. I really did marvel at the size of Jane Austen’s writing table when I first saw it about ten years ago. We don’t need a Thoreau-ian writing cabin in the woods or Hemingway’s hideaway in Key West to do the daily, ordinary work of showing up to write… We can embrace Austen’s little table behind a squeaky door, purposely never fixed so she had fair warning of an intruder in order to hide her latest manuscript.
5. And finally, eating the K-rations of World War II. …This continues to be my favorite just-for-fun channel on YT.

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Vols. 6-7, by Beth Brower (Yep, I am flying through them with the goal of finishing the series before the school year begins, and also because they’re just so good.)

“Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screeneed porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape.”

-Harper Lee

Of course, I asked this in mid-July, so your feelings might have changed since then… It’s definitely gotten swelteringly hot around here. However, since my husband and I have chosen not to complain about the heat for the second summer in a row (since complaining never makes things cooler, and actually makes enduring the summer worse), I still don’t hate summer like I have in previous decades here in Texas—but it’s not the end of the world. Sure, I’d like things to cool off. But in the meantime, I’m appreciating the glory that is still the lazy summer day mindset.