Happy Friday, and happy 4th of July weekend to all who celebrate!
This week //
A great first week in DC. On Saturday morning, I ran my favorite five mile loop around the monuments and did a pass through the Old Town farmers market for seasonal produce and iced coffee. On Sunday, a group of seven friends and I had a “leftovers lunch,” where everyone brought whatever food was in their house. We ended up with hot dogs wrapped in scallion pancakes, watermelon/feta/basil salad, potato salad, so much fruit, and aperol spritzes. And yesterday for the 4th, we gathered at a friend’s house for burgers and spiked limeade before walking over to a nearby park to watch all the neighbors’ illegally obtained fireworks.
The weather has been unseasonably beautiful this week (one day was even 75 with low humidity?!), and I’ve taken advantage of my riverfront location to go on a lot of walks by the marina, open the doors to let the breeze through, and work from the back porch.
Enjoying + link love //
Substack book clubs are one of the platform’s hidden gems, so I was delighted by Simon Haisell’s directory of book clubs.
Henry Oliver tackles the limitations of the modern discourse novel.
Loved this conversation between Dr. Jason Baxter and Autumn Kern about education, C.S. Lewis, and the medieval understanding of the world.
I still think often of Gracey Olmstead’s piece about practicing temperance at the grocery store.
I keep my bookcase simple and organize all of my books by author’s last name, so I enjoyed Joel Miller’s walkthrough of his (giant!) home library.
Currently //
Reading: The Simulacra by Philip K. Dick, Strength to Love by Martin Luther King Jr., Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton, Emma by Jane Austen, The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Watching: The Bear, The Boys, Days of Being Wild, Galaxy Quest (rewatch)
Listening: Revisiting influential albums from my college days (Porches’ Pool, Volcano Choir’s Repave, Shura’s Nothing Real). Also, the new singles from Blossoms’ upcoming album and the new Zimmer90 EP are all delights.
Misc: nothing beats a locally grown heirloom tomato
Looking ahead //
I have today off work for the holiday, so I’m grabbing lunch with a college friend I haven’t seen in years. We lost each other’s contact information through a series of absurd human and tech errors, so I’m very excited we reconnected.
Oh I loved Gracy's piece back when she wrote it. Such simple but worthwhile questions, so I'm glad you re-upped it.