I need to figure out the following:

Is there a way to blend pages and posts together nicely on the site, so that I don’t have to configure only posts to see them on the main page?  I would like to make a menu that will show me maybe the latest five or so, but allow me to dig down further.

I know I can do it with PHP, but I want to know if there’s a configuration way to do it.

I found something.  Create a blank page and in the “Static page” section of Settings – Reading, choose the blank posts page to view the posts.