Life Lately 

Summer sure did seem to fly by this year!  

We enjoyed some great times and did a few projects around our home...

We had a great "theater summer".  We are blessed with several local theaters that do a great job.  This production of Hair was wonderful at the Mr. Gretna Playhouse.  Located in Mt. Gretna, PA, this open air summer theater is a great place to see a show.  Mt. Gretna is a short drive from our home and wonderful experience.

In the 1890’s, the Pennsylvania Chautauqua Society founded Mt. Gretna, attracted by the region’s natural beauty. The landscape is still just as inviting -- gently wooded mountains, a stream, and a lake. Throughout the Summer, the Chautauqua’s educational and cultural tradition is carried on with first-rate events in music, theater, and art.

At one time a grand resort, still a spot for swimming, boating, hiking - as well as an art festival each summer.

There are summer cottages and year round homes, and it is fun to stroll around the town.

Lectures and presentations are available, too.

We also were able to see productions of West Side Story, 1776, and A Beautiful Noise!

One of our projects was getting a new mattress - I don't even remember how old our last one was, and we were in the market for an adjustable bed.  Luckily the new frame fit right in our old bed frame so we could keep the same look.  But, the delivery guys told me that I could not have a bed skirt because the lumbar support that moves up and down in the middle of the bed would get tangled in the mechanism.  OK...but when all was said and done I hated the way the bed looked without a bed skirt.  Then I had an idea...

We took the mattress off of the frame, I put the bed skirt on, then used the remote to activate the lumbar support.  I used a marker to outline the area, cut it out, and then taped the edges down...

works perfectly and looks great !

Other summer fun included a visit from my sister and niece...

We had a great brunch and wonderful time catching up!

 Then a short getaway to Ocean City, Maryland.  We had not been to "the shore" in a few years and enjoyed the beach, the boardwalk, and riding bikes.

While having dinner at an Irish Pub on the Boardwalk we started chatting with our waitress...she said she was from Romania.  We said we had just been in Romania in the Spring...as she brought back our drinks I had my phone out with a photo of the city we visited...it was her hometown!!!  She was thrilled, and we we asked her to take our photo she said she wanted a selfie with someone who knew where she came from !  Small world!

Other summer highlights included John's 55th Class Reunion!

Hippie attire was optional and many people did go all out.  The committee did a great job with the entire even and favors.

Our community hosted a Route 66 progressive dinner to celebrate 100 years of the famous drive...the event started with drinks and snacks on the rooftop deck of our building.

We made our way to a Phillies game and even though they lost, we had a great time.

We remembered September 11th and our community did a great job making a walkway of luminaria - one for each victim - all around the pond in our grounds.  Evenly spaced, markers with information on the attacks, and just a beautiful tribute.  This is the view after dark from our rooftop. 

Do you love pizza ?  My favorite is Grotto Pizza...found in Delaware and Maryland but started years ago in the Wilkes Barre, PA area and a childhood favorite.  After always having to travel to enjoy this treat we are so excited to have Grotto in Lancaster !!!

What wonderful things you will remember from this summer?  Please leave a comment below - I love hearing from you!  

We will be traveling again, so I will be back on the blog in a few weeks...until then - enjoy the Fall !

 Recent Reads - August 2026

I am a little behind on my reading  -  travel to Ireland for two weeks made it difficult to read much except for our flights.  Here are some titles I enjoyed since my last Recent Reads post.

A last chance to escape. A journey fraught with danger. Based on true events.
Vienna, 1938. Newlywed Lilly is looking forward to the future with her husband until the Nazi annexation of Austria throws everything into uncertainty. Suddenly, their Jewish heritage turns them into outcasts, facing persecution and daily humiliation.
Despite their tireless efforts to emigrate, no country will grant them the visas they desperately need. Then Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, shatters Lilly’s world.
With the outbreak of World War II, Lilly remains trapped in Vienna, fearful of what lies ahead. Her cousin discovers a possible joining a group of Jewish refugees on a daring journey down the Danube River and across the Black Sea to British-controlled Mandatory Palestine.
Leaving comes at a price, and though it may offer Lilly a second chance and new friendships, it will also test her resilience to the limit. With danger and difficulties at every turn, can Lilly and all the other refugees survive the journey and reach the Promised Land?

I enjoyed reading this book  - and historical fiction is my favorite genre - and it was very neat to read this book while cruising on the Danube!  I gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads and learned a lot about how difficult it was for refugees to escape Europe as the Nazi regime took over.

Artie Dam is living a double life. He spends his days teaching history to eleventh graders, expanding their young minds, correcting their casual cruelties, and lending a kind word to those who need it most. He goes to holiday parties with his wife of three decades, makes small talk with neighbors, and, on weekends, takes his sailboat out on the beautiful Massachusetts Bay. He is, by all appearances, present and alive. But inside, Artie is plagued by feelings of isolation. He looks out at a world gone mad—at himself and the people around him—and turns a question over and over in his mind: How is it that we know so little about one another, even those closest to us?
And then, one day, Artie learns that life has been keeping a secret from him, one that threatens to upend his entire world. Once he learns it, he is forced to chart a new course, to reconsider the relationships he holds most dear—and to make peace with the mysteries at the heart of our existence.

I enjoy this author and gave this book 5 stars!  Artie is everyone as we grow, learn, love, and worry about the future.

Twelve stories. Twelve months. Once chance to heal her heart...

When Tilly Nightingale receives a call telling her there’s a birthday gift from her husband waiting for her at her local bookshop, it couldn’t come as more of a shock. Partly because she can’t remember the last time she read a book for pleasure. Mainly because Joe died five months ago…The gift is simple – twelve carefully-chosen books from Joe, one for each month, to help her turn the page on her first year without him. Tilly sets out on a series of reading-inspired adventures that take her around the world. But as she begins to vlog her journey, her story becomes more than her own. With help from Alfie, the bookshop owner, her budding new following and her friends and family, can Tilly’s year of books show her how to love again?

I thought this was a great concept and a wonderful read for book lovers with lots of good suggestions for more good reads, and a lovely story about grief and recovery. 4 stars!

This is the story of Kitty O'Shea, married woman whose love affair with Charles Stewart Parnell in the late nineteenth century led to the famous Irish patriot's downfall.
Told as a fictional biography, the author has been assisted in her sympathetic and understanding portrait of heroine by discovering Katherine O'Shea's own published account of her passionate and unshakeable love and loyalty of Parnell.
The stormy days of Gladstone and the Home Rule Bill for Ireland form a lively background to this most moving and tragic story.

I read this book while I was in High School and wanted to read it before we went to Ireland.  I loved it again...and one of the hotels we stayed in had a room dedicated to Charles Parnell...so it was perfect.

Nostalgia made me give it 5 stars!

High school English teacher Polly Goodman can talk about everything and anything with the women in her book club, which is why they’ve become her closest friends and, along with the support of her veterinarian husband, the bedrock of her life. Her private school students, her fraught relationship with mother, her struggles with IVF—Polly’s book club friends have heard it all. But when they give Polly an ancestry test kit as a joke, the results match her with a stranger. Despite it seeming clear that this match is a mistake, Polly cannot help combing through her own family history for answers. Then, when it seems that the book club circle of four will become three, Polly learns how friendships can change your life in the most profound ways.

I enjoy Anna Quindlen and this book was interesting...blending family, friends, reading and infertility into a good story.  4 stars.

Aside from a delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed. 
Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn how and when they are going to die. For some, their death is far in the future—age 103!—and they laugh. But for six passengers, their predicted deaths are not far away at all. 
How do they know this? There were ostensibly more interesting people on the flight (the bride and groom, the jittery, possibly famous woman, the giant Hemsworth-esque guy who looks like an off-duty superhero, the frazzled, gorgeous flight attendant) but none would become as famous as “The Death Lady.” 
Not a single passenger or crew member will later recall noticing her board the plane. She wasn’t exceptionally old or young, rude or polite. She wasn’t drunk or nervous or pregnant. Her appearance and demeanor were unremarkable. But what she did on that flight was truly remarkable. A few months later, one passenger dies exactly as she predicted. Then two more passengers die, again, as she said they would. Soon no one is thinking this is simply an entertaining story at a cocktail party. If you were told you only had a certain amount of time left to live, would you do things differently? Would you try to dodge your destiny?
 I made sure NOT to read this before we were flying to Ireland!  It was a strange read, but I loved it - 5 stars - and it stresses enjoying each and every day we are given!

In the heart of revolutionary Boston, Abigail Adams raises her children amidst riots, blockades, and the outbreak of war. While her husband, John Adams, rises from country lawyer to nation-builder, often away for years at a time, Abigail builds her own independence—managing their farm, making lucrative investments, amassing savings, battling plague and loss, and defending their home. Unafraid to speak her mind, she famously offers fearless political counsel, urging John to “remember the ladies” in the new government. Through it all, she becomes his most trusted confidante and indispensable ally.
When peace is secured, Abigail steps onto the world stage—exchanging ideas with Thomas Jefferson in the French countryside, navigating court life as the wife of the minister to Great Britain, and presiding over the parlor politics of the early American republic in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. Even after her husband’s presidential administration, she continues battling political foes and working behind the scenes to advance her family, secure independence for the women closest to her, and ensure a better life for the next generation of Americans.
From war-torn streets to the chandeliered halls of power, A Founding Mother is the unforgettable story of a woman ahead of her time—one whose voice, vision, and valor still resonate powerfully today.

Perfect read for 4th of July weekend - 5 stars! So much sacrifice for the founding of our country...and regarding the early politics you realize that some things never change.

Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident.
As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become.
A sweeping love story with the pace and twists of a thriller, Broken Country is a novel of simmering passion, impossible choices, and explosive consequences that toggles between the past and present to explore the far-reaching legacy of first love.

5 stars !!! Once I started reading this I could not stop. Such a good story with great twists and real emotions. Loved it !

Colette Marceau has been stealing jewels for nearly as long as she can remember, following the centuries-old code of honor instilled in her by her mother, take only from the cruel and unkind, and give to those in need. Never was their family tradition more important than seven decades earlier, during the Second World War, when Annabel and Colette worked side by side in Paris to fund the French Resistance.
But one night in 1942, it all went wrong. Annabel was arrested by the Germans, and Colette’s four-year-old sister, Liliane, disappeared in the chaos of the raid, along with an exquisite diamond bracelet sewn into the hem of her nightgown for safekeeping. Soon after, Annabel was executed, and Liliane’s body was found floating in the Seine—but the bracelet was nowhere to be found.
Seventy years later, Colette—who has “redistributed” $30 million in jewels over the decades to fund many worthy organizations—has done her best to put her tragic past behind her, but her life begins to unravel when the long-missing bracelet suddenly turns up in a museum exhibit in Boston. If Colette can discover where it has been all this time—and who owns it now—she may finally learn the truth about what happened to her sister. But she isn’t the only one for whom the bracelet holds answers, and when someone from her childhood lays claim to the diamonds, she’s forced to confront the ghosts of her past as never before. Against all odds, there may still be a chance to bring a murderer to justice—but first, Colette will have to summon the courage to open her own battered heart.

WWII historical fiction is my favorite genre, and this book did not disappoint. I liked the way the story wove between past and present, and the way family and love came together in the end. A great read!

4 stars.

Surrey, England, 1938. After thirty devoted years of marriage, Ellie Endicott is blindsided by her husband’s appeal for divorce. It’s Ellie’s opportunity for change too. The unfaithful cad can have the house. She’s taking the Bentley. Ellie, her housekeeper Mavis, and her elderly friend Dora—each needing escape—impulsively head for parts unknown in the South of France.
With the Rhône surging beside them, they have nowhere to be and everywhere to go. Until the Bentley breaks down in the inviting fishing hamlet of Saint Benet. Here, Ellie rents an abandoned villa in the hills, makes wonderful friends among the villagers, and finds herself drawn to Nico, a handsome and enigmatic fisherman. As for unexpected destinations, the simple paradis of Saint Benet is perfect. But fates soon change when the threat of war encroaches.
Ellie’s second act in life is just beginning—and becoming an adventure she never expected.

4 stars - Good story with a little bit of historical fiction set in the 

Cote d' Azur...really enjoyed it!

In 1933 Oxford, Mississippi, Prohibition is on the wane, and the Great Depression is tightening its grip. Poor and rich folks alike have fallen on hard times, even as the old social order remains. For women on the margins, the options are few and the price of dignity and self-determination is unbearably high.
Eleven-year-old Meg, one of the unadoptable “big girls” at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum, fights each day to keep her spirit unbowed. Birdie, unmarried and outspoken, has come to Oxford on a mission to ask her social-climbing sister to help the struggling family she’s left behind. And Charlie is a woman with a past, running low on luck but driven by fire, fury, and grit. When their fates converge, they come up with an audacious plan to take back control of their lives. Together, they form an unlikely sisterhood—but in a place and time where hypocrisy is rife, women’s freedom is fragile, and making an enemy can have dire consequences, will the price they pay for their outrageous risk-taking be too high?
The Calamity Club will make you laugh, cry, and cheer—an epic testament to resilience, friendship, and the fierce, funny women who know that calamity can be the spark of new beginnings. This is Kathryn Stockett at her most confident, heartfelt, and hilarious—the triumphant return of one of the most beloved storytellers of our time.

If I could, I would give this 10+ stars! Don't let the 656 pages turn you off - this book was amazing! Along with the great story, the history of eugenics and the terrible years of the depression made this book hard to put down. Very rarely do I get a book hangover, but this one I wanted to go on and on. What happened to Birdie, Mrs. Tarte, and Meg and her mother.....I will be thinking about this book for a long time! I listened to the audio of this book for about half of it...then because the audio was due back at the library and could not be renewed, I read the rest.  I am SO glad I listened to it because the voices of those characters will be in my head for a long time!

What have you been reading this summer ?  Do you set a reading goal for the year?  I try to read my age each year...which means I read more each year - a good thing!  Please leave a comment and let me know if you read any of these books, did you like them, and what can you recommend for my next read!

 

Irish Adventure Conclusion

After our first week in Ireland we headed out of Killarney to head up the coast to the Cliffs of Moher.

Our coach boarded a ferry to cross the Shannon River .

And when we got to the cliffs they were all fogged in and we couldn't really enjoy the view...so we headed to the Visitor Center for lunch and to explore the museum...

We knew we would not find our Eastern European name in County Clare...but my sister married and O'Dea and that name was featured - and we met some other O'Dea's there, too.

And then the fog cleared and we had a great walk along the cliffs...do you recognize them?  The Cliffs of Insanity from the movie

 The Princess Bride. Our guide made sure to mention any movies or series that were filmed along our route and we loved that !

Then it was on to Ennis and a Medieval Banquet...

in a real castle!  Greeted by our host who was SO good...

We had a toast with the Lady of the Castle, then entered the banquet...notice there is only a knife.  We drank the soup from the bowl..

had a toast with mead...

great entertainment...

and ate ribs, chicken, veggies...all with our hands!

A farewell of pipe music, too!

The next day we were off to a traditional Irish sheep farm -

We learned how the sheep dog was trained and watched him herd the sheep...

Then inside the thatched roof cottage for tea and scones...

A bit of rest by the peat fire...

And it was a great visit!

Then it was off to County Donegal and Derry - 

On the way we passed the castle of Lord Mountbatten, who was killed during "the troubles".

And everywhere, such beauty!

Donegal, where we saw how authentic Irish tweed is made...

then we explored the town, and we always find a cemetery.

The tombstones are quite specific...many of them giving the address of where the person lived.

Then it was on to Derry - or Londonderry - depending on if you were Irish or English...Catholic or Protestant.

We had a wonderful guide, who gave us the history, explained "the troubles" and the violence that the town experienced over the years before there was peace.  He had a Chinese mother, an Irish father, and he was Buddhist...and married to a Catholic.  He sends his children to the only integrated ( Catholic and Protestant ) school in the area because he feels that by learning about each other is the only way to keep the peace.

Our hotel was very close to the Peace Bridge and we walked over after dinner to walk around and explore.

The window depicts the ship Mount Joy that broke the famine during a long battle...and the guide told us there is a Mount Joy in Pennsylvania named after this ship - we know!  Not far from us !

We headed the next day to Inishowen Peninsula and Malin Head - Ireland's northern most point.

You can still see the chalk markings that told the women pilots ferrying planes during WWII

A camper tent on top of a car!

It was so peaceful there...

The northern most pub in Ireland...some of the Star Wars movies were filed here.

A wonderful old pub with great Irish Coffee

and John had hot chocolate with Bailey's Irish Cream!

The next day we headed to the Giant's Causeway formed by volcanic activity millions of years ago...

Such amazing sights!

A drive through the country side to Belfast...

We toured the old, divided section and stopped at the Peace Wall...

our guide provided us with markers so we could add our thoughts to the many there.

A very moving experience.

The next day we toured the Titanic Museum - amazing!

Very interactive with a lot of personal stories..

and one of the deck chairs.  A sobering visit.

But, we could not resist getting this shot!

We spent our last afternoon in Belfast exploring on our own. Of course, I had to find the Belfast Library...and we were actually a little lost looking for Belfast Cathedral, so we stopped in the library and the librarian gave us directions!

A very impressive Celtic Cross.

Our hotel was beautiful - and during "the troubles" the most bombed building in Belfast because that is where all the media stayed.  

Right across the street were these two very old pubs -

which made it the perfect spot for our last dinner of the trip.  Fish and chips and mushy peas ( but John got cole slaw, too) and of course -

a pint of Guinness!

It was an amazing trip, and I cannot say enough good things about our tour director and the great trip that AAA Member's Choice and Collette Tours provided.  While we love Viking Cruises, this was a great way to really see all of Ireland.

Thanks so much for coming along on our Irish Adventure!  Since we have been home we have been working on some projects and enjoying the summer.  Hope you are having a great summer - how did it get to be August already???

Thanks for stopping by Our New Vista - enjoy the month of August!