Journeys – Page 5 – Hashtag Retired

by Angela

Tranquil in Bethlehem

Bethlehem is one of Pennsylvania’s treasures, for its rich historic significance and the gracious, centuries-old buildings that have held fast despite the encroachment of time, the birth and death of the steel industry, and the Sands Casino erected in Bethlehem Steel’s reclaimed brown fields. That the casino and its trappings flourish within blocks of the Northern Province headquarters of the Moravian […]

by Angela

Islands in the laguna

For a daydreaming Pisces, a novel with a sense of place as strong as any of its characters is irresistible. Writers from the American south have always been very good at this—Gail Godwin, Pat Conroy, Flannery O’Connor, and the like. Place is typically very important to ongoing mystery series are as well. My personal favorites are Donna Leon’s […]

by Angela

In the footsteps of the stonecutters…

We make frequent trips to New England, partly because we love it so, partly because we have both roots and family there. Our visits often begin and end at my brother-in-law and sister-in-law’s home in Vermont. On one such visit, we took a fascinating field trip to, of all places, a cemetery. But not just any […]

by Angela

It won’t be long…

Bedecked, festooned, adorned. Pick your favorite over-the-top adjective. Come summer, there are flowers everywhere you turn in Québec city. And, just as I’ve often observed in Maine, the perennials seem more vivid, more lush. Perhaps because they know they’re appreciated more when summer starts late and ends too soon???

by Angela

Roussillon

As we hover between the last gasp of winter and the earliest days of spring, take a moment to visit Roussillon with me. Roussillon rises out of the Vaucluse like a Provençal Brigadoon. The ochre-laden earth gives it a sunny luminescence even on the grayest day. Roussillon is one of the villages perchés of Provence—the perched villages […]

by Angela

‘Le weekend’

By the time we get to Friday, even those of us who are #HashTagRetired are ready for the promise of relief that the weekend affords. “Weekend” is a word so emblematic that the French, who used to be very zealous about protecting their language from outside influence, gave it a gender and added it to their franglais vocabulary. Le […]