Culture

(Monday, March 17, 2025) by Ann Silverthorn with Jim DeDad It was cool, but the rain held off as we met with our group at 9:00 a.m. on St. Patrick’s Day. Our coach driver took us on a sightseeing tour of the city with Guide Cam narrating. Here are some interesting takeaways: The Crown Promenade, where we…

(Sunday, March 16, 2025) by Ann Silverthorn with Jim DeDad We were grateful for an easy day, waking at six, enjoying another awesome breakfast, and meeting the bus at eight for our 9:40 a.m. flight out of Ayers Rock Airport (also known as Connellan Airport).  The flight to Melbourne was around three hours. I may…

(Saturday, March 15, 2025) by Ann Silverthorn with Jim DeDad Our long bus ride departed at 7:30 a.m. for the Stuart Highway, then the Lasseter Highway going west toward Uluru, the Aboriginal word for the huge monolith most of us know as Ayers Rock and what I was most excited to see on this trip. I…

(Friday, March 14, 2025) by Ann Silverthorn and Jim DeDad Those who opted for the pre-dawn, hot-air balloon ride were being picked up at 4:55 a.m., while the rest of us, who like their feet on the ground, enjoyed breakfast in the hotel restaurant, before everyone was picked up from the hotel at 8:45 a.m. for…

(Thursday, March 13, 2025) by Ann Silverthorn with Jim DeDad We were up at 3:00 a.m. for a 4:15 a.m. transport to our 6:00 a.m. flights to Brisbane and then to Alice Springs. It was nice that they gave us boxed breakfasts while we waited for the coach. No coffee, though, so that was a…

Dear Visitor: I thought you might be interested in reading a little about our recent trip to southern Germany. There were eight of us, including our guide, Derek, a German teacher at a local high school here in northwest Pennsylvania.

Note: I am a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and wrote this article for my chapter’s newsletter. The Daughters of the American Revolution has a complicated legacy regarding American contralto, Marian Anderson (1897-1993). Raised in Philadelphia, Anderson showed her musical talent early on, but because she was black, she was turned down…

Author Donna Tartt’s expert craft in word choice, phrase construction, paragraph progression, and plot architecture combined with narrator David Pittu’s deep, exact pronunciation and dramatic inflection made all 32 hours of listening to The Goldfinch (2013) audiobook—simply delicious. The novel centers around Theo Decker, a young man who lost his mother through tragedy and gained a priceless…

Until I set foot on Romanian soil for a family event in 2019, I pictured a country coldly washed in black-and-white and imagined that its occupants never smiled. I was, obviously, wrong. The country is alive with natural beauty, and the people are warm and friendly.  Happily, I’m headed back to Romania this summer and…

No spoilers) There’s little dialogue in Hannah. I was afraid this film would be one of those where at the end you say, “It’s over? What was this movie about anyway?” Well, when this film ended, I knew exactly what happened even though no one ever actually said it. That’s brilliant. Imagine a retired couple having…