From Pennsylvania In A Thunderstorm

Having a lovely time in Hanover, where we arrived early this afternoon. There was a Dutch Craft Fair going on today so we went and walked around the tents -- Dutch here meaning Pennsylvania Dutch, meaning lots of furniture and food and some jewelry. Then we went out for an enormous dinner at the local Chinese buffet, being my younger son's favorite sort of restaurant, since we were celebrating his birthday belatedly with my husband's parents. Both kids got these arm things that shoot little discs (oh joy) and he got a build your own T-Rex skeleton, so he is very happy even though he doesn't know he's also getting a GameCube game but not till right before coming home so he doesn't get bummed that he can't play it while visiting here.

Tonight the local symphony did a free concert of patriotic music which we listened to a little of, since it was outdoors at the YMCA next door to this development. We saw lots and lots of bunnies and groundhogs but they were on the far side of the hill -- the dreaded Wal-Mart side -- on the way to dinner, so I have no pictures! The only wildlife photo I got in the backyard was of a big scary cat that had caught a bird. Woe. Also, Maximus appears to be a bigamist; there he was, all big and HUGE, with at least four littler groundhogs around him, and perhaps some of those were his adult children but they looked suspiciously amorous.


The old, abandoned Hanover movie theater, with some of the street fair visible in front.


St. Matthew's Lutheran Church, with the seventh largest organ in the world, in the distance behind the Dutch Craft Fair.


And the First United Methodist Church of Hanover, because I promised pictures of some of the landmarks.


My one purchase from the craft fair. Under $20. Isn't it lovely?


And what Hanover is famous for -- Utz potato chips, popcorn, cheese curls, snack mix and more come out of these factories!

I finished The Far Side of the World, which is one of those books that just gets better every page, and so completely different from the movie particularly near the end! I was very lukewarm on Stephen in this book; on the one hand he defends the Polynesian Amazons and the reasons women might wish to shun men forever in the sort of world they all know, but on the other hand he's still a raging hypocrite when it comes to women terminating pregnancies; he'll try to save one from dying from it but he won't help her avoid getting into a near-death situation to begin with. Well, he's a great improvement on that misogynist Martin anyway -- ick. I loved Stephen thinking of Diana dancing while defending women who enjoy sex and frolic and don't want to sit home taking care of babies when he and Martin are arguing about bird nesting behavior. And Jack is so gay in this book that it makes up for anything I didn't like (worrying like an old woman, hee). Ahh, desert island fantasies. Favorite quotes tomorrow night if I can get to them.