The Pennsylvania Chautauqua, Mount Gretna, Lebanon County

Important update from my post about Smithfield Church - the fire on Blue Mountain is out! Our entire community is deeply grateful to all of the fire companies who helped to bring the disaster to an impressive end - no one was injured and there was no property damage, apart from several hundred acres of trees. Hopefully it recovers quickly. Meanwhile, additional thanks to everyone who contributed in some way to the relief effort, as our home company was truly overwhelmed by the generosity. Even the visiting representatives from FEMA were astonished by the community response.

I'm still doing my best here to try to get the blogs caught up, but it's a slow process. I keep an awful lot of balls in the air at one time, and then sometimes life randomly tosses in a chainsaw or two. I appreciate the patience and the words of support I've received from many of you!

Kevin and I were at a meeting of my beloved White Rose Irregulars this past Saturday, where I talked for a little while about the family tree of Sherlock Holmes. Public speaking might be the greatest fear of a lot of people, but it honestly doesn't bother me very much at all; I quite enjoy it, even though I'm not overly fond of the sound of my own voice. After the meeting, we detoured off of the road home to collect today's marker - I found the subject so interesting, both visually and historically, that I had to make it the focus of this week's post because I couldn't wait to share it with all of you.

Smithfield Church, Shawnee, Monroe County

October disappeared while I was looking the other way, it seems. Even without touching on the election or its results, the back half of 2024 has been frankly dizzying for me. I sure am happy to not be getting any more spam texts, though.

Of particular note, for the last several days the mountain behind my house has been on fire. It's far enough away (about five miles) that I haven't been in any danger, but it's been a big enough issue that we have at least a dozen fire companies, all or nearly all volunteers, working together to fight the blaze. It's burned just under 600 acres of woodland, though they do believe they have it contained now. The community has rallied around our firefighters - seriously, I'm so proud of everyone for contributing water and snacks and supplies, to the point that the local fire company had to ask people to stop bringing donations because they have no more space to store it all. If you would like to contribute to the effort, what Lehigh Township's fire company needs now is money to replace equipment and things like that, so they do accept donations via Squaresite at this link. (The fire is situated in Lehigh Township, so they've been leading the operation.) Alternately, consider contributing to your own local fire company, because I'm sure they can always use more support.

At the very least, please pay attention to burn bans. It's believed this was all started by a campfire, which no one had any business building when the entire commonwealth is in a severe drought. (We haven't had any measurable rainfall in my area since the middle of September!)

Meanwhile, I'm trying to keep on top of the blog in between all the other madness. It's not easy, but I dearly love my blogs so it's important to me. So let's kick off November with a trip to scenic Monroe County, to a spot where a church is believed to have once stood.