This Fall will be for Family & Friends Only

Hello Everybody,

We are moving out from La Macchina Fissa quite smoothly. This past Sunday (August 2nd), with the help of friends from Mantova, Carpi, and Torino, we did a seven-person, four-car caravan (about 100 boxes of books) up to our new home, "Il Cerro".

As soon as we arrived, we could feel the incredible difference 400 or 500 meters of altitude makes - What a lovely breeze up there! For members who were seeing the property for the first time, there was a very enthusiastic response to the light, the landscape, views of the hills, the house, horse stables, agricultural buildings and overall potential.

We also immediately popped a tire on the Panda, but managed to get the spare on and get out of there without any difficulty or delay.

We have four more Sundays of moving together (9, 16, 23 and 30 August) interspersed with weekday trips to and from the houses with members coming in to help from Williamsburg (Virginia), Norwalk (Connecticut), Krefeld (Germany), Athens (Greece), Antwerp (Belgium), Milan, Ravenna, Crevalcore, and cities close by. If you can join us for a Sunday move, please come over! We load up our cars and vans at noon, have lunch around 1 pm and leave around 2. It's a two hour drive (91 km) door-to-door.

Important structural works are ongoing at "Il Cerro" and will be finished by the end of August, but we have a lot of junk to move out of there and cleaning to do. It's going to take months. For this reason, I think it's best to hold off on "normal" reading retreats (for people we don't know) until January 2027. For September through Christmas, our new location will be open all the time, but only for "Family & Friends" - people who already know us and who won't mind staying in the new place even if Clark & Co. is hammering and drilling around and the wall painting, garden work and cleaning continues all around the property. It's an exciting time, but not relaxing!

Which is not to say we won't have events!

They are all mentioned on our new website: www.readingretreats.com

Come see what we're up to and enjoy a party or classical music concert!

Clark