RH Digest — April 7th
"The Front Page for Retirement"
📗 e-Book Deals of the Day
Peddling Paradise (Bold Women of the 19th Century Series Book 4)
By: Amanda Hughes
Set during the American Civil War, Camille Kubilay is forced to flee violence in Kansas and Missouri, eventually arriving alone and penniless in booming Denver. Using determination and entrepreneurial skill, she begins selling luxury goods and gradually builds a thriving retail business that grows into a powerful department store empire. Her ambitions are complicated when she falls for a bold writer and activist, drawing her into the dangerous conflicts surrounding railroad power and the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.
Get it now for FREE on Kindle!
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📺 Watch This Tonight: Suddenly Amish
Hand over your phone. You are moving to Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
The premise alone is irresistible: the Amish community is facing a genuine crisis. Young people are leaving the church, the population is dwindling, and Bishop Vernon has come up with a solution that has never been tried before — invite six outsiders from the modern world to leave everything behind and attempt to become Amish. No smartphones. No electricity. No modern clothing. Hard physical labor, communal meals, and a set of rules that most of us would struggle with by lunchtime on day one.
The six participants come from wildly different backgrounds and have their own deeply personal reasons for wanting a different life, and watching them navigate the culture shock — the early wake-ups, the plain dress, the horse-drawn everything, the Bishop’s patient but unwavering expectations — is genuinely compelling television. It is part social experiment, part fish-out-of-water comedy, and part surprisingly thoughtful meditation on what we actually need versus what we have convinced ourselves we cannot live without. Eight episodes, all available now.
Streaming on HBO Max and Discovery+. Also available on Hulu.
🎧 Listen In: Arlo Parks — “Beams”
A young British artist at the top of her craft, writing about things most people can barely say out loud.
Arlo Parks is twenty-five years old, British-Nigerian, and already a Mercury Prize winner and two-time Grammy nominee. Her voice is one of the quietest and most precise instruments in contemporary music — unhurried, intimate, the kind that makes you feel she is speaking directly to you and no one else. “Beams” is the emotional center of her brand new album Ambiguous Desire, released this week, and it is a song that takes some courage to write and some grace to receive.
It is about carrying an old wound — the particular fear that your pain is not just yours to bear but a burden to the people you love. Parks has described it as being about numbness, about fight or flight, and about the slow work of coming to believe that you are worthy of love as a complete person, not just the easy parts. Over shimmering piano and a descending chord progression that feels like a long exhale, she sings the line that landed most softly on many listeners: “I know it’s the right thing to do, but I don’t wanna.” It is a remarkably brave thing to admit, and she admits it beautifully. A song to sit with, especially when you need one.
🚢 River Cruises vs. Ocean Cruises — What’s Better After 60?
The short answer: both are wonderful. The longer answer is more fun.
Let’s settle this the way all great travel debates should be settled — with a little honest enthusiasm and zero pretense that there is only one correct answer.
Ocean cruises are what most of us picture first: the big beautiful ship, the midnight buffet, the shuffleboard and the steel drum band and waking up in the Bahamas. They are festive and social and packed with things to do, and if you want to do absolutely nothing for four days at sea while the horizon glitters and someone brings you a drink, there is no better vehicle for that particular happiness. The downside, particularly after sixty, is scale. These ships carry thousands of passengers. The embarkation lines can be long, the crowds can be considerable, and the experience of actually arriving somewhere — as opposed to arriving at a port where buses take you somewhere — can feel a little impersonal.
River cruises dock in the heart of things. You wake up in Budapest. You step off the gangplank and you are already there.
River cruises are a different animal entirely. The ships carry somewhere between 100 and 200 passengers. You know your fellow travelers by name within two days. The itineraries tend to be genuinely all-inclusive — excursions, wine with dinner, Wi-Fi, all of it wrapped into one upfront price with no unpleasant surprises at checkout. The pace is unhurried and cultural rather than entertainment-driven, and the ships dock right in the middle of historic city centers rather than at industrial port facilities miles away. For anyone with mobility concerns, this matters enormously. There are no tenders, no long walks to the attraction, no steep gangways. You simply step off the boat into Bruges, or Vienna, or Burgundy wine country, and start walking.
The honest verdict? Ocean cruises win on spectacle, variety, and onboard fun. River cruises win on intimacy, culture, ease of exploration, and the feeling that you actually went somewhere rather than visited it. If you have always dreamed of the Caribbean or Alaska or a Mediterranean island, book an ocean cruise. If Europe has been calling your name for years and you want to see it slowly and well, from the water, at a pace that lets you actually absorb it — a river cruise may be the most pleasurable way to travel you have ever tried.
Either way: go. You have earned every single mile of it.
Tell us your best cruise memory in the comments. We want to live vicariously.
📻 Flashback Files
Aretha Franklin — “A Natural Woman” Live at Concertgebouw, Amsterdam (1968)
Carole King and Gerry Goffin wrote it in a single evening. Aretha Franklin took it somewhere neither of them had imagined.
In 1967, Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler was riding through New York City when he spotted songwriter Carole King on the street. He rolled down the window of his limousine and shouted out to her that he needed a song called “Natural Woman” for Aretha Franklin’s next album. King went home with her husband and songwriting partner Gerry Goffin, and by the following morning they had written, composed, and demoed an entirely new song. They gave Wexler a co-writing credit in gratitude. Then they waited to hear what Aretha had done with it.
When King finally sat down to listen to the finished recording, she later wrote that she experienced “a rare speechless moment.” She tried for years to find the words for what it felt like to hear her song returned to her transformed into something far beyond what she had put into it. In the end she settled on this: “It was Aretha’s performance that sent our song not only to the top of the charts but all the way to heaven.”
What you are watching in this Amsterdam performance from 1968 is Aretha Franklin at the height of her gifts — twenty-five years old, one year into her Atlantic Records era that would produce more classics in a shorter time than almost any artist in history, performing for a European audience that had never seen anything quite like her. The connection to gospel music is immediate and unmistakable: you can hear the church in every phrase, every held note, every moment where she pulls back and then lets go completely. The song is about love. But what she brings to it is bigger than love. It is about the experience of being fully seen and fully known by another person — and what that feels like when you have spent your whole life waiting for it.
In 2015, Aretha performed this song at the Kennedy Center Honors for Carole King. She wore a full-length fur coat, sat down at the piano, and by the time she reached the chorus, there were tears running down King’s face and the President of the United States was on his feet. At the end, Aretha stood up and let the coat fall to the floor and walked off the stage. King said afterward that she heard it hit the ground from the balcony. That is the only appropriate punctuation for a performance by Aretha Franklin.
🍽 Recipe of the Day: 🥐 Croissant French Onion Soup
Savory caramelized onions in a rich broth, topped with melted cheese and buttery croissant slices.
Servings: 4
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 45 minutes
Ingredients
For the soup:
4 large yellow onions, thinly sliced
3 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp sugar
2 cloves garlic, minced
4 cups beef or vegetable broth
1/2 cup dry white wine or sherry (optional)
1 tsp fresh thyme (or 1/2 tsp dried)
Salt and pepper, to taste
For the croissant topping:
2–3 large buttery croissants, sliced in half
1 1/2 cups shredded Gruyère or Swiss cheese
Optional: a sprinkle of Parmesan
Instructions
Caramelize the onions
In a large pot, melt butter with olive oil over medium heat. Add onions and sugar, cooking slowly for 25–30 minutes until deep golden and caramelized, stirring occasionally.Add garlic & deglaze
Stir in garlic and cook 1 minute. Add wine or sherry, scraping up browned bits from the pan.Add broth & seasonings
Pour in broth, add thyme, and season with salt and pepper. Simmer gently for 15 minutes.Prepare the croissants
Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C). Arrange croissant halves on a baking sheet. Top with shredded Gruyère and a light sprinkle of Parmesan. Toast 5–7 minutes until melted and golden.Assemble & serve
Ladle soup into oven-safe bowls. Float a cheesy croissant half on top of each bowl and broil briefly if desired to get extra bubbly cheese. Serve immediately.
❤️ Why You’ll Love It: Sweet caramelized onions, rich broth, and buttery croissants with melty cheese make this a decadent, comforting soup perfect for any chilly evening.
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