the list VALLEY —

A good ruin is a grand place to imagine long-gone jobs, lives and vibes when they were vibrant. Lock Ridge Furnace is a great imaginarium, a roofless, windowless, sometimes wall-less stone center for burning coal and milling iron from 1868 to 1921, when the Valley was an industrial titan. The building’s graceful, gritty geometry has a European flair, conjuring collapsed castles in England and pancaked monasteries in Ireland. An historic place on the National Register, the Furnace contains a neat museum devoted to old iron making and a courtyard magnetic enough for weddings and other celebrations. Even better, it anchors a gracious, generous 59acre park with trails, picnic areas and a fishable creek. Better yet, this month a large patch planted by a furnace worker yields a lake of bluebells, a lovely reminder of nature overtaking human nature. (525 Franklin St., Alburtis; 610-4351074; lehighcounty.org; lehighcountyhistoricalsociety.org)

Dan Roebuck loves to christen his movies around his birthplace. Five years ago three Valley theaters premiered the Bethlehem native’s Getting Grace, a charming, shot-withheart feature pairing a rather awkward funeral director with a fiercely cheerful terminally ill teen. On April 22 the Roxy Theatre in Northampton will debut Lucky Louie, in which Roebuck plays one of four former prisoners helping a detective crack a case 50 years cold. Also made in the Valley, the film was written and directed by Roebuck with his daughter, Grace, and produced by A Channel of Peace, a spiritual nonprofit run by Roebuck and his wife, Tammy. The latest picture extends a crammed, catapult career for Roebuck, who played Andy Grif-

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Geoff Gehman is a former arts writer for The Morning Call in Allentown and the author of five books, including Planet Mom: Keeping an Aging Parent from Aging, The Kingdom of the Kid: Growing Up in the LongLost Hamptons, and Fast Women and Slow Horses: The (mis)Adventures of a Bar, Betting and Barbecue Man (with William Mayberry) He lives in Bethlehem. geoffgehman@verizon.net