I really like the scenery in UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN. Near the end of the movie there is a lovely scene where the writer hosts her adopted son's wedding reception in an Italian garden. Another great scene is when her best friend comments on the "spooky Italian trees". I also agree about the Lord of the Rings trillogy. I own the dvds and have been known to pop in the first movie just so that I can watch the Shire scenes. When I first saw the film I had fantasies of living in a house under a hill with a big round front door. Did you notice the pretty cottage garden in front of BagEnd? Now THAT is my idea of idealic. The Rivendale and Lothlorian scenes were also breathtaking. Two things that stand out in my mind is the silvery garden temple in the first Rivendale scene where Frodo is looking out from his balcony at the elven colony. Another scene is the Elven Queen's scrying well (she calls it the Mirror). I want that well! Mine of course would be surrounded by white roses. Here is a link that might be useful:

John Buchan Quotes Scottish - Politician August 26, 1875 - February 11, 1940 The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope. John Buchan Prayer opens the heart to God, and it is the means by which the soul, though empty, is filled by God. John Buchan Every man at the bottom of his heart believes that he is a born detective. John Buchan You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn. John Buchan The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there. John Buchan We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves. John Buchan Civilization is a conspiracy. Modern life is the silent compact of comfortable folk to keep up pretences. John Buchan To live for a time close to great minds is the best kind of education. John Buchan He disliked emotion, not because he felt lightly, but because he felt deeply. John Buchan The true definition of a snob is one who craves for what separates men rather than for what unites them. John Buchan There may be Peace without Joy, and Joy without Peace, but the two combined make Happiness. John Buchan Peace is that state in which fear of any kind is unknown. John Buchan Without humility there can be no humanity. John Buchan The robe of flesh wears thin, and with the years God shines through all things. John Buchan The best prayers have often more groans than words. John Buchan Guillaume Apollinaire Quotes French - Novelist August 26, 1880 - November 9, 1918 Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy. Guillaume Apollinaire It's raining my soul, it's raining, but it's raining dead eyes. Guillaume Apollinaire I love men, not for what unites them, but for what divides them, and I want to know most of all what gnaws at their hearts. Guillaume Apollinaire The plastic virtues: purity, unity, and truth, keep nature in subjection. Guillaume Apollinaire Joy always came after pain. Guillaume Apollinaire Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony. Guillaume Apollinaire A structure becomes architectural, and not sculptural, when its elements no longer have their justification in nature. Guillaume Apollinaire Artists are, above all, men who want to become inhuman. Guillaume Apollinaire I hate artists who are not of their time. Guillaume Apollinaire When man wanted to make a machine that would walk he created the wheel, which does not resemble a leg. Guillaume Apollinaire One can't carry one's father's corpse about everywhere. Guillaume Apollinaire Christopher Isherwood Quotes American - Author August 26, 1904 - January 4, 1986 Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique, and not too much imagination. Christopher Isherwood What irritates me is the bland way people go around saying, 'Oh, our attitude has changed. We don't dislike these people any more.' But by the strangest coincidence, they haven't taken away the injustice; the laws are still on the books. Christopher Isherwood I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Christopher Isherwood I'll bet Shakespeare compromised himself a lot; anybody who's in the entertainment industry does to some extent. Christopher Isherwood California is a tragic country - like Palestine, like every Promised Land. Christopher Isherwood One should never write down or up to people, but out of yourself. Christopher Isherwood Katherine Johnson Quotes American - Physicist Born: August 26, 1918 We will always have STEM with us. Some things will drop out of the public eye and will go away, but there will always be science, engineering, and technology. And there will always, always be mathematics. Katherine Johnson I like to learn. That's an art and a science. Katherine Johnson I don't have a feeling of inferiority. Never had. I'm as good as anybody, but no better. Katherine Johnson Take all the courses in your curriculum. Do the research. Ask questions. Find someone doing what you are interested in! Be curious! Katherine Johnson I'm always interested in learning something new. Katherine Johnson Girls are capable of doing everything men are capable of doing. Sometimes they have more imagination than men. Katherine Johnson In math, you're either right or you're wrong. Katherine Johnson I counted everything. I counted the steps to the road, the steps up to church, the number of dishes and silverware I washed... anything that could be counted, I did. Katherine Johnson Go see 'Hidden Figures,' and take a young person! It will give a more positive outlook on what is possible if you work hard, do your best, and are prepared. Katherine Johnson Many professors tell you that you'd be good at this or that, but they don't always help you with that career path. Katherine Johnson I see a picture right now that's not parallel, so I'm going to go straighten it. Things must be in order. Katherine Johnson Everything is physics and math. Katherine Johnson I found what I was looking for at Langley. This was what a research mathematician did. I went to work every day for 33 years happy. Never did I get up and say I don't want to go to work. Katherine Johnson Men don't pay attention to small things. Katherine Johnson John Glenn's life will long be remembered for his time in space, his courage, and his service to all Americans. Katherine Johnson I felt most proud on the success of the Apollo mission. Katherine Johnson I liked working with smart people. Katherine Johnson Barbara Ehrenreich Quotes American - Writer Born: August 26, 1941 I know that the last thing a book wants is to just sit around unread, serving as an element of interior decorating. So when I have people over, all they have to do is glance at my books, and I implore them to take a few home with them. If I am really ambitious, I pack books into boxes and donate them to prisons. Barbara Ehrenreich At best the family teaches the finest things human beings can learn from one another generosity and love. But it is also, all too often, where we learn nasty things like hate, rage and shame. Barbara Ehrenreich I haven't read enough of the Bible. You know, I'm saving the Bible for if I ever get imprisoned, and the only reading material was the Bible. Barbara Ehrenreich I would never call myself a cancer survivor because I think it devalues those who do not survive. There's this whole mythology that people bravely battle their cancer and then they become survivors. Well, the ones who don't survive may be just as brave, you know, just as courageous, wonderful people. Barbara Ehrenreich The Civil Rights Movement, it wasn't just a couple of, you know, superstars like Martin Luther King. It was thousands and thousands - millions, I should say - of people taking risks, becoming leaders in their community. Barbara Ehrenreich I'm not questioning the monotheistic god. I think there's absolutely no evidence for the existence of such a god. When I say that, I mean I'm - part of that is that the idea that God could be all-powerful and also benevolent is on its face contradictory. Barbara Ehrenreich I've spent so many years talking about poverty and economic justice, I'm strongly tempted to get biblical. Jesus' teachings are so radical; they're just insanely generous and apocalyptic. Christians become more fascinated by the dead Jesus. They don't like the living Jesus. Barbara Ehrenreich America is addicted to wars of distraction. Barbara Ehrenreich Employers have gone away from the idea that an employee is a long-term asset to the company, someone to be nurtured and developed, to a new notion that they are disposable. Barbara Ehrenreich My death is incidental, and I worry very much about my loved ones and, you know, would like to make it as easy as possible for them. Or wish I could will away whatever, you know, the sadness they will feel when I die. But for me, nothing. The world goes on. Barbara Ehrenreich A research group found that 56 percent of major companies surveyed in the late '80s agreed that 'employees who are loyal to the company and further its business goals deserve an assurance of continued employment.' A decade later, only 6 percent agreed. It was in the '90s that companies started weeding people out as a form of cost reduction. Barbara Ehrenreich If there is something I am arguing, it is a critique of science. Science has consistently denied the existence of consciousness other than human. Only in the last 20 years do we have acknowledgement of animal feeling or culture or experience. Barbara Ehrenreich Of all the nasty outcomes predicted for women's liberation... none was more alarming, from a feminist point of view, than the suggestion that women would eventually become just like men. Barbara Ehrenreich The one regret I have about my own abortions is that they cost money that might otherwise have been spent on something more pleasurable, like taking the kids to movies and theme parks. Barbara Ehrenreich Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous. Barbara Ehrenreich Exercise is the yuppie version of bulimia. Barbara Ehrenreich That's free enterprise, friends: freedom to gamble, freedom to lose. And the great thing - the truly democratic thing about it - is that you don't even have to be a player to lose. Barbara Ehrenreich No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots. Barbara Ehrenreich We who officially value freedom of speech above life itself seem to have nothing to talk about but the weather. Barbara Ehrenreich Personally, I can't see why it would be any less romantic to find a husband in a nice four-color catalogue than in the average downtown bar at happy hour. Barbara Ehrenreich There is the fear, common to all English-only speakers, that the chief purpose of foreign languages is to make fun of us. Otherwise, you know, why not just come out and say it? Barbara Ehrenreich Personally, I have nothing against work, particularly when performed, quietly and unobtrusively, by someone else. I just don't happen to think it's an appropriate subject for an 'ethic.' Barbara Ehrenreich Marriage is socialism among two people. Barbara Ehrenreich I'm not a nice person. Barbara Ehrenreich We love television because television brings us a world in which television does not exist. Barbara Ehrenreich Like many other women, I could not understand why every man who changed a diaper has felt impelled, in recent years, to write a book about it. Barbara Ehrenreich Someone has to stand up for wimps. Barbara Ehrenreich In fact, there is clear evidence of black intellectual superiority: in 1984, 92 percent of blacks voted to retire Ronald Reagan, compared to only 36 percent of whites. Barbara Ehrenreich That's the really neat thing about Dan Quayle, as you must have realized from the first moment you looked into those lovely blue eyes: impeachment insurance. Barbara Ehrenreich The secret of the truly successful, I believe, is that they learned very early in life how not to be busy. They saw through that adage, repeated to me so often in childhood, that anything worth doing is worth doing well. Barbara Ehrenreich Life, Childhood, Believe Take motherhood: nobody ever thought of putting it on a moral pedestal until some brash feminists pointed out, about a century ago, that the pay is lousy and the career ladder nonexistent. Barbara Ehrenreich Individually the poor are not too tempting to thieves, for obvious reasons. Mug a banker and you might score a wallet containing a month's rent. Mug a janitor and you will be lucky to get away with bus fare to flee the crime scene. Barbara Ehrenreich Lenders, including major credit companies as well as payday lenders, have taken over the traditional role of the street-corner loan shark, charging the poor insanely high rates of interest. Barbara Ehrenreich Poor, Credit, Loan No one should be incarcerated for debt or squeezed for money they have no chance of getting their hands on. Barbara Ehrenreich Money, Chance, Hands As anyone knows who has ever had to set up a military encampment or build a village from the ground up, occupations pose staggering logistical problems. Barbara Ehrenreich The internet was supposed to make this whole business of job searching rational and simple. You could post your resume and companies would search them and they'd find you. It doesn't seem to work that way. There aren't enough jobs for experienced, college educated managers and professionals. Barbara Ehrenreich There's more pressure on women to be chirpy and perky. Barbara Ehrenreich Well I do think there are people who are habitually negative and depressed and take the opposite approach because they imagine the worst, and their minds become dominated by that. They let their own emotions and expectations transform their perceptions of the world. Barbara Ehrenreich So even though I consider myself a fairly upbeat person, energetic and things like that, I never do very well on happiness tests. Barbara Ehrenreich If you can attribute your success entirely to your own mental effort, to your own attitude, to some spiritual essence that you have that is better than other people's, then that must feel pretty good. Barbara Ehrenreich Well, the first thing that clued me in to the fact that there was something really scary about breast cancer, way beyond the thought of dying, was coming across an ad in the newspaper for pink breast cancer teddy bears. I am not that afraid of dying, but I am terrified of dying with a pink teddy bear under my arm. Barbara Ehrenreich It was a real surprise to me to come across the evidence that Christianity might once have been a danced religion. Certainly, some of the early church leaders thought this was great and spoke of what seems to have been circle dancing, perhaps around an altar. Barbara Ehrenreich Whenever people can access deities directly without the intervention of a religious hierarchy, they don't need to have hierarchy so much. Barbara Ehrenreich Yes, I think especially the Pentecostal churches, you know, that there's been such a growth in Pentecostalism. And it's a rejection of the much more dour and barren kind of Calvinist worship and also, the very formal Catholic forms of worship. Barbara Ehrenreich I think it's tragic that we have this human capacity, which appears to be hardwired, or so the evolutionary biologists say, for collective joy. We have these techniques for generating it that go back thousands of years, and yet we tend not to use this. Barbara Ehrenreich Well, I certainly wouldn't want to live in the 18th century myself, or the 19th either, for that matter. Barbara Ehrenreich Yes. I think the anti-Wal-Mart is Costco, which pays much better and has much better health benefits and which is profitable and offers low prices. Barbara Ehrenreich Medical debts are the number-one cause of bankruptcy in America. Barbara Ehrenreich For a long time on Earth humans didn't worship good gods; that's a new idea. The ancient Greek gods, the Hindu gods, are fairly amoral, most of them. We get stuck when we insist that God be both good and all-powerful. Barbara Ehrenreich I have a Ph.D. in cell biology. And that's really manual labor. I mean, experimental science, you do it with your hands. So it's very different. You're out there in a lab, cleaning test tubes, and it just wasn't that fascinating. Barbara Ehrenreich Experimental science is fascinating, but I don't want to do it. I want other people to do it, and I'll read about it. Barbara Ehrenreich People tend to judge presidents on how the economy performs, and yet we don't expect them to have the power to do much about it. Or we don't want them to exercise that power, if they were to have it. Barbara Ehrenreich When I was born, my father was a copper miner in Butte, Montana. It was a hard-core, blue-collar situation. Barbara Ehrenreich Both chronic, long-term poverty and downward mobility from the middle class are in the same category of things that America likes not to think about. Barbara Ehrenreich I'm an obsessive. When I get a problem, a question in my mind, it can take me over. Barbara Ehrenreich I haven't seen much socially redeeming about religion. I'm an atheist. I don't here want to get into the Hitchens- or Dawkins-style attack on religion. I was raised on that. It's boring. Barbara Ehrenreich It was a very big principle in my upbringing that you should respect everybody's work. The street sweeper. Everybody. You should never look down on anybody for their work. Barbara Ehrenreich The psychological trauma of losing a job can be as great as the trauma of a divorce. Barbara Ehrenreich In 1993, 89 of the 'Fortune' top 100 companies were administering the Myers-Briggs test to their employees. The philosophy behind personality tests is that they don't want you to be in the wrong kind of job. The tests have been completely exposed as nonsense. Barbara Ehrenreich When I was 13, I had these episodes where I could just see the world without any words attached to it, without any associations. It was a little bit spooky. A lot of people might have even thought it was pathological. I thought it was interesting. Barbara Ehrenreich In 2001, I was being treated for breast cancer, and I was pretty sure I was going to recover. Barbara Ehrenreich I'm interested in what bonds people together. You know, what brings us together in good ways? And there's not a lot known about that. Barbara Ehrenreich We - we spend a lot of time, scholarly time, thinking about love and sex, but very little about the - the kind of joy that can take over a crowd of people or a group of people, in festivity, in ecstatic ritual of some kind, in celebration. Barbara Ehrenreich My parents were atheists, strong atheists. I never got the answer 'God.' Barbara Ehrenreich When I was 17, I had an experience that I later learned could be called a 'mystical experience.' It was almost violent. No faces, voices, nothing like that. It is like the world burst and flamed into life all around me. That is not a great image, but it is as good as I will ever do. Barbara Ehrenreich I became a student of the history of religion. I am fascinated by how religions often center on mystical experience, and in the Old Testament tradition you find flames, the burning bush. Barbara Ehrenreich There's a lot of cruelty going on all the time, and I'm not just talking about inter-human cruelty. I'm talking about whole species becoming extinct, asteroids hitting planets, black holes gobbling up stars. Barbara Ehrenreich Our atheism family tradition is traced to a - I don't know if it was great-great or a great-great-great grandmother who was a poor Irish-American woman in the 1880s in western Montana. Barbara Ehrenreich I first started asking big questions when I was 12, and by big questions, I mean, 'Why are we here? What is this business? We're alive for a few short decades and then poof, we're out of here.' Barbara Ehrenreich I didn't want to be an author; I wanted to be a scientist. Not that I didn't love literature, but I couldn't distinguish it from reading, and reading was already my default activity, almost like breathing. Barbara Ehrenreich I routinely oscillate between exultation and despair. Maybe at the end of the day I feel pretty good about what I've written, but the next morning I see that it's crap. Then I start again - make a new outline, do some more research, try to rethink the whole question. Barbara Ehrenreich

Well, our belated TG yesterday was....interesting! There were 9 of us plus the 14 month old twins, who kept heading for the kitchen and the dog looking for dropped food! Everyone had something to bring, but what they did was bring the ingredients! There were up to 6 people in my kitchen prepping at the same time! It's NOT a large kitchen! THIS is why I never learned how to make gravy! At that point in the prep time, I'm so stressed out and trying to keep people out of the kitchen I run away to decompress! Thankfully, the weather was beautiful and we took the twins outside to eat rocks and meet the neighbor baby, a few months younger. We had a 15 lb turkey plus a 3 lb breast, both came out perfectly cooked and juicy. I hit up the dollar store for leftover containers, but hardly anyone took any (except my weird sister who walks into anyone's house and sees what they have for leftovers!), So we have plenty to freeze for later meals! There was also a gravy-off! I mentioned my thing about not making gravy, so DIL made 10 cups (at home), there was a package that came with the breast, which we froze and I "helped my SIL with one from the drippings and broth using WW flour for my daughter with gestational diabetes. I would love to post pics, but I don't have this site on my phone or tablet. Oh yeah! Hubby made tiramisu (low sugar) that was delish! Also DD took a whole pumpkin pie home, left us each a piece, which we wanted, but took the whipped cream home with her. so I had to walk across the street to the store today in order to have my pie!

Oh man, it all looks delicious. At first I was concerned, then I saw the pink bowl for the stuffing and the pink pan holding spinach dip and all was right with the world. It's amylou, it's gotta have something pink. I think George has taken the correct measures, LOL. He looks a lot like my 25 pound cat, Spark. Orange cats gotta do orange cat things, you know. My Thanksgiving won't be until next Saturday, that's when Ashley has the girls and Makayla can come home for dinner and all other family obligations are fullfilled by all. Elery and I joined the neighbors at the B&B for dinner, the chef there did the cooking and I provided some of the "raw" ingredients. Well brined free range Amish turkey, nearly 30 pounds, some apple/cranberry stuffing, green bean casserole with no C of M soup, just some nicely seasoned white sauce and crunchy pan fried shallots, mashed potatoes from our Kennebecs in storage, gravy, fresh cranberry relish and dinner rolls, dessert was a really nicely spiced apple cake with cream cheese frosting. A couple of cups of coffee, chatting with friends and rooting for the Detroit Lions (who, true to tradition, lost), made a lovely day. Having lost my mother and my brother within the last year it was actually good to have something completely different. I'll start my cooking about Wednesday... Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. Annie