Despite what some purveyors of entertainment would have you believe, a lack of funds doesn’t necessarily mean a lack of fun. At least that’s what Ellye Howell Glover claims in her 1907 book, “Dame Curtsey’s” Book of Novel Entertainments for Every Day in the Year. No need to sell the farm for an afternoon of novelty, Glover insists. Consider hosting a ludically themed gathering … say, Christmas in July!
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An inveterate traveler and watercolor painter of landscapes, architecture and street scenes, Walter Frederick Roofe Tyndale searched the world for fittingly picturesque subjects, wandering from his native Bruges to the far shores of Morocco, Egypt, Sicily, the Italian peninsula, and eventually Japan.
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While on his way to the Lonely Mountain to burgle the hoard of the great dragon Smaug, Bilbo Baggins, hero of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1937 novel The Hobbit, encounters the wild but benevolent Beorn, a “skin-changer” who divides his time between the man and bear forms he assumes at will.
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The Austerity Kitchen 