"a Luddite day today"
Since you mentioned "Luddite," I can't resist commenting again on the article (Lord of the Luddites meets Lord of the Rings) you guys had posted a couple weeks ago.
That writer called Tolkien a "tree hugger," I consider that a shot at both Tolkien and his fans, us. Because the folks that call themselves tree huggers don't really love trees, they are just out there using trees as a lever to push socialism. And they're also trying to feel important, like a few hobbits in the Scouring of the Shire.
Tolkien OTOH, (like us) really loved the trees for their own sake and their own beauty, he did not use them to further some questionable cause - big difference between him and the "tree huggers."
And I'm not really convinced that he was really a "Luddite." When he was growing up, neither washing machines nor automobiles were often seen, they were not at all a part of daily existence, as they are for us. I think, to him, their advent coincided with the loss of the pastoral beauty of the Oxfordshire countryside to industrialization and its ethics of individual freedom to socialism. All these things occurred during the course of his life, my feeling is that the writer's comparison of Tolkien to a "tree hugger" or a "Luddite" is, at best, disingenuous.
Forgive me for this exercise in pedantry, did I use disingenuous right?