[HairOfTheDog]

I would take the English peasant farmer any day.

If I ever lost everything, I would move up into the woods... We have two types of homeless here, the survival folks, living in the state forests, and the street panhandlers, sleeping in doorways. The first almost seems romantic to me sometimes, when the wheels of industry and the iron hand of the modern world get me down!

[Sam Cree]

Yeah, I do not think that poverty (depending on how it's defined) has to equal squalor, the fact that it often does is an interesting problem, IMO.

I love the woods and nature, always have, yet I also, unlike Tolkien, adore machinery and implements (though clearly Tolkien liked implements). I can take joy in the "things" and inventions made by man that allow him to conquer adversity and to accomplish so much, really, to realize dreams.