It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
I made a comment to someone in the comment section last week that the bear I saw on our back porch, and purchased a Ring camera to keep an eye on, probably would never show again.
How wrong I was.
The other night the dog was barking crazily outside. She is hooked up on a lead and I periodically walk back to check on her. Now we have a Ring camera that I can turn on and watch from my phone, but I didn’t because, well, I really didn’t think anything would happen.
The only thing that might happen is she might take off after a skunk like she did last weekend, yanking the stake to her lead out of the ground and disappearing behind our shed where she, and our son, was sprayed by a skunk.
That’s what I thought would happen anyhow but as I headed toward the back door I turned on the Ring camera from my phone and before I even looked down at it, I was at the back door looking out at Zooma face to face with a black bear, ten or twelve feet from our back door.
Zooma was barking bouncing back and forth in front of the bear, who looked quite confused honestly. I called Zooma back with a tremble in my voice, worried the bear might reach out and take out a swipe at her.
Luckily, Zooma barked a few more times but then came to me and I quickly opened the door and let her in while the bear continued to look confused.
This video does not do justice to how close the bear was to the house because of the angle of the camera. I left the audio in even though I sound like I’m crying, which I really wasn’t, but I was nervous and recovering from the virus we had so my voice sounded pretty shaky. I was just worried Zooma was going to get smacked around.
As the bear turned to leave, The Husband and I noticed he or she was limping, which was so sad to me.
I couldn’t film any longer because the bear was headed toward my neighbor’s backyard and sometimes they are out watering their garden late at night, so I wanted to warn her.
We did contact the game warden and they said they’d send someone out, but we never heard anything back. Hopefully, next week someone will update us on the condition or location of the bear.
Seeing the bear has made me very nervous but really it is a little silly to be afraid of the bear. They are black bears and aren’t really huge fans of people. They also aren’t known to attack people or, usually, pets. They simply come down looking mainly for food and our one neighbor has food out for the animals (yes, I’m pretty sure this is illegal and if not it is at least dangerous!). If you make loud noises or have a barking dog they tend to leave.
Still, I don’t relish the idea of stepping outside of my house and finding myself face to face with one.
That was the exciting part of our week. The rest of the week was spent being up weird times of the night while Little Miss coughed a lot from sinus drainage left over from the virus we had earlier in the week. We spend our days napping and trying to catch up from the weird sleep the night before.
We are still trying to recover from all of that and from the lack of sleep.
This next week I am actually going to start school for Little Miss. I wanted to do it the last couple of weeks but with being sick and recovering, that went out the window.
I have all of Little Miss’s curriculum so there is no excuse to not just get started. I’m looking forward to the upcoming year, especially art and literature, which are her and my favorite subjects.
I am still reading the same books, for the most part, but I am making progress. I finished The Scarlet Pimpernel last night. I enjoyed the book, even more so than the 1970s movie with Jane Seymour, but the ending did seem quite sudden to me. I would have liked a little more of a wrap up.
I am still reading Dave Berry Isn’t Taking This Sitting Down by Dave Barry. It is a collection of his columns for the Miami Herald and they are so funny.
I did not read any from Carry On, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse last week but I will be back into that this week. The Jeeves books are so funny.
I was very excited to receive a delivery this week from Thriftbooks that included two P.G. Wodehouse books, one of them a Jeeves book.
The books are Very Good, Jeeves and A Damsel in Distress. I am gathering that A Damsel in Distress is not a Jeeves book, based on the title and the description on the back, which is fine with me. I am interested in trying Wodehouse’s other books.
The order also included Nancy Drew books Nancy’s Mysterious Letter, The Whispering Statue, and The Triple Hoax, Remains to be Seen by Elizabeth Caldell, An Enola Holmes Mystery: The Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer, and Come, Tell Me How You Live by Agatha Christie Mallowan.
I am looking forward to reading Nancy Drew: The Triple Hoax soon but first I am going to read the Nancy Drew Mystery Password to Larkspur Lane.
Little Miss is reading The Clue of the Missing Diary by Carolyn Keene (Nancy Drew).
The Boy is reading/listening to Red Tithe by Robbie MacNiven.
The Husband is reading. That’s all I know right now because I forgot to ask which book he is reading. I know he finished Targeted: Beirut by Jack Carr about a week ago.
This week I watched Murder She Wrote, The Picture of Dorian Gray, episodes of Canal Boat Diaries, and a movie called Raffles, which ended terribly.
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
This summer I am watching Angela Lansbury movies for the Summer of Angela.
This week I watched The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), which I had never seen before. I’ve also never read the book that it is based on.
I had to sit and process this one for a bit and also watch a comedy or two afterward.
Wow, what a creepy, dark, and unsettling film.
Yes, unsettling is the perfect word for this movie and while I am glad to see the second film that Angela received an Oscar nomination for, I don’t plan to watch it again.
I shuddered too many times while watching it.
First, a quick description of the movie for those who are not familiar with it.
From TCM.com, this one-sentence description tells us what we need to know about the movie:
“A man remains young and handsome while his portrait shows the ravages of age and sin.”
The movie is based on the book of the same name by Oscar Wilde, written in 1898. There is even a moment where the main character quotes Wilde.
The movie stars Angela, Hurd Hatfield, George Sanders, Donna Reed, and Peter Lawford.
Dorian Gray is a young man without any family who gets mixed up with a man who is a bit of a chauvinist, cynical jerk. This man, Lord Henry Wotton (George Sanders, who plays villains absolutely perfectly), comments on how awful it is to age when he is looking at a painting of Dorian being made by artist Basil Hallward.
Lord Henry, a man who enjoys manipulating the lives of others and talking down to women and everyone around him, says that youth is fleeting and that the pursuit of desire should be the only real goal in life. Dorian, who seems super impressionable to me, thinks about what Lord Henry has said and says that he would give his soul if the painting would grow old while he remained forever young.
Lord Henry tells him to be careful about making such a wish in front of his Egyptian statue of a cat.
Dorian decides to explore new places, experience new things, and later he visits a bar where he watches a beautiful young woman names Sibyl Vane (Angela) performing a song called Little Yellow Bird. He is enamored with her and her with him.
Consider yourself warned that the song she sings, Goodbye, Little Yellow Bird, is an earworm. I’ve been humming the thing all week!
He’s in love, but Lord Henry is cynical and mean and tells Dorian to give Sibyl a challenge. Invite her to stay overnight, and depending on what she decides, Dorian will know if she is virtuous or not.
Things will go downhill for Dorian after the outcome of the challenge. Tragedy strikes, causing him to become hardened to the world. He decides that living only for his own pleasure, no matter who it hurts, is the way to go in life.
I won’t spoil the whole movie in case you haven’t watched the movie or read the book, but want to. I will say: be prepared to be fairly depressed by the end.
I will say that two additional characters were added to this movie that were not in the book — a woman named Gladys (Donna Reed) who has loved Dorian since she was a child, and her boyfriend David Stone (Peter Lawford). Gladys was terribly annoying and stupid to me. They should have left her and David out, quite frankly.
The part of Dorian Gray is played by Hurd Hatfield.
His absolutely creepy and dead-behind-the-eyes expression is the central reason I felt unsettled by the movie.
I saw his demeanor as perfect for this part but one critic I read said it resulted in his character feeling too one-dimensional and detached.
“On all accounts, (director Alfred) Lewin micromanaged Hatfield’s every gesture (to the point of not letting the actor perform after four o’clock in the afternoon, for fear fatigue would show), resulting in a central performance that is appropriately strange, but which never engages,” wrote Richard Harlin Smith on TCM.com. “One doesn’t see what others see in this Dorian Gray, who seems as inflexible as a mortician’s wax even in his mysteriously protracted youth.”
I thought not emotionally engaging with anyone is the point of a character who essentially gives up his soul, feelings, and love for anything, to be as nasty as he wants to be (yes, a bit of a spoiler there).
The movie was only Hatfield’s second film (his first being Dragonseed from 1944).
Smith wrote in his review of the film on TCM that, “Hurd Hatfield, in his second screen appearance, was so effectively evil in the title role that it actually handicapped his career with casting directors.”
According to Hurd Hatfield Luv on Tumbler, Angela once said that Lewin would stop rolling the cameras once Hatfield made an obvious expression on his face. This was frustrating to Hurd because his usual acting style was animated and he wanted to perform the character like he was written in the novel.
Lewin’s wishes always overrode the wishes of the actors, though.
“Also to point out, halfway through the film Dorian said he wanted to be in control of his emotions and refrain from yielding to them,” the author of the Tumbler site wrote. They continued: “Here’s another possible reason on why Lewin wanted Hatfield to act with little feeling in this film. Now this is actually my conjecture, but it makes sense with my research. As many would understand, making strong facial expressions would wrinkle the face. Smile lines and crows’ feet form when happy. Forehead creases when worrying. Eyebrows close in and skin folds in between when angry. Bursting up in tears crying gives out the most unflattering face of all. To put it short, it’s impossible to look extraordinarily “beautiful” without scrunching the face.”
Ronald Bergen wrote in The Guardian that he interviewed Hatfield on time about his role in the film The Diary of a Chambermaid and the actor said he was glad to speak about something other than Dorian Gray.
Hatfield called the role both a blessing and a curse.
“A blessing in that it gave him a reputation; a curse in that he found it difficult to escape,” Bergen wrote.
After the movie, he was cast mainly as handsome, narcissistic young men.
Hatfield was ambivalent about having played Dorian Gray, according to the magazine Films in Review, feeling that it had typecast him. “You know, I was never a great beauty in Gray…and I never understood why I got the part and have spent my career regretting it.”
The casting director for The Picture of Dorian Gray, Robert Alton, referred Angela to the casting director for Gaslight. He saw her in the role of Sibyl, but also felt she might work for the maid in Gaslight. That role as the maid led to her first Oscar nomination.
Angela’s role as Sibyl was her second Oscar nomination and came only a year after the first.
“Great send off,” she joked in an interview with the Screen Actors Guild Foundation. “Everything went down hill from there.”
By the time Angela worked on The Picture of Dorian Gray she had filmed Gaslight and National Velvet and had started to become used to working on a set. And she meant “working.” She said in the SAG Foundation interview that she was very conscientious as a young person. She was conscientious of how she needed to be professional for the sake of the other actors and the film overall.
This was both a good and a bad thing.
“I never had any fun. I never goofed off,” she said. “I missed a lot of fun along the way but perhaps in the end it contributed to me to being able to build such a very strong base for what would was to later become an enormously successful career.”
Facts and Triva about the movie:
Lansbury’s mother appears in the movie as “The Duchess” in the dinner scene at “Lady Agatha’s”. (source Jay’s Classic Movie Blog)
The hideous portrait of Dorian shown later in the movie was painted by Ivan Le Lorraine Albright. According to TCM.com, he was hired after director Lewin saw a painting of his at the Art Institute of Chicago entitled That Which I Should Have Done I Did Not Do. It is not owned by the Art Institute of Chicago.
A scene in the movie staged beneath a wildly swinging chain lamp was an effect that would be duplicated by Alfred Hitchcock in Psycho some fifteen years later.
Several years after this movie premiered, a friend of Hurd Hatfield’s bought the Henrique Medina painting of young Dorian Gray that was used in this movie at an MGM auction, and gave it to Hatfield. On March 21, 2015, the portrait was put up for auction at Christie’s in New York City (from the Collection of Robert Hatfield Ellsworth) with a pre-auction estimate of between five thousand and eight thousand dollars. It sold for one hundred forty-nine thousand dollars. (source IMdB)
Oscar Wilde’s Dorian was blond-haired, blue-eyed, and highly emotional, but Writer and Director Albert Lewin’s conception of Dorian was of an icy, distant character.
The dark musical piece that is heard repeatedly is Frédéric Chopin’s “Prelude in D Minor”, the last of the twenty-four pieces of “Opus 28”. (Source IMdB)
Writer and Director Albert Lewin was obsessed with retakes. In this movie, he asked for one hundred and ten retakes and ended up using only one. (Source IMdB)
Basil Rathbone campaigned in vain for the part of Lord Henry Wotton and believed that his typecasting as Sherlock Holmes was the reason he failed to get it. MGM’s loaning of Rathbone to Universal Pictures to play Holmes was very profitable for the studio, another reason for not casting him. (Source IMdB)
According to Angela, a friend of hers, Michael Dyne, was considered for the role of Dorian Gray. Dyne suggested Lansbury for the role of Sibyl Vane. The casting director liked her for the part and suggested her to George Cukor for Gaslight (1944). She saw Cukor and Writer and Director Albert Lewin the same day and was cast for her first two movies. (source IMdb)
My overall view of the movie:
This movie creeped me out immensely and made me very sad. It was extremely thought-provoking. As I mentioned above, the movie left me with a very unsettled feeling. I didn’t really want to keep going at points but knew I had to find out how it ended.
The cinematography and the use of light and shadows was amazing. The best example of this is during a climatic turning point in the movie that involves a very dark action by Dorian. As the act is completed he stands with a light swinging back and forth above him and it’s casting light on his face, then it swings back and he’s in darkness. The shadows around and behind him move in the pattern of a monster’s mouth, as if signaling he’s been officially swallowed by and turned into a monster.
Another shocking part of this movie is the use of color. Yes, the movie was filmed and presented in black and white, but there are three scenes that are shown in brilliant, and later terrifying, technicolor. You have been warned because a couple of the images truly are terrifying.
I probably wouldn’t watch this movie again, but only because it disturbed me, not because it is a good movie. It is a good movie, and it is too good in presenting that icky, dark, and demoralizing feeling it’s meant to present.
Have you seen this movie? What did you think of it?
Cat from Cat’s Wire wrote about her views of it here and she does have spoilers, but it is such a good, interesting post. I loved it. If you’ve already seen the movie or read the book, definitely hop over to her blog.
Left on my Summer of Angela list for August are:
August 15 – A Life At Stake
August 22 – All Fall Down (keep an eye out. I might switch this one up.)
August 29 – Something for Everyone
If you want to read about some of the other movies I watched, you can find them here:
Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, where we offer a place for bloggers to link up and get a fresh set of eyes on their posts. We also feature one blog a week, letting our readers know about the blog and providing a link so readers can learn more about it.Please feel free to post new blog posts or old ones you want to bring attention to again.
Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.
Our family is still recovering from the effects of a virus that hit us out of nowhere.
Our daughter has been dealing with horrible sinus drainage that has kept her and us awake. We are truly hoping to turn a corner next week. I can’t believe how long the effects lasted for a virus that didn’t even last a week. I think it would all have gone away faster if it hadn’t been for all the sleepless nights that followed it.
The weather has been sort of nice, though, despite the haze from the wildfires in Canada making everything look very dystopian.
Now, let’s introduce our hosts for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot:
Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!
Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household – The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!
Lisa from Boondock Ramblingsshares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.
Sue from Women Living Well After 50 started blogging in 2015 and writes about living an active and healthy lifestyle, fashion, book reviews and her podcast and enjoying life as a woman over 50. She invites you to join her living life in full bloom.
We would love to have additional Co-Hosts to share in the creativity and fun! If you think this would be a good fit for you and you like having fun (come on, who doesn’t!) while still being creative, drop one of us an email and someone will get back with you!
WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!
A little about Judee: I am a retired high school teacher, author of the popular cookbook, Easy Plant-Based Soups From Farm To Ladle (which you can purchase below), wife, mother of two and grandma Judee to four adorable grandkids.
I have always loved to cook and entertain. I post heath conscious plant-based recipes that are also naturally gluten free.
I live a vegan lifestyle with a focus on nutrition, wellness, and personal development. My blog has given me a platform to share and connect with the blogging community. I’m grateful to all of my dedicated readers.
Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up!
And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:
Today’s prompt was: Genre freebie (Pick any genre you’d like and build a list around it. You can even narrow the topic if you’d like, such as: thrillers with unreliable narrators, fantasy romance with fae characters, or historical romance with suspense elements.)
My choice was 10 mystery/cozy mystery book series with men as the protagonist (as shown by this post title *wink*)
Because it is such an obvious choice, I am not going to include Sherlock Holmes in this list, even though it would have taken up a spot that I didn’t have to fill with another series. There are a lot of series which could be added to this list, but I added ones I’m either familiar with because I or my husband read them, or ones that I have read and enjoyed.
The Cat Who Mysteries by Lilian Jackson Braun (29 books)
This is one of my favorite cozy mystery series, if not my favorite. James Macintosh Qwilleran, or simply Qwill, is the protagonist. He is a newspaper reporter in the big city in the first two or three books and later he is a newspaper columnist who has inherited a large sum of money from a woman he barely knows and is living in the small town of Pickax, which is “north of everywhere.”
He is helped in his mysteries by his two Siamese cats — Koko and YumYum.
I’ve read almost all of these books and, yes, there are a couple duds, but the series is a comfort read to me.
2. The Walt Longmire series by Craig Johnson (21 primary books and several novellas)
This series is about the sheriff of Wyoming’s Absaroka County and the various cases he has to solve. Yes, the show Longmire is based on the series. Walt’s sidekick is Henry Standing Bear, and his deputies are Victoria “Vic” Moretti and Santiago Saizarbitoria.
I’ve read five or six in this series and have enjoyed them, but they do get a bit repetitive after a bit. Book series are supposed to be a bit predictable, though. It is what makes us feel familiar with them and makes the books become “comfort reads” even if the topic is heavy.
One thing you come to expect from a Walt Longmire Mystery is that there is going to be a fairly gruesome murder, Walt is going to have to go on a long journey (often in the snow) where he will probably see his Native American spirit guides, Henry is going to be both a support and a smart mouth that provides the comic relief, and Vic is going to figure out how to make complete sentences using only the words “the” and the f-word. So, no, these are not “clean” books. But the writing is really great.
3. Detective Daniel Hawthorne series by Anthony Horowitz (5 books)
In this series, screenwriter and author Anthony Horowitz has inserted himself in the mystery. He solves crimes with a complex and unlikable retired police detective turned private investigator named Daniel Hawthorne. Mixed up in the mysteries of each book is the mystery of who Hawthorne is and why he left the police force.
I’ve read two of the books in this series and plan to read the rest.
4. The Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries by Dorothy Sayers (15 books)
This series is about an aristocrat from England who seems to have nothing better to do with his time than solve mysteries. Lots of tongue in cheek humor mixed in with a ton of satire.
(Have read one and enjoyed it and plan to read more)
5. The Hercule Poirot Mysteries by Agatha Christie (34 books)
One of the most famous mystery series with a male protagonist. Hercule Poirot is a private detective from Belgium living in England. His trusty sidekick is Arthur Hastings.
I have read four or five and enjoyed them. Will read more.
6. The Hamish MacBeth series by M.C. Beaton (36 books)
This is a series about a police investigator in the fictional Scottish Highland village of Lochdubh. There was a show based on the series but it is much, much different. For one, Hamish is a ginger in the books and has dark brown hair in the show, but a lot of the characters are different in general.
I do think Hamish sleeps around a bit in both, though.
I have read one and it wasn’t amazing writing (I’ve never thought Beaton’s writing that good but it gets the job done to deliver the story) but for some reason I still fell for Hamish and will be reading more. I have one on my physical bookshelf right now.)
7. The Albert Campion Mysteries by Margery Allingham (21 books)
According to the site, booksinorder.com, “Author Allingham has introduced the central character in this series in the form of a suave sleuth named Albert Campion. Along with the novels of this crime fiction series, the character is also seen in a few short stories, which are also written by author Allingham. It is believed that author Allingham has created the Albert Campion’s character as a parody to the character of Lord Peter Wimsey created by author Dorothy L. Sayers. But, she eventually went on to develop a unique personality of Albert Campion.”
I haven’t read any yet but have one in my Kindle and can’t wait to try it.
8. The Perry Mason Mysteries by Erle Stanley Gardner (82 books!! In this series)
This series follows the investigations of attorney Perry Mason. Yes, they are the basis for the TV show from the 60s and 90s and yes, they are a lot different than the show.
I have read two Perry Mason Mysteries and enjoyed them both. I plan to read more and looks like I have a lot to choose from.
9. The Father Brown Mysteries by G.K. Chesterton (52 short stories compiled into 5 books)
I read one of the short stories and listened to another and enjoyed them both and hope to read more. This series of short stories is about a Catholic priest who is also an amateur sleuth. Yes, the shows are based on the short stories.
10. The Nero Wolfe Mysteries by Rex Stout (48 books)
I have not read any of the books in this series so I don’t know as much about it, but my husband has and enjoys them. They are about a detective named Nero Wolfe and are narrated Wolfe’s confidential assistant Archie Goodwin.
Here I am with another recap of an episode from The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries show from 1977.
As I’ve mentioned before, in the first season of this series, the episodes switched back and forth from Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew episodes and in the next season, they started to join together. Eventually, they began to phase out the Nancy episodes and focus more on The Hardy Boys. A new actress also started as Nancy when Pamela Sue Martin became disenchanted with the parts that were being written for her character.
*Disclaimer: These posts do spoil the entire episode. Also, I do joke around a lot about the cheesiness or plot holes or the “weird” 70s hairstyles, clothes or music, but please know it is all in good fun. I have fun watching these and the mysteries are often very interesting. Please don’t leave me comments enraged that I am making fun of your favorite show. *wink* I make fun of my favorite shows too!
In this episode, focused on Nancy Drew and titled, The Mystery of the Ghostwriter’s Cruise, we start out with people loading on to a cruise ship.
First, we see the ship with people waving from the decks and then we see a scrapbook with photos featuring an elderly man and the headline under the one photo reads: “Famous Mystery Writer John Addam to Set Sail.”
Underneath the photo there is a handwritten note which reads: “Castling to protect king — two moves to checkmate — this will be your last cruise, Mr. Addams. Your going to . . .” A hand begins writing and finishes the sentence by adding the word “die.”
I should note here that I copied that sentence verbatim from the threatening note in the journal (as you can see by the photo) and really wanted to go back and change “your” to “you’re.”
Imagine the editors not noticing that error before this episode aired. Or maybe they never noticed. Ha!
Immediately after this scene we see an elderly man and a young woman standing next to him and they are being interviewed by a TV reporter. The reporter asks the man, who we can see is Mr. Addams, the mystery writer we saw in the photos in the first scene, what made him decide to retire.
What she actually says is, “What finally decided you to do it?”
Um…huh? I don’t know about the writers of this show sometimes, but anyhow….
Mr. Addams answers that writing is getting boring now. “There isn’t a new twist anywhere.”
She asks him if this means there will never be another book featuring the main characters from his mystery books and he tells her she clearly hasn’t read his books because he killed off one character, retired the other one, and the third has simply gotten too old to do anything.
The camera pans to Nancy and her father, Carson, and friends George Fayne and Ned Nickerson. Ned is carrying all the luggage asking why the girls have so much if they are only going on the cruise for a week.
We switch quickly back to the interview and the author is mellowing a bit as he answers questions. He also refers to his niece Cathy as being his main helper with his books these days.
Nancy and the crew are now listening in the background and soon Mr. Addams ends the interview so he can meet up with them.
It isn’t clear why, but Nancy and George seem to be going on this cruise with Mr. Addams. At first, I thought maybe he is an uncle to one of them but that’s never really made clear, so I believe he is simply a friend of Carson’s.
This is one of the first times I’ve seen Nancy act like she and Ned might be more than friends. As they are saying goodbye Ned expresses concern that she will get herself in trouble and she says she doesn’t plan to and then assures him she will be safe on the cruise, leans up, and gives him a quick peck on the mouth.
Oh. Um. Well then.
Carson tells Mr. Addams to take care of the girls and Mr. Addams answers, “I’ll certainly do that.”
This whole time there is a man with either an amused or creepy smile on his face, we aren’t sure which, watching both the interview and the gathering of Mr. Addams and Nancy and her friends and Dad.
This will start an interesting episode-long tactic of making the viewers question who is suspicious and who isn’t, by the camera focusing on a person frowning, smiling, glaring, or simply looking, well, suspicious while watching Mr. Addams and the girls. This is done a number of times making us guess who was behind the eventual threats against Mr. Addams.
Let’s get back to the story, though.
On their way to find their rooms, the party is stopped by the captain. He tells Mr. Addams what a pleasure it is to have him on board and invites them all to dine with him at his table that night.
After that praise fest it’s on to their rooms but not before we have the suspenseful music and a pause by the captain with him watching the group walk away. Huh…is he also suspicious? And then there is a young woman watching them too. Is she suspicious or just a fan?
They were really dropping the red herrings left and right from the start in this one.
After the captain, the group run into George the activities director. He’s excited to meet George since his name is also George. George and George. Ha. Ha. He clearly thinks George is cute and lets her know he can’t wait to see her later during the cruise. He creepily touches her face, trailing his finger down her cheek, and says “There’s a hidden depth to you….”
Her expression cracks me up. It is a mix of flattered and horrified — pretty much how most viewers probably feel watching that moment. *snort laugh*
Once they finally get to the room there is a man waiting for them and he is not welcoming. He is the man who we saw at the beginning of the episode watching the interview and he says his name is Peter Howard. He has a tape recorder and starts smooth talking Mr. Addams, telling him he wants an interview with him about the memoir he’s planning to write. Mr. Addams says he isn’t going to be writing a memoir and tells the man to get out.
George and Cathy go to explore the ship, leaving Nancy and Mr. Addams in his cabin. Mr. Addams says he’s going to take a nap and settles back in a chair. Before he can fall asleep, though, Nancy finds the scrapbook with the threat written in it. She reads it to him and he sort of shrugs and says, “You don’t go through life like a battering ram without making some enemies.” He doesn’t like the idea someone may be after him but he also thinks it might be a prank so he decides to nap and Nancy decides to go meet up with George and Cathy.
Mr. Addams asks her to leave one light on in the cabin because he doesn’t like to wake up in pure darkness and when she goes to turn a lamp on, a huge spark flies out, knocking her down.
There is a fade out as the show goes to commercial break and when we “return” (there are no commercials where I watched this on a YouTube channel where someone uploaded all the episodes), George and Cathy are back and Nancy is sitting on the couch with a glass of water.
Everyone is concerned about Nancy and the captain steps in because he’s probably concerned about his ship’s reputation with the light in a celebrity’s cabin almost zapping the life out of someone. A ship electrician has arrived and says the lamp was definitely rewired to it would zap someone on purpose.
Mr. Addams points out how bad the situation is but how it could have been even worse if he had touched the lamp since he is an old man with a heart condition.
The electrician is a fan of Mr. Addam’s and lets him know how the fact someone targeted him is like a scene from one of his books. Wow. I bet Mr. Addams had no idea the attack was similar to one of his books. Good thing that electrician was there to tell him.
Viewers are left feeling that there is something not quite right about this electrician but can’t put their finger on it. He goes on the list of suspects too at this point.
As if we don’t have enough suspense, we will soon find out that the captain is worried about what could be deadly fog settling around the ship. He tells the crew to keep him abreast of the situation and then heads to dinner.
Throughout the episode we keep being shown a person in a long trench coat moving around the ship. We see them again as Nancy is on her way to dinner. They are cutting some wires and putting what looks like a bomb somewhere in the bottom of the ship. Eek. This episode is intense and I’m not kidding.
As in any Nancy Drew episode of the series, we have another moment where an older man seems to be flirting with her. This time she’s dancing with Mr. Howard who wants to know how well she knows Mr. Addams. What’s a little icky about this scene is that it’s like Nancy is flirting back with the man. He’s old enough to be her father! *gag sound*
“I’m not a stepping stone to him, you know, Mr. Howard,” she says coyly.
I’m sure that’s not how the writers meant it, though, really, so I’m just teasing.
Anyhow, they chat a bit about how she knows him and she says she knows his niece Cathy more, which is something I’m just learning about because for this whole episode I’m assuming Mr. Addams is friends with Carson.
Anyhow, Mr. Howard says he’ll get what he wants from Mr. Addams, mainly by intimidation. He’s smiling but…hmmm….is he the mystery note writer?
Nancy escapes Mr. Howard by bumping into the electrician or crew member, whose name is Tony by the way, and asking him for a dance before questioning him if there could be a stowaway on the ship. The man says there couldn’t be and the two continue to dance while Cathy looks on sadly. Her uncle encourages her to go out and dance but she simply looks sad and declines.
A girl named Adrienne approaches Cathy and Mr. Addams at their table and tells Cathy she went to school with her brother.
Cathy invites Adrienne to sit with them, and a chat ensues.
On the dance floor, the Georges are dancing together and the male George says the female George (yes, this does sound like the start of a joke…), “You know George, you’re very attractive.” And the female George responds, “You are too, George. In your own way.”
Ouch.
We flip to a scene with Mr. Addams out on the deck of the ship for a smoke. Suddenly a voice starts speaking over the loudspeaker, telling him that this is his last cruise, etc. The voice is echoing and s female voice. The voice taunts him in reminding him of what happened to his victims in his books. He is looking freaked out as the voice tells him he is going to die.
He runs into Nancy and asks her if she can hear the voice. She can and they start to look for the source of it and find a cassette recorder broadcasting through the loudspeaker.
Nancy points out that the recorder looks like the one Peter Howard had and suggests that he was hoping to sneak up behind Mr. Addams when Mr. Addams was looking for the source of the voice.
Cathy is out on deck next and says she heard the voice too.
“Whoever did it made a very big mistake,” Nancy says and stares at Cathy pointedly. Cathy stares back. Also pointedly. Dun-dun-duuuuuuuun.
Nancy and Mr. Addams rush to the captain’s office to play him the tape but when they hit play, the recording is gone.
Now they both feel stupid and leave with their heads hanging down. The captain watches them leave with a little smirk.
There are a lot of smirking people in this episode.
To speed this recap up a bit I’ll skip ahead a bit. After discussing that this all sounds a lot like a book Mr. Addams wrote called The Mystery of the Ghostwriter’s Cruise (gasp! The episode title!), Nancy goes to look for the book in the ship library because, yeah, sure, a ship is going to have an extensive library with just the book she needs. She can’t find it and we see the person with the gloves and the trench coat throw the book overboard.
Moving ahead again, Nancy bumps into Tony, literally, and he looks at her with “come hither eyes” and says, “I heard the captain say you think someone wired that lamp on purpose.” She says she does and he … yes, you guessed it…smirks.
“Who would do a thing like that?” he asks, suggesting she’s just some silly girl.
He tells her he will help all he can but to please be careful “in case there is some nut running around the ship.”
Are you the nut, Tony? Be honest now…you did think it was important to tell Mr. Addams you read all his books
Adrienne has somehow wiggled her way into the show and is now playing chess with Mr. Addams. She seems a bit miffed when the old man wins.
Nancy looks at the scrapbook with the threat in it again to see if she can figure out who might be making the threats and finds an article about a Martin Carroll who sued Mr. Addams for stealing his idea for a book.
When Nancy asks, Mr. Addams says Martin Carroll would be about 50 now. He also says he didn’t steal the man’s idea. They were working on the book together and Martin Carroll simply flaked out and walked away. There was also never enough evidence for the lawsuit to go forward.
Nancy begins to suspect that Martin Carroll is actually Peter Howard.
She somehow uses a CB radio to contact her dad and ask for more information about Martin Carroll. The captain is listening in and looks very concerned about her conversation.
Nancy soon gets a telegram for her dad telling her that Martin Carroll died six months earlier. He also tells her he will be meeting her on the first island the cruise ship is stopping at.
Nancy then finds someone leaving Mr. Addams room. She chases the person into the belly of the ship and is knocked off a metal ladder and is about to fall to her death when Tony shows up to rescue her.
Tony tells her she needs to be careful (he’s the new Ned, I guess) and then we are in the bridge and the captain sees on the monitors that they are about to hit a tidal wave. He wants the crew to tell the passengers what is going on without alarming them.
In between all this, George (the female one) is asked to sing by George (the male one). We listen to a subdued 70’s style song but they are interrupted by crew members telling everyone to get their lifejackets on.
Nancy smells a hoax though. She runs to tell the captain that she thinks the tidal wave is a hoax and that it isn’t going to hit. While she tries to convince him, we get cut away shots of Mr. Howard smirking while he drinks some kind of alcohol and Cathy looking creepy.
Turns out Nancy is right and someone has hacked the radar. But why?
Nancy has to find out.
She asks Tony if he knows anything about the Carroll case since he was such a huge fan of Mr. Addams. He says yes and that Martin Carroll did write one book and it was called The Mystery of the Haunted Cruise.
Nancy rushes to the ship library again and — it’s a miracle — the book is there! She reads the ending of the book and finds out that the character in the book is backed against a railing before being killed. She flips to the front of the book and sees a dedication that reads, “To my wife Celeste and my daughter …. ADRIENNE??!!!”
Nancy rushes out of the library and then we are sent to the deck where George and George are talking but that isn’t important — what is important is that Nancy runs out looking for Mr. Addams.
George tells her that he’s walking on deck with Adrienne.
“She’s the one who has been doing all this!” Nancy cries. “Get the captain right away.”
Suddenly we are on the deck where Adrienne shoves Mr. Addams toward the ship railing and declares he killed her father.
“He was a broken man, Mr. Addams in health and spirit,” Adrienne tells him. “I’ve lived under your shadow for years. Your name was all I ever heard in our house. My father was obsessed with you. You ruined his life. You robbed him of the success that might have changed his life.”
“And you wanted me to relive the events of that book?” Mr. Addams asks.
Adrienne says, “That’s right. Everything the way it was.”
Mr. Addams suggests that she couldn’t kill him, though, not really. Adrienne disagrees and is about to shove him over the railing when Nancy stops her at the same time the captain and his first mate are walking up to the scene.
“I don’t think she would have gone through with it,” Mr. Addams says, an optimist, despite being a grump through much of the episode.
All is well now, but Nancy and George decide they’re going to get off the ship on the island where Ned and Mr. Drew are meeting them.
Mr. Addams is going to finish his cruise, and he decides not to press charges against Adrienne, instead asking that she get mental help.
He even grants an interview with Mr. Howard.
And with that the episode is over.
As I said, this was one of the more intense and exciting ones.
Up next for a recap is Episode 13 of the series with The Hardy Boys and entitled The Secret of the Jade Kwan Yin.
If you want to read some of my recaps of other episodes of this show, you can find them by doing a search for Hardy Boys Nancy Drew in the search bar on the right sidebar.
Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.
You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
Today is my mom’s 81st birthday. Sadly, we are probably not going there for dinner because my family is recovering from a summer virus/cold. We are almost all the way over it but we’re making sure we are still not contagious before we go. So, we will celebrate her birthday later this week.
The biggest issue with our illness this week was Little Miss’s cough at night and our being unable to stop it so she, and we, could sleep. We were happy to have some beautiful weather the second half of the week that allowed us to go outside and get some fresh air. During the first part of the week, it was simply too hot to enjoy anything outside.
Fans of Summer have been disappointed this week since we had fall-like temperatures for the last few days but I have been loving it. I would love it even more if Little Miss could kick her cough all the way. I have a feeling that will happen by tomorrow or Tuesday, however.
A couple of quick reminders:
I have a monthly book-related link party if you are interested. You can find the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea link party at the top of my page or here (https://lisahoweler.com/2025/08/02/a-good-book-a-cup-of-tea-monthly-link-party-for-august/) . It is for posts about books that you are reading, have read, book reviews — just anything book-related really. So even posts about book collections, authors etc. etc.
We will be holding another one in August, but I am not sure when yet.
The Crafternoons are events where we gather on Zoom and craft at our respective homes and chat while we work on various projects. We are calling them drop-in crafternoons because you can drop in and out during the time we are on (usually from about 1 to 3 p.m. EST US time). No need to stay the whole time if you can’t. Come late if you want or leave early.
If you want to join in, email Erin at crackcrumblife@gmail.com and she will add you to the mailing list.
This wasn’t the worst cold/virus/whatever I’ve ever had so I was able to get some reading in, mainly from Dave Barry Isn’t Taking This Sitting Down while I sat up keeping an eye on Little Miss in the middle of the night. I also read quite a bit of The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy.
I didn’t read any of the 100-Year-Old-Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson this week but I do plan to continue it and finish it. I did read some from Carry On, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse and I love it.
Soon I hope to read The Clue of the Broken Blade, a Hardy Boys Mystery, and Password to Larkspur Lane, a Nancy Drew Mystery.
The Boy is listening to Red Tithe by Robbie MacNiven, a Warhammer book.
The Husband is reading something or other but he laid down for a nap because he might be getting the virus next so I will have to ask him later.
Little Miss and I have not started anything new lately but I hope to finish Magical Melons by Carol Ryrie Brink soon. That title was later changed just to Caddie Woodlawn’s Family. I think that’s a good thing because the first title was .. a little weird in modern times.
Last week I watched The Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn, a few episodes of Murder She Wrote, an episode of As Time Goes By, a documentary of David Suchet on the Orient Express, and an episode of a new-to-me show called Canal Boat Diaries. I also watched The Court Jester as part of my Summer of Angela series. Next week I will be watching The Picture of Dorian Gray.
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
Welcome to the A Good Book & A Cup of Tea Monthly Link Party for book and reading posts! Each link party will be open for a month.
1. For Bloggers, you can link unlimited posts related to books and reading. These can be posts about what you’re reading, book reviews, books you’ve added to your shelf, reading habits, what you’ve been reading, about trips to bookstore, etc. You get the drift.
2. Link to a specific blog post (URL of a specific post, not your website). Feel free to link up any older posts that may need some love and attention, too.
3. Please visit at least two other bloggers on this list and comment on their posts. Have fun! Interact! Get some book recommendations.
4. Readers can click the blue button below to visit blog posts.
5. If you add a link you are giving me permission to share and link back to your post(s).
This week I watched The Court Jester (1955) with Angela, Danny Kaye, and Basil Rathbone. It is a musical/comedy.
The main words to describe this movie are silliness, ridiculousness, and peak Danny Kaye moments.
It really fell apart toward the end, I felt, but there were some hilarious moments that made up for it.
First, a bit of the plot with a description from Google:
“Former carnival performer Hubert Hawkins (Danny Kaye) and maid Jean (Glynis Johns) are assigned to protect the infant royal heir from tyrannical King Roderick I (Cecil Parker). While Jean takes the baby to an abbey, Hawkins gains access to the court by impersonating the king’s jester, unaware that the jester is really an assassin hired by scheming Sir Ravenhurst (Basil Rathbone). When Princess Gwendolyn (Angela Lansbury), falls for Hawkins, a witch secretly aids him in becoming a knight.”
This film is just a lot of craziness caused by misunderstandings, misdirection, and generalized oopsies.
We start the movie by learning that an entire royal family was killed so that the current King, King Roderick I, could take the throne. Actually, though, the entire family wasn’t killed, according to rumors anyhow. The rumors say an infant survived and bears upon his bottom a birthmark of a purple pimpernel.
The rumors further say the child is being cared for in the forest by an “elusive, dashing outlaw” known as the black fox. As if to prove these rumors, one of the king’s men is killed as they are riding near the forest and a note attached to the arrow announces that the child is alive and The Black Fox has him.
Not sure why this was being announced because I would think it would be better to keep this all a secret until the child is older and then they bring the child in to overthrow the usurper, but…what do I know?
After the note scene we are taken to the castle where the king’s advisor, Sir Ravenhurst (Rathbone), is stating the rumor about the child being in the care of the black fox is simply a silly story to scare the king. The other advisors say there is something to the rumor and to the power of the black fox. They feel that the king should form an alliance with Griswold of the North because he is strong and has men who can help them fight against The Black Fox.
Ravenhurst is against this and the other advisors say it is because Ravenhurst wants to be the king’s right hand man and have more power.
The king says even if he wanted to form an alliance he doesn’t have anything to offer Griswold to sweeten the deal. The one advisor says that the king does have something he could give Griswold — the hand of his daughter Gwendolyn — our fair Angela — in marriage.
Angela is gorgeous in this movie. She’s super skinny (not that she’s ever been big), tall and elegant.
My son told me recently that young Angela was beautiful and that even “old Angela” in Murder She Wrote wasn’t so bad. I can’t wait to show him her in this film (I watched it on my own) because this will further solidify his feelings.
Gwendolyn says she is not interested in marriage because the castle witch, Griselda, told her that a more dashing man than Griswold would be coming along to sweep her off her feet.
Now the scene switches to the lair of the black fox, where Hubert tells the black fox he has brought a group of midgets with him from the carnival (Hubert’s former job) to fight for The Black Fox. This brings me to one of the weirdest promo photos I’ve ever seen:
I’ll be seeing this one in my nightmares tonight.
It is the job of Danny’s character, Hubert, to care of the baby and he thinks it is a job that should go to a woman. Well! How rude.
But The Black Fox doesn’t agree and tells Hubert he will continue the job.
Hubert is a little more excited about having to take care of the baby when he is charged with traveling with the beautiful Jean to take the child to the abbey for protection.
When I was reading about the actors in this movie, I found out that Glynis Johns (Jean) also played the mother in Disney’s Mary Poppins. The first one, of course.
Anyhow, moving on — The pair stop for the night and that’s when they not only admit their feelings for each other (smoochy, smoochy) but a man stumbles into the small stable they are in and asks to stay with them for the night. He’s on his way to see the king, he says. He is a court jester and his name is Giacomo.
Ah-ha! Hubert and Jean were just talking about how it would be a good thing if they had a spy in the castle who could tell them if the king was coming after The Black Fox. How very fortuitous this unexpected meeting has been.
Giacomo is knocked out and Hubert steals his clothes and his wagon, which is emblazoned, for some weird reason, with Giacomo’s name across the back of it.
So Jean takes off toward the abbey and Hubert takes off toward the castle.
Sadly, Jean is captured by soldiers from the castle who are looking for good looking women for the king. The baby is hidden in a basket and she and the baby are taken to the castle where she manages to hide the baby away from the king and his men.
Meanwhile, Gwendolyn learns that Griselda lied to her about the dashing man and is about to have her killed when Hubert shows up on the road below and Griselda claims that he is the man that Gwendolyn is supposed to marry.
Whew. This plot is starting to get pretty twisted at this point. From here on out, things get pretty crazy with Griselda casting spells and poisoning people left and right. Ravenhurst also thinks that Giacomo (Hubert) is an assassin who is going to take out the three advisors who wanted to create the alliance with Griswold.
Before all is said and done there will be sword fights, a jousting match, fake and real romances, a midget army, and, of course, plenty of musical numbers by Mr. Kaye.
There is also the famous scene between Danny, Glynis Johns, and Mildred Natwick where they discuss which vessel the poison is in.
Here is a clip of it, in case you’ve never seen the movie:
I won’t share too much more in case you want to watch the movie yourself.
The movie was directed by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank.
According to an article on TCM.com, Panama and Frank formed a production company with Kaye called Dena Productions, named after Danny’s daughter, after Kaye’s success in 1947 with the film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
The idea behind the production company was to introduce the real Danny to film audiences. He had been acting on Broadway and in smaller productions on stage for years.
The Court Jester was the company’s second movie and proved to be a huge success but not right away. It actually bombed at the box office, despite it’s stellar cast. Years later though it was regarded as one of Danny’s finest films with, according to TCM, “comedy routines that have entered the annals of film history.”
Amazon features trivia and facts through their xray feature when you watch a movie there on a computer or device. I often forget that because I usually watch the movies on my TV but this time I watched part of the movie on my phone and bits of the trivia popped up.
One of them was a story from Danny’s daughter who said that fans often came up to him and recited the entire tongue twister scene for him.
What Angela said about the movie:
Angela had been playing mainly dramatic roles before this movie and was able to have some fun with the role. Part of that fun was watching Danny Kaye work she said in the Kaye bio Nobody’s Fool by Martin Gottfried.
“His use of hands was inspired by commedia dell’arte,” she said. “And in the way he moved, he was absolutely original; he was one off the mold.”
She added, “Danny wasn’t an ensemble player – he was the one around whom everyone danced, and we all dressed to him. We never stopped laughing. There was none of that moodiness he could have elsewhere, that abruptness, ignoring people. If something interested him, sparked him, he came alive. The minute that was over, he was closed for business, which I think is true of many of the great comic performers. They are constantly out to lunch. Where they are, I don’t know.”
Gottfried also wrote an autobiography on Angela and said of her role in the movie: “It allowed her to play not only a princess, but a princess her own age. She was made up to look young and lovely. She got to wear beautiful clothes that showed off her fine, slender figure.”
What I thought overall
This was a ton of fun. As I mentioned above, I wasn’t a huge fan of the ending when things started to fall apart in some ways and just descend into chaotic ridiculousness but that was a minor issue when there were so many other great moments and interactions in the film.
Angela wasn’t in this one a ton but she was in it enough to enjoy her mix of wide-eyed adoration of Danny’s character and her devious ways to get what she wanted. She truly was beautiful in the film as well.
I loved the wordplay and back and forth between the characters. None of the songs really stuck out to me but they were fun.
This is a great film to escape into and forget about your problems with. The bright and colorful outfits alone will distract you from the stresses of your days.
Trivia about the movie:
Basil Rathbone had made many movies where he was the sword-wielding villain so when it came to his role in this film, he was ready. He was 66 at the time, though, having already redefined Sherlock Holmes in 14 films from 1939 to 1946, and wasn’t ready for how quick Danny would be able to move the sword. A body double had to be called in to film some of the fencing scenes because Danny was moving so fast that Basil was almost injured. It was because of his superior fencing skills that no one was injured but he still couldn’t keep up with Danny’s fast, though less accurate, moves.
According to TCM.com. “(Basil’s) talents were carefully observed by Danny: With his quick reflexes and his extraordinary sense of mime, which enabled him to imitate easily anything seen once, Kaye could outfence Rathbone after a few weeks of instruction.” (various sources, including TCM.com.)
During the “Maladjusted Jester” sequence, King Roderick I (Cecil Parker) kicks Hawkins (Danny Kaye) every time he makes a mistake. It took 11 takes, and afterward, Kaye said he had bruises all over his hip. (source IMdB)
The “Now I can shoot and toot” speech during “The Maladjusted Jester” was previously said by Danny Kaye in Up in Arms (1944).
From IMdB: “This was composer Vic Schoen‘s first movie. He was not officially trained in the mechanisms of how music was synchronized to film, so he had to learn on the job. It took him a long time, but he was very proud of his work. Composer Igor Stravinsky listened to his score and later complimented Schoen, saying he had broken all of the rules.”
A U.S. Civil War reenactment group, The American Legion Zouaves of Richard F. Smith Post No. 29, Jackson, Michigan” performed the intricate high speed marching maneuvers during the knighting ceremony. (source, Classic Movie Hub)
Have you ever seen this movie?
What did you think?
Cat from Cat’s Wire shared her thoughts on the movie here..
Here is what is left of my Summer of Angela:
August 1 – The Court Jester
August 8 – The Picture of Dorian Gray
August 15 – A Life At Stake
August 22 – All Fall Down
August 29 – Something for Everyone
If you want to read about some of the other movies I watched you can find them here:
Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, where we offer a place for bloggers to link up and get a fresh set of eyes on their posts. We also feature one blog a week, letting our readers know about the blog and providing a link so readers can learn more about it.Please feel free to post new blog posts or old ones you want to bring attention to again.
Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.
My kids and I came down with a virus over the last couple of weeks and it has not been fun but we are luckily on the mend. The worst part of it was the sore throat and earaches for my son and I and for my daughter the worst was the sore throat and then the sinus drainage that made her cough and kept her up all Wednesday night. And by all I mean ALL.
I’ll be glad when this is over!
Now, let’s introduce our hosts for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot:
Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!
Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household – The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!
Lisa from Boondock Ramblingsshares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.
Sue from Women Living Well After 50 started blogging in 2015 and writes about living an active and healthy lifestyle, fashion, book reviews and her podcast and enjoying life as a woman over 50. She invites you to join her living life in full bloom.
We would love to have additional Co-Hosts to share in the creativity and fun! If you think this would be a good fit for you and you like having fun (come on, who doesn’t!) while still being creative, drop one of us an email and someone will get back with you!
WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!
A little about Joanne: I’ve been homeschooling since June of 2012 and that’s when I started my blog. I was new to homeschooling and while I jumped in with both feet and lots of enthusiasm I was feeling overwhelmed and over my head– and I was a teacher by profession!
I have my master’s degree in early childhood education and worked in the public school system as both long term & regular substitutes. Within one year of having all three of my kids attending school full time I realized we were all miserable and with the support of my family we turned to homeschooling.
They all had far more confidence in me than I did.
We live in a state with little to no homeschooling laws & guidelines which I found even scarier at the time. I hoped to use my blog as a way to hold myself accountable for what I was teaching and have found it tremendously helpful over the years to look back and see all that we do manage to cover even when I feel like we aren’t doing any schoolwork for long periods of time.
Over time my blog has evolved to showcase more of me; my interests, crafting ideas, recipes and more. I love that homeschooling my children has allowed us all time to peruse so many other interests– That’s why I had to change the name of my blog!
I used to blog over at Our Unschooling Journey but found more and more of my posts had nothing to do with homeschooling. I changed the name of my blog to Slices of Life since that’s what I felt like I was sharing!
Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up each week, Joanne!
And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:
