“It’s like the great stories, Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad has happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines, it’ll shine out the clearer. I know now folks in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going because they were holding on to something. That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”
― Samwise Gamgee from the movie Lord of the Rings

The theme for our first week of season at my beloved Chautauqua Institution was friendship, and we had an exceptional presentation by Sean Astin, who played Samwise Gamgee in one of our favorite book and movie series, “Lord of the Rings,” by J.R.R. Tolkien.

At the end of his interview Sean stood up and recited the above soliloquy, one of the most inspiring in literature. It gave me goosebumps!

— Image by Victor Molina from Pixabay