Farmhouse

To secure an audience with the Obama family matriarch at her farmhouse in western Kenya, you are told to pay respects at the local seat of power. This is a run-down government building where the district commissioner, a scowling man in a black suit, receives you without warmth. You've come to see Sarah Onyango, you explain, the woman referred to as "Granny" by the president of the United States. You are coming with the blessing of the president's half brother Malik Obama, you quickly add. District Commissioner Boaz Cherutich, who controls the woman's 24-hour security detail, dismisses you brusquely, saying: With the family's permission, you don't need mine.

Prolifically produced worldwide since its 1979 premiere, Peter Colley's comically dark thriller, “I'll Be Back Before Midnight” now receives a belated Los Angeles premiere at the Colony in Burbank. Stephen Gifford's moldering farmhouse set, lighted with creepy virtuosity by Luke Moyer, is the ideal milieu for Colley's roller-coaster play, which contains the kind of stomach-dropping twists that will make you hoot with laughter even as you clutch your theater companion's sleeve.

Luckily, I saved Gina Cappannelli's readers recommendation (Sept. 17, 1995) about the renovated French stone farmhouse, Le Che^ne au Loup (011-33-5432- 5944). We'd never visited the Loire Valley and were surprised by how much there was to see and do, and how beautiful it is! The cottage was immaculate and tastefully decorated, and the price was a bargain at $550 for a week. LOREE L. SCARBOROUGH Los Angeles

Spending Christmas in a remote farmhouse doesn't sound particularly inviting, except when that farmhouse sits on a vast winery in Tuscany. Il Borro , an extensive estate owned by the Ferragamo family of fashion fame, makes wine and olive oil, and provides luxury lodgings for guests. It's also the name of the medieval village. Sceptre Tours offers a six-night trip for a minimum of four people that includes a stay in a two-bedroom farm house and a rental car. You can explore the gardens and grounds of the estate and tool around villages from Florence to Siena.

Spending Christmas in a remote farmhouse doesn't sound particularly inviting, except when that farmhouse sits on a vast winery in Tuscany. Il Borro , an extensive estate owned by the Ferragamo family of fashion fame, makes wine and olive oil, and provides luxury lodgings for guests. It's also the name of the medieval village. Sceptre Tours offers a six-night trip for a minimum of four people that includes a stay in a two-bedroom farm house and a rental car. You can explore the gardens and grounds of the estate and tool around villages from Florence to Siena.

Police investigating the deaths of eight men found stuffed inside abandoned vehicles in a remote border area descended on a nearby farmhouse. Police refused to discuss what was happening beyond the roadblock, about three miles from where the bodies were found inside four vehicles in a field Saturday. The farm is about 90 miles northeast of Detroit. The eight victims knew one another and were all from the Toronto area, said police, who called the deaths homicides.

A fire engulfed a two-story farmhouse near here and killed two elderly brothers and their two sisters, authorities said Thursday. The cause of the Wednesday night blaze had not been determined.

Prolifically produced worldwide since its 1979 premiere, Peter Colley's comically dark thriller, “I'll Be Back Before Midnight” now receives a belated Los Angeles premiere at the Colony in Burbank. Stephen Gifford's moldering farmhouse set, lighted with creepy virtuosity by Luke Moyer, is the ideal milieu for Colley's roller-coaster play, which contains the kind of stomach-dropping twists that will make you hoot with laughter even as you clutch your theater companion's sleeve.

Re "Mugabe's Fortunes Shift as Land Crisis Widens," April 29: American conservatives never believed for a moment that the English settlers of Rhodesia were villains and that President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe was a hero. Mugabe's ruthless acts were predictable but that doesn't make them any easier to swallow. Politics aside, there is something heroic about the English settler who first sends his wife and children to safety, then waits in his farmhouse for certain death at the hands of Mugabe's hit squad.

Ventura County sheriff's deputies arrested a suspect in the bludgeon murder of a 68-year-old semi-invalid Friday and indicated that they were seeking others. William Nye, a member of a pioneer ranching family, was found murdered March 15 in the bedroom of his three-story farmhouse in the small rural community of Foster Park. Deputies said the house had been ransacked, but they declined to give any further details.

BELFAST, Maine - The first sign says, "Slow. " Then, about 50 feet down this back road in mid-coast Maine, there's a second sign. It says, "Slower. " I ease up on the pedal. That about sums up the rhythm of life in this part of Maine, which is about as far as you can get from L.A. and still be in the same country (and sometimes it feels like another one). On this trip, I'm looking to go slower. Or maybe even go in reverse, to a bit of America that's like a half-remembered dream - to a time when books cost a dollar, dinner at the drive-in was as fast as food got and an overnight suitcase was called a "possibilities bag. " Sure, Maine has lots of fancy antiques stores and gourmet restaurants.

ELDON, Iowa - Beth Howard sits at her kitchen table on a Sunday morning and pulls back the curtain to peer at a group of rosy-cheeked youths taking pictures on her front lawn. They pair off to stand side by side in the pose familiar to millions - the dour farmer with a pitchfork, the unsmiling woman beside him in front of the white house. No one notices the woman in flannel pajamas sitting inside. "People seldom know that people live here, much less that there's someone watching them from the other side of the curtain," says Howard, who rents the house made famous in Grant Wood's painting "American Gothic.

Entertainment industry executive Roger Birnbaum and his wife, Pamela, have put their Beverly Hills home up for sale at $15.75 million. Completed five years ago, the nearly 7,200-square-foot contemporary farmhouse was a project of former talent manager and high-end remodeler Sandy Gallin. The Birnbaums bought the house from him in 2007 for $16.5 million. The four-bedroom, five-bathroom house sits behind gates on close to a half acre with a swimming pool and gardens. The two-story living room has sliding-glass doors that open to a veranda.

A Sherman Oaks home built in 1936 for actress Joyce Compton is on the market at $1.795 million. Evoking an English farmhouse with a half-timbered exterior, it features beamed ceilings, a stone fireplace in the living room and oak floors. The updated 3,306-square-foot house includes a den, a family room, three bedrooms and 31/2 bathrooms. There is a separate one-bedroom guesthouse and a swimming pool. Joyce Compton, who died in 1997 at 90, was in more than 200 films with such stars as Cary Grant, Jack Benny and Clara Bow. She appeared in "Christmas in Connecticut" (1945)

To secure an audience with the Obama family matriarch at her farmhouse in western Kenya, you are told to pay respects at the local seat of power. This is a run-down government building where the district commissioner, a scowling man in a black suit, receives you without warmth. You've come to see Sarah Onyango, you explain, the woman referred to as "Granny" by the president of the United States. You are coming with the blessing of the president's half brother Malik Obama, you quickly add. District Commissioner Boaz Cherutich, who controls the woman's 24-hour security detail, dismisses you brusquely, saying: With the family's permission, you don't need mine.

I scrambled out of bed at dawn's first light, dashed to the barn to milk a cow, stopped by the chicken coop to collect fresh-from-the-hen eggs, then doubled back to the farmhouse for breakfast. Six of us gathered around the table at Verdant View Farm B&B, prefacing our early morning meal with the cheerful strains of the Johnny Appleseed Song. "Oh, the Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord, for giving me the things I need, the sun and the rain and the apple seed.... " Just another morning in Paradise.

It's easy to imagine a great vacation awaits those who rent a farmhouse in Southern France ("Farmhouses in France," Aug. 30). Let me mention a variation on that theme: a motor home. (We've done it eight times.) Every advantage mentioned in those two articles still applies: food purchased at the local markets; no packing and unpacking; a chance to live among interesting and friendly people; visits to some of the best possible vacation sites, and the most exciting Roman ruins anywhere.

Hooray and whoopie! There'll be a sequel to "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre"! Filming on "2" begins in four weeks in Austin, Tex. Tobe Hooper (again) directs, from a screenplay by L.M. Kit Carson, for Cannon Pics. Budgeted at $2.5 million, it should be in the theaters by summer. It all takes place the weekend of the Big Game between the U of Texas and Oklahoma State, so that everyone's taking to the streets and acting pretty crazy. . . .

A farmhouse fire killed seven children Tuesday while their mother was in a barn milking cows, according to a state trooper. Their father was reportedly taking a nap in a delivery truck not far from the home. The children, six girls and a boy, were found dead inside the house, CNN reported. One child survived. Those who died ranged in age from 7 months to 11 years. The children's father had left the two-story home, on a working farm in dairy country not far from the state capital, to get his truck around 10 p.m. Tuesday, Trooper Tom Pinkerton said.

A Palm Springs property that actor Cary Grant lived in for 20 years has come on the market at $2,995,000. The 19th century Spanish farmhouse replica was built between 1927 and 1930 on 1.5 acres in the area known as the Movie Colony for its famed residents. Called Las Palomas, or the Doves, the house features thick whitewashed walls, hand-painted kitchen and bathroom tile, kiva fireplaces and handmade terra-cotta roof tiles. A soaring wood-beam ceiling, stone fireplace and tile floor add character to the living room.