John D. Rateliff's Blog, page 114

Time to Vote

So, Washington state is big on democracy and loves to vote: caucuses, initiatives, non-binding measures, local issues, and actual elections (local and statewide and national). The current ballot falls firmly in the 'local issues' categories, and only has two items up for a vote: one seeking authorization for Capital Improvements to Kent schools and the other to renew funding for the fire department.
Surprisingly enough the accompanying Voters' Pamphlet didn't have 'argument for' vs 'argument against', followed by 'rebuttal of argument against', followed by 'rebuttal of argument for', as is usually the case. That's particularly unexpected given that the amounts involved are quite large ($252,000,000, or just over a quarter of a billion dollars) and the improvements significant: building two new elementary schools, adding twenty new classrooms, repairing roofs and the like. I guess the issuing of bonds doesn't fire off the antitax trigger so many initiatives and referendums come up against.

A case in point: the other Proposition, concerning our fire department.  A few years back Kent decided that rather than setting up a separate fire department for Covington (the recently incorporated area immediately to the east of Kent) it'd be better to create a regional fire department that covered several adjacent cities. That's worked pretty well; all the present measure does is re-up their funding for another six years.
Enter the antitax brigade, who make a whole array of charges* against the measure which all more or less come down to a call to defund the fire department in the name of lower taxes. One of the points they put forward in their Statement is a cry to "Remember Pine Tree Park!" This is interesting, because it works directly against the point they think they're making.
A few years ago, the Kent government said it didn't have enough money to keep the city parks going and would have to shut down some of them unless a levy passed. It got voted down, with the result that the city sold off one small park** and removed some amenities from others (e.g. a pier that'd become too dilapidated for safety which they cdn't afford to replace). So the real lesson to 'Remember Pine Tree Park' is that you don't get what you don't pay for: de-fund something the community values and it goes away.
So, two easy votes for a change.
--John R. current reading: THE CAULDRON OF ANNWN by Th. Evelyn Ellis [1922]

*one includes the point that it's wasteful to have a fire truck respond to a health emergency call when some form of ambulance is more appropriate. True enough, but those who oppose the measure don't explain how defunding the department will address this problem in any way.
**the outcry was such that they've since cancelled the deal and it remains city property for now

Tolkien's KULLERVO on NPR

So, thanks to Janice for the link to a quite nice book review of Verlyn Flieger's edition of THE STORY OF KULLERVO.  This first appeared in TOLKIEN STUDIES a few years ago, but it's nice to have it in book form: easier access, and a handsome volume in and of itself, w. as an added bonus a nice piece of Tolkien's KALAVALA art on the front cover. Not only did the reviewer appreciate Tolkien's piece but she's also properly appreciative of Verlyn's editing. As usual there are some strange assertions in the comments at the end, alas (Shippey did not take over Tolkien's Oxford chair: that was Norman Davis), but those are easily ignorable.  All in all, nice piece. Congr. to Verlyn.

Here's the link:

http://www.npr.org/2016/04/10/471619609/frodo-bilbo-kullervo-tolkiens-finnish-adventure

--John R.
current reading: THE CHILDREN OF DON by Lord Howard de Walden.

An Invasion in Slow-Motion

So,  once upon a time not that long ago, this wd have been referred to as 'creeping socialism'. As it is, this has got to be one of the weirdest invasions I've ever heard about: the Russian infiltration of Georgia, which is being overrun a hundred yards at a time. Want to know what it's like to go to sleep in one country and wake up in another, without having moved a foot? Go visit Georgia (while you can; it'll soon all be South Ossetia).

Here's the link.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/georgia-border-russia-vladimir-putin-213787



--John R.
current reading: AS I SEEM TO REMEMBER by Sir Leonard Woolley (post.publ. by Allen & Unwin 1962)

own Lovecraft letters

So, today I got a flyer from Heritage Auctions (the folks I got the Sime from, who now won't stop sending me message after message about other things they have that I don't want) that a set of ten Lovecraft letters, mostly unpublished, to one F. J. Pabody* (1932-1937) are being auctioned off, with an expected price of about $20,000. That's a lot, and just goes to show how mainstreamed Lovecraft has become (like Tolkien, and increasingly Lewis as well).

Here's the link:

http://historical.ha.com/itm/books/hp-lovecraft-ten-autograph-letters-totaling-forty-six-pages-signed-by-hp-lovecraft-to-frederic-jay-pabody-providence-/a/6155-45111.s

--John R.

*looking at the name, I'd guess it was the inspiration for Dr. Pabodie, creator of the famous drill of the same name, in HPL's AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS

A Tea Party I Missed

So, had I known about this beforehand I wd have been tempted to arrange my recent trip to Arkansas to cover one more evening.  As it was, I missed something interesting by a day: the evening of the day I left Magnolia to fly back here, my alma mater, Southern Arkansas University (which I still think of by its old name, Southern State College), was hosting a speech by Tom Cotton, the junior senator from Arkansas (and I think the youngest person currently serving in the Senate).  I disagree with Cotton on just about everything, but was sorry to pass up the chance to see him in person and hear him present his ideas himself, rather than catch bits and pieces of them filtered through news reports and headlines. After all, I went to see Orville Faubus give a speech on the town square in front of the courthouse back when he was trying to stage a comeback long after his time had passed. And howevermuch I disagree with Cotton it'd be interesting to hear how he frames his ideas: what the world looks like from such a radically different position -- after all, he's an anti-tax radical who opposed disaster relief because it hadn't previously budgeted and is most notorious for trying to sabotage the president and State Department's negotiations to de-escalate our long-running standoff with a foreign power.

On the other hand, checking things out more closely I've learned that this wasn't a free event but fundraising for the Arkansas Republican Party, presumably to be used to try to re-elect or shore up support for the sorry lot they currently have in office (Boozman, Hutchison, and esp. Cotton). And I'd have had a hard time giving money to any cause with Ronald Reagan's name attached to it.

Still, wd have been interesting.

--John R.
current reading: THE FLOATING BODY by Kel Richards (2015/2016), the third in the C. S. Lewis-as-detective mysteries, and the best so far, though that's a low bar to limbo under.

Nostalgic for Evil

So, I have to admit there are some things I just don't get. Case in point: I was in the airport early yesterday morning, getting tea from Dilettante to fill my thermos for the trip ahead. While waiting for them to fill my order, I looked at the the various items they had on the counter, including small take-away bags of various brews of coffee. One was the Habsburg blend, another the Romanov blend.

My puzzlement is why anyone would want to name anything after those two royal (imperial) houses. For their part, the Habsburgs were perhaps the most hapless of the various royal houses of Europe in the last few centuries (just ask Emperor Maximillian): not sure why that would conjure up cozy memories for anyone. As for the Romanovs, anyone who's forgotten just how horrible the czars were just needs to look up the word 'pogrom'. If you're going to go that route, why not call it Stalin's Cup of Joe?

--John R.
--in Little Rock, soaking up the ambiance at the last Barnes & Noble/Starbucks for many, many miles.


P.S.: I see from checking online that they also offer a Bohemian blend, which sounds much more benign.

Birmingham's Folly (Perriot's Tower)

So, thanks to Brad Eden for the forwarded link, and Nancy Martsch for the recent article in BEYOND BREE (Feb. issue, p. 5), both about Perrott's Folly. An interesting building in its own right, this is a brick tower in the Edgbaston part of Birmingham, near where Tolkien grew up. In recent years this has been claimed to be the inspiration for one of JRRT's 'Two Towers' from the book of the same name. The only problem is that there's no evidence whatsoever that this is the case. It's testimony to Tolkien's popularity that folks try to attach things to his name, whether it's a golden ring (the so-called 'Ring of Silvianus') or an old tower.

I must confess that when I heard the local authorities were holding meetings to decide what to be done with the tower, I had fantasies of Tolk. folk. running a Kickstarter to rent the tower for a set period (a week, a month, whatever), and hang from it a great big banner that read

This Neat Old TowerHas Nothing Whatsoever To Do With J. R. R. Tolkien
--Ah well. A scholar can dream, can't he?

Here's the link: the link-within-the-link shows some interesting detail about the tower's interior -- though my acrophobia's bad enough that I know I cdn't ever climb the interior stair and these pictures are the closest I'll ever come to see it.

http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/wanted-good-ideas-future-use-10742931#rlabs=6%20rt$sitewide%20p$4

--John R.

The Unopened Book

So, the Nodens paper proceeds, having finally arrived at Arthur Machen -- the point at which Nodens transitions over from being a forgotten god once worshipped in the real world to being a fictional character used by authors like Machen, Ellis, and Lovecraft.

The next stage is to look at the plays (operas) by Thomas Evelyn Ellis, based on the MABINOGION (making him one of the first authors in English to adapt the medieval Welsh stories from the Four Branches into modern English -- earlier even than Kenneth Morris). The plays were originally published separately, but I have the omnibus edition of all three in one volume, called THE CAULDRON OF ANNWN, a privately printed limited edition signed by the author (mine is copy #72 out of a total of 250.

The dilemma is that I need to read the book and it's never been opened. By this I mean that each gathering of the pages are still attached together at the top and sometimes side of pages. Books used to come like this, and you cut the pages apart as you read.*  Nowadays books are trimmed (so the margins are all smooth and the same size) and opened (so each page is only attached on the side of the binding). Some previous owner of my copy seems to have read the first play but abandoned the book without ever making his or her way through the second and third plays. So in order to read them I'll have to cut apart what's remained in its original condition for the better part of a century. Once done, it can never be undone. But books are meant to be read, and I bought this one because I wanted to read what Ellis had to say, not to decorate a shelf.

I wonder how many other copies of this old book survive (most of them, I shd think) and how many remain unopened and unread to this day (an unknown quantity).

--John R.
current reading: various bits by and about Arthur Machen
current audiobook: still DODGER by Terry Pratchett, getting near the end.
the new arrivals: the vellum edition of TIME AND THE GODS, signed by both Dunsany and Sime (not the best of Dunsany's eight early collections, but the reproduction of the artwork here is incredible), and the third of Kel Richards' C. S. Lewis, Detective' series.


*(Samuel Johnson was notorious for using a butter knife alternately to butter bread and cut the pages of books his friends had loaned him)

The Voice of Gilgamesh

So, thanks to Wolf Baur and the good folks over at Kobold Press for this one: last week they posted a link to a bit of audio in which someone reads a passage from THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH in the original Akkadian.* The effect is quite interesting. Here's the link. Recommended.


http://www.openculture.com/2010/10/th...


--John R.
current audiobook: DODGER by Terry Pratchett
current reading: bits and pieces, including The Welsh Triads (ed/tr Rachel Bromwich)



*Although the original original would of course be Sumerian.** I'm not sure if they know how Sumerian was pronounced, but I love to hear their best guess. For one thing, Sumerian isn't related to any known language. Unlike, say, Akkadian, which is one of the Afro-Asiatic language groups (like the Indo-European group), and thus related in varying degrees to  Egyptian, Phoenician, Hebrew, Coptic, Aramaic, and Arabic. So while foreign to an English-speaker's ear, it nevertheless fits in with some familiar-if-exotic category. Being outside that frame of reference, Sumerian, I suspect, would sound very odd indeed.


**And, of course, the 'epic of Gilgamesh', while v. old, is centuries later than the Sumerian poems, in which the hero's name is Bilgames. It took me years to find out that the EPIC OF GILGAMESH I sought out and read in high school and again in college and once or twice since was not a translation but a modern re-telling presented as translation. For the real thing (complete with ellipses where there's damage to the original tablets), see Andrew George's 1999 translation (available since 2000 thr. Penguin Classics.

The Last Survivor

So, I saw a news item this week that the last survivor of the Abe Lincoln Brigade has died at the advanced age of a hundred. The Spanish Civil War is remembered as a nasty one, which is saying something in the context of a century filled with horrific wars, but it's good to remember that it inspired a good deal of idealism too, albeit idealism that for the most part came to a nasty end.*

The war itself has largely slipped out of public memory -- there was nothing at all about it in the high school history books I was taught from back in the 70s, and precious little in college.**  My own knowledge of it is piecemeal, from its effects on various twentieth century figures: from reading Orwell's HOMAGE TO CATALONIA (the classic account of what it was like to fight in defense of the Spanish Republic), Quentin Bell's biography of his aunt Virginia Woolf (whose nephew, Quentin's own brother, died there), Auden (who was briefly there as an observer),  Norman Bethune (who invented the battlefield blood transfusion there), Evelyn Waugh (who sympathized with Franco but advocated a hands off approach), and most notably the despicable Roy Campbell, who enthusiastically supported Franco's coup and the fascist state Franco succeeded in installing in power. The war fits in memorably in the final scene of Sir Peter Jackson's  FORGOTTEN SILVER: the subject of his documentary ends his life on a Spanish battlefield while filming the war.

It even briefly intrudes into Inklings studies in the exchange between CSL and Campbell, with Tolkien's sympathies very much with Campbell: the one case I can think of where I think Lewis was right and Tolkien was wrong.


Here's the link:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/02/delmer-berg-dies-last-living-american-fought-fascists-franco-spain



--JDR

current reading: just finished HOMER'S ODYSSEY by Gwen Cooper (the story of a blind cat); just begun TESSA VERNEY WHEELER biography by L. C. Carr (2012)
current audiobook: DODGER by Sir Terry Pratchett.

*Oddly enough, I found out years ago while doing some reading up on South Africa that something similar had happened several decades earlier. It's forgotten today that volunteers from America and elsewhere (including czarist Russia!) came and fought for the Boers, so unpopular was the British land-grab officially known as the Second Boer War. A truly forgotten piece of history, like our invasion of Russia in 1919 or our having lost the War of 1812.

**for example, how many people hearing Billy Joel's "Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway" (from his collection of early pieces, SONGS IN THE ATTIC) understood what he was talking about when he sang

"They burned the churches up in Harlem
Like in the Spanish civil war"