John D. Rateliff's Blog, page 164

The New Arrival (VT.50)

So, the same day we returned home from the trip, the newest Tolkien-related publication arrived: issue number fifty of Vinyar Tengwar. This now-venerable Tolkien linguistic journal (the first issue having been printed back in the eighties*) some time back morphed into being a venue for printing minor (i.e., relatively brief) primary texts by Tolkien, in conjunction with Parma Eldalamberon, which similarly prints major (longer) pieces. As such they are specialty publications, often opaque to those of us without formal linguistic training (e.g., in this piece's use of technical terminology like "enclitic conjunction", "spirantized", "deictic construction", "passivizing element", "postvocalic lenition", and the like).** I mainly pick these up to have them for reference, as I often find out elsewhere after the fact that they contain valuable material for the non-specialist.
This particular issue is devoted entirely to "The Turin Wrapper" (not to be confused with the Shroud of Turin***): a page of Elvish written in the (early) 1950s, reproduced both in facsimile and in letter-by-letter transcription, along with over twenty pages of detailed analysis deciphering what Tolkien had written and what it meant. Most of it turns out to be relatively straightforward -- names for Ireland (in Old Irish, Primative Celtic, Modern Irish, Latin), and variant titles for the Turin story. The most interesting part of all, from the point of view of what it tells us about the mythology, is a brief passage in which Rian (Huor's young widow) speaks to her infant son Tuor, something about "What have we done" and now being estranged from the dwarves and the elves (perhaps in a geographical sense, i.e. separated by vast stretches now occupied by hostile forces). With all the work I've been doing recently on changing depictions of the dwarves in the legendarium, this latter was of particular interest to me. Unfortunately, as often proves to be the case w. Tolkien manuscripts, the most interesting parts tend to be the most difficult to read and interpret.
Hostetter has done an amazing piece of work here, carefully distinguishing between the known and the unknown, extrapolation and speculation, with phrases like "inferred by reference" and "recourse to . . . surmise", "unattested" and (my favorite) "of uncertain meaning and opaque derivation".  Despite which he builds a persuasive case for almost the whole of the translations proffered, which is pretty impressive in itself.
That said, it's a tough read for any non-linguist.  Though not without its rewards: the take-away that interested me most was the passing observation that Huorn meant "talking tree" ("orn" = tree, as in Fangornand Onodrim) and wondering whether making "din" the Elvish word for silence (Amon Din, the Hill of Silence) was a deliberate joke on Tolkien's part or just worked out like that. And, now that I know the speaker's introduction survives from the event in which Tolkien was granted his honorary doctorate in 1954 (VT.50.11), I find myself curious what the man said on that occasion. cx
--John R.current reading: AN EXPERIMENT IN CRITICISM (CSL), AVILION (Verlyn Flieger)

*September 1988, to be precise. To my astonishment, having just checked my files I find I actually have an almost-complete set, lacking only #49
**i.e., not for the Bertie Woosters of the world
***speaking of which, in other news: habemus papam (or, in the vernacular, We Haz Got Pope)

Dayquil Days and Nyquil Nights

So, not much posting from me, as a direct result from our both being laid low with colds (congestion, aches, lethargy, coughs). More when mental acuity and energy levels return.
   Till then, much bonding with the cats, who are delighted to have us both home for several days in a row, and encouraging us to sit quiet, read, nap, watch book tv or browse online, et al.

--JDR

current anime: the BLOOD series (BLOOD THE LAST VAMPIRE; BLOOD+; BLOOD C)
current reading: just finished the Donald Wandrei horror/fantasy short story collection; starting CSL's AN EXPERIMENT IN CRITICISM (1961) in search of a quote I wanted to use in my Kalamazoo piece; so far no luck.

Valparaiso, Day Three

So, Sunday morning it was hard to drag myself out of bed but highly necessary that I do so, since we had to check out of the hotel, eat breakfast, and get to the campus (not that it was v. far) before nine o'clock, when it was my turn to present the third and final plenary speech of the conference: "In the Company of Dwarves: THE HOBBIT's Influence on THE SILMARILLION".*


I'd been fretting about this piece ever since I finished it more than a week before (unusually for me, who usually runs a deadline right up to the last moment, and sometimes slightly beyond). Oddly enough, it was not my conclusions that worried me but the syntax. My Marquette piece ("How THE HOBBIT Came to Milwaukee") of a few months before was deliberately casual in tone, including bits of personal reminiscence and the like. This time to make my point I had to go into detail about just when elements entered into the mythology, where specific changes were made, and their significance in light of other details in other works. In short, an extremely detail-oriented argument heavily depending on the audience's being able to keep the relative dates and relationships of all the works I was discussing clear while hearing me read it aloud. And for some reason I found it impossible to set out all the information without resorting to relatively complex syntax, with the danger that what I wanted to say might get tangled up in how I was saying it. Luckily, Janice gave it a read-through the first night of the conference and gave me some good advice on relatively minor ways I cd change the phrasing that greatly improved the piece.

And, to my relief, the presentation itself went well. I always consider it a win when the audience doesn't charge the stage with pitchforks and torches, but there's also always the fear that they'll just shrug and say 'so what?': that the mountain of argument only receives a molehill of revelation. Luckily, that seems not to have been the case; I got a lot of good questions afterwards, and heard good things about it from people whose judgment I trust.** So, a happy ending. Here's a picture of me presenting it:


http://www.flickr.com/photos/valparaiso_university/8524963050/(thanks to Jason Fisher for the link)

The mid-morning sessions, the last scheduled events on the conf., quickly followed: out of two interesting sessions, I chose the one dealing with Bombadil in it, this being a long-term interest of mine (having once years ago presented a piece on "The Importance of Being Bombadil"). So while I missed pieces by Tolkien linguist Eileen Moore on "The King's Letter", by Heather Patnott on "What Names Do For Narrative", and by David Weber on "The Virtue of Hope", I did get to enjoy Justin Noetzel's "Beorn and Tom Bombadil: Mythology, Narrative, and The Most (Non) Essential Characters in Middle-earth", wh. was enjoyable to listen to but difficult to sum up; the most interesting part for me was his association of Tom Bomb with the Celtic Otherworld and tales of the Tuatha de Danaan. This was followed by what was for me the last presentation of the conf., by Thom Foy, an independent scholar who I think said was making his first presentation, on "Satisfying the Skeptic: Truth, Knowledge, and Tolkien's Music of Creation", a wide-ranging piece that covered everything from crop circles ("people make them!" a no-nonsense farmer told Foy and his wife, who'd come to marvel at one for themselves) and Hurin's curse to see everything through Morgoth's eyes to string theory and quantum theory.

After the usual questions, the roomful of people dispersed. Emerging into the hall, I found the conference had more or less ended. It broke up quickly and quietly, with people just slipping away; most were already gone by the time I wandered out of the meeting room after that last session. So didn't get a chance to make my final farewells of some, but there's always next time.

In short: Brad Eden put on a great conference, and I'm glad I made it. I'm honored to have been one of the plenary speakers, and hope to soon see several of the papers I heard this weekend in print.

And then it was off to Milwaukee, and then to Harvard, and then Rockford; enjoyable visits to many a Coulter; a day (T.3/5) of being snowed in in our extended stay with nine-and-a-half inches of snow (that'll teach us to be nostalgic about Midwest winters!); a day at Marquette; getting to see my friend Jim Pietrusz, all too briefly (probably the best-read person I know; we can go on and on for hours talking about books); more visits; much talk of Lewis and Clark and Yellowstone and John Colter; finally a cat-petting session (Fr.3/8); slowly succumbing to a travel-cold; returning home; being laid low with said cold. More posts as the mental fuzziness and physical not-at-all-wellness recedes.

--John R.




*my original title having been "Anchoring the Myth: The Impact of THE HOBBIT on Tolkien's Legendarium", but I had to change that when my thesis changed in the course of researching and writing up the paper -- as is sometimes the case: you start out with an idea, do the research to see if you can prove it, and wind up with conclusions altogether different from what you started with.


**I got a particularly glowing response from David Bratman, whose own paper I think one of the best I've seen on THE HOBBIT, on his blog: 
http://calimac.livejournal.com/647175.html

Valparaiso, Day Two

So, Saturday dawned all too early; second day of the conference and I'm already fighting the drag of not-enough-sleep.

Still, the first event of the day (at nine o'clock, a.m.) was worth getting up early for: Verlyn Fliger's plenary talk on BILBO'S FRENCH CONNECTION. This was in part pushback against Carpenter's claim that Tolkien suffered from a kind of Gallophobia and dislike of all things French; in part, a look at Tolkien's use of the words "adventure" and "aventure" in OFS and THE HOBBIT, tying this back to that word's usage in Arthurian romances like Chretien and the Lancelot story (and, she might have added, particularly in Marie de France).  And in part an argument that stories of knights errant (Eric, Yvain, Lancelot) had much in common with our Mr. Baggins. I thought the middle part (about aventure) outstanding and the first part (arguing Tolkien owed more to France and things French than generally acknowledged) interesting. The final part I'm not yet convinced on, partly I think because I need to go back and read Chretien's ERIC AND ENIDE and think of it in relation to THE HOBBIT.

Next came the morning sessions: of the two tracks, I went to the HOBBIT over the 'Bromancing Tolkien' one. Presided over by Doug Anderson, it had two presentations: Judy Ann Ford's piece on Peter Jackson's depiction of The White Council and David Bratman's "Bilbo in the Land of Fable". The former was the main piece dealing with the new HOBBIT movie at the conf.; thought it did a good job sorting out Jackson's changes to the story. It did not address something about the scene that intrigued me: has Saruman gone bad yet at this point, or is that still to come? I thought Jackson threaded the needle with great care here; J.A.F. took the position that he was already evil and deliberately working to forestall the Council's taking any effective action.

I'd heard an earlier version of the latter paper at a gathering a few years ago and been much impressed then; now I found the more fully written up version brilliant: a major contribution to Tolkien scholarship. David's approach here is the exact opposite of mine in MR. BAGGINS and "A Fragment, Detached" (or my own presentation here at Valparaiso the next day, for that matter) that I thought produced some interesting insights into the work: that Bilbo is like a fairy-tale hero who goes off into the wild (i.e., into fairy-land/Faerie), where he has a series of strange adventures and encounters with familiar fairy-tale monsters and beings: elves, goblins, trolls, evil wolves, dragon, et al. The strange contradictory indicators of time (did Gondolin fall ages before, or within living memory of the average goblin?) make sense if we'e in Faerie, which as he pointed out is notorious for strange variations in chronology and geography. If I had to make an analogy of the way his paper and mine relate to each other, it'd be that if you look to the right, you see some things you can't while looking straight ahead, and if you then look to the left, you'll see other things you can't see while looking to the right. But all of them were there all the time, wh. is why approaching works from different points of view can be so interesting.


Then after a snackish lunch in the college cafeteria, during which time I got to visit some w. various co-attendees I hadn't met before, it was time for the afternoon sessions. In my pursuit of attending as many HOBBIT-themed presentations as possible, I mixed and matched the next set of sessions. That is, I attended the first paper in one set (Sharin Schroeder's piece on JRRT and Andrew Lang), then shifted over to the session running opposite it in time for the second (Kris Swank's piece on THE HOBBIT's links to THE FATHER CHRISTMAS LETTERS) and third (Michael Fox's "The Narrative Structure of THE HOBBIT") papers in that session. That's the thing about dual-tracking papers: it means you have good things no matter which session you chose, which is good, but it also means you're missing out on A as you take in B. Alas.

Of these, Sharin's paper convinced me I need to learn a lot more about Andrew Lang, whom I've known mainly as an editor (and as writer of PRINCE PRIGIO, a minor but amusing work, and its still more minor sequel); what little I know of his feud with Muller* I know second-hand thr Verlyn's (excellent) book INTERRUPTED MUSIC. Kris Swank's piece did a good job going back and forth between H and FCL, showing ways each influenced the other (and also taking into account other works like ROVERANDOM and the early Man-in-the-Moon poetry). It also cited my book a lot, which was gratifying but also for some reason highly embarrassing. Why is it that I'm delighted to read someone citing my book or saying something nice about it, yet the same comments in person make me bashful and want to hide behind the person sitting in front of me? Michael Fox's piece looked at THE HOBBIT's links to various Old English and Old Norse stories, chief among them BEOWULF but also GRETTIR'S SAGA, ARROW-ODD's SAGA,** HROLF KRAKI's Bothvar Biarki, et al. I was particularly struck by his argument that Grettir starts out as a slayer of monsters but ends up being a monster himself. I've still not read Grettir's Saga (though I picked up a good translation a year or two back), but I see I'll have to remedy that soon.

The second afternoon sessions (2.30 to 4) began right away. Here there was no doubt where I would be, since I was moderating the session in Room A (more on THE HOBBIT), opposite those in Room B (more Bromance). Here I didn't take many notes, since I was busy moderating. The first speaker of three was Laura Lee Smith, whose "This Is of Course the Way to Talk to Dragons: Ettiquette-based Humor in THE HOBBIT" compared THE HOBBIT's concern with politeness and mock-politeness with Carroll's ALICE books, MacDonald's CURDIE books, Milne's POOH, and Wyke-Smith's SNERGS. One thing she highlighted was how politeness ebbs and flows depending on power: characters at a disadvantage are distinctly more polite than those who feel in a stronger position.

Next came Paul Catalanotto's "Down, Down, and Into the Dark: Evil in THE HOBBIT", which among other things looked at manifestations of the Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Virtues in HOBBIT characters, particularly looking at the ancient concern for philoxenia (hospitality). I was particularly struck by his description of Smaug as "luciferian". His conclusion was that the lesson of THE HOBBIT for young readers is simply this: Evil is real. By contrast, Trish Lambert's "From Ear to Eye to Film: The Evolution of THE HOBBIT" argued that the oral origins of THE HOBBIT left their mark on the story; indeed, that some of the early chapters read like transcriptions of the latest storytelling sessions. I've come to be skeptical about those oral Hobbit tales myself, but she's certainly right that he was originally writing for "an appreciative audience" (his own children, particularly the three sons) and did a good job extrapolating from  the theory into how we might see it in practice. In the latter half of her essay she sequed into discussion of the various film adaptations or attempts at adaptations: Zimmerman, Carpenter's stage play, the Rankin-Bass HOBBIT, and the current ongoing Peter Jackson. All in all, quite a good session, with an array of questions afterwards.

From hence, we walked over to the university Chapel (a huge college church that looked like a great ship sailing across the campus) to hear an informal talk already in progress by Jonan de Meij, composer of SYMPHONY No. 1: THE LORD OF THE RINGS (which is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary). De Meij talked about how he came to write the piece, which parts he's written in which order (he wrote part four, Moria, first), why specific keys were used at specific points (the ending in peaceful C-major), changes he'd made to the orchestration over the years (extra cellos to join the rather unusual soprano sax of the original), et al., following this with a question-and-answer session. I actually enjoyed the talk even more than the performance that followed: it was interesting to learn that he'd started with the idea of wanting to do a large-scale work, and looked about for a suitable text, only then come across Tolkien and decided that would make a good basis.

The Concert itself followed, conducted by de Meig himself. I have two recordings of the symphony, one a cassette by a military band, of all things, the other by the Amsterdam wind ensemble.*** This live performance was far and away superior to either -- so much so that it made me wish there'd been a way for them to have recorded it and made this performance available.

Afterwards, a group of us got together, it being too early to go over to the banquet, and set forth seeking hot tea and coffee and a place to sit and talk for a while. The little campus cafeteria had closed by now. We knew there were Starbucks nearby but not exactly where, and didn't feel like casting about trying to find it when we were travelling in multiple cars. So we decided we'd just settle on the Dairy Queen that was within sight of the campus. A good discussion over acceptable tea and bad coffee followed: getting together with friends and fellow Tolkienists is one of the best things about these occasional gatherings,**** and this was no exception.

Have to say the Dairy Queen were as nice as cd be at a largish group that came in, bought v. little, and stayed talking for a good long while (it probably helped that the college was on spring break and there were few students about, so we weren't taking up a table others might need).

Finally, there was the banquet. Some of us stood around outside talking until almost all the table had filled up, so we picked the one that was still mostly empty, which turned out to be the one de Meij and Brad Eden, the conference organizer, were at. So we not only had more enjoyable conversation among outselves but also got to talk more with the composer, who again showed himself to be full of interesting things to say. I had no idea that there are thirty-two recordings of his Symphony available (soon to be thirty-three in a few more weeks). Of these, he recommend the Wind Orchestra recording I have as the best recording available of that version of the symphony, while he said the London Symphony one was the recording he'd recommend of the full orchestral version.

And then, after a feast and dragon-cake and many cups of tea, it was back to the room to get some sleep and be ready (a) to check out in the morning before the first session and (b) to have everything ready for that session, which was to be my own plenary presentation. And, despite shorting ourselves on sleep again some, that's just what we managed to do.

More to come re. the third and final day of the conference.

--JDR

current reading: the same.



*my general impression (from OFS) having always been that both men were obviously wrong, I'd previously lacked the impetus to delve into their works first-hand or at any length.

**this being the Arrow-Odd who went to Permia, as all readers of WHOSE AFRAID OF BEOWULF will no doubt recall.

***Here's a link to the cassette; apparently the same recording is now also available on cd:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Lord-Rings-Force-Band/dp/B002RL8QGA/ref=pd_bxgy_m_img_y

I cdn't find a link to a cd of the Wind Orchestra version, but it is available for download:
http://www.classicsonline.com/catalogue/product.aspx?pid=940638

And finally here's the full symphonic version, which I've not heard (but which I'll have to pick up, now that I know it exists and that de Meij recommends it):

http://www.amazon.com/The-Lord-Rings-Symphony-No/dp/B00005UF21/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1362520730&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=Johan+De+Meij+london

****another, of course, is meeting new people who are going good work that I wdn't know about otherwise



UPDATE (3/5-13)
I've corrected de Meij's name: it's JOHAN de Meij, not 'Jean". I've also fixed a typo ("lucierian"). Thanks to sharp-eyed Merlin for catching these.

Valparaiso, day one

Yesterday: goodbye to cats. ride to airport (thanks, Stan). acrophobiac on airplane. Chicago. snow on the ground. cold.

Today: up, rendezvous with another conference attendee, drive to Valparaiso. check into hotel. register for conference. strict admonition not to lose tiny little banquet ticket.  Meet up with friends: David Bratman, conference organizer Brad Eden. Visit library with DB to check out their Tolkien, Wms, Lewis, and Dunsany shclves. Good primary collection for JRRT, good secondary collection for CSL. They have four books by Dunsany, wh. is good. two are duplicate copies of FIVE PLAYS, while the other two are books-for-libraries reprints (like the first Dunsanys I read) of two of Dunsany's three best books: THE LAST BOOK OF WONDER and A DREAMER'S TALES (if only they had THE BOOK OF WONDER they'd be all set).

Hence over to the chapel, where the LotR Symphony will be performed tomorrow, and then over to the Tolkien Exhibit, drawn from Brad Eden's personal collection, where we reunited with Janice and Yoko while perusing the exhibit.  Many Tolkien posters showing a wide range of artists and styles. Some autographed books belonging to various members of the Tolkien family. David and I between us worked out two lines of a three line inscription in one of them, wh. I think was doing pretty good considering that was (a) in Tolkien's handwriting, (b) in a language I don't know, and (c) highly abbreviated.

Leaving the exhibit, our group of south-moving Tolkien scholars (Janice, Yoko, David, myself) ran into a group of north-moving Tolkien scholars (Verlyn Flieger, Vaughn Howland, Doug Anderson). Didn't Dr. Seuss write a story about something like that? Except in our case we were so delighted to see each other that we stopped and congregated in collegial fashion. Got to visit briefly with Jn Houghton, where we commiserated with each other over a project we've both put a lot of work into that's stalled interminably by forces outside our control.

All in good time, we mosied over to the campus cafe for a snack to hold us till after the eventing's event. Then to the evening event itself: Eileen Moore performing a number of in-character songs from the point of view of a lot of Tolkien's female characters: Eowyn, Galadriel, and Luthien of course, but also Lobelia and Rosie and Melian, as well as more obscure or unexpected ones like Gollum's (yiddish) grandmother, Aredhel, Shelob.  

Before, during, and after the event saw more familiar faces, mostly from Kalamazoo: Deborah Sabo, Eileen Moore, Anna Smol, Merlin DeTardo. Plans for dinner started simple but became so complicated that we decided that if we were too tired to follow the directions to the restaurant where we were to all meet up maybe we'd better give it a pass, so Janice and I called it an early night, got a quick meal at the Culvers across from our hotel, and settled in for some down time, during which I read through and revised my paper (which I'm delivering Sunday), I think improving it. I'm particularly pleased by one small addition I made near the end (more on this later).  After which Janice read through it, improving it a good deal more.

And now it's past midnight, past one o'clock, and time to call it a night. With more time with friends and more Tolkien goodness to come.

--John R.

current reading: JOHANNES CABAL AND THE FEAR INSTITUTE (Jonathan Howard, 2011) and DON'T DREAM (Donald Wandrei, 1997)

The Cat Report (W.2/27-13)

I never did get a Cat Report written up last week, because things started changing so quickly day by day. Then I was going to congratulate Katniss and Kelvis on their cleverly getting themselves adopted, but in rapid succession after that Sunny Sam, General Grant, and sweet little Genesis all did likewise, while Thistle arrived and departed so quickly I never even saw her. 

The main event of last week (2/20) were the walks and their aftermath. Tattoo declined a walk, emphatically. Sam had a good long one, all the way over to the fishes; turned out he tolerates dogs but is not fond of them. Then General Grant got carried around until he felt comfortable, whereupon he had a long walk, exploring the back half of the store. The trouble came when I tried to walk Pascale (No! NO! NOOOO!). She panicked and leapt about like a wild thing; it was all I cd do to get her back into the room, where she hid under the cat-stand by the cabinet and refused to let me take the leash off. Eventually she calmed down, and when a PetsMart employee dropped by about an hour later to visit the cats Pascale let her take both collar and leash off with no fuss. Memo to self: never try to walk Pascale again. Last of all I offered Genesis a walk, which annoyed her no end; till then she'd been v. loving and demanding of attention. Glad to know she's now in a new home of her own.
As for this week (2/27), we're down to just six cats: Edna Jane, Lemura, Butterscotch, newcomer Heidi Klum, little Pascale, and Tattoo. Turns out ALL of them love catnip, and will happily roll in the stuff with abandon.
EDNA went high, eventually working her way via a succession of cat-stands, navigating hissily through territory occupied by other cats, to the cabinet top and hence Cagetop Land. She loved it up there, and even tried at one point to burrow her way under an upside-down cat-bed. She was so busy lording it up there that she didn't seem to mind if other cats were at the far end of the cagetops (Heidi) or atop the cabinet (Tattoo). Getting her back in was a challenge, but a combination of making sure everyone else was inside and out of the way, having her cage door open, showing her I'd moved a cat-stand over for her to jump down on and into her home base, and standing atop the stepladder shooing her along with a big piece of cardboard all worked. All in all think she had a good morning.
LEMURA made her way to the top tier of the cat-stand by the cabinet and, after a good round of catnip, snoozed away the morning. In a good mood but not v. active.
BUTTERSCOTCH refused to come out but rolled in her cage in catnip, played the string game with great zest, and several times came to the front of her cage. I put a short cat-stand in front of her open door, but she declined to come out. Since she usually won't let me clean her cage fully (i.e., replace the blankets and get them all smoothed down), tried something new. Put the wicker basket in her cage where the litter box wd usually go. She came out of her cat-stand cubby and examined the stand with great attention before climbing inside. Then I removed her little stand and the blankets and moved the wicker-basket to where it'd been, returned the dirt-box and put out food and water. She was so pleased I left it there at end of my shift, thinking that if it needs to come out it'll be pretty easy to remove, and that she might as well enjoy it in the meantime.
HEIDI , our new semi-tuxedo cat, is a purrbox who loves to hike up her tail when being petted. She loves attention so much that at one point she went into a corner and cried because she wasn't getting petted. A beautiful, charming, and affectionate cat. Tried her on a short walk at end of morning; think for her part the jury is out on whether this is something she likes or not.
PASCALE was shy but active, prowling about here and there, in and out of cages, mostly hanging out around the bottom of the cat-stand near the door. She still flinches if I try to pet her; don't know what bad experience in the past has made her so wary. Pretty little thing; hope she finds a home where they want an independent cat rather than a clingy one (some do).
And then there's TATTOO, our dark tabby senior cat, who was sweet today, welcoming attention and purring mightily in response. 
Ended the morning with wet catfood all round, which was greeted with enthusiasm. 
And that was about it; left a little early, everybody settling back down in their respective cages. I'll be out next week (in the Midwest, experiencing more Winter Weather than I'd planned on), so best wishes to all (including the cats) till the 13th -- by which time I hope a few more of them will have been adopted.
--John R.

Health Concerns: part of the right side of Lemura's face is red and puffy -- above the eye (which is closed or half-closed) all the way into the ear. It doesn't seem to distress her, but may need a vet to look at. Last week she'd had some sort of sore by the side of her mouth (the left side, I think); didn't see it this week.    Also, there was throw-up (digested food) in Lemura's cage, and her food dish was entirely empty. She acts normally, but something's going on that's not good, poor cat.   One of the cats had spilled her water (Heidi, I think), but this was probably just accident.

Note: no donation box this week or last. I assume one will arrive the next time new cats appear.

And Fifth Makes Five (Beatles dvds)

So, found out yesterday* wd have been George Harrison's 70th birthday. When the youngest Beatle passes the seventy year mark you know Beatlemania and its aftermath was a long time ago.

Appropriately enough, I've been on something of a Beatles kick lately (as opposed to usually listening to them in the general mix). A few weeks back I bought the MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR, knowing full well that it was gosh-awful from having seen it once, years before, when in grad school at Fayetteville.** But (some of) the music is good, and I had a curiosity to see if it was really as bad as I remembered (it was).

I knew YELLOW SUBMARINE had been released a few years ago in an expanded version, adding some new sequences, which I'd rented at the time. And I have both A HARD DAYS NIGHT and HELP on VHS (a gift from my mother back around the time of the Marquette Mythcon) but now that we're newly without a VHS player they're less assessible. I remarked to Janice how it was a shame you cdn't get either on dvd -- Imagine my surprise, then, when dvds of both arrived not long after, Janice having gone on line, found out I'd been wrong about their not being available, and having ordered me both as presents. Horray!

Watching HELP made me want to see YELLOW SUBMARINE again (it'd been a while), and I found that while I thought I had a copy I was wrong about that. Luckily this was soon remedied, and I found myself in possession of four of the five Beatles movies, leaving out only LET IT BE. I knew this was unavailable -- but then I'd 'known' that HELP and HARD DAYS NIGHT were too, so if I was wrong about them I might be wrong about that. Sure enough, amazon provided a solution. LET IT BE arrived yesterday, and I watched it (for what will be the first of no doubt many times) last night.

Of them, I find enjoy HELP the most; something about its sense of humor resonates --"Jolly, with a knife" "They have to paint you red before they kill you. It's a different religion than ours. (pause)  I think" "I'm going to miss the sacrifice!" and that final silent appearance of that Channel swimmer.*** HARD DAYS NIGHT is good too, but I find myself drawn back to rewatch it much less often. MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR is hopeless; better to stick with the album there, which is half-soundtrack and half-compilation of some singles from around that period. YELLOW SUBMARINE is weird in a kind of pre-Python way (the animation style is obviously a big influence on Gilliam's work, but also just as obviously indebted to Peter Max****); I've stolen from it in various DandD scenarios over the years, to the general bafflement of players ("there's got to be someone with a Bigby's Hand wand hiding around here somewhere, I just know it!").

And then there's LET IT BE, which is both depressing and uplifting at the same time. On the one hand it de-mythologizes with a vengeance, showing Paul trying to get the others to take the whole thing seriously (and annoying them no end in the process), a glowering and resentful George, detached John, and unhappy Ringo slouching about. Yoko haunts the set like a prefiguration of  THE RING, and the whole is weighed down by too many middling songs ("Two of Us", "I've Got a Feeling", "Dig a Pony"*****) among what would become classics ("Get Back", "Don't Let Me Down", maybe "I Me Mine", "Let It Be" itself). And yet it starts to come together when they switch to the Abbey Road studio and bring in Billy Preston; even the second-rate songs  start to transcend their limitations through spirited performances. Last of all comes the rooftop concert, their last performance before an audience. And all of the sudden, it's over, brought to a premature end by the police. If the whole film had been as good as the final twenty minutes, it'd be remembered as a classic. As it is, a mixed bag, but one I'm glad to see again.

I suppose I'll have to see about getting THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGY from Netflix for my next Beatles fix . . .

--John R.


*thanks Stan!

**where they had an eclectic film program I occasionally went to; remember seeing "Bambi vs. Godzilla" and a live-action Wiley Coyote short there, as well as the Star Trek blooper reel, alongside less memorable fare.

***and the cameo appearance of Stonehenge in one scene is an added bonus

****does anybody else out there remember PETER MAX'S PAPER AIRPLANE BOOK?

*****A good example of this being "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window", one of several songs they rehearsed that made it onto ABBEY ROAD instead of LET IT BE (or GET BACK, as it was originally to be called); this one didn't make it into the final film (as did early versions of "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", "Oh! Darling", and "Octopus's Garden"), but endless retakes made their way onto various old bootlegs in the late 70s/early 80s (and, I assume, today as well).

"Taking the Part of Trees" (Post Number One Thousand)

So, in the five or six years I've been blogging, it turns out I've written a thousand posts, or about a post every other day. Sometimes I go through droughts where a week or two will pass without a post, either because inspiration failed or because I'm very, very busy and/or under the weather (or both).

Of course, not all those posts got posted. Some I drafted but never hit "Send" on, not being satisfied with how it came out. Others were left unfinished, till the pot went off the boil; it might be interesting to revisit some of these one day, though many no doubt wd now be moot. And a few were finished and ready to go but I thought better of sending them; most of these were snippy bits about politics, so it's probably just as well.


This being mainly a Tolkien blog, I thought #1000 shd be Tolkien themed. I was recently reminded by something I was reading of one of the best Tolkien discussions I've ever taken part in, way back in Milwaukee days at a session of the Burrahobbits (the local fantasy discussion book group, dating all the way back to 1984 and still going strong). One of the times we did THE LORD OF THE RINGS, the question came up of what was each of our's favorite part. The result was a real eye-opener. I'd always just kinda assumed my response to the book was the same as everybody else's, and that folks who really, really like Tolkien like him for the same reasons and so would have the same favorite scenes. Such did not prove to be the case. Pretty much each of us had a different favorite scene or thing in the book that had first moved us, that kept drawing us back to re-read it again and again. I know of one friend for whom it's the arrival of the Rohirrim at the Siege of Minas Tirith. I suspect for many it must be the scene of Eowyn against the Nazgul, given how many artists have illustrated the confrontation (it must be hundreds by now). For myself, it's two chapters from THE TWO TOWERS: "Treebeard" (Bk III. Ch iv) and "The King of the Golden Hall (Bk III. Ch vi); when I feel drawn to re-read the book, it's often to read these two chapters, after which I get drawn in and start from the beginning and read all the way through.

But the one thing that first and immediately attracted me to Tolkien was the trees. I'd never met anyone, aside from my mother, who felt about trees the way I did; Tolkien was the first writer in which I had what C. S. Lewis described as that "What! You too?" moment.  When he described a tree being cut down and then just left laying there, I'd seen and felt just the same thing with a tree a few blocks from my junior high. When he described mourning for individual trees after they were gone, there too I knew exactly what he was talking about.

It's not unusual to have an interest or feeling no one around you shares, or to conclude that no one else anywhere feels the way you do. But to suddenly discover that yes, there's someone who agrees, and who can express that point of view far better than you ever could, is one of the things that can make reading a book a life-changing event.

So, thanks to the Professor for that.

--John R.

A very minor spoiler

So, I'm sometimes bemused or amused but often interested in what Amazon.com puts in my 'Recommendations'. The logic of their algorithm sometimes escapes me, and other times it's all too obvious though wildly wrong.  Yet their system also lets me know about some interesting things I wdn't come across otherwise.

As a rule, I only check the Recommendations in Books, but a week or so ago I accidently hit a button that made it show All Recommendations, which included lots of little action figures from the newest Peter Jackson/Tolkien movie. And one among these caught my eye, since it's of a character not appearing in the first movie (nor, I suspect, the second): Bolg, son of Azog. Given the context (he appears in a two-pack with 'battle-damaged' Gandalf) and Tolkien's original, I suspect he'll be making his appearance in the third movie, just in time for The Battle of Five Armies.*

In any case, if (like me) you didn't know Bolg was scheduled to make an appearance in Peter Jackson's version of HOBBIT-world but find evidence that he will interesting, and if (unlike me) you like to collect four-inch figures,** you might want to check it out. Here's the link:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Bridge-Direct-Gandalf-Adventure/dp/B008LQWNV4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361755783&sr=8-1&keywords=bolg+hobbit

--John R.

*The text accompanying the figure on the amazon site says he appears in the first movie, which is not the case; either they've got which installment in the three-film set wrong or he'll actually be in some extended version of this first one down the line.

**I'm oldschool enough that I prefer little lead miniatures you can paint and use in yr DandD game. I still have some of these from the Bakshi LotR film. Of them, one of their hobbits, the Saruman (or 'Aruman' as Baskhi sometimes called him), the Gandalf and Strider figures were all pretty good, though best of all was Gollum (and worst was horned-hat Boromir, though that was not the miniature-maker's fault)

TSR documentary

So, I'm back.

Which is ironic, since I'm about to go away (on a trip, to a Tolkien conference), though at least I shd be on line for the duration.

The recent lack of posts has been due to my being on deadline, drafting my plenary paper for the upcoming Valparaiso conference. And no sooner had I gotten the draft done (me, early for a deadline; there was much rejoicing at the early Dance of Doneness) than I had a review due (or a little past due). That now being off as well, barring any requested revisions, it's high time I started dealing with the backlog of blog topics I've been wanting to get to.

First and foremost there's this documentary of TSR, filmed back in 1997, which has been making the rounds online lately. It's great fun seeing familiar faces from my co-workers--in some cases with more hair and less grey--back in the Lake Geneva days, this having been filmed in the final days of TSR as an independent company (just before the buyout by Wizards of the Coast and the move from Wisconsin to Renton).

Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq8G-gjpWM8

Particularly impressive are the bits from Gygax: this is the best interview I've seen, heard, or read of his, esp. where he's straightforwardly discussing his and Arneson's respective contributions to the game. Gygax had a tendency from the mid-80s onward to engage in revisionist history,* but not here. Good for him, and good for them for getting it down and preserving it. It captures him at his most outgoing, good-humored, and appealing self.

Since they don't identify who most of the TSR employees shown in the film are, thought I'd name-check a few. Those who were identified include Lorraine Williams (owner and boss), plus group leaders Steve Winter, Harold Johnson, and Thomas Reid.  We see Bill Slavicsek running an ALTERNITY game for Rich Baker (who co-created that game with Bill), Dale Donovan, Michele Carter, Dave Eckleberry, and Sean Reynolds. We also see the DUNGEON boardgame being run with great gusto by Jeff Grubb for a trio which includes Dori Watry, Dawn Murin, and I think Bruce Nesmith. We don't actually see anyone playing D&D, oddly enough, aside from Bill Conners running a demo at GenCon.

We see artists (Diesel, Todd, I think Rob, and esp. Jeff Easley), who they keep coming back to (it being more visually appealing to show artists painting than to show writers writing or, God knows, editors editing). I suspect this is why the piece is short on editors: I didn't see Anne or Andrea or Sue or Julia or Keith or Miranda or Stan. Some of those I'd love to see are absent for another reason: like me, they'd been let go in the Great Christmas Layoff of December 1996, just before this was filmed. Some of us were hired back as soon as WotC bought the company that summer; others who'd survived the lay-off decided not to make the move out to Seattle. So for both its virtues (it handles the Egbert flap with even-handed dispatch) and vices (they keep showing video from that horrible DRAGONSTRIKE game, and its even worse never-released sequel WILDSPACE), it serves as a neat little time capsule of a lost world.*

I guess nostalgia is all about remembering the good parts version of events and not the other side (which wd make a great story all on its own). If there's time, I'll have to swing by the old 221 Sheridan Springs Road when I'm in the area week after next.

--John R.
current reading: FROST by Donald Wandrei, and THE COMPLETE CALVIN AND HOBBES TREASURY by Bill Watterson, Vol. III


*e.g., when he claimed Tolkien had no influence on DandD


**including the little bit of footage from GenCon, and the (since discarded) TSR Castle dominating the Dealer's Room/Exhibit Hall in MECCA (since destroyed by Milwaukee and replaced by a newer conference center with less room, a prime factor in GenCon's leaving Milwaukee altogether)