My Cat Weighs (Less Than) Twenty Pounds

Good news on the cat front: I took all three cats in to the vets (McMonigle's on the East Valley Hwy; highly recommended) over Wednesda-Thursday,* where they got their boosters, got weighed, and got a plan for the latest intervention over Hastur's issues.

Rigby now weighs  8 & 3/4 pounds. This is great news, since her last two check-ups she'd been down at scven-something pounds, which was too low. Now she's back to a nice healthy weight for her size.

Hastur is still overweigh at 15 3/4 pounds. So the portion control for her nom will continue. The fur loss is much improved -- she's in the paradoxical position of being unable to reach and clean some areas because of her tubbiness, so she overgrooms spots she can reach, licking all the fur off. Now the bare spots are growing back, stubbily, but I had to resort to bathing her in the tub to help keep her clean. Which she didn't like at all, poor cat.

Feanor also had really good news: he's now below twenty pounds for the first time in several years, at 19 1/2.  He's always beeen a solid black cat; now the fur inside his ears is turning white -- the male-cat equivalent of that grey streak at a middle-aged man's temples, perhaps? He's also just developed a few scattered white hairs on his tail. Equivalent of old-man eyebrows, perhaps?

So, the good news is that all the cats are well, and two out of three have their weight either in or moving in the right way. More games and play with Hastur to boost her activity a little, making sure she keeps clean, and continuing to restrict her access to the others' food shd pay off over time for the third cat as well.

--John R.

*in addition to taking care of the ten cats in the Purrfect Pals adoption room in the PetsMart nr Southcenter for four hours Wednesday morning -- these have been two days largely devoted to cats.

Tolkien's Webley

So, while I was drafting the preceding article about THE FALL OF ARTHUR, I followed a link at the very bottom of the GUARDIAN piece and discovered that by so doing you can see a photo of Tolkien WW I service pistol (a Webley Mark VI revolver).

Here's the link to the article from six years ago*

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/may/21/booksnews.firstworldwar?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

and here's the online entry for the item itself (in the 'Personal Stories' section):

http://archive.iwm.org.uk/server/show/nav.2211

Given that I imagine the Imperial War Museum has any number of Great War officer's revolvers, I assume Lt. Tolkien's is included because he's now so popular that it's a good draw for the exhibit as a whole (it's possible, of course, that they just like to make extra links like this to bring the war home to modern museum-goers). 

In any case, it shows that, like many veterans before him (most famously, Dr. James H. Watson), Tolkien kept his officer's sidearm after the war was over, since the article notes the gun was acquired by the museum from the Tolkien family two years earlier (e.g., 2004, perhaps not incidently the year after Jn Garth's excellent book had made Tolkien's wartime duty more widely known than it had been hithertofore).

At any rate, wanted to share.

--John R.

*and here's the article from which that link came: 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/09/jrr-tolkien-new-poem-king-arthur?fb=optOut

THE FALL OF ARTHUR

Arthur eastward in arms purposed

his war to wage on the wild marches,

over seas sailing to Saxon lands,

from the Roman realm ruin defending.

Thus the tides of time to turn backward 

and the heathen to humble, his hope urged him,

that with harrying ships they should hunt no more

on the shining shores and shallow waters

of South Britain, booty seeking

--JRRT, THE FALL OF ARTHUR, lines 1-9

So, the big news Sunday night was the announcement, forwarded to the MythSoc list by Douglas Kane (thanks, Doug!), that the most eagerly awaited of all unpublished works by JRRT has been scheduled or a May release. Here's the official release at the publisher's website:

http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/Titles/79908/the-fall-of-arthur-j-r-r-tolkien-9780007489947

And here, also courtesy D.K., is what someone thinks the cover will look like:

http://www-images.theonering.org/torwp/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/fall-of-arthur.jpg

--its provenance is a little uncertain, but it does bear a strong 'family resemblence' to the cover for SIGURD & GUDRUN, which leads some credence to its authenticity.

I don't know why Australians get a break and apparently will be able to buy it three weeks sooner than the rest of us -- because it takes so long for the books to reach them, perhaps? I've put in a pre-order at amazon, myself.

The HarperCollins announcement includes the news that this volume will include three essays by Christopher Tolkien, which is good news indeed -- I thought his contribution to SIGURD & GUDRUN as good as the poem itself. And more can be learned about the forthcoming book via the following piece in THE GUARDIAN (thanks to Janice for the link):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/09/jrr-tolkien-new-poem-king-arthur?fb=optOut

Here we learn that the book is 200 pages plus (relatively brief, closer to FINN & HENGEST than SIGURD & GUDRUN): remember that the poem is just under a thousand lines long. Better yet, the opening lines are printed her in this piece for the first time ever (see them quoted above).

For those who don't have it handy, here are the only other previously published lines, from Humphrey Carpenter's TOLKIEN: A BIOGRAPHY (1977), p. 168:

(of Mordred's lust for Guinever):

His bed was barren; there black phantoms

of desire unsated and savage fury

in his brain had brooded till bleak morning.

(of Guinever herself):

                        . . . lady ruthless,

fair as fay-woman and fell-minded,

in the world walking for the woe of men.

Of those last two and a half lines, I'd say much what Beren says of Luthien: just that fragment is so good that it justifies the existence of the whole. Here's hoping there are more lines that good, and that the fragment is large enough to get a good sense of the whole that Tolkien had planned.

For my part, I'm going to be re-reading Tolkien's obvious sources for his tale: THE ALLITERATIVE MORTE ARTHURE and THE STANZAIC MORTE ARTHUR.

Given that I first heard of this book as forthcoming back in 1985, I think it was, from Rayner Unwin, I really can't convey how pleased I am that another seven or eight months will see it in print.

And there was great rejoicing, and is great rejoicing, and will be great rejoicing in the land.

--John R.

The New Arrivals

. . . are ourselves, back at last from our travels. Two weeks in England, one very busy week back, then a week in the Midwest that included two talks and an interview for me and visits to my father-in-law and all four of Janice's siblings. The cats are inclined to forgive us for being away so much, but sternly inform us that we're NOT to do that to them again anytime soon.*

Oh, and there was a Tolkien book waiting for me when we returned home, as often seems to be the case these days. This time it was THE UNOFFICIAL HOBBIT HANDBOOK, subtitled EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT LIFE I LEARNED FROM TOLKIEN by "The Shire Collective", one of whose three authors turns out to be Peter Archer, a friend from Wizards of the Coast days (he was head of the WotC book department). All I've read so far is the interview with Smaug and the advice on how to tell a Good Wizard from a Bad Wizard. Lighthearted, but having just read David Brin's vicious little tare I was in the mood for something more good-humored, and this came at just the right time to fit the bill.

And of course I've also put in a pre-order for the forthcoming new Tolkien book, due out in May. More on this later.

--John R.
just finished:
(1) MASTER OF THE WORLD by Verne (v. bad)
(2) MORSE'S GREATEST MYSTERY & other stories by Colin Dexter (rather interesting)


*their forgiveness will be tested later this week when I take them all in to Dr. McMonigle's to update their boosters; they won't like that at all.

I'm On NPR

So, Friday I had a phone interview with NPR -- specifically, with Milwaukee's local NPR station, for their LAKE EFFECT segment. It was broadcast today (Tuesday). Listening to it, I'm pleased that it came out as well as it did. You never quite know how things will go when speaking off the cuff, so it's nice when everything goes well. They told me they have editing software that cleans up hesitations and interruptions, like coughs or saying "um . . . um" a lot; it seems to have done a nice job. Here's the link:

http://www.wuwm.com/programs/lake_effect/lake_effect_segment.php?segmentid=9701


Listening to it this evening, the only slip that caught my attention was my asserting, for some reason, that Wm. Ready was a devout Catholic. I don't actually know this for a fact -- I assume he was Catholic, since his heritage was Irish despite his growing up in Wales (he boasts in his autobiography about his family having brought a priest over from Italy to serve the community), since he worked at Marquette, concentrated on getting collections of Catholic authors for his new archives, and as I understand it went from Marquette to another Catholic university. Luckily, the point's not essential to the argument, just a side-issue. Similarly, I mention Marquette's having bought some seven thousand pages worth of material; checking Wayne & Christina's count in the COMPANION & GUIDE, I see that the final number was closer to eleven thousand pages.

Oh, and the introductory bit on the website gives the opening date of the upcoming HOBBIT movie as November 28th. Would that this were true! As I understand it, it'll be a little further off than that, with the debut date being December 14th (which will make a nice slightly delayed birthday present).

--John R.

P.S.: Have to say, re. the closing music to this segment, I'd never noticed the little tuba solo in THE BALLAD OF BILBO BAGGINS before. Live and learn.  --JDR

Thulcandra No More

This might be one of the neatest things I've ever seen (or, more accurately, heard).

Remember the music of the spheres? Well, now you can listen to Earth's part in it.

Follow the link to the audio file, and enjoy.

http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/10/earth-sound.php?ref=fpnewsfeed

--John R.

A New Arrival and A New Departure

So, another book showed up this week: Louis Markos' ON THE SHOULDERS OF HOBBITS: THE ROAD TO VIRTUE WITH TOLKIEN AND LEWIS, with a Foreword by Peter Kreeft.
And, co-incidentally, the next day the mail brought a catalogue from The Teaching Company that the lecture series Markos gave through their Great Courses, THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF C. S. LEWIS, is on sale for just $9.95, making this a great time to pick that up for those interested in a thoroughly Xian reading of CSL.

I've only had time for a quick look at the new book, but as suggested by the fact that Kreeft provides a Foreword, this is a heavily Xianized reading of Tolkien, focused on LotR but also drawing frequently on the Chronicles of Narnia (ironic, given how much JRRT disliked them). Kreeft asserts that while LotR might be the greatest book of the twentieth century, the Narnia books are "the greatest children's stories ever written". I don't agree with the latter part of this statement, but if you like LotR and Narnia in equal measure, and wd like to see traditional (Xian) values asserted vie the medium of interpreting Tolkien and Lewis, then this is the book for you.

As for me, it's off on another trip tomorrow. Early (far too early) in the morning we head off to the airport for the flight to Milwaukee. I finished drafting my Marquette talk this evening and have it all printed out (and a safety copy too). If you happen to find yourself near Marquette Wednesday afternoon, drop by and join the fun in the new library building on Wisconsin Avenue.

--John R.