The Epic of the Decade?

So, Friday I picked up the new issue of TOTAL FILM magazine (not something I usually read), which proclaimed on its cover their selection of Peter Jackson's THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy as The Epic of the Decade. This designation turns out to be less distinctive than it might be, since the magazine turns out to have ten nested covers, each inside the other: Best Epic, Best Blockbuster, Best Sci-Fi, and the like. Still, LotR did get priority of place, both as the first cover and first write-up for the lead story (pages 62-65) -- which focuses mostly on Jackson who, seeing the films again for the first time since their release (in order to get his mind working on THE HOBBIT project), muses on ways his films had influenced the way other films had been made, right down to specific shots. Better still, there's a small box about the upcoming HOBBIT movie, which is due out the end of next year: they've now finalized the look of Smaug, the wargs, spiders ("visually striking, in a different way to Shelob; massive but very nimble") &c. Apparently filming starts late this spring -- not so far away at all now, the day before Groundhog's.

Retrospectives are always interesting, and when the tenth anniversary of the first film rolls round I'll be curious to see what the consensus opinion will be about how well they hold up. There may be remakes someday (given the way Hollywood works, or doesn't work), decades down the road, but I suspect these will remain the film adaptations people think of when they hear the phrase "Tolkien movies".

--John R.

current reading: THE RABBI'S CAT by Joann Sfar.

New Tolkien Roleplaying Game

So, this past week brought the announcement that, later this year, we'll see the publication of a new Tolkien-inspired roleplaying game. Here's the short version, in the form of a news clip on ICv2:

http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/16700.html

And here's the longer version, from the publisher's website:

http://www.cubicle-7.com

At this point there's obviously little specific information, but I'll be posting more as we find out more about the game. Here's hoping that this new effort avoids the problems that plagued the old MERP and Decipher games.

--John R.

Tesla Would Be Proud

So, I may have mentioned that a few months ago the local Kent paper started getting better. Their coverage of the threat of flooding has been good, and from time to time they have an interesting local-interest piece.

Such was the case the other day when their 'feature-a-local-Kent-business' page had a full-page article about how a company here named LaserMotive has just won a NASA contest relating to the Space Elevator NASA is hoping to build somewhere down the line.

Now, I'm dubious about the whole Space Elevator concept, but I'm impressed that they're thinking far enough ahead to start encouraging work on some of the technology that'll be necessary to make it useful if they ever do manage to get it up and running in the first place. Hence the contest: make a robot capable of climbing a one-kilometre tall cable. Which the folks from Kent just won, giving them boasting rights, a sense of achievement, and $900,000 prize money.

Their breakthrough idea? Their climbing robot, named "Otis" after the elevator company, didn't have to carry its own power pack or generate power for itself. Instead, the bottom of the robot was covered with photoelectric cells, which they kept charged while it climbed by focusing a laser on it.

The result? Broadcast power. Or at least that's what Tesla might have called it. As I've heard the story, Tesla was famous for claiming the better part of a century ago that he'd found a way to transmit power over a distance without any wires or cable: electricity like radio waves. So far as I know, no one's ever found any evidence of how he planned to do this. Most assume it's another 'cold fusion', but Tesla was brilliant enough, and paranoid enough, that it's just possible he was on to something but left no records behind. And now the Kent folks have figured out a way to transmit power, via a concentrated beam of light, to a distant engine's photoelectric cells. Neat.

And in other news, there are definite signs that spring thinks it's here, despite it's being far too early in the year for that kind of thing. Weekend before last I saw the first dandelions, the daffodils in the yard are all coming up, and today the first cherry blossoms. And on the bird front, the swans disappeared for a while but are now back. Except that there are now fourteen of them. Turns out they're probably Tundra Swans, and the slightly smaller greyish ones are definitely youngsters. Janice speculated that the unusually low level of the lakes this year (they've been keeping them half-emptied so the water will have someplace to go if the river gets too high) might have made the neighborhood more appealing to them somehow. Or maybe it's climate change at work. Or maybe just luck. Hard to say.

--John R.

Kent Levys

So, for a change we're not worried about the levees here in Kent (which are holding up just fine so far -- it helps that the river, while moderately high, is behaving itself so far this winter). Rather, it's time to think about the levys -- that is, the three proposals for funding schools and libraries that appear on our mail-in ballot that came a few days ago.

On the surface, this seems like a no-brainer. I mean, what's a better use of tax money than funding public schools and libraries? That's as American as apple pie. But then so is the tradition of Tax Deadbeats (see: the Whiskey Rebellion). So, just what are these levys?

The first is to bypass one of Eyman's initiatives (which is reason enough to vote for it all by itself). The King County Library (third busiest in the nation. who knew?) gets almost all its funding through property tax. Since 2001, property tax increases have been capped at 1% a year. So the Levy is to allow a one-time, one-year exemption and boost the library levy rate to fifty cents on every thousand dollars. So, if your home's worth a hundred thousand dollars, in 2011 you'll pay the one-time rate of fifty bucks to keep the public libraries going. Sounds good to me.

The second and third both relate to local schools, and in each case they renew an existing levy for another four-year term rather than establish a new one. The first provides Kent schools with a fifth of their operating budget -- so, if it doesn't pass, they have to lay off 20% of their teachers. The second is for technology -- buying new computers to replace old ones that wear out, and the like. Again, supporting public education is one of those things everyone shd be willing to do, whether you have kids or not.

..............

--I shd note that I started to draft this post last week but got bogged down; the arrival yesterday of our Voter's Pamphlet has stirred me to get it done. Of the four measures covered in it, three don't relate to us (i. e., they're not on our ballot), with the exception being the library levy. I was bemused to read the 'Statement in Opposition', which essentially took the tack that it's morally wrong to raise taxes in times as hard as these. I'd take that more seriously if I thought for a minute that the person making it had advocated investing more in libraries and other public services back when the local economy was booming. Somehow I suspect not. They also note that kids neglected by their parents often wind up spending lots of time at the libraries, since they're warm and clean and safe -- so, they're rather the kids huddled on street corners in the rain?

One of the measures described in the voter's pamphlet sounds like Federal Way's version of our Kent tech levy (why ours isn't in there I don't know). Again, the 'Statement in Opposition' is hard to take seriously: "There is little evidence that computers have been able to enhance student achievement" -- i.e. 'computers? who needs computers? why, in my day . . .'

So: whatever your opinion on these issues, be patriotic: vote. And, if you can, be a good citizen: vote yes.

--John R.

Tolkien and the Distributists

So, a few days ago I learned through a post on the MythSoc list that the St. Austin Review, a Catholic journal (of "culture, literature, and ideas"), has a new Tolkien/Lewis themed issue out (TOLKIEN AND LEWIS: MASTERS OF MYTH, TELLERS OF TRUTH). Here's the link to the Table of Contents:

www.staustinreview.com/uploads/issues/Jan_Feb_2010_TOC.pdf

Most of these are names I don't recognize (but then I don't keep up with Lewis studies the way I do with Tolkien studies); of the rest, James Como and Thomas Howard are the best-known aside from the issue's co-editor, Joseph Pearce, the most prominent advocate of the Tolkien-as-Catholic-writer meme. I'm particularly curious to see Como's review of Barfield's EAGER SPRING, which I worked on.

It was also interesting to be able to read the sample article on Tolkien and Distributism ("Distributism in the Shire", by Matthew P. Akers), which they've kindly made available online:

www.staustinreview.com/uploads/issues/Jan_Feb_2010_Akers.pdf

I enjoyed reading this article--having long heard that Tolkien is supposed to have shown affinities with Chesterton's Distributism without seeing any detailed explanation of what this means, it was good to finally have that rectified--although the references Akers dropped in about "global markets" and "free trade" sounded a gratingly anachronistic note without seeming to have any relevance to Saruman's plans. I wish, in offering up the Scouring of the Shire as a model for reforming the modern economy, Akers had taken into account that the 'industrial' changes Tolkien disparages had only been imposed on the Shire for a matter of months, not years/decades/centuries as in the modern world--it seems like it wd be easier to roll back unpopular changes imposed from outside quite recently than to achieve systemic change of long-standing practices. I also found myself thinking, in reading his description of what Saruman's goons had done to the Shire, as if I were reading an account of Colonialism from the point of view of the colonized (say, the Boer War from the point of view of the Afrikaaners*).

But I realized at the end that there are some things about Distributism I still don't understand --most of what I know being the result of having read I'LL TAKE MY STAND by the Agrarians (also known as The Fugitives, among other titles) back in a Southern History class in college.** If the basic idea is to have land distributed as equally as possible among the populace, what's Distributism's approach towards breaking up large estates? For example, Gaffer Gamgee gets his little bit of garden back, which is all to the good, but taking the ideals of Distributism to their logical conclusion would seem to suggest the vast holdings of the Tooks and the Brandybucks, et al, ought to be broken up as well and redistributed.

So, if there's anyone out there knowledgable in Distributist theory, here's my question: what is Chesterton's position on breaking up those with huge landed estates (especially given that, in England, many of these were the result of local squires enclosing commons two centuries before)? Clearly Tolkien himself was not in favor of it, since a return to the status quo marks his happy ending for the Shire-folk.

Update:

Perhaps the issue's not so moot as we might think. Just this morning I saw a piece on CNN (I think) in which a self-identified expert on Haiti was discussing how agriculture had collapsed there since the 70s, sending large numbers of people from the countryside into the city. With the current crisis, many are returning from Port-au-Prince to their old villages, and he was suggesting that one of the best long-term things folks could do for Haiti wd be to help them rebuild their small-farm family agricultural system.

In any case, I'll probably be ordering a copy of this issue and will be keeping my eye out for future issues in hopes they have more Tolkien content.

--John R.

........................

*relevant in the case of Tolkien, of course, because the little country in which he was born had ceased to exist by the time he was ten years old, having been forcibly (and violently) incorporated into the world's largest empire.

**including, most notoriously, the essay "Forty Acres and a Mule" which, if I remember rightly, decried black migration to the industrial north and instead suggests they be repatriated from the cities to rural settings as small independent farmers in the South.

The Mystery of the Missing Poe Toaster

So, the title above does not apply to household appliances named after famous American authors (the Hawthorne Dishwasher, the Whittier Microwave) but to a gentleman who, every year, shows up at the gravesite of Edgar Poe to leave a bottle and some flowers.

Except, this year, he didn't.

For the article about the ensuing consternation, and speculation about the reasons behind the no-show, check this link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/19/edgar-allan-poes-mysterio_n_428038.html

And, if you follow the two links at the bottom of that story, you'll find (1) a brief note about one of Poe's least successful books having just sold for far more money than the impoverished Poe made in his entire lifetime, and (2) a detailed account about a bizarre faux-funeral some fans held for Poe back in October, in which they dressed up as famous people who'd known Poe and recited little funeral speeches -- the idea being to give Poe the grand funeral he'd have gotten if he'd been as famous then as he is now. I wonder if his Aunt Clemm, the person closest to him after his wife died, was represented. At least it's good news that John Astin was the master of ceremonies; Janice and I got to see him do his one-man show of Poe in Chicago back around 1997 and thoroughly enjoyed it; he by and large avoided the histrionics, which was all to the good.

And so, it seems like today a tradition died. Too bad, but so it goes.

--John R.

The Green Dragon

So, I was v. interested to read, in the newest issue of BEYOND BREE, a paragraph by David Bratman in which he reports his discovery that Oxford once had a Green Dragon pub:

". . . According to AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF OXFORD PUBS, INNS AND TAVERNS by Derek HOney (Oakwood Press, 1998) . . . a Green Dragon stood in St. Aldate's, by Christ Church, until 1926 when it and two other pubs were demolished to make way for the War Memorial Garden. This is also close to Pembroke College, to which Tolkien was attached beginning in 1925, so it's possible that he had a pint or two in Oxford's Green Dragon in his day . . ."

I'm not surprised that Tolkien might have patronized a real Green Dragon, but had I known that there was one that close to his own college at Pembroke that first year after he returned from Leeds, I would certainly have included the fact in MR. BAGGINS. A nice little discovery on David's part.

--John R.