A Good Day

So, today we re-instituted our policy, begun in January of 2007, of going someplace new or trying something different once a month.

This weekend it was to celebrate Janice's birthday. First, we indulged ourselves with a breakfast consisting largely of homemade rolls (my grandmother's recipe, which these days I can only make on non-Atkins feast days).

Next, we drove down to Sumner (which seems to be a nice little town) to have high tea at The Secret Garden, an English-style teahouse which takes up the ground floor of an old nineteenth century 'Queen Anne' house called The Herbert Wms House (built in 1890). We had the little sun room to ourselves, where in addition to the tea (English Breakfast for me, Darjeeling for Janice) we had some most excellent freshly made scones (still warm), an array of bite-sized quiches and the like, traditional tea sandwiches (which of course I passed on), and more bite-sized desert morsels (a stick of shortbread, a mini gingerbread muffin, &c). Highly satisfactory!

From there, we headed down to Olympia, which we've passed through on several occasions on our way down to Portland or Trout Lake, but only visited the city itself once, years back, as part of a group who went down to see The King in Yellow -- perhaps the worst play I've ever actually seen performed.

This time, we visited the state Capitol building, which turns out to be suitably impressive, as one might expect. Lots of marble and massive stairs and grand vaulting columns and public statuary (bronze) and a great high dome; huge legislative chambers on either side and galleries above; a warren of little rooms belowground. This makes the third statehouse I've seen (the others being in Little Rock and Madison) and the third Janice has seen (her previous ones being in Springfield and Madison).*

After poking about for a bit, we strolled around the grounds, taking in the Story Pole (a painted totem), the WWII memorial/monument, the sunken garden (now in winter-resting mode), and walked by the (closed) conservatory --basically an oldstyle greenhouse, currently abandoned, dating from the FDR era (1940 to be precise, according to the official plaque on the side listing Roosevelt as president and Harold Ickes as Director of Public Works). Apparently it's unsafe to go through these days; hope they fix it up rather than tear it down.

I shd note that we were not the only tourist: there were hordes of well-dressed high school kids, either on a field trip or there for some sort of Boys State event (assuming they still have Boys State), and outside at the overlook for Capitol Lake we were much amused to see two Buddhist Monks in their traditional saffron robes taking vacation photos.

From there we walked down to the Japanese Garden: smaller than the Arboretum's walled garden, which we like to visit a few times a year (on good days we get to feed the turtles) and larger than Kent's little Kaibara Park by the (temporarily closed) library. Apparently they'd been having some event that was just ending involving a lot of tarps set up over folding tables; the one thing we saw were two men pounding rice with wooden mallets -- which was interesting, but we missed whatever story went along with the demonstration.

On the way back we decided to walk through rather than around a tiny park, and hence discovered the Sequoia. Rather grandly named The Daniel J. Evans Tree (sequoia sempervirons), it was obviously a relatively young tree (as sequoias go) but still towered over the other trees in the little park. Not being surrounded by other giant trees, it had little branches sticking out all round rather than a vast stretch of bare trunk with all the branches way up at the top, as in most pictures I've seen of sequoias. A nice foretaste of the redwoods we'll be going down to see later this year.

And after, back home for a quiet evening with the cats. A pleasant enough trip; we'll have to try Olympia again sometime. One of the things I enjoyed the most about the day were the long conversations we had -- though truthful disclosure requires me to reveal that apparently Janice had a bet with herself about how long it'd be before I brought up Tolkien. We arrived at the tea house at 10.40, and I did the expected about ten minutes later.

Happy Birthday!

--JDR

*plus of course we've visited the U. S. Capitol in D.C.

Goodbye, 2009

Sometimes, a cartoon says it all, as in the case of these episodes of SINFEST -- a v. funny, thoughtful, and occasionally profane online strip I discovered through Jeff Grubb's GRUBBSTREET.

http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=3401

http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=3402

http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=3405

http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=3406

Do not go gentle into that goodnight indeed, 2009.

--JDR

So That's What They Were . . .

So, a few weeks ago I happened to look out the window and noticed a number of small, brown, v. active little birds feeding from the tight little cones in our stunted conifer on that side. I wasn't able to see them v. well, given my eyesight and their size and speed, but was certain they weren't a kind I'd see before, being even smaller than the chickadees, yet the tails were too long and straight for them to be wrens. Then a week or so later they came back and Janice and I were both able to see them. And now for the past several days they've been appearing on-again & off-again at the suet feeder out back -- quite an amazing sight, mixing freely with the occasional chickadee (which helped me confirm that they were definitely smaller than the chickadees, previously the smallest birds I've noticed aside of course from our hummingbirds).

So yesterday I asked the folks at Wild Birds Unlimited, where I'd gone to stock up on finch mix (there being heavy demand this time of year) what they might be. Small, fast, brown, thin, appearing in flocks of ten to twenty, attracted to the suet, longish tail. Ah yes, they said: bushtits. Except they would be grey, not brown. They showed me the picture in a bird-book, and they were right. A little research since revealed that bushtits, the smallest of all passerine birds, were first identified as a species in the Seattle area, so it's probably just chance I've never noticed them before. I did find one image online that gives a pretty good idea of what our suet feeder has looked like when they descend upon it:

http://ibc.lynxeds.com/photo/bushtit-psaltriparus-minimus/adults-suet-feeder

--John R.

Tolkien on Ireland, part two

So, since making my earlier post about Tolkien's odd comment about the land of Ireland being saturated with evil, I've been able to locate the original source cited in PERILOUS REALMS. The particular passage starts a new section of the three-way discussion between Kilby, Carpenter, and Sayer (which took place on September 29th, 1979), with its own header. Here's the whole passage:

"On the Influence of Tolkien's Love of Nature in General on his Use of Natural Images in his Writings"

Professor Sayer:

I've gone for one or two walks with Tolkien, and he did talk to me about natural scenes he visited. One of the things I noticed, which surprised me from the start, was the way in which he regarded certain natural scenes as evil. This came up most strongly after he'd been examining in order -- that is to say classifying students in an Irish University according to their achievements in the English language and literature. He described Ireland as a country naturally evil. He said he could feel evil coming from the earth, from the peat bogs, from the clumps of trees, even from the cliffs, and this evil was only held in check by the great devotion of the southern Irish to their religion. This was a very strange view, and was not one I could even have guessed.

Carpenter:

I have nothing to add to that extremely illuminating reminiscence except that, to say that he was a very knowledgable [sic] observer of the details of scenery . . . [he then goes on to describe Tolkien's 'nature ramble' with the Lewis brothers, after wh. Kilby describes Tolkien as a gardener].

[source: MINAS TIRITH EVENING STAR, January 1980, Vol. 9 no. 2, pages 15 & 16]

--so, as per Jason's comment on my original post, it's now clear that Humphrey C. cd not have shed more light upon this; apparently it was a new anecdote to him. It's not that odd that Tolkien might have identified a particular area as evil -- many who experienced trench warfare on the Western Front came to feel that way about No Man's Land -- but that he wd apply this to Ireland. As David points out, Tolkien is on record saying that he liked both Ireland and the Irish (though not the Irish language, much preferring Welsh).

Quote #1

"I am very untravelled, though I know Wales, and have often been in Scotland (never north of the Tay), and know something of France, Belgium, and Ireland. I have spent a good deal of time in Ireland, and am since last July actually a D. Litt. of University College Dublin; but be it noted I first set foot in 'Eire' in 1949 after The Lord of the Rings was finished, and find both Gaelic and the air of Ireland wholly alien – though the latter (not the language) is attractive." [JRRT to HM Co., June 1955; LETTERS p. 219)]

In a second letter, Tolkien is even more explicit:

Quote #2

"I do not travel much. I love Wales (what is left of it, when mines, and the even more ghastly sea-side resorts, have done their worst), and especially the Welsh language. But I have not in fact been in W. for a long time (except for crossing it on the way to Ireland). I go frequently to Ireland (Eire: Southern Ireland) being fond of it and of (most of) its people; but the Irish language I find wholly unattractive. I hope that is enough to go on with." [JRRT to Rhona Beare, draft of October 1958; LETTERS p. 289]

So, on the one hand Sayer tells us Tolkien considered Ireland a land saturated with evil, and on the other Tolkien twice goes out of his way to say that he liked Ireland and its people. I don't think there's any way to reconcile these two positions, other than to assume that Sayer somewhat misunderstood Tolkien -- that Tolkien had been describing his experiences at a particular spot in Ireland (say, one of the peat-bogs, from which the Bog People are occasionally recovered), and Sayer mistakenly extrapolated it into a general remark about the whole island. That's my best guess, at any rate.

As for Extollager's comment: the idea of demon-haunted waste spaces was certainly familiar to Tolkien -- cf. Grendel's Mere -- and they feature memorably in some of his works. The classic example in English literature is Browning's "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came". Given Tolkien's sensitivity to landscapes, I see how he could feel this way about specific places he'd encountered, of which Sayer gives us one example (apparently not the only one). I know the most sinister-looking place I remember seeing, a woods of twisted trees you have to walk through for a mile or more to see a petrogylph-site, looked menacing but didn't feel that way at all. The only time I did get an odd feeling from a landscape was on the Isle of Wight when I climbed Tennyson Down. Walking around the top in the fog, I v. much got the sense that I was in Britain, not England. This is the only time I've felt anything like that in my five trips to the UK; what some might call a numinous feeling. It was v. striking, and memorable, but not at all sinister.* Luck, perhaps?

--John R.

*the frightening part came a little later. Since I'd climbed up one side, I assumed the other was pretty much the same. So later, after I'd sat down to rest and think a little, when the fog lifted saw I was less than five feet from the edge of a sheer cliff dropping what looked like hundreds of feet to The Needles, my acrophobia kicked in big-time.

January 3rd, 1892

Happy Tolkien's Birthday!

Six Hundred Books

So, a new year and a new decade, both of which inspired me to look back at my reading list to see how I've done. I used to read about a hundred books a year, but in recent years I've slowed down and now average about sixty or so. Partly this is because I read a good deal on-line -- certainly more than I used to do with the occasional newspaper or magazine. Partly it's because I listen to a lot of recorded books, which I don't count in the reading list (and which I've never been able to keep a separate list for, for whatever reason). Partly it's because these days I read a lot of manga, which again doesn't count. And of course all the anime I watch (usually during meals when I'm by myself, or at night before going to bed) cuts into what used to be reading time.

Still, I find I do get through a fair amount. January 1st 2000 found me reading book #II.2204, MURDER IS SERVED [1948] by Richard & Francis Lockridge -- one of the Pam & Jerry North mysteries I'd picked up years before; I'd been curious to read this because my sister was named after Pamela North (from the tv show based on the books).

And January 1st 2010 finds me finishing up #II.2816, THE LOST STRADIVARIUS by Jn Meade Falkner [1895] -- an absolute dud of a ghost story more interesting for its sanctimonious passages that are almost a parody of Victorian public piety than for any merits as a story.

And in-between? Rather than list all six hundred and twelve books, here's a sampling of ones that I was particularly struck with at the time, either because I thought they were especially well-written, or thought-provoking, or for some other reason really stood out from the crowd.

--CASE CLOSED by Gerald Posner [1993]

--uncollected short stories by Lord Dunsany

--SEVEN NIGHTS by Jorge Luis Borges [1984]

--ONLY YESTERDAY by Frederick Lewis Allen [1931]

--*THE LAND OF LAUGHS by Jonathan Carroll [1980]

--CADMEAN LETTERS by Martin Bernal [1990]

--*THE DYING EARTH by Jack Vance [1950]

--an unpublished piece by Verlyn Flieger [circa 2001]

--THE LOST CHRONICLES OF THE MAYA KINGS by David Drew [1999]

--*TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON by R. A. McAvoy [1983]

--TO THE CHAPEL PERILOUS by Naomi Mitchison [1955]

--*A NIGHT IN LONESOME OCTOBER by Roger Zelazny [1993]

--BLACK ATHENA STRIKES BACK by Martin Bernal [2001]

--*THE FORGOTTEN BEASTS OF ELD by Patricia McKillip [1974]

--A PLEASING TERROR by M. R. James [2001]

--*SWORDS AGAINST DEATH by Fritz Leiber [1970]

--*A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS by David Lindsay [1920]

--*THE BRIDGE OF BIRDS & *EIGHT SKILLED GENTLEMEN by Barry Hughart [1984 & 1991]

--*THE DREAM OF X & *THE NIGHT LAND by Wm Hope Hodgson [1912]

--NIGHT WATCH by Terry Pratchett [2002]

--*THE SECRET MOUNTAIN & *THE BOOK OF THREE DRAGONS by Kenneth Morris [1926 & 1930]

--*HOBBERDY DICK by Katharine Briggs [1955]

--*THE SILENT MIAOW by Paul Gallico [1964]

--THERE & BACK AGAIN: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF J. R. R. TOLKIEN by Matthew Lyons [2004]

--LOST LANGUAGES by Andrew Robinson [2002]

--*PERSUASION by Jane Austen [1818]

--THE LORD OF THE RINGS 1954-2004: SCHOLARSHIP IN HONOR OF RICHARD E. BLACKWELDER ed. Hammond & Scull [2006]

--*LUD-IN-THE-MIST by Hope Mirrlees [1926]

--INTERRUPTED MUSIC by Verlyn Flieger [2005]

--PERILOUS REALMS by Marjorie Burns [2005]

--COLLAPSE by Jared Diamond [2005/2006]

--MISQUOTING JESUS by Bart Ehrman [2005]

--PALESTINE: PEACE NOT APARTHEID by Jimmy Carter [2006]

--HARRY POTTER & THE DEATHLY HALLOWS [2007]

--OWEN BARFIELD (biography) by Simon Blaxland de Lange [2006]

--CORALINE by Neil Gaiman [2002]

--BEOWULF A (verse) & BEOWULF B (prose) plus the PWYLL fragment & misc. related texts, tr. J. R. R. Tolkien [unpublished]

--THE FRODO FRANCHISE by Kristin Thompson [2007]

--*THE GODS OF PEGANA by Ld Dunsany [1905]

--THE LEGEND OF SIGURD & GUDRUN by J. R. R. Tolkien [2009]

--MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE TREES by Th. Pakenham [1996]

A fairly mixed lot, I wd say. Looking through the list, I see I don't re-read Tolkien nearly as often as I used to, but that probably because when I get the itch to do so I'm just as likely to listen to it on audiobook -- which I really shd upgrade from cassettes to cds.

And now, on to the next book.

--John R.

* (an asterisk indicates this is a rereading)

Sir Peter

So, yesterday I was surprised to find in the local paper (or, rather, at the website wh. is what remains of the local paper) the news that Peter Jackson appears on the New Year's Honours List and henceforth can style himself 'Sir Peter'. His knighthood is specifically for "services to film", but the account I saw v. much emphasized THE LORD OF THE RINGS film trilogy and the upcoming HOBBIT duology.*

http://www.seattlepi.com/movies/1402ap_as_people_peter_jackson.html

It's nice to see someone mainly known for his work on Tolkien to be honored in this way. In part it seems a sign that the old custom of only giving out knighthoods to people in the entertainment industry when they were at death's door (Hitchcock, Chaplin, Wodehouse) has finally given way to recognizing them while their careers are still ongoing (e.g., Sir Ian McKellen). Even so, Jackson is on the youngish side to be receiving this award. Good for him, I say.

--John R.

*as opposed, say, to his brilliant but little-known mockumentary, FORGOTTEN SILVER