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My God, It Was Horrible (Part III)

Ah, yes! When you worked six to seven days a week 12 to 15 hours a day (if you were lucky and weren't a slave, serf or soldier) in order for your overlord to take 9/10ths of what you made. When there were no anesthetics, antibiotics or indoor plumbing. When you froze in the winter and baked in the summer if you lived long enough to even be aware of such things since most people died in infancy. No films, books (except for the very rich or the religious) or anything in the way of "leisure time". Where there was little or no "justice" for any but those who could afford to buy it and an ordinary fellow could have his nose and/or ears cut off for "offending" some lord or knight or be hanged or broken on the wheel for the smallest crime. Ah, yes! The "good old days"!
 
I can always count on you to cheer up the place.

forgive me for being a romanticist.

you obviously are a realist.
 

Adventure tends not to come to those who safely sit inside their Hobbit holes, unwilling to venture forth, expend some effort, take risk. There's much truth in the words "Life is what you make it."

Here are just a few of the high points I experienced in the year 2003:

· Rainbow trails reflected in a golden sheen of water at sunset while being on a boat facing West on my birthday.

· The once-in-a-lifetime sight of a rare bird ... an endangered species called "Kirtland's Warbler" spotted October 5th of this year on Kelley's Island!

· Horse-keepers at the Bit & Bridle stable trusting me enough to ride a problem horse ... thus granting Cocoa a chance to succeed, and myself an experience I won't forget. Apparently, only two people in the world are allowed to, or are willing to, ride this horse, and I'm one of them. Not that I'm an experienced horse-whisperer, I'm definitely not … it's just that Cocoa is a friend who happens to be a horse ...

I've also been known to to dress up as an Iroquois Indian interpreter/fur trader and volunteer for the living history canoe program at the local park. Volunteering meant I was able to ride around in a canoe all summer long, absolutely free ... or rather, sing for my supper of split pea soup and camp coffee cooked over an open fire ... French and Iroquois songs, while we paddled the canoe. Lots of good times, from throwing crabapples at fellow volunteers to rescuing people who'd fallen in the lake, to having a man mistakenly think the beaver pelt I wore at my waist was a human scalp, to trading a skunk pelt with gentle teasing about how it smelled compared to the breath of the people trading it, to losing something precious that a friend had given me and having a small child who had seen my loss unexpectedly, and very touchingly, return what they could scavenge of it.

And as for work, I've been blessed ... for as a technical writer, I am able to make my living in the manner of Tolkien's Lorien Elves ... at an occupation that actively engages my love of writing and languages, enabling me that magical sort of creativity where I can ... "put the thought of all that I love into all that I make."

LIFE IS OUT THERE, AND WELL WORTH LIVING!

And if wearing a wizard's hat is my lot in life ... then ... I eagerly accept!

Gandalf the Grey
 
Ol'gaffer said:
I can always count on you to cheer up the place.

forgive me for being a romanticist.

you obviously are a realist.
Click to expand...
No, I'm just older than you by (I would assume) a good bit! Yes, it's nice to be nostalgic, but the next time you go to the dentist and need a tooth drilled or even removed and you don't experience horrible pain, you will remember that there are things to be appreciated in our less romantic, more prosaic "real life".

Actually, I assure you, life was just as prosaic and "unromantic" in the "romantic times" you are envisioning. We look at all such things (and I, too, am a medievalist and a lover of the Victorian era and Le Belle Epoch) through the veneer of time which makes them wonderful (like an older person fondly remembering a very happy childhood). This is good! It is enjoyable! As long as while you are enjoying such wonderful "memories" (as Albus Dumbledore said) you don't forget to live in the "here and now" no matter how flat and uninteresting it might appear to be!
 
Amen! and Amen!!

The other night after we took my daughter out for a birthday dinner, upon returning home and getting out of the car I looked up at the dark sky which was cloudy and therefore not all that dark having been "backlit" by the surrounding store and street lights. As I looked, I noticed a rather large bird's silhouette on the wire leading from the front telephone pole to the next door neighbor's house. Now most birds don't sit on wires at night, but this one did. I also noted its shape and realized that it was some sort of owl - probably a barn owl because up in the West Hills woods we have a number of stables and horse farms. I was thrilled (I was also tempted to go in and get a flashlight and see if I could illuminate the bird and get a better look. However, I didn't want to frighten it away perhaps never to return, and so I foreswore my "better look". When I took the dog out some time later it was still there. Although I look every night to see if my owl friend has returned, I haven't seen him/her. But I will always remember my first owl sighting (or what I could actually see of it) and be glad!

Small pleasures are the glory of life. Anyone who has read LOTR knows that Tolkien felt the same way.
 
Plenty of people, who wouldn't know what a npw was, not only make the claim, but go as near to proving it as statistics allow.
I wouldn't know a gandalf hat if I saw one; I wouldn't have a DVD set with a resin model of one of the characters in my house if it was offered to me for nothing; and my worship is very firmly allocated elsewhere.
You've just been unlucky in whom you've met - and all these people you meet must be surprised when you carefully ask them all about TLOTR.
Having made your enquiries, you must have a remarkable mathematical ability to work out that figure of 90%.
Yes, very carefully worked out, over many years; and much too intricately to stand tampering with.
I've seen precisely one incident in the books specified here as an inconsistency; and it wasn't one.
The "story" has been out there in the full light of day for fifty years, would have stayed there without the temporary extra glare of PJ's films, and will still be shining brightly long after those films have taken their place on the dusty shelves of cinema history.

I didn't really need to write all this: Mrs M expressed it very neatly, in just six words.
 
Rhi isn't a romanticist, but neither is she a realist- she's an idealist. My personality type, according to the tests I've taken, is commonly called a 'Questor'. I once had to answer the question 'what direction are you?', and my answer was West; West is Texas and sunsets and horizons and far off the curve of the world. And happiness is blue flecked with gold, and Irish fiddles, and driving along with my dad when both of us are singing along with 'American Pie'.

Rhi is also an eccentric with a lot of odd hobbies, like learning the words to obscure ballads and talking to inanimate objects. And speaking in the third person. But her whole family is like that, so no one cares.
 
I was just thinking about the end of the movie.Galadriel said that the time of the rings is over(or something like that) but we never understand that Gandalf had the third ring.I think that it could be cool to show the rings that werent destroied.in FOTR Galndaf said that he is a serves to the flame of Arnor,may be PJ could have explained with a few lines about the flame and the ring.It could have been cool to see the three rings of the elfs and the Grey Heavens something like a flashback to the prologue from the first movie.It will look like Galadriel was telling the hole story all the time and here at the end it will finish like it have started-with the three rings tha have been give to the elfs
 
That is one of the many small details in the book that is never made clear in the films. Of course, that really isn't a problem - or much of one - given the tons of other things that were much more problematic than the business of the elven rings. Indeed, by the time we get to the end of ROTK, one doubts that anyone but book enthusiasts even remember the elven rings and those who do aren't really very interested in them. It simply was not possible for Jackson - or any director - to include so much background in the films. It would only have served to further confuse and complicate matters.
 

You saw a barn owl, Mrs. Maggot?

Good deal and congratulations!

Incredibly enough, I've never in my life seen a barn owl (and would dearly love to see one), despite long years of birdwatching and knowing what one looks and sounds like from voraciously reading field guides and listening to CDs of bird songs and calls. Here's hoping I'll receive the sight of a barn owl for my birthday this year. 'Twill be a possibility, for I've already made arrangements for this year's birthday-travel vacation adventure ... a Bed & Breakfast Inn and Stables close to Rohan (Southern Ohio just a short drive from Kentucky ... next year maybe I'll venture into Kentucky-Rohan itself, but this part of Southern Ohio also features The Glittering Caves in the form of Old Man's Cave.)

Another of life's simple pleasures? I just tried my hand at making lembas according to a recipe posted here at TTF by Two Trees. Burnt the first batch such that the edges were singed black flakes. Further attempts produced sweet, hearty, incredibly filling pancakes that needed no syrup ... good change from the regular ones.

As for the enjoyment of life's simple pleasures, it bespeaks an appreciation, an attitude of gratitude, that helps those such as Hobbits who wander without being lost and Rangers golden but unglittering to keep things in perspective when confronted by the clamor of glamor and the glower of power.

Re: Galadriel

Speaking of Galadriel ... now she was hard for me to take during all three movies. Beauty is only skin deep of course, as well as being in the eye of the beholder, but the lady they cast in her role struck me as having an inappropriately sinister ugliness. Now Gollum's ugliness, in contrast, was right on the money in my opinion, so his characterization overall was pleasingly acceptable to me, instead of causing the jarring-grating mental cringe reaction of Galadriel.

Gandalf the Grey
 

And very little water for bathing.
 

90% was a generous estimate.

The every day Joe doesn't have the time to hide in his home pining for imagined days that never existed. He works in a real world dealing with real problems and more importantly, teaching his offspring the skills to be in the world but not of the world.

You cannot do that by living in the past.
 
Barn owl's? You ever seen what a barn owl does to a truck drivers head after it comes crashing through his windshield?
 

That is so cool! Often the horse does not have a problem, its handlers do. If you approach it in the right way and offer it your friendship, it will most always oblige happily. I am not a talented rider, but I always take a special interest in horses that have been given up. As a kid I used to dream of going to the slaughterhouse and saving all the horses that were brought there because they 'couldn't be handled'... I'd love to hear the whole story about Cocoa, would you PM or e-mail it to me? We could do some horse-talk together.
 

The every day Joe is a sad, sad man. My father has dealt with 'real' problems in the 'real' world, taught his offspring many skills, prepared us to deal with this 'real' world, and yet found time every night to read out loud to us. Things like The Lord of the Rings.
 

My point was not made to anyone specifically. It was a general remark about hiding from the world by not interacting with it. Thank god that Will Rogers didn't hide in his house limiting his exposure to a few people that fit his lifestyle. Instead of imagining a better world and keeping it to himself, he had the courage to chance public ridicule in order to bring his vision to the rest of us. Will Rogers was just an every day Joe who believed in himself and shared that vision with the world. Very much like JRR did. The difference is that they didn't hide in a world someone else created and I doubt they expected us to.
 
Foe-Hammer said:
The every day Joe doesn't have the time to hide in his home pining for imagined days that never existed.
Click to expand...
You must be short of time also: you quoted all my posting, and had time only to refer briefly to one point in it!
But if Joe DID have the time, then he WOULD hide and pine?!
If the world was entirely populated by your Joes, all the authors, biographers, and historians would be out of a job.
And where does Will Rogers come into all of this?
 
I'm curious about the Will Rogers thing too. I'm sure there is a deep significance in the use of Will Rogers as an example of how one should live one's life, but dashed if I know what it is.

Foe Hammer, I, at least, am not 'hiding' from the world by 'refusing to interact with it'. In fact I make a point of sharing my dazzling wit and sparkling personality with everyone I come in contact with. But I insist on interacting with the world on my terms. Yes, I do use literature, particularly fantasy literature, as a form of escapism. Yes, I did at one time refuse to interact with the world at all, and spent the years between eleven and fourteen years old in books. I'm sorry I didn't have the strength of character to stand up to the girls who ostracised me because I was homeschooled and fat and didn't wear make up or dress the way they did or have a crush on Jonathan Taylor Thomas, or whoever was popular at the time. But I'm not sorry that I read books instead of changing myself to fit in to their idea of what a teenage girl's life should be. I do not regret all of the time I have spent absorbed in fantasy worlds; in fact I credit the reading I did with saving me from depression. I was miserably unhappy for a while, but it was temporary, and now that I am past that point I feel that I am well prepared to deal with your 'real world', without sacrificing my individuality and submitting to a life of conformity.

I don't hide from the world. But when the world tells me that I need to be something I'm not in order to suit it, then I turn my back and ignore it. I'm not here to meet the expectations of anyone other than God, and that's between Him and me.
 
Mrs M.

I do go out, make most of my time, but my main grief with this world is the commercialism, the ugly buildings, the lack of just wild nature around me, the gloomy streets and highways.

That's why, every summer, I go up north, and have as many experiences vie Live Action Role Playing games as I can, I enrich myself into a fantasy world with many others who feel the same as me.

But I still, especially during fall and winter, yern to travel to somewhere like Japans countryside where I probably could still find some untouched landscapes and maye just forget the dark and gloomy cities for sometime.
 
Foe-Hammer said:
Barn owl's? You ever seen what a barn owl does to a truck drivers head after it comes crashing through his windshield?
Click to expand...

My Dear Foe-Hammer:

Now if you'd have been talking about a sheep crashing through the windshield instead of a barn owl, I'd suspect you were trying to pull the wool over my eyes.
 
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