The Hobbit Hole III - Journey to the Cross-roads!

[HairOfTheDog]

Welcome to The Hobbit Hole!

Journey to the Cross-roads
The Two Towers Edition

Come on! Come in! -if you would like to have some seedcakes and a pint and relax a while. (If it is a special occasion, we still have a few bottles of the old wineyards left!)

Our first thread ( New Zealander builds Hobbit hole ) reached 4,100 posts, and we thought that was big. Our second thread (The New Hobbit Hole ) held us for over 48,000 posts, and we loved it dearly. We talked about moving to a new thread for the last 38,000 posts, but we are really slow to muster! Finally, the time has come. Tomorrow (at 12:01 am, to be precise!) The Two Towers comes out, and we start a new chapter.

[Sam Cree]

I have half a mind to just keep about 5 dozen shrimp in it, then when we are ready for dinner...

[Overtaxed]

Hehehe...no. We've had a lot of rain lately. I at least need to get rid of the standing water....skeeters, ya know.

[Sam Cree]

I usually keep buckets of water standing around, growing mosquito larvae. Then, my mosquitos chase the neighbors back inside their houses when they try to come out, so they don't stand around yakking. Keeps the neighborhood more quiet.

[osagebowman]

SC: yes, I have, they are a lot of fun, try google with atlatl and you'll get more hits than you can shake a stick at. (no pun intended). Cane makes great, and cheap, darts. Martha Stewart's plant stakes form the easy and cheap (anyone notice I'm frugal), arrows and darts. The atl-atl generally is as long as your forearm, and they do need to flex. Society of Primitive Technology had a great issue on them a few years ago. Turkey feathers are great fletching. One tip is try your first few throws in a big open field. It is amazing how much power can be generated and, with a bit of practice, how accurate they can be.
SC & Hair, all the talk of aquariums and fish reminded us, we need to make up some fish oil emulsion for the plants. Thanks. BBL

[osagebowman]

SC: just reread the post, hmm. first off the tall plant stakes, say 4-5 feet tall, are the ones for darts. The shorter ones, 36 inches are for the arrows. Kmart has them as well as most garden and building stores, Some are green colored others natural, no diff we could find. Feathers are optional with darts, we like 'em that way though, some prim-techies have made a real science of it. BBL

[Vets_Husband_and_Wife]

28,644!!!!

Great letter.. and WOW, I'm impressed by so many things, not to leave out the fact that this is the BIGGEST THREAD I've EVER seen on FR!!!

FRegards, Vets :o)

[Sam Cree]

Thanks for the info, just saved it into a Word doc.

[Sam Cree]

Thanks for the advice on the dishwasher last week, the thing is running fine, you guys were right. Apologies to anyone I forgot.

[SuziQ]

he shot her and then himself within seconds, while the kids watched and screamed.

It's bad enough that he felt the need to do it, but even WORSE that he did in in front of his kids! I'm glad their Mom is still alive. I'll have to check out the thread on FR. I didn't pay attention to it last night.

[.30Carbine]

Here's a section of the interview I have heard, from 1971, widely available on the net:

[Interviewer]Gerrolt - There's an autumnal quality throughout the whole of The Lord of the Rings, in one case a character says the story continues but I seem to have dropped out of it . . . however, everything is declining, fading, at least towards the end of the Third Age. Every choice tends to the upsetting of some tradition. Now this seems to me to be somewhat like Tennyson's "the old order changeth, yielding place to new, and God fulfills himself in many ways". Where is God in The Lord of the Rings?

Tolkien - He's mentioned once or twice.

Gerrolt - Is he the One?

Tolkien -The One. . . yes.

Gerrolt - Are you a theist?

Tolkien - Oh, I'm a Roman Catholic. Devout Roman Catholic.

Listen on RealPlayer

In another (1967) interview: "Hobbits," Tolkien says, "have what you might call universal morals. I should say they are examples of natural philosophy and natural religion."

It sounds, in this particular article, that it was Tolkien's "close friend" CS Lewis who sought the allegorical in Tolkien's LoTRs:

His close friend, the late C. S. Lewis ("a very busy official and teacher" to whom Tolkien test-read a great deal), wrote once that the darker side of "The Lord of the Rings" was very much like the First World War. He gave examples: the sinister quiet of a battlefront when everything is prepared; the quick and vivid friendships of the hobbit journeys and the unexpected delight when they find a cache of tobacco. No, Tolkien says; there is no parallel between the hundreds of thousands of goblins in their beaked helmets and the gray masses of Germans in their spiked ones. Goblins die in their thousands. This, he agrees, makes them seem like an enemy in a war of trenches. "But as I say somewhere, even the goblins weren't evil to begin with. They were corrupted. I've never had those sort of feelings about the Germans. I'm very anti that kind of thing."

Students produce lots of allegories. They suggest that the Dark Lord's ring represents the Bomb, and the goblins, the Russians. Or, more cheekily, that Treebeard, the tall treelike being, "his eyes filled with age and long, slow, steady thinking," is Tolkien himself. In a rather portly note to his publishers, he replied: "It is not about anything but itself. (Certainly it has no allegorical intentions, general, particular or topical, moral, religious or political.") But he will agree that the Shire, the agreeable hobbit country, is like the West Midlands he remembers: "It provides a fairly goo[d] living with moderately good husbandry and is tucked away from all the centers of disturbance; it comes to be regarded as divinely protected, though people there didn't realize it at the time. That's rather how England used to be, isn't it?"

Links found on this page allow you to hear Tolkien himself read from all three LoTR books!

I must add, SuziQ, that I didn't lie intentionally, but I have found that JRR Tolkien (-1973) *was* alive after I was born, it was CS Lewis (-1963) who died before I came into this world. Sorry about unintentionally misleading you about my true age! ( ;

[HairOfTheDog]

I didn't either, and it isn't an active thread today. I only heard about it by accident, because I rarely watch the local news! - I was watching Forest Gump last night and they broke in with an update.

[SuziQ]

The lady in front turned but just like surprised not offended - well I hope not.

I doubt she was offended. It being Texas and all, she was probably familiar with the concept of folks 'witnessing' during worship. I'm a cradle Catholic, but we got involved with a Charismatic group when we lived in NJ. WOW! The Masses were awesome, folks praising and praying, and the music sounded as though the roof was gonna come off the Church! Very unusual for the Northeast, I can tell you! And there are some times in Mass now when the Priest will make a good point in his homily, and I'll find myself saying softly "Yes, Lord!"

A lot of it is in where you are raised. Both SSQ and I were born and reared in MS, and we are very familiar with other Churches; some of our family members are in some of them. My Daddy's family is all Baptist, but he converted when my oldest sister was 11, after he and Mama had been married about 15 yrs. Mama always said he was a better Catholic than she'd ever be! But we know about the praising out loud type of worship, and are comfortable with it; not many up here in MA would be.

[SuziQ]

Maybe I'll buy a starfish and a couple sea urchins, too.

So I guess you have a saltwater tank? How do you refill it?

[SuziQ]

Then, my mosquitos chase the neighbors back inside their houses when they try to come out, so they don't stand around yakking.

ROTFL!! You misanthrope!

[JenB]

Well, I'll tell you, Catholics might be ok with it but you might get some odd looks at a Presbyterian church! We tend to be rather... subdued. I feel more at home in a Catholic mass than a charismatic worship service, but then again I'm not demonstrative myself.

[Sam Cree]

"You misanthrope!"

Ha! I am something of a misanthrope. I am always telling people how I don't really like babies. Then I mention that I don't like their parents either.

I nearly named my boat the "Misanthrope," but didn't because I was afraid it might bring bad luck.

To tell you the truth, though, in my old age, I have surprised myself by turning into something of a "people person," actually liking them, and loving meeting them, babies too of course, at least babies at a distance :-D

We were talking about black gospel singers the other day, I just know there is something special about the African influence on music. I have occasionally been to a small rural black church near where I grew up. The singing always blows me away, they are just country people, but the voices and melodies are breathtaking. It never fails to make me weep, the tunes and singing are haunting and joyful all at once, I have never heard a white person duplicate the African voice.

OTOH, I think Asians are slightly challenged musically. Gosh, I hope I am not offending anyone with this, we all have our strengths and weaknesses.

[Sam Cree]

Oh, I just put freshwater in from the well, if it needs more salt you just add some salt.

[Overtaxed]

, my mosquitos chase the neighbors back inside their houses when they try to come out, so they don't stand around yakking

LOL!

Fortunately, I don't have the yakking neighbor problem.

[JenB]

Yeah, the best Asian music is Japanese pop - and that's got a lot of Western influence. Authentic Asian music is... well, I'm not sure if it's a step up or down from Mideastern music.

[Overtaxed]

this is the BIGGEST THREAD I've EVER seen on FR!!!

LOL....well that's hobbits for ya! We get comfortable on one thread and just.....stay.