"as I am REALLY trying to not push it too fast for people who are NOT here all the time. Some of our best posters actually have lives that interfere with their participation, and I would hate to leave them behind."
There are many "morsels" to consider, offered in this thread, bringing insight, tieing loose threads together, expanding and amplifying the story. It has re-awakened the original joy of the works.
For those of us that have read Tolkien's LOTR once twenty years ago; and now seeing the movie, this is a welcome and enchanting discussion, thanks so much for launching it. The bit of a moderate pace of a week allows deeper assimilation.
Spike Lee was being interviewed on Biography recently, and he commented, that "music videos had reduced viewers attention spans to 5 second blips or less; making it difficult to develop character and tell profound stories."
We are so into "fast" and "extreme" everything ... food ... cars ... romances ... sports ... commercials ... road rage, resulting from inconvience or delay ...cell phones and doing three things at once. Real life can not begin to keep us with the hyper speed of it. Makes for impatience and instant frustration, etc.
Thanks for the slow down.
I will re-read your post when we are tempted to rush... No new chapter yet!