Heavenly!

"I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library." --Jorge Luis Borges

An Ethical Issue in Harry Potter

D.G.D. Davidson at The Sci Fi Catholic has posted a second look at a certain ethical issue in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows with the able assistance of Snuffles the Dragon and Frederick the Unicorn, who take a Catholic position, and Penny the Phoenix, who represents the Pagan camp (". . . and I don't mean one of those limp-wristed neo-pagans either").

If you still haven't finished the book, be forewarned that Here There Be Spoilers!

A Book To Watch For

She found the Encyclopedia Americana and began with FEATHERS, which led her to PTERYLOGRAPHY, BIRD, and FLIGHT; and she was reading FLIGHT when Sister Librarian came over to her and, glancing over her shoulder, said, "Oh, are you interested in FLINCH?"

"No," Sister Bertrille said, "Perico said that feathers have feathers on their feathers, and I was looking it up--" Then she stopped, because she realized that FEATHERS was not what she was reading. . . . "Well," she said, "you know how an encyclopedia is: one thing leads to another--" The Fifteenth Pelican by Tere Ríos.

I know all about reading the encyclopedia. My parents bought The World Book Encyclopedia when I was in third grade. To me, this was the most exciting purchase of my childhood. You have to understand that my parents were not bookish people. So there weren’t a lot of books in our house. But they highly valued education, hence the encyclopedia.

I couldn’t believe our good fortune. All of those lovely unread volumes -- none of which would ever need to be returned to the public library. Over the next few years, I must have have read the entire thing, some parts over and over. Of course, I didn’t didn’t sit down with Volume A and read the whole thing straight through. I’d read a random article which would refer me to another topic and another and another . . .

Which is what happens to me now on the Internet. On link leads to another, and suddenly I’ll find myself on an amazingly cool blog or website having no idea how I got there.

Like the time, this past Lent, when I found my way to Fr. Dwight Longenecker’s blog, Standing on my Head. (The title refers to a G.K. Chesterton quote: "Any scene...can be more clearly and freshly seen if it is seen upside down.") He was running a series called "The Gargoyle Code," a take-off on The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. Longenecker is certainly not the first person to attempt this, but he's definitely one of the more competent ones. You can read it here, but since it's in blog format, you'll have to scroll down to the very bottom to get the first installment. He's turning it into a book which I'll look forward to buying for my special collection of Catholic fiction. (Since he's already a published author, I feel pretty confident that it will actually make it into print.) Unfortunately, his laptop crashed at the end of July when the book was three quarters finished. Perhaps my fellow biblophagists can spare a few prayers that he will recover his data.

Today he had an interesting post on the interface between Catholicism and popular culture.

For my money, it is the products of popular culture that are making the most profound comments in our society. Of course there is lots of dross, but there is also a lot that is thoughtful, well made and very powerful.

. . . Good stories in movies and novels ultimately support a theistic view of the world. In his essay on fairy tales, J.R.R.Tolkien wrote about the 'eucatastrophe' or the 'happy or just ending' to a story. The happy ending to a story reminds us that life can have a happy ending, and if a happy ending, then meaning, and if meaning, then purpose, and if purpose, then a plan, and if a plan, then a planner.

Mythcon XXXVIII

Okay. I'm done now. (And I even made some fresh tomato sauce for tonight's pasta.)

Yes, I was a little apprehensive about going to Mythcon again after so many years. Was it the same as in the old days? Yes and no.

It was different in that I knew almost no one at the con except Swan Lady with whom I'd made the seven hour drive from Southern California to Berkeley. I felt oddly invisible, somewhat like Scrooge trailing round after the Ghost of Christmas Present. I don't mean to imply that people ignored me, but I realized that I had no links and no "history" with anyone present. It gave an oddly light feeling to the con.

When scanning name tags I did see a few vaguely familiar names: folk who'd written stuff or done fantasy art work, people I must have heard friends mention in the past.

The other difference was that I'd never heard of any of the finalists for the Mythopoeic Awards. It's not surprising that I didn't know they were finalists since I had pretty much dropped out of these circles. But I had never even heard of any of these titles or authors. Except for Tim Powers, of course, whose recently published Three Days to Never did not -- alas! -- win the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. But now I have some nice new titles to look up at the public library. And I will probably try to buy copies of The Ring of Words by Peter Gilliver, et al., which is about Tolkien's work on the OED and Gemstone of Paradise by G. Ronald Murphy whose presentation "The Holy Grail in Wolfram's Parzival," has inspired me to read both his book and Wolfram's.

Um, I don't think we had papers about "the erotic life of Earthsea" or "slash fiction from Lord of the Rings fandom" in the old days, but perhaps I was too wrapped up with other things to notice.

Things that were the same?

They still have an opening procession.

I attended some really good panels, papers, and readings, but unfortunately missed some that were scheduled at the same time as other good stuff. I should especially mention a talk with recorded music given by David Bratman, "Music and Middle-earth."

They still close the Mythcon by singing "What do you do with a drunken Hobbit?"

And Mythies are still silly!

Among the evening festivities was "Lord of the Ringos," the Tolkien musical that the Beatles would have written. Even I, who spent the '60s with my nose in a book and never got into the whole Beatles thing, had absorbed enough background radiation from the culture to find this immensely funny.

And the Not Ready For Mythcon Players presented an extremely brief and impromptu take-off on the J.K. Rowlings books in which "Harry Trotter" is sent by "Applecore" (who promptly falls over and dies) to pick up seven magical items from the local wizardly convenience store . As far as I can remember the seven segments were titled:

• Harry Trotter and the Sorcerer's Scone
• Harry Trotter and the Cauldron of Sea Crabs
• Harry Trotter and the Poisoner of Marzipan
• Harry Trotter and the Giblets of Fire
• Harry Trotter and the Order of the Fish Sticks
• Harry Trotter and the Half Blood-Orange
• Harry Trotter and the Deathly Marshmallows

Someone narrated the stories while the players, costumed in bed sheets, mimed the action. In the exciting denouement Harry Trotter duels the Voldemort character with Applecore's credit card.

Not silly, but even more delightful, was a concert by a musical group called Broceliande whose concert included musical settings of Tolkien's poems which appeared in their album The Starlit Jewel (now unfortunately out of print). They also play "Celtic music from the British isles and the Medieval and Renaissance music of the European courts and countrysides, with an emphasis on music inspired by or traditionally performed during each of the four seasons." They are sooo good! I don't usually buy CDs (that was always my husband's job), but I bought two of theirs.

They played many non-Tolkien pieces including a Cantiga Medley (Court of Alfonso X, 12th c.), a favorite which I hadn't heard since our record player broke during the Northridge earthquake of '94. A tiny clip of it is on their website.

Guest of Honor Ellen Kushner gave a one woman show, "Thomas the Rhymer," based on her Mythopoeic Fantasy Award-winning novel. It was very enjoyable. I'd read her book in preparation for Mythcon and had wished I knew more about ballads, especially what they sounded like. So this was perfect programming for me.

Both she and Delia Sherman were very gracious co-Guests of Honor who brought much to the various presentations and panels in which they participated. At Sunday night's banquet they were ceremonially presented with Food Sculptures -- a new (to me) Mythcon tradition in which various individuals construct and present to the Guest of Honor artistic works created from banquet components, most of them having a punning title. My favorite was "Rhombus the Timer," using one of the delicious butternut squash filled ravioli to construct a little clock face. It was a dreaful pun on Ellen Kushner's Thomas the Rhymer.

Delia Sherman's guest of honor speech was warmly received. At one point she listed the sorts of books she was reading when she was young and they were all books I had read and loved -- but that could probably have been said by everyone else in the audience too!

Glen Goodknight, the founder of the Mythopoeic Society, attended the banquet. Apparently he's been away from active participation in the Society for some time. Everyone seemed glad to see him, and his speech commemorating the founding of the Society 40 years ago was strongly applauded. My husband, who had been very active in the Society in its early days, had known Glen fairly well. Glen had not heard of his death until that evening and kindly made an opportunity to offer condolences.

Sherwood Smith spoke about her joyful discovery of the Mythopoeic Society during her teens. Her description of finally finding other people like herself resonated with everyone there. At the time she was innocently unaware of the hazards of her bus route to attend discussion meetings, which required an hour long wait in the middle of Skid Row in order to transfer to another bus. I suppose most of us didn't have to work that hard to get to meetings, but I dare say many of us would have been willing to.

Well, there is probably more to tell about, but I've got an appointment in 15 minutes. I must bustle!

Well, I'm back.

. . . as Samwise said at the end of Lord of the Rings. And as soon as I wash the dishes that piled up while I was gone; scoop the cat's litterbox; do the laundry; and clean the sticky stuff on the kitchen floor, I'll tell you all about Mythcon.

And I guess I'd better pick all the tomatos that got ripe while I was gone too.

I'm off!

I'm off on a rather daring adventure, something I haven't done in more than twenty years. I'm going to Mythcon!

The Mythopoeic Society, founded in 1967, is a literary group which was organized to discuss the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams, as well as other works of myth and fantasy. I joined in 1970 or '71 at which time it was made abundantly clear to me by the old guard that I had already missed the real Golden Age of the Society and such legendary exploits as The Bed Races of Mythcon I. (Why are the leaves always falling in Lorien?) But as it turned out, there were lots of good adventures still to come.

I was shanghaied, um, introduced to the Society by Dragon Lady, a girl in my dorm who, to use Lewis' phrase, had read "all the right books." Having just emerged from the parched desert of high school where no one I knew was a reader (much less a reader of Tolkien), I did not put up much of a struggle when she told me, "You know, after attending three meetings you have to join." (This was after having dragged me to several of them!) As it turned out, it was through Dragon Lady and the Mythopoeic Society that I met my future husband and the people who would become my closest and dearest friends. It was like coming home at last.

I loved being in a group where I could wear long hair, long skirts -- in fact costumes -- which seemed so much more comfortable, reasonable, and natural than the dreadful things the rest of the world was wearing right then. And the element of pure play, which my age-mates seemed to have abandoned on entering junior high school, was here embraced by members of all ages. I remember the youthful exuberence with which we celebrated Bilbo & Frodo's birthdays at our annual Fall Picnic and the destruction of the One Ring at the Spring Picnic. We also indulged in the joy of innocent word play, a mirth that was not based on mockery or scorn.

But most of all, I loved the monthly meetings where we discussed books! One of the things that most impressed me was that we were from very different age groups, backgrounds, and levels of experience. But none of that mattered during our discussions where people much older than I (though probably younger than I am now) listened respectfully to the youngest members and engaged them as individuals rather than as types. (Sort of like the Internet, only face to face.)

Ah, the golden glow of memory.

But my ride is driving up the street. I'm off on the road with dwarves!

Unshelved

Oh, my goodness! Why have I never stumbled on this before? Unshelved is a daily comic strip set in a public library.

From their website:

Writer Gene Ambaum (the made-up name of a real-life librarian) and co-writer and artist Bill Barnes have been publishing since February 16, 2002. Some of the stories are made up, some of them are based on real life, and some are absolutely true stories sent to us from our readers. And the stranger the story, the more likely it is to be true.

Here is the beginning of a weeklong series comparing libraries to the Internet, which also spoofs the popular Mac commercials.

This is the beginning of a segment in which Dewey, the YA librarian, meets the only kid in America who hasn't read Harry Potter.

And here's the one with which I, as a bibliophagist, most identify. If you don't click on any of the others, please click on this one.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to buy their books!