first, let me say I'm delighted to share my birthday with Aunt Dora. Auntie, I hope you have a wonderful day. If you have cake, enjoy it on my behalf. We're having apples and caramel dip in an effort to minimize the saturated fat intake. Ach... aging.
Five years ago I rediscovered Tolkien and it was a profound experience in more ways than I can count. It precipitated me to start my own adventure and, at the age of 50, I prepared to leave the familiarity of my existence and go back to school. Now, five years in on my adventure, I’ve found myself in a spot I never would have guessed I’d be in but feels mostly right.
So, that September - five years back - and this one feel like bookends to a segment of my life that was exciting, rewarding, expanding and exhausting. It is with pleasure that I share my Tolkien mathom with you, my friends in Tolkien.
Last year was for me and many of my friends, “Anno Horribilis”. There’s just no other way to put it. Being out of work (which was part of my Anno Horribilis), I set about creating diversions for a dear friend facing a health/life crises. I thought, when things get hard, maybe being able to pull out a snippet of Tolkien would soothe her soul or divert her from the reality of the moment. I created a set of ‘cards’ with quotes from Tolkien’s writings. Amusing, touching, stirring... all the bits of Tolkien that I love - paired with images. I made them the size of collectible cards like Magic and Decipher so they would fit in those sorts of boxes. It was a project I really loved working on and today I share them with you.
I’ve prepared two formats of the cards. One is a set of web quality images. The link below will take you to the first page. There are four images on a page and an arrow at the bottom that will take you through the progressive pages. You can right click and image and save... if you can think of anything to do with these.
The other format is print quality. At the bottom of each page is a link to a pdf of print quality images. The pdf has one page (with the four images) and another page of instructions on how to print/fold/cut.
HERE THEY ARE
I hope you enjoy them.
Before I sign off, I have to acknowledge two magpie shiny moments. I love when I stumble across connections or new information. Even the smallest of things is a delight to a magpie.
The first was a shiny new factoid. I needed a new card to round out the pages and was looking for an image to go with a passage regarding Bregalad. I searched for images of rowan trees without much success and then switch to the alternate name for rowan, mountain ash.
I landed on this page where the first paragraph read,
If I had to chose one tree on Dartmoor as a symbol for the moor it would be the brave little Mountain Ash or as it is called by the moorfolk: 'Quickbeam'.
Whoah... I didn’t realize that Quickbeam was a name for rowan trees... the trees that Bregalad called ‘his friends’. I love Tolkien.
Next, a shiny connection came as I searched out the quote I wanted. I had the book in front of me but typing out quotes is so tiring. I have to balance the book on my lap and try to hold it open and I never type well if I’m not looking at the screen so I’m glancing back and forth between book and screen. I have digital copies of the book but then I must search through the long file to find what I want. I’ve discovered that, if I want a quote from the books, then someone else probably wanted it too. I type in a string of 3-5 words in quotes and google it and almost always get text I can swipe and paste. When I did that for Bregalad’s text, only three sites came up. I clicked on the first links and found myself at Gramma’s TIME site. Ha! It’s a small world sometimes.
And... there’s one last shiny, magpie connection at the end of all the quote card pages.
Take care all.
Magpie
