Ummagumma

This is a photo of Tolkien's vision for Beleriand and its environs.  It is a fold-out map contained in my first edition of The Silmarillion .  Tolkien's attention to detail in geography and linguistics help distinguish him from other writers in the fantasy genre. Note:  This is the second part of a series of essays summarizing J.R.R. Tolkien's greatest literary work.  You can read Part One here .  I will not repeat links to various characters or events.  See Part One for those. Because she brought them into being, Yvanna longs for the Light of the Trees, which now only exists in the Silmarils.  The Valar ask Fëanor to break the jewels so that the light, perhaps, the Light might be restored by Yvanna’s work.  But Melkor had earlier lied to Fëanor, saying the Valar would try to take possession of the jewels from him.  He is proud and vain of his great work and refuses to give them up.  Instead he locks them away with other jewels o...

It took us only three more days for another 10,000 Americans to die from COVID-19.  As I mentioned in the last post, Trump has proclaimed we passed the peak of new cases.  But, as you can see in the Johns Hopkins graph below, the numbers have gone up not down for the past five days.  We are not yet back to the peak of 9 or 10 days ago, but it is irresponsible to inform the American public that we've seen the worst in terms of new cases when that is not factually proven.   As I have mentioned, we might see a steady rise in the number of new infections in the short term as ignorant people freely stop social distancing , go to beaches , protest at their state capitols against the lockdown, and plan activities around such calendar days as Easter.  This past Easter could likely bring more death to America.  If so, we will see it in the next ten days or so. April 19. You can clearly see that the number of new confirmed cases in the US has risen ste...

It took the US just four days to go from 20,000 to 30,000 deaths.  Trump proclaimed yesterday that we have passed the peak for new COVID-19 cases in America.  But, so far, that is not conclusive according to the data from Johns Hopkins. I'm still wandering if we will see a "bump" in new infections as a result of irresponsible people refusing to social distance themselves on Easter.  We will know in a few days.  There was actually an increase in new cases over the past two days as Trump declared we are over the hump.  Still, we are down from the all-time high which occurred about a week ago, so that is encouraging. When to reopen the economy is a subject for debate .  Several governors are potentially at odds with Trump .  The 50 states are a different stages of the virus's progression, suggesting that reopening will not be uniform . In typical, bombastic fashion, King Trump proclaimed " total authority " the reopen the economy when he saw fit....

The COVID-19 death rate in the United States has risen to about 3.9%.  That's up from 2.9% on April 6.  The US now has more coronavirus related deaths than any country in the world .  Our number of cases has doubled in the last six days. The Johns Hopkins Interactive Map is now tracking how many tests have been conducted in the US along with how many cases are hospitalized (82,809) in addition to the number of recoveries (32,314).   Currently, we are approaching 2.7 million tests, which is a good sign.  Massive testing is one of the keys to returning to "normalcy," if there will be such a thing.  My feeling is that the world has already changed in fundamental ways we have yet to fully recognize. The good news is that the rate of death shows signs of slowing in most countries where hotspots of the virus emerged first.  But in countries where hotspots emerged later (the US and the UK) this is not yet the case.  If our "shelter in plac...

Proof of purchase. The Silmarillion is J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterwork.  Begun while Tolkien was serving in the trenches of World War One, long before he wrote The Hobbit , the author strove to see it published later along with The Lord of the Rings .  This endeavor ended in failure and it was up to his son, Christopher , to finally put the work into presentable form after Tolkien’s death. Being an enthusiastic fan of the trilogy, I bought a first edition hardbound copy of The Silmarillion at the University of Georgia book store when it was initially published in 1977.  It is not like Tolkien’s more popular works.  It features very little dialog nor does it possess much character development.  It is more like an extended synopsis of a truly epic tale that would encompass dozens of volumes if it were fully fleshed-out like Tolkien’s story of the One Ring . It reads like the Old Testament, which is to say it is not as accessible as his other works.  One ...

Locked down at Twin Oaks while riding out the pandemic, we have been watching more movies than usual.  Last week we finished the 11-hour extended cut of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings .  Afterwards we watched a few of the special features including a splendid short documentary on J.R.R. Tolkien and how he came to write the trilogy in the first place. At one point, the documentary quotes extensively from the Forward that Tolkien wrote for the revised version of the work which was what I purchased back in 1976-ish as a first-time reader.  I still enjoy those old dog-eared yellowing pages which I last read completely in 2011 .  But I had forgotten some of the things Tolkien addresses in his Forward even as I discovered that I had highlighted them during some past reading. Tolkien was as much obstinate as he was anything else.  He discusses his impetus for writing the books. “The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really lo...

I'll record milestones as we pass them.  You can click the graphs and watch the spread...it is my own worse-case scenario and I see no way out of this short of a full national lock-down, which Bill Gates suggested four days ago.   Rush Limbaugh and his ilk insist that we have lost perspective and the media is blowing this situation all out of proportion.  I was originally skeptical of the catastrophic predictions myself.  Welcome to dystopia Rush.  The Right-wing is clueless in our new world.  Will tens of thousands of dead Americas cause them to change their tune?  How will they justify their impoverished, money-based perspectives?  They'll likely follow Trump's lead on respinning himself .  My opinion is the opposite of Rush's.  The media did not do enough to strike fear into every American.  It should have been even more alarmist than it was.  But who knew for certain what this monster would do to us?  Only a...