Welcome to the first
“Getting to know…” questions that need answering. It’s based on the old Getting to know you threads that I used to post on the message boards here, so those familiar with them will know that the questions can be a little crazy and the answers even crazier.
This month we’re asking questions of our favourite Ent, and Host of TORn Tuesday, Quickbeam.
Once again, thank you for agreeing to take part in all of this Quickbeam.
Me: Remembering, of course, that your beautiful kitty passed on just before you left for “Where the Stars are Strange“. Do you have any cats or other pets?
Quickbeam: Ah yes, that was a blow. I remember very clearly how I wanted to just “close up shop” when my little feline friend died. The thought of pleasurable vacationing in New Zealand seemed out of bounds, but obviously I went. Perhaps that is a normal response for anyone who has taken guardianship of an animal… those are the bonds of love that are peculiarly the strongest. The idea then came to me of how I might be sharing my unique trip to Middle-earth with the spirit of my lost friend. Somehow it was therapeutic and indulgent at the same time.
Continue reading “Getting to know Quickbeam”
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
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Earlier tonight Sean Astin (Samwise Gamgee) appeared on Access Hollywood to promote his special dedications for the upcoming L.A. Marathon and show his #run3rd hashtag-inspired running shirt. Check out the clip here. Just a few short weeks ago Sean happily showed Ringer fans at TheOneRing.net a sneak-peak when he joined our live weekly webcast TORn TUESDAYS with Cliff Broadway. Sean treated us to stunningly cool movie props and authentic costumes from the LOTR trilogy and talked enthusiastically about running and training. Check out the TORn TUESDAY archive on our Live Event page where we start talking about marathons about an hour in.
Follow Sean Astin on Twitter.
Visit the official Sean Astin website.
Find out more about Sean Astin’s Run3rd special project.
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Middle-earth Madness and all the fun that implies, is soon to be released to fans of J.R.R. Tolkien everywhere. Readers and moviegoers will be able to vote as we pit character vs. character in a showdown to determine the 2012 Middle-earth character champion.
In the spirit of the U.S.’ NCAA college basketball tournament, known as March Madness, we will create matchups that pit the likes of Gollum vs. Treebeard and Boromir vs. Balin. Unlike the NCAA bracket, ours will be a 32 team showdown. Using voting fan input and finally our own selection committee.
And, because there are hundreds of great characters across the Middle-earth catalog, we know not everybody’s favorite character can fit in a field of 32 and just like in the NCAA tournament, some deserving characters may not get in. (Unlike the basketball tournament however, all of the characters are fictional and none will have his or her feelings hurt and they all have “next year” to be a contender.) So, we hope you will join us for our voting and enjoy Middle-earth Madness! The Bracket will be revealed soon!
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We’ve gotten a lot of great reaction to yesterday’s reveal of our Today in Middle-earth Calendar and want to share a quick update for those of you looking to add it to your feed or Apple’s iCal. For iCal, simply click on this link and the calendar will be automatically added to your iCal application (from there you can share it on your iPHone, etc). When we make updates to the calendar they should automatically populate your calendar as well. If you are looking for a XML feed of this calendar, click here. [XML Feed] [iCal Download] [TIME Calendar]
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Today we are proud to formally announce a new feature on TheOneRing.net called ‘T.I.M.E.’ – the Today in Middle-earth Calendar! Created as a Google calendar (so you can subscribe, set reminders and share) we hope this calendar will serve as your one-stop reference point for Middle-earth events on any given day of the year. From The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings and beyond, we’ve got significant events galore. But wait…there’s more! The project does not simply tell you about the event, it also links you to discussion threads on our very own forums, allow you to discuss the history of Middle-earth with over 7500+ of your closest Tolkien fanatic friends. This calendar came together thanks to the extremely hard work of staffers Magpie, Grammaboodawg and Kelvarhin. So dive on it, and make it a habit to check our Today in Middle-earth Calendar! [TIME Calendar]
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Back in 2001, I wrote Glossopoeia for Fun and Profit (also reprinted in The People’s Guide to J.R.R. Tolkien), for our Green Books department, in which I discussed three examples of invented languages: Esperanto, Elvish, and Klingon. For those who found that necessarily brief article of interest, University of Indiana linguistics professor Michael Adams has now edited a new book, From Elvish to Klingon: Exploring Invented Languages (Oxford University Press, 2011), comprising eight essays (including his a general introductory essay by Adams) about linguistic invention, though not precisely the “invented languages” suggested by the book’s title, as we will see. Each essay is accompanied by an appendix by Adams that extends or clarifies some aspect of the essay.
Adams’s introductory chapter deals with the spectrum of linguistic invention, and considers the motivations for such inventions. He considers whether invented languages are an attempt to re-create “the language of Adam”, i.e., a perfected language as spoken by Adam before the fall (it appears that Adams takes the Biblical texts quite literally here), and considers slang and poetry as examples of human linguistic creativity; Adams is the author of Slang: The People’s Poetry(Oxford Press, 2009).
Continue reading “Michael Adams — From Elvish to Klingon: Exploring Invented Languages”
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