Father's Day Weekend

It was a productive and fun weekend.  The productivity was primarily getting  my parents started with their tech-oriented Christmas gifts (yay!).  That was fun for me, but we also went for a hike at Vaughn Woods: 

We also went to see "Noises Off!" which I'd heard a lot about, but hadn't seen before.  The setting was quite spectacular: 

Moon over the woods

Bison in a field behind the playhouse

We headed over to see the sand castle competition.  It wasn't entirely to my taste, but the artists  were certainly very accomplished:

Cthulhu and the Crustacean?

No longer a slave to the clock?

My favorite: "Selfie"!

Finally, something that would have caught the girls' attention!!!

The Gardener

C.S. Lewis, Plagiarist?

Twice in the last two weeks I've heard Lewis accused of plagiarism.

Once from a devotee of another Inkling, who (in passing) characterized Lewis's references to Numinor in That Hideous Strength as "plagiarism" of Tolkien's Númenor.  This is apparently the claim Tolkien himself made in Letter #169, although Tolkien hastened to add: "well, not that, since he used the word, taken from my legends of the First and Second Ages, in the belief that they would soon appear."

[Historical note: Tolkien's letter was written in 1955, 10 years after the publication of That Hideous Strength, and perhaps 5 or 6 years after the Inklings had ceased meeting.  Coincidentally, during that post-Inklings period (1950-55), Lewis had published his first 6 Narnia books.]

To the extent that plagiarism is, as I understand it, unattributed copying, the charge is false. In the Preface to That Hideous Strength, dated "Christmas Eve, 1943," Lewis states:

Those who would like to learn further about Numinor and the True West must (alas!) await the publication of much that still exists only in the MSS. of my friend, Professor J. R. R. Tolkien.

(I have the "First Paperback Edition" - New York: Collier Books, 1965.)

Moreover, the concept of plagiarism is perhaps a little difficult to apply to a bona fide work of creative fiction.  Lewis was, as far as I can see, telling his own independent story, even though he took time to forge a connection with his friend's secondary world, through six references.  He wanted his tale, set in a dystopian near future, to share the same glorious past as Tolkien's world of Middle-earth (which itself is suggested as a distant past for our own world).

It is worth noting that Númenor is only one of two glorious legendary pasts Lewis invokes -- the other is the Arthurian mythos.  In other words, he was elevating the then-unknown Númenor, written by a friend of his, to the status of the Arthurian legends.   That is a pretty powerful tribute.

In a later post, I'll try to analyze the six references to Numinor and see what I can make of them.

Riotous Roses

My camera phone was easily overwhelmed by the depth and wild profusion of color and shapes, especially in the rose garden.

Cranford Rose Garden

Ombre effect...

I deliberately took several shots with this brightly-clad family in the background; so beautiful!

I took so many pictures of lavender in the garden; only this one really showed the depth of hue.

Purple flowers on the bank; reflection of Shinto gate

Milkweed Thistle

Bumblebee

Fungi

Water Lilies

How "The Hobbit" Could Have Passed the Bechdel Test - Part II

I originally planned this scene for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, but the second movie actually squeaked through with a pass, so I'm instead proposing it for the third movie.

A brief but poignant exchange, it builds on the relationship established during my revised White Council scene for the first movie, and injects a little Wodehousian jocularity for a light-hearted interlude.  

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Scene: A quiet afternoon, next to a river.  TAURIEL is sitting on a boulder, sharpening one of her long daggers.  Enter GALADRIEL.

TAURIEL: Hey, cocky.

GALADRIEL: What ho, reptile.

TAURIEL: So, Galadriel, what are you doing in town?

GALADRIEL: I'm taking an origami class, Tauriel.

She takes out a mallorn leaf and quickly folds it into a scale model of Lothlórien.

TAURIEL: Cool.  I think you could teach that class.  Well, nice catching up with you.  Gotta run.

GALADRIEL: Pip pip.

Exeunt.

Many Dimensions

So, I've been delving into Charles Williams a bit as part of Mythgard's The Inklings and Science Fiction class.  The official readings are "Et In Sempiternum Pereant" (available in Doug Anderson's Tales Before Narnia) and "The Noises That Weren't There" (thus far apparently published only as a serial in Mythlore 6, 7, and 8).

In reading "Et In Sempiternum Pereant," I found myself wondering about Lord Arglay's character.  To me, there's at least a suggestion that he is not, or has not been prior to this episode, a particularly virtuous or godly man from a Christian perspective.  

First off, I found myself wondering if Lord Arglay had taken advantage of the man whose Francis Bacon papers he'd been reviewing.  The overall set-up of the encounter somewhat suggests this: a worldly, sophisticated man (not only a British Lord, but also a retired Chief Justice) heads out to the boondocks to meet with a man in financial straits who owns certain as-yet-unpublished papers the former Chief Justice is considering for a possible occupation or hobby in retirement.   Moreover, the owner's financial circumstances are mentioned in the same breath with the fact that Arglay had restrained himself, and humored the owner, when the owner made a bitter joke about the papers, which Lord Arglay had not found amusing. (The joke was "All that is smoked isn't Bacon," which may possibly have reflected disappointment at owning papers of great historical significance which cannot be monetized.)  For me, this particular trope was pressed into my consciousness through the short story "Parson's Pleasure" by Roald Dahl.  [Historical note: I doubt there is any "actual" connection between the two stories.  The Williams story was apparently written around 1931, but not published in his lifetime.  So Dahl's short story appeared first, as it was published in 1958 and the Williams story was published in 1986.   Their lives overlapped -- Dahl was born in 1916 and Williams died in 1945 -- but I don't know if they ever met or corresponded, etc.]

Ultimately, however, I suspect Arglay did not take advantage of him in the usual predatory sense; after all, their relations had been amicable enough that the "host" offered to send Arglay off by car (very unlikely if he knew that Arglay had forced him into a hard bargain, although possible if he'd been fleeced in ignorance) and there is no reference to Arglay being in possession of the papers (e.g., patting his pocket to assure himself they were there, etc.).  The advantage-taking, if any, would have been to adhere to norms of scholarship and simply review them in situ without remuneration, rather than taking the opportunity to alleviate the man's distress by compensating him for his kindness in making the papers available to Arglay for study and publication.  The story, standing alone, does not entirely foreclose such a reading.

And still other aspects of the story raised questions for me concerning Arglay's character, again questions that are not fully resolved in the story itself.   Arglay's reported lifelong efforts to maintain his equanimity and not to take on responsibilities, to remain aloof and uninvolved, suggest a want of Christian charity.  Likewise, his recollection of a convicted man's screaming suggests perhaps a detachment amounting to a lack of compassion. Arglay's "habit of devotion" is addressed to the "Omnipotence" rather than the Christian God -- and it is not prayer, per se, but merely "his means of recalling himself into peace out of the angers, greeds, sloths and perversities that still too often possessed him."  Arglay's "natural temper" is apparently "violen[t]" -- "There had been people whom he had once come very near hating, hating with a fury or selfish rage and detestation; for instance, his brother-in-law."  Even the long-suppressed hatred of his brother-in-law (which he now recognizes as unjustified) was something he apparently never truly overcame, but only set aside perhaps for equanimity's sake.  Moreover, Arglay sees the cottage only when he  experiences despair; it seems to materialize at the same time that he falters and fails in the virtue of hope (since despair is its negation).

In a private email and her guest lecture, however, Sorina Higgins mentioned that Arglay is one of the main characters in the Williams novel, Many Dimensions; his character is perhaps more fully developed there.  The brother-in-law appears too, and is in fact the undisputed villain of the piece; a person well worth hating by any standard.

So I'm now on a frolic and detour reading Many Dimensions.  Unlike "The Noises That Weren't There," I've only had to look up one allusion so far, to Kipling's poem "The Sons of Martha" (first published 1907).

How "The Hobbit" Could Have Passed the Bechdel Test - Part I

For the first movie to pass the Bechdel test, they would need to include a second named female character, and have her talk to Galadriel about something other than a man.

The obvious character to include is Tauriel, since she has a big role in the next two films anyway, and the obvious place to include her is in the White Council meeting, since Galadriel has nothing but contempt for Saruman and thus has both the motivation and the ability to conduct telepathic conversations with others during the meeting.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Scene: Galadriel is participating in a White Council meeting at Rivendell (with Elrond, Gandalf, Saruman), to discuss rising threats such as the Necromancer of Dol Guldur, the Fomor, etc.   

SARUMAN: Radagast? Do not speak to me about Radagast the Brown. He is a foolish fellow.

GANDALF: Well, he’s odd, I grant you. He lives a solitary life.

SARUMAN: It’s not that. It’s his excessive consumption of mushrooms. They've addled his brain and yellowed...

Saruman's voice fades away as Galadriel focuses on Tauriel, who is off doing tai chi elsewhere on the grounds, and speaks to her in her mind.

GALADRIEL, telepathically: OMG Tauriel, I can't believe he's sharing this vile boring gossip. My blood pressure is hitting the roof and I'm seeing red.  Please distract me quick before these stupid lies start to addle my own brain!!!

TAURIEL, telepathically: LOL Galadriel!  I'm actually really focused on my practice right now, but I'll share my thoughts with you to help you reach a state of calm:  Breathe in, reach down, bend your knees, gather the air up from the ground...

GALADRIEL, telepathically: Ah, calm breathing, yes.

Galadriel is now also practicing tai chi in her mind.

TAURIEL, telepathically: ... continue bringing it up and up to your chest; now breathe out, reach your arms up to the sky; breathe in, slowly lowering your arms out to the sides; breathe out, moving your arms in front of you.

GALADRIEL, telepathically: You're the best, T!  I feel so much better.  I need to get back into taking tai chi and origami classes again; they really help me stay calm and focused.  That reminds me, gotta get back to the meeting - I need to make a little revelation about the thing brought back from Dol Guldur.  I mean, it should be pretty obvious, but not everyone here is playing with a full deck if you know what I mean.

TAURIEL, telepathically: Yeah, you mean the Witch-King of Angmar's Morgul-blade?  Good luck with that - and peace out!

Tauriel's voice fades away as Galadriel focuses on Gandalf, and speaks to him in his mind.

GALADRIEL, telepathically: You carry something. It came to you from Radagast. He found it in Dol Guldur.

Hamilton: The Final Letter

Hamilton's final letter to his wife does not make me cry.  It irritates me, with a dull ache of frustration and an occasional flash of anger at this unnecessary and cruel waste of life.  Yes, cruel to Eliza, who'd surely suffered enough with his excruciatingly detailed public confession of his multi-year dalliance with Maria Reynolds and the concomitant siphoning off of the family finances to pay off his lover's husband.  Heartless to offer himself up for suicide-by-duel, to ensure that his wife lost her husband on the very same dueling ground where their first son had died 3 years earlier.  To leave her and their other children bereft of their protector and provider.  

Easter Weekend

Afternoon sunshine through the magnolias 

At Redeemer's final Good Friday service, the lobby was as loud and crowded as I've ever seen it.  So I was pleasantly surprised at how sparsely filled the seats were in the sanctuary (especially when only two of Redeemer's three locations were hosting services).  I went to the far side, toward the front, and figured I'd have lots of room.  Never have I been so wrong!  Turns out the lobby crowd were not stragglers from the earlier service; they and their friends were all on their way in!  There were three readings (Jesus as man, king, and lamb), and people kept squeezing in up until the last song.

On the way home, I picked up some kirsch, gruyere, and comte. I love the Upper West Side!

Saturday involved three loads of laundry (long overdue), more books from the library, more shopping at the farmer's market, and a nice walk around the park.  I also got all the cheese shredded for the fondue, and shook it up with a few tablespoons of cornstarch in a ziplock bag.  That should be  enough advance planning, right? But I also decided to make carrot ginger lemon soup (lots of extra garlic and ginger, YUM) and tried my hand at a honey mustard vinaigrette salad dressing from a random internet recipe.  That took a lot of tweaking!

But the highlight of the day was reading the last book of Larry Correia's Grimnoir trilogy.  There are some gruesome bits, but so often I found myself grinning with delight as I read Warbound.  It's a really fun read, and very satisfying.

The Grimnoir series also seems to have  some synergies with other stuff I've been reading recently, Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series (totally caught up) and Victoria Schwab's Shades of Magic series (just read the first one).  Some of it is mere happenstance, I think - e.g., one of the two main characters in A Darker Shade of Magic is named Delilah, as is Jake Sullivan's rival/love interest in Hard Magic. (Not a very common name these days, in literature or life.)  And the Thames is a source of magic in Schwab's Red London, while the Thames has both a god and a goddess in the Aaronovitch series.  (They do not get along; the hero has to broker a truce with hostages.) But both Schwab and Correia are very interested in the mental and physical limits of magic; where it comes from, how it can be blocked, how it is exhausted and replenished. In both worlds, some (but not all) people are able to draw magic from a mysterious source, but can be drained or thwarted.  Both authors thus explore similar interests in strikingly different ways.  Pretty cool.

Buds

Farmers' Market, with Forsythia 

I'd been thinking about going to an Easter sunrise service today, but there weren't a lot of convenient choices.  And my laziness was rewarded by thick cloud cover that blocked the sunrise.  So instead, I went to the early service at a local Catholic church I've been attending off and on.  It's got wonderful gothic style architecture, with bright colors painted on the vaulted roof panels between the pale stone supports.  It is beautiful and uplifting.  Plus, they have a fair number of young children at the church, which is a lot of fun.  I was right behind a toddler who kept fussing and trying to strike out for the center aisle.  His mom was clearly worried about disturbing everyone in the vicinity, so I gave her a big smile.  (When she apologized for him, I smiled again and said, No worries; but what I really wanted to say was I'm so glad he's here!  Your son is really cute, and so full of life.)  The kid enjoyed the sign of the peace, shaking hands with everyone in his family at least twice.  It was adorable.

The homily focused on the centrality of the resurrection to Christian faith.  (As I like to say - and naturally, many others have said it before me - absent the resurrection, Jesus is just another nice guy who finished last.)

My church attendance was rewarded with glorious sunshine for the walk home.

I then shifted into host mode.  Got the wine started warming on the stove, then began chopping peanuts and cabbage for the crowd favorite, Indian Slaw: Bund Gobhi Nu Shaak.  Preheated the oven for the sweet potatoes... All these tasks synchronized well, so I was able to roast sweet potatoes  (45 minutes at 400F) and prepare two salads and fondue "simultaneously", finishing just as my guests were scheduled to arrive.  It was all delicious, and fun to see everyone. It's been a while since I had anyone over.  

I never did get around to offering them the soup, but that's fine.  I'm all set for a week or two of feasting now with the leftover coleslaw and soup (not to mention the chickpea masala I'd made earlier in the week).  

After a quick cleanup, the perfect end to the day: a walk in the park.  Saw dozens of robins, a few squirrels, a dove of some kind, a bluejay (too shy for photographs), and a cardinal (cautious, but photogenic).  

"DANGER - THIN ICE" Buoy