Overview
As I grow older and give more consideration to more things, I find myself framing things based on or in relation to J.R.R. Tolkien, his life, works, and study.
I touched on this in the many posts I’ve written related to his work and especially in this post, Tolkien for the Uninitiated. When I hike, the first thirty minutes or so from when I leave the trailhead, I consider my transition from the Shire, my day to day world, to Fairie, the Perilous Realm. It is in that first half hour or so when the sounds of civilization fade and those of nature emerge. In 2027, my creative non-fiction essay, The Mandolin, will be published in an anthology, and it was written about giving my great grandfather’s Martin Mandolin to a friend, as my birthday gift to her, like hobbits gave gifts on their birthday, as a turning point in my personal healing and the beginning of my life flourishing.
Given these things and many more, I decided to dedicate this page to my Tolkien activities.
The Tolkien Society
I am a member of the Tolkien Society. You can learn more about it and join here.
The 2nd Breakfast Smial of Pennsylvania
The Society has Smials, these are local or regional groups that act independently and do their own thing. I belong to the 2nd Breakfast Smial of Pennsylvania. We meet monthly and talk Tolkien. We sometimes meet up at Tolkien and other events, and occasionally we get together just to see one another. We are on Facebook here.
This group has gained a reputation within the Society and especially at Oxonmoot for our ENT, or entertainment video that is produced for the conference’s after dinner evening entertainment. It helps tremendously to have individuals who are professionals in production and theater, extremely well versed in Tolkien’s works, and ridiculously smart and creative. I’m so glad they tolerate letting me tag along.
You can watch some of the videos here.
The Big Read
As a member of the Society I participate in the Big Read, which is a new member program. Every other Monday there are two groups, one based in Europe and one in the Americas, who gather online to listen to a presentation and discuss a reading. This has been very enjoyable and a great way to meet people from all over the country.
My Tolkien Related Posts
I have made a lot of posts related to Tolkien. I am working on updating book reviews previously on Goodreads here on my own blog in addition to ones for new books I have been reading. I’m attempting to tag all my posts so they can be more quickly identified, these also include summaries of each Big Read session, Oxonmoot recaps, and posts on my own talks at Oxonmoot.
The filtered search for all things Tolkien is here.
Oxonmoot
The Annual Conference of the Tolkien Society is called Oxonmoot.
With encouragement of my 2nd Breakfast friends, I submitted a paper for a talk at Oxonmoot online in 2021 and each year since I have done the same and been selected to present. Below are the titles of my presentations, including one I co-presented with fellow 2nd Breakfaster and author Michael Urick, who published Leadership in Middle-earth.
2021: Exploring Tolkien’s Tragedy: The Stories of the Children of Hurin
2022: Neithan the Wronged: An Approach to Better Understanding Turin
2022: Lessons to Be Learned from Bad Decisions: Turin, Thorin, Theoden, and Denethor
Co-Presentation with Michael Urick
2023: The Women in the Children of Hurin
2024: The Evolution and Impact of Story: The Children of Hurin
2025: On Dragons
2026: The Ordeal of Hope: Turin and Aragorn
Neithan the Wronged
The Children of Hurin has become my passion. It became my favorite story when I first read it in about ninth grade in the Silmarillion. I read the versions in Unfinished Tales and Book of Lost Tales II by the time I was eighteen and graduated high school.
Since then I’ve given it serious consideration, written essays, and given talks at Oxonmoot related to the story. Today I am working on a book tentatively titled, Neithan the Wronged: The Unauthorized Biography of Turin Turambar. It has a page of its own here.
The Tolkien Experience Project
Luke Shelton is an academic and editor-in-chief of the Tolkien Society’s Mallorn Journal. He created the Tolkien Experience Project and I was participant number 29. My responses were posted to the site on November 20, 2018. I’m pretty sure I met Luke through an online group on G+ that Jerry Burns put together. He kindly invited me based on engagements in public groups. He assembled a dozen or so people and we had great discussions. Most were academics so I mostly stalked and read, but it was enlightening and I remain grateful he included me. For Luke’s project he asked fans the same five questions and recorded them all. The latest on the site is number 216 dated April 2023.
More…
Orientation: Return home, or see what I’m currently doing, what I’ve done, and where I might be going.
East (agency): On Writing and Being a Writer.
West (meaning): The Compass & the Current.
North (self): My Evolving Words to Live By.
South (journey): The Nunamaker Group.
