birthday greetings

[calimac]

It's Tolkien's 118th birthday anniversary today. Raise your glass to the Professor!

For educational reading today, here's a NY Times Magazine article on the decline of Braille. You know, there's one aesthetically neat thing that the literate in Braille can do better than most other people, and that is to read stories aloud to a circle of friends in the dark. (A recorded book, no matter how well read, wouldn't have the same effect.) I once had the privilege of hearing Tolkien's Ainulindalë read aloud that way from a fat Braille volume of The Silmarillion, and it sealed my appreciation for that magnificently-told creation story.

Comments

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

Makes me think of the Sturgeon remark about how two ASL speakers can talk to each other from opposite sides of a crowded, noisy intersection, and thus have an ability than non-ASL speakers do not.

[jpmassar.livejournal.com]

It is also the Gregorian birthday of Isaac Newton of whom it might be said, while he did not invent an alternative world, largely invented the modern world.

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

As a person who prefers urban fantasy, I weep.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

No, you should be thankful that so many bad fantasists got sidetracked into writing lousy Tolkien clones and didn't write lousy urban fantasies instead.

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

I never thought of it that way.