Memory Lane
TheOneRing.net is down temporarily, and we may have lost some data permanently. The staff is looking into who has what and which can be saved and restored, and Corvar and Calisuri are looking at a jumpstart on the redesign they’d been planning. Ouch. On the up side, this may make it easier for Green Books to return to active posting. The static pages where our essays were kept were started in an era (I love the internet age; individual years can be the sum total of their own eras) before self-posting was widespread; we Green Bookers were far less on the technical knowledge side than on the thematic Tolkien side, and we had to send our stuff to an individual tech person who would then convert it to HTML and post it for us. This gradually became a bottleneck (although I don’t wish to defame our posters; we all gradually fell off in our duties, too, due to life, babies, documentaries, books …). Perhaps now we’ll get a self-posting system, like a blog, that will leave Green Books no excuses outside ourselves. I don’t know who we’ll get back besides me; it’s been a long time, and people have lives … babies … books … films …
I know I haven’t done any Tolkien stuff in a while, and I think it may have lost me at least one reader. Ouch. It is hard to keep talking about one subject. I’ve been doing Tolkien posts only when my heart is really in it, because I’d hate to write nonsense about Tolkien worse than not to write about him at all.
But I went browsing tonight through the sites of two of the artisans who do really wonderful Tolkien work. TORn was heavily affiliated with Badali Jewelry back in the day and still has a lot of Badali’s ads. Badali made those brooches that our folks got to give to Peter Jackson et. al., the ones the crew tended to actually wear at Oscar ceremonies. I was always fascinated by his One Ring, though I never bought one because I wouldn’t be comfortable wearing it. (Now Corvar, though, has been waving his ring hand, trying to turn me into a wraith, for years.) It’s gorgeous nevertheless. I love the script carving.
And Wandering Fire Pottery & Tile Works is now Verdant Tile Co., but they still have a few of their beautiful Tolkien-inspired designs. I think I have to order a couple of these this week–always intended to, but never got around to it.
No, I’m not advertising for either of these companies, in the sense that nobody asked me or paid me to do so. Just remarking on some beautiful, fascinating work. And remembering.
Update: I ordered the Athelas Kingsfoil tile and the White Tree tile. A little bit of Gondor for my living room.