Notes from February 2015 Meeting
February 14th, Valentine's Day Meeting of the Eä Tolkien Society of Spokane.
You can view the archived video of this meeting on our Youtube channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lgwLqOHz6c
Venue: Hawke's house
Those attending: Hawke (HR), Chris (CK), Richard (RB), Brian (BH) and online guests Jeremiah & Tom.
1. Greetings!
2. BH read January Notes.
3. Discussion of notes covered these topics: new meeting location, Tolkien Moot XI @ 3rd weekend of July, Choose Your Own Adventure books tie in. Venue for the foreseeable future will be Hawke's house, as the Rocket Bakery North was not willing to let us reserve the small room.
4. HR read Elvish vocabulary words from Vinyar Tengwar: Lokse (hair), Finde (tresses), and Anta (face).
5. This led to conjecture about Elvish for beard... "nangwa-lokse"? Perhaps no Elvish word for it, as few if any Elves had beards. Correction by Jeremiah: Cirdan had one, as described in "Grey Havens" in ROTK.
6. RB read Letters of Tolkien 93.
7. Discussion of the letter referred to what Tolkien was then writing in LOTR. Comparison by Tolkien of Sam and Bilbo.. those who are deeply of the Shire, even after their adventures; and Frodo, who goes West immediately. Also JRRT mentions flowers' names a lot in this letter. CK said, "History has a hand in changing who we are by changing our names and the names of objects around us." Cirith Ungol was originally Kirith Ungol because of the Finnish spelling, but Tolkien changed it to go with the Latin orthography where /c/ is hard, as in the Celtae (Celts).
8. CK read Letter 94.
9. Mostly the discussion centered around JRRT's "mob rule" reference... discussing democracy & politics.
10. BH read Letter 95.
11. The group discussed Tolkien's reference to wishing he could visit Anglo-Saxon Britain: "I'd give a bit for a time-machine."
Hwiccian refers to the small Hwicce kingdom of Saxons which existed near Bristol.
Reference also to Stenton's bibliography of all books about Anglo-Saxon England: https://plus.url.google.com/url?sa=z&n=1426139384125&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.asnc.cam.ac.uk%2Fresources%2FASHistBib06.pdf&usg=zFFzRA7dC8X_bZmgLV0v7q2yqpk.
Also some discussion about war debt from WWII, WWI, and even earlier: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/28/world/that-debt-from-1720-britains-payment-is-coming.html?_r=1 12.
End of meeting... sound worked much better according to online audience, thanks to Hawke's new equipment.
Next meeting will be on March 14, otherwise known as International Pi Day.
Not sure how we can relate Tolkien to Pi, but I'm pretty darn sure we can do it (with style!).
We will meet at Hawke's home on Five Mile again.
Namarie!
Brian HuselandSecretary of the Eä Tolkien Society of Spokane