The bios of ALBACON’s Guests of Honor are now up.  www.albacon.org  Check out our web site and see why YOU should be there next October.

We give good con!

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it. -William Styron, novelist (1925-2006)

It was this way for me when I first read The Lord of the Rings!  Exhausted, been to places new to me, and sad it was over.

I return to Middle-earth once every year or two.

When I travel, I often wonder: Where in Middle-earth am I?

YEA!!

Ron Miller has accepted our invitation to be the Artist GOH at Albacon 2010.

He joins Allen Steele, who is ALBACON’s Writer GoH!

ALBACON, www.albacon.org , has its hotel for 2010: Best Western Sovereign Hotel – Albany, 1228 Western Ave., Albany, NY 12203; +1-518-489-2981; http://www.sovereignhotels.com/ .

We hope to have on-line registration up and running real soon now.  Y’all come.  We give good con!  Allen Steele is our Literary Guest of Honor.

I had a very good weekend.  It started off with a huge turkey lunch en route to Rochester at my favorite turkey restaurant.  The con went well.  Met old friends and made new ones.  Did a couple panels, judged the masquerade, chatted with folk about my no fuel/no waste power source, got too little sleep, etc.  –  If you are anywhere near Rochester next NOV, you might think about the con.  –  Hey, it is almost as good as ALBACON.

For the past couple days I’ve been scanning in papers from the Tolkien conferences I ran in 1969 and 1971: The 1^st & 2^nd Conferences On Middle-earth.  I may add a couple more that I have which are contemporary with them.  It is very interesting to go thru these papers which were based solely on The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings.

These are the papers which didn’t make the cut for “A Tolkien Compass” edited by Jared Lobdell.

One idea is to publish them under the title: “A Tolkien Lodestone.”  They being sort of not quite ready for accurate directions in Middle-earth.

It might be fun to hold another Conference On Middle-earth for fans of Professor Tolkien, the books, music, art, films, etc.  A small get together in the “Green Dragon” for a nosh & a natter.

The so-called Westboro Baptist Church is again in the news.  All I can think of is that Sauron would be smiling.  This family, and that is about all the Westboro Baptist Church is composed of, is anything but God fearing or holy.  They insult the truly religious.  –  I have a further question.  Who is paying for them to do this?  They are all over the US bleating out their message of hate & bigotry.  Are they rich and can afford all the travelling they seem to do?  Maybe someone is behind these simple minded puppets of hate and bigotry.  It would be interesting to follow the money, as the expression goes.  –  A good primer on dealing with terrorists, [And I consider the so-called Westboro Baptist Churc as such.] such as this group, is found in a very interesting SF novel by Dean Ing: “Soft Targets.” It came out at the end of the 70’s. Well worth looking for.

Recently read/viewed “JRR TOLKIEN – Artist & Illustrator” by Hammond & Scull.  It is a fascinating look at Tolkien’s ideas visualized.  While I thoroughly enjoyed the book and Tolkien art as well as the commentary by Hammond & Scull, I’m not quite as overwhelmed by Tolkien’s art as they are.  Tolkien’s art is quite good.  However, he was not an artistic master.  It is very interesting to see how different works grew in the drawing as it were.  It was interesting to learn how Tolkien recycled some of his art work for publication.  All in all it is a book well worth adding to one’s collection of books by Tolkien.  I’m glad I did and recommend it to you.

I wonder if this film will be released in the US.  It looks interesting.