Zuleika; LOTR; Farmer boy
One of my favorite chapter openings, almost as good as “The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida”:
This time, ’twas a spider. It spun its web on the prongs of our “Medusa” lamp.
Karin once feared spiders – maybe she still does – but she treated this one oh so tenderly. She brought it ants and flies.
Last night, she brought it a live Junebug. That cracked something inside of her. She was anguished for the Junebug: “It just fought so hard to live.”
She carefully removed the spider from our house.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Her actual offspring are with their grandfather tonight. A respite for us.
This morning I hazarded a library outing with them. They were loud, and I had to drag them home when Daniel wouldn’t stop running through the stacks. But it was gratifying that at first they shunned the e-tablets. Samuel built with blocks from a Jenga-like game. Daniel filled, emptied, and refilled the Connect Four grid.
I kept an eye on them and read Tolkien. Pippin tries to sneak off with the palantír. Gandalf scolds him; then they ride away in the night, on Shadowfax.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
I also am reading the Little House books. Nine-year-old Almanzo, in Farmer Boy, isn’t quite a hobbit, but he is driven to and fro by industrious larger creatures. The temperatures are frigid; the work is hard; but all is worthwhile because it is fueld by mountains of rich food, described unstintingly.
Her actual offspring does not suffice a very motherly woman. Such a woman was Mrs. Batch. Had she been blest with a dozen children, she must yet have regarded herself as also a mother to whatever two young gentlemen were lodging under her roof. …The same is true of Karin: not with lodgers but with pets and strays.
This time, ’twas a spider. It spun its web on the prongs of our “Medusa” lamp.
Karin once feared spiders – maybe she still does – but she treated this one oh so tenderly. She brought it ants and flies.
Last night, she brought it a live Junebug. That cracked something inside of her. She was anguished for the Junebug: “It just fought so hard to live.”
She carefully removed the spider from our house.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Her actual offspring are with their grandfather tonight. A respite for us.
This morning I hazarded a library outing with them. They were loud, and I had to drag them home when Daniel wouldn’t stop running through the stacks. But it was gratifying that at first they shunned the e-tablets. Samuel built with blocks from a Jenga-like game. Daniel filled, emptied, and refilled the Connect Four grid.
I kept an eye on them and read Tolkien. Pippin tries to sneak off with the palantír. Gandalf scolds him; then they ride away in the night, on Shadowfax.
As he fell slowly into sleep, Pippin had a strange feeling: he and Gandalf were still as stone, seated upon the statue of a running horse, while the world rolled away beneath his feet with a great noise of wind.Thus ends LOTR bk. III. Tolkien is at his best in the concluding paragraphs of the “books.” So far, he has always concluded with a scene of hobbits. There are grand things in this story, but they are best viewed through hobbits’ eyes; they are too grand for anyone less humble. Tolkien himself may have been a bit of a hobbit, recording momentous and homely detail, for homely folk.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
I also am reading the Little House books. Nine-year-old Almanzo, in Farmer Boy, isn’t quite a hobbit, but he is driven to and fro by industrious larger creatures. The temperatures are frigid; the work is hard; but all is worthwhile because it is fueld by mountains of rich food, described unstintingly.