Hi there!
I wonder if I will ever get over the gratitude I feel when I see the center of my city jammed with people. After the empty years of the pandemic, I still feel so thankful to see Uptown Charlotte brimming with humanity. This past weekend, my husband and I attended a show (Jerry Seinfeld and Jim Gaffigan! Touring together! What fun!). At the same time, Charlotte FC was hosting its second home match of the season. When we attempted to board the light rail headed home, the train was too full to board. We had to wait for the next one. This was a good thing.
The Part Where There’s an Essay:
Most of my fellow Tolkien nerds probably already know this, but The Lord of the Rings loosely follows the church calendar. The Fellowship sets out from Rivendell around Christmas; they leave Lothlorien on Ash Wednesday; and the One Ring is destroyed on the Feast of the Annunciation/Good Friday (depending on who you ask). If you are enough of a Tolkien nerd that you’re going to come after me with “adjustments for the Shire-Reckoning” and whatnot, you may fight that out in the comments. I will absolutely wave the white flag and send you with my blessings to Reddit, where you belong.
That being said, Tuesday was “One Ring Day,” the day of the destruction of the ring, and it’s now known as Tolkien Reading Day. In honor of The Professor, I will give you some of my favorite quotations from him today. I raise my glass!
“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”

“I feel that as long as the Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable: I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again.”
“War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”
“The treacherous are ever distrustful.”
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
“…in that very moment, away behind in some courtyard of the city, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed, recking nothing of war nor of wizardry, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn.
”And as if in answer there came from far away another note. Horns, horns, horns, in dark Mindolluin's sides they dimly echoed. Great horns of the north wildly blowing. Rohan had come at last.”
“Is everything sad going to come untrue?”
For the Anglophiles
Heads up, Dame Judi is about to level the room:
Reads & Listens of the Week
My friend Librarian Laura was on the Banderpod! Laura is a trusted friend and a great source of bookish knowledge, especially for kids. (Am I that Kelly on the group text? Yes, yes I am.)
I thought this was an interesting way to boil down the struggles we experience with technology: Something Is Wrong: The Nine Contradictions of our Technological Age.
I enjoyed reading Loren’s thoughts on literary tragedy: “All the World’s a Stage…”
A good reminder of a helpful discipline: A Key Discipline: Observe Without Judgment. “I might not agree with all of these decisions even after gaining the necessary interpretive facts, but in every case, I have had an opportunity to learn and to grow in my respect for other Christians and the way they’ve wrestled through the issues and come to their decisions.”
Conviction without experience makes for harshness. —Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being
😄
(Can we discuss the jumper on the man sitting next to Judi? It’s appropriate for the occasion!)