J.R.R. Tolkien’s numerous—and now, thankfully, available—lectures on the medieval epic poem, Beowulf, pop as well as dazzle his audience in fascinating ways. No sentence is without insight, and no paragraph is without some unique revelation about Beowulf’s significance and relevance—to his world and to our own. The poem is not only perfectly coherent as a poem and as a story, but it was also written by “a single hand and mind.”[1] Drawing upon the work of his friend and fellow parishioner, Christopher Dawson, Tolkien thought the poet a member of the first generation of Christian converts, written at “the time of that great outburst of missionary enterprise which fired all England,” having at the end of the enterprise, the greatest of all Englishman, St. Boniface.[2]
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/10/beowulf-men-twilight-bradley-birzer.html

In our world of recriminating hatreds—in which we desire more to label those we don’t like as sexist, imperialist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, and, simultaneously, mark ourselves as victims—we often forget some important historical truths. Here’s one we conveniently ignore, dismiss, or mock: Nothing in the world has brought about more equality and justice than has the Christian religion.

To be sure, various paganisms—such as the Heraclitan Logos, Socratic ethics, and Stoic philosophy—had sought the universal as well. Each, however, hit understandable walls of resistance and fierce competition from non-egalitarian Gnostic systems.

Christianity, however, was the first to achieve a proper, just, and serious equality in any radical and meaningful way.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/10/radical-equality-christianity-bradley-birzer.html

Given its epic nature, the Beowulf poem also drew from other mythologies circulating in its own time: the Roman Aeneid; the Norse Volsunga; and the Germanic Niebelungleid. Even the pagans, after all, believed in evil and the eternal death of the damned. There was, in summary, a sort of fusion of many things.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/10/noble-pagan-bradley-birzer.html

The Cure have new material on the way — a lot of it. According to leader Robert Smith, the band have not one but three new albums on the way, and the first may arrive before the year is out.

Speaking to Spanish publication Zocalo [via NME], Smith said, “Actually I have prepared three albums, two of them more advanced. The first will be the one that we will release very soon. I think that the first single, or the whole album, will come out this Christmas, or a little earlier. It has the title of Live from the Moon, and it will surely change its name.
— Read on exclaim.ca/music/article/the_cure_are_working_on_three_new_albums_robert_smith_reveals

The Republic of China flag emoji has disappeared from Apple iPhone’s keyboard for Hong Kong and Macau users. The change happened for users who updated their phones to the latest operating system.

Updating iPhones to iOS 13.1.1 or above caused the flag emoji to disappear from the emoji keyboard. The flag, commonly used by users to denote Taiwan, can still be displayed by typing “Taiwan” in English, and choosing the flag in prediction candidates.
— Read on www.hongkongfp.com/2019/10/05/taiwan-flag-emoji-disappears-latest-apple-iphone-keyboard/

For an album that was rushed, there’s so much depth on it, not least with ‘Out of This World’, which was about Donald Campbell and the Bluebird tragedy.
I wrote those words many, many years ago even before I met or joined Marillion. I just had a handful of words about the Bluebird, and they were just my recollections of my mother crying when she saw it on the news, and I was sitting there wondering what she was crying about. She explained to me what was going on, and that strange lobster-shaped craft doing a back-flip in the water and a man losing his live, and it never really left me.

It’s a very haunting song.
Dave Meegan, our produce always maintained that song was haunted. Strange things happened in the studio, and it was beset with technical difficulties at every stage. Overdubs kept going missing off the tapes, and even when he came to mix it, things had gone missing. But we had to keep going trying to find them, and it was all full of clicks, and it would drive him up the pole! It was dragged kicking and screaming into the world against its’ own will. It was a strange, strange track.
— Read on www.eonmusic.co.uk/steve-hogarth-marillion-eonmusic-interview-september-2019.html

JMSNews had added a really nice overview of J. Michael Straczynski’s works. JMS is one of my favorite writers, and nothing he writes is unimportant.

http://jmsnews.com/home/works?fbclid=IwAR0wMT5zQduAthAcZIha3_lDp2oVaG9JxkRb4zyWVygohYBdRT8SvAwD_No