Of the original stories that Tolkien wrote for his nascent mythology, the first real attempt at depth as well as breadth was The Fall of Gondolin, most likely begun in 1916. From there, the story took on an unwieldy and unpredictable life of its own, like many of Tolkien’s writings. Tolkien’s wife, Edith, wrote out the story sometime in 1917 after he had first written it, and Tolkien offered a version of it as a public essay in 1920 at Exeter College, Oxford. The story appeared as one of the most drawn-out of Tolkien’s Lost Tales (the first version of the larger mythology that would one day become The Silmarillion); in slightly different form in the 1926 “Sketch of the Mythology”; in yet again slightly different form in the 1930 Quenta Noldorinwa; and, finally, in 1950 and 1951, as Tolkien was trying to write the history of the ages preceding the now completed but yet unpublished The Lord of the Rings. The final 1951 version ended up, more or less, in the 1977 Silmarillion.
— Read on www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/two-tolkiens-one-better-world/

Today, guests from the Hauenstein Center join us to talk about the event Searching for Deeper Common Ground as part of the center’s Common Ground
— Read on www.wgvunews.org/post/searching-deeper-common-ground

Colorado’s controversial “red flag” bill was signed into law by Democratic Gov. Jared Polis on Friday, with more than half of the state’s counties declaring opposition to it and many sheriffs promising not to enforce it at all.
— Read on www.cnn.com/2019/04/12/us/colorado-red-flag-gun-laws/index.html

Very proud of the Park Country Sheriff for being a true hero.

Would it be an unlicensed trespass of the imagination to conceive that on the night preceding the day of which you now commemorate the fiftieth anniversary—on the night preceding that thirtieth of April, 1789, when from the balcony of your city hall the chancellor of the State of New York administered to George Washington the solemn oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States, and to the best of his ability to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution of the United States–that in the visions of the night the guardian angel of the Father of our Country had appeared before him, in the venerated form of his mother, and, to cheer and encourage him in the performance of the momentous and solemn duties that he was about to assume, had delivered to him a suit of celestial armor–a helmet, consisting of the principles of piety, of justice, of honor, of benevolence, with which from his earliest infancy he had hitherto walked through life, in the presence of all his brethren; a spear, studded with the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence; a sword, the same with which he had led the armies of his country through the war of freedom to the summit of the triumphal arch of independence; a corselet…of long experience and habitual intercourse in peace and war with the world of mankind, his contemporaries of the human race, in all their stages of civilization; and, last of all, the Constitution of the United States, a shield, embossed by heavenly hands with the future history of his country?
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/10/virgil-forgotten-american-founder.html

Though I was officially enrolled at the University of Notre Dame, I spent the entire 1987-1988 school year—my sophomore year of college—at our sister school in Austria, the University of Innsbruck. I arrived in Austria in July of 1987, and I departed in July of 1988. During the academic year there, fall semester ended on the last day of January, and spring semester didn’t begin until March 1. A full month of exploration is just too close to heaven for a twenty-year-old. The possibilities seemed endless: a journey to the northern reaches of Scandinavia; a brave excursion into the mysterious depths of the Soviet Union; or a crossing into the old, palimpsest recesses of the Near East of the Roman empire.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2018/03/surprised-faith-bradley-birzer.html

In case you didn’t know, it’s International Talk Talk Day, April 5. To celebrate, listen to as much Talk Talk as possible. Mark Hollis might be gone from this earth, but his art endures and always will.

If you don’t own any Talk Talk, you’re in for a treat. I would give a lot to hear TT for the first time, again! You can order everyone of their studio albums from the best music store anywhere, Burning Shed.

https://burningshed.com/index.php?route=product/search&filter_name=Talk%20talk&filter_sub_category=true

April 5 lyrics (from COLOUR OF SPRING) by Mark Hollis:

Here she comes
Silent in her sound
Here she comes
Fresh upon the ground
Come gentle spring
Come at winter’s end
Gone is the pallor from a promise that’s nature’s gift
Waiting for the color of spring
Let me breathe
Let me breathe the color of spring
Here she comes
Laughter in her kiss
Here she comes
Shame upon her lips
Come wanton spring
Come for birth you live
Youth takes it’s bow before the summer the seasons bring
Waiting for the color of spring
Let me
Let me breathe
Let me breathe you
Let me breathe
Let me breathe you
Let me breathe

Contra Cruise| July 5th – 12th, 2019
— Read on www.tomwoodscruise.com/

Dedra and I are thrilled that we’ll be joining Tom Woods and Bob Murphy on the Contra Cruise this summer. Our first time on a cruise, and our first time in Alaska. Should be an incredible week. Please join us.

Having already lost his mother and his father at a young age, Tolkien also lost two of his three closest friends during the war. Prior to that war, he and his three friends had dedicated themselves to sanctifying the world through poetry and literature. We had, Tolkien believed, “been granted some spark of fire—certainly as a body if not singly—that was destined to kindle a new light, or, what is the same thing, rekindle an old light in the world.” Given the depth of feeling Tolkien possessed toward his friends and the burdens of the Great War, there is no reason to underplay his words. By 1916, he had already begun his Elvish languages as well as his first stories for those languages, in addition to writing much poetic verse. “The greatness [of the four friends] I meant was that of a great instrument in God’s hands,” Tolkien wrote in 1916, as “a mover, a doer, even an achiever of great things, a beginner at the very least of large things.”
— Read on www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/two-tolkiens-one-better-world/

It is only in this context of history that one can understand the rise—uniquely American—of the “superhero,” especially those that came out of the company that would eventually be known as D.C., Detective Comics. While the art of D.C. might not be the equivalent high art of Eliot or Cather or Davis, it is art nonetheless, taking from the past and searching for a goodness and truth in a generation that desperately fought to be for something rather than just against. Between 1938 and 1940, D.C. (for sake of argument, this is short hand, even when the company was called National or something else), creators brought into existence Superman, the alien immigrant raised in innocence and honesty by a Kansas couple who understood the Christ-like powers of their adopted son; Batman, the American aristocrat, detective, and crime fighter, who patrolled the darkest corners of urban America, protecting the innocent from harm; and Wonder Woman, the angelic, Greek classical goddess, who comes to the aid of American servicemen waging just and proper war against the ideologues. This trinity of heroes stood powerfully in 1940, but it remains equally powerful almost a century later. The heroes—immigrant; dark avenger; and demigoddess—speak to us of the twenty-first century every bit, if not more, as much as they did to the generation of the Great Depression and the Second World War.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/03/batman-rise-american-superhero-bradley-birzer.html