{"id":13353,"date":"2023-06-25T10:31:50","date_gmt":"2023-06-25T09:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/potbanks.wordpress.com\/?p=13353"},"modified":"2023-06-25T10:31:50","modified_gmt":"2023-06-25T09:31:50","slug":"tolkien-gleanings-94","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/2023\/06\/25\/tolkien-gleanings-94\/","title":{"rendered":"Tolkien Gleanings #94"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tolkien Gleanings<\/a> #94.<\/p>\n

* New on Archive.org to borrow, The Ring and the Cross: Christianity and the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien<\/a><\/em> (2011) from Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.<\/p>\n

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* Posted on a Spanish forum, as a spur to a general discussion of Tolkien, a map I’d not seen before. The text at the bottom was too small to read. But the style suggested the 1960s U.S. paperback cover-artist Barbara Remington. This thought led me to a fine 3,000px scan of the map still freely online at Boston Rare Maps<\/a>. Turns out that Ballantine Books sold her rather pleasing map by mail for $1.50, back in the 1960s. The maps don’t show up on eBay today, if a PicClick search is anything to go by.<\/p>\n

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Although one has to wonder how many fans can actually properly ‘read’ the Middle-earth maps. A 2021 OS survey of 2,000 people found that 77% (nearly four people in every five) can’t read a standard British Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 map in even the most basic way. <\/p>\n

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OS 1:25,000 map example, near Stoke-on-Trent. Red dashed lines are public footpaths.<\/em><\/p>\n

60% of people also admit they get lost because they can’t even follow a simple way-marked map shown on a mobile phone. There’s perhaps an opportunity here to run short courses for teens in ‘Tolkien and the joy of maps’ that also teaches regular map-making \/ map-reading skills, based not only on the Middle-earth maps but also off the fact that Tolkien was a Signals Officer — a job for which swift map-reading was a vital skill. Could also be combined with Strider-like ‘natural wayfinding’ methods for North-South orientation, as many people also seem unable to maintain their orientation to north when walking.<\/p>\n

* My latest 80-page PDF ‘zine Tolkien Gleanings<\/em> issue 5<\/a> (May-June 2023) is now freely available. All the recent Gleanings<\/em> collected in one searchable bundle, plus some quick essays, notes, a film review and artwork.<\/p>\n

* And finally, Tolkien’s ‘trench fever’ could soon be cured<\/a> with relative ease. Researchers on the disease at the University of Basel in Switzerland… “have discovered neutralizing antibodies, which prevent bacterial infections or bring them to a halt” in cases of what is commonly known as ‘trench fever’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tolkien Gleanings #94. * New on Archive.org to borrow, The Ring and the Cross: Christianity and the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien (2011) from Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. * Posted on a Spanish forum, as a spur to a general discussion of Tolkien, a map I’d not seen before. The text at the bottom was too […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tolkien-gleanings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13353\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}