How a Broken Benchmark Quietly Broke America

a poll for fellow knowledge workers teetering on the edge of #burnout (#mh) (also for those Wild E. Coyote types who haven't looked down yet) [ ] Organic farm (with goats?) 🐐 [ ] Bakery 🥐 / Cafe ☕ [ ] Book/Hardware/Bike store 📚🔧🚲 [ ] Sailboat ⛵

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I have just made the acquaintance of the Old Icelandic _Hávamál_. Among other things, it’s a source of wisdom-verses. The originator of the wisdom related here is Odin himself. Here’s W.H. Auden’s translation in alliterative verse. Carolyne Larrington points us to stanzas 54-56: > Not trusting this guy until I know where the other raven is. > > It is best for man to be middle-wise, > Not over cunning and clever: > The learned man whose lore is deep > Is seldom happy at heart. > > It is best for man to be middle-wise, > Not over cunning and clever: > The fairest life is led by those > Who are deft at all they do. > > It is best for man to be middle-wise, > Not over cunning and clever: > No man is able to know his future, > So let him sleep in peace. The three verses all start with the same two lines, which are a maxim. 1 The third and fourth lines explicate the maxim, slightly. I know someone these might apply to. Let’s match these up with our friend Samwise Gamgee. We know from his name that he’s one of the middle-wise. How does that work out for him? His lore is not deep — he knows just enough to write silly songs about trolls. [LR 1.12.069] He is certainly deft at all he does. He’s a good cook, even by hobbit standards [LR4.04.027] and the restoration of the Shire after Sharkey’s depredations is largely his work. [LR 6.09.021] He’s not good at thinking, but he knows that. “Think, if you can!” is good practice for the half-wise. [LR 2.10.097] Can he sleep in peace? Like a log. [LR1.07.037] So this supernatural being who looks like an old man in shabby grey robes drafts a medium-wise person to accompany Frodo. That’s the beginning of Sam’s relationship with Gandalf. He can be forgiven for wondering who this old guy actually is. Though by the time they get to Moria, Sam is sure Gandalf isn’t Odin. [LR 2.04.039] The role of Anglo-Saxon Merlin is still open, of course.2. I searched all kinds of places around the World-Wide Web for someone who’s noticed this before, but came up blank. I guess it’s either too obvious or not significant enough to be included in a journal paper. Which means it ought to be perfect for a blog post. * * * ### Share this: * Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X * Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit * Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon * #### Notes 1. For some reason, I don’t like calling them “gnomes”. Maybe because they don’t stand around in the garden. 2. Juliette Wood, “In Our Time” @ 29:10 ### _Related_

gitchee gumee time

_The Return of The King_ by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 733-736 One of the important things that a good reader of _The Lord of the Rings_ will ask is whose eyes are we looking at this part of the story through? Sometimes a scene will be described in epic heroic language and we can imagine that we are listening to a bard in a royal mead hall, but usually we see the scene through the eyes of a hobbit, either Frodo or one of the three companions who set out from the Shire with him, and then we remember that Tolkien tells the story as one that he discovered in the Red Book of West March and which was an account of the adventures of Bilbo and then of Frodo and his friends, written by Bilbo, then Frodo and completed by Sam with the aid of Merry and Pippin. In the last post on this blog we heard Gandalf’s prophetic words to the guards at the gates of Minas Tirith and now we journey up the seven levels of the city in the company of Gandalf and Pippin and soon realise that it is not Gandalf’s eyes through which we see the city but Pippin’s. “Pippin gazed in growing wonder at the great stone city, vaster and more splendid than anything that he had dreamed of; greater and stronger than Isengard, and far more beautiful.” Minas Tirith is the great achievement of the descendants of Númenor in Middle-earth, built by the followers of Elendil at the end of the Second Age as they escaped from the wreck of their homeland and established new kingdoms in Gondor and Arnor. Minas Tirith was first known as Minas Anor, the city of the Sun, which faced Minas Ithil, the city of the Moon, with Osgiliath, the city of starlight, the first capital of Gondor, that grew on the banks of the Anduin and whose bridges were a link between the sun and the moon and the two sides of the great river. In the year 2002 in the Third Age, the Nazgûl captured Minas Ithil, renaming it Minas Morgul, the city of Black Magic, and Minas Anor was renamed becoming the City of the Guard, Minas Tirith, and so it remained until the War of the Ring in 3019, over a thousand years later. Defence is a wearisome affair, especially when your whole identity is shaped by defying an enemy who are servants of darkness and of death. Was it because of this that, as the long years went by, the defenders of Minas Tirith slowly became enamoured of death themselves? Pippin sees a city that “lacks half the men that could have dwelt at ease there”. Year by year the city has fallen into decline and has become depopulated. As Pippin gazes upon the great houses of the city he sees many that are silent where “no footsteps rang on their wide pavements, nor voice was heard in their halls, nor any face looked out from door or empty window”. Later, when Legolas and Gimli entered the city, after a Battle of the Pelennor Fields, Legolas made a similar observation to Pippin’s, remarking that “the houses are dead, and there is too little here that grows and is glad”. (ĹOTR p.854) The defenders of Minas Tirith have long defied their enemies with great courage but they have lost the ability to be glad. They admire martial skills and so Boromir the warrior was their great hero, but nothing grows in the gardens of the city and too few children play there. Gandalf declared that the “end of the Gondor that you have known” had come, and it is likely that the gloom that had become the habitual state of mind of the defenders was merely deepened as they heard his words. But Gandalf was giving a message of hope and of renewal. Can Denethor, their lord, hear such a message, or does he even want to hear it? Is it possible that we can become so attached to our state of mind, even to our despair, that we do not wish to hear of hope when it is spoken to us, preferring the unhappiness that we have become used to, and even fearing a hope that will disturb, even sweep away, the existence in a grey half light to which we have become used? So Gandalf prepares for his meeting with the Steward of Gondor. ### Share this: * Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X * Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Like Loading...

_The Book of Lost Tales_ uses the words "foul" and "vile" in pretty much the way you'd expect. "Foul" describes the following beings or things associated with them: * Orcs: _LT_ II 14, 159, 193, 232 * Karkaras (Carcharoth): _LT_ II 34, 38, 239 * Melkor: _LT_ I 55; _LT_ II 37, 42 * Glaurung (Glorund): _LT_ II 85, 86 (3 times), 98 * Thingol, reproached by Tinúviel for Beren's "foul captivity" by Melkor: _LT_ II 37 * Brandir (Tamar), his "foul speech" that Nienor committed suicide, as described by Túrin: _LT_ II 111 * Ungoliant (Wirilómë): 152 * Water, as polluted by blood or evil: _LT_ II 38, 287 "Vile" describes the following beings or things associated with them: * Glaurung: _LT_ II 106, 107 * The dragon's hoard is Thingol's "vile reward": _LT_ II 135 "Foul" occurs more often in direct or indirect connection with the dragon than with anyone or anything else. So, too, of course, it occurs most often in "Of Turambar and the Foalókë," seven out of a total of sixteen times in both volumes of _The Book of Lost Tales_. Túrin and Morwen both address Glaurung with this word, calling him "foul worm," and "foul beast" (_LT_ II.86, 98). It appears four times in a single page when he first enters the tale and meets Túrin (_LT_ II 85-86). "Vile" is twice applied to Glaurung, again in "Of Turambar and the Foalókë," and once in a deleted passage by Húrin when he scornfully gives him Glaurung's hoard from Nargothrond as his "vile reward" for what he wrongly thinks is Thingol's failure to care for Húrin's family (_LT_ 135). There is one final passage to look at, in which both words occur in the same sentence. Here, Túrin, having killed Glaurung, learned that his wife is actually his sister and that she has killed herself, and then killed the man who gave him the news, asks his sword to kill him: > "Thee only have I now—slay me therefore and be swift, for life is a curse, and all my days are creeping foul, and all my deeds are vile, and all I love is dead.” > (_LT_ II.112). Given the usage of these two words in _The Book of Lost Tales_ , one might conclude that Túrin feels he has become as evil as Glaurung himself. _______________________ I noticed not long before finishing this post that the second half of Túrin's words to his sword can be read as two lines of iambic pentameter: > and all my days are creeping foul, and all > > my deeds are vile, and all I love is dead. (The first half of the sentence is not far off either)

Cædmon's Hymn, by me! This was my first time really using Garageband! https://youtu.be/E6uol8gPQ1U