Mint Brook Meadow Teas has graciously sent along a case of their new Hobbit Teas for TCG to give away! Head over to the Discussion Forums for more information and to enter the contest. I have a lot of tea to give away, so the more entries the better. I look forward to hearing from you all, regulars and new visitors. This is some great tea!

Contest Entry thread

David Storr Unwin, 91, who wrote children’s novels as David Severn, died February 11, 2010 in London. Unwin, the son of publisher Sir Stanley Unwin, was born in London on March 12, 1918. He published over 30 children’s books in the UK, some with SF and fantasy elements, including Dream Gold (1949), Drumbeats! (1953), and The Future Took Us (1957). His final children’s book, The Wishing Bone, appeared in 1977. He also wrote two books for adults under his own name. His final book was autobiography Fifty Years With Father (1982).

http://www.locusmag.com/News/2010/03/david-severn-1918-2010.html

- wellinghall

“The Bodleian Library is taking part in World Book Day 2010 by exhibiting a selection of JRR Tolkien’s original artwork which was used to illustrate The Hobbit. A unique manuscript of Hobbit doodles and a rare first edition of the book will also be on display. The free-of-charge one-day display will take place in the Divinity School of the Bodleian Library on Thursday, 4 March 2010.”

http://www.articleant.com/gen/13491-there-and-back-again–the-hobbit-at-the-bodleian-library.html

- wellinghall

“He became a Fellow of St Edmund Hall in 1955, recommended by JRR Tolkien, who wrote that Mitchell ‘would prove a very suitable person to fill the lectureship . . . although he is an Australian’.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article7041454.ece

- wellinghall

Mint Brook Meadow Teas has obtained a license from Tolkien Enterprises to use the Hobbit brand and characters from that book in order to market their tea. Hobbit Tea is made in their facility (it is impossible to call it a factory) in Dalton - a small village near Wooster, Ohio. Dante and Twila Tropea are very focused on having a natural and wholesome product and work environment. The mint leaves are air dried out of the sun, with the help of a corn burning furnace - the corn ashes are then used as fertilizer in the fields. When I asked them about the ingredients they use for the teas, they told me that “we grow the peppermint and spearmint used in the Hobbiton Meadow Mint here on the farm as well as the clover used in the Bilbo Baggins Breakfast blend. The ingredients in the teas are not organic at this time, however we use only all natural ingredients with no chemical processing and no artificial colors or flavors.”

Tolkien Enterprises was reportedly very impressed with the tea itself (Dante sent samples to them when trying to get permission), as well as the business model and environment that Mint Brook Meadows works under. The farming is obviously done with respect for the product and the environment, the process of growing, havesting, curing and packaging is very down-to-earth, and the staff are very Hobbit-like in their demeanor. The artwork and packaging (seen below) were made by student artists from the Cleveland Institute of Art, including Yusef Abonamah, Albert McClelland and Daniel Farruggia.

They are currently shipping three different teas under the “Hobbit Tea” brand. You can order the teas directly online using their Paypal shopping cart, to be found at the Hobbit Tea website. Each box of tea has 20 bags, and currently costs $4.49 per box. Shipping for a single box (inside the USA) was recently dropped to $2.10, while my order for three boxes ran $5.10 - very reasonable! The Paypal shopping cart will also calculate your shipping if you are outside the USA, which is very nice.

The teas are:

http://hobbittea.com/
http://www.mintbrookmeadows.com/

http://www.cleveland.com/taste/index.ssf/2010/02/mennonite_farmer_gets_ok_to_ma.html

On the left menu bar of TCG pages you now have a small widget that will translate the current page you are on into one of a wide variety of languages supported by Google Translate. The service is far from perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but for those of you for whom English is not your primary language, you can get an idea of what is being discussed in a language more to your preference.

Of note, once you have translated a TCG page into another language, there are two tricks that will help you get the most out of the tool. First, you can move your mouse over a sentence and the translator script will offer the original English sentence to compare with - quite useful when the translation ends up getting mangled due to misunderstandings by the software. Secondly, if you want to return the page to English, just click the “show original” button at the top of the page (or close the Google toolbar entirely) and the page will be restored to English.

Do let me know in the comments if there are serious technical issues this new script causes with site navigation or page loads. I can’t help with silly translations, however - we will have to take those to Google and see what they can do for us.

Many thanks to Jason over at Lingwë for pointing this tool out!

Amazon.co.uk have the book available as a pre-order for release on the 1st April 2010.

The New York Times just posted an article about the phrase “Cellar Door” (that is, in fact, the title of their piece). The print edition of this piece is supposed to appear in print on February 14, 2010, on page 16 of the Sunday Magazine.

The article refers to the movie “Donnie Darko”, in which a character asks about the phrase “cellar door” written on a chalkboard, and another character in the movie says the words are supposed to be especially lovely, and attributes the quote to “a famous linguist”. The NYT goes on to speculate that the “linguist” in question is Tolkien and goes on to discuss the phrase further.

The article is a part of the “On Language” section of the Sunday Magazine of the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14FOB-onlanguage-t.html

UPDATE

The new dates are

Public 9-5: Sat 14th Aug – Mon 16th Aug 2010, free entry.
Invite only Preview Party: Fri 13th Aug 2010.

Please note that this is the same weekend as the “Festival in the Shire” event.
The next Cotswalds gathering in Moreton-in-Marsh has been postponed temporarily. The delay will allow the new Hilary Tolkien book Wheelbarrows at Dawn and the new illustrated edition of Fouque’s The Magic Ring to be available at the event. Given the extra time, the artists involved will have more time to make new artwork as well. As soon as a new date for the event is available, it will be posted here.

Edge of the Wild page on Facebook

Wheelbarrows at Dawn page on Facebook

ADC Books home page Host/homepage for the event

The Cimmerian has just posted a very useful and lengthy review by Brian Murphy of the 1998 heavy metal album Nightfall of Middle-earth by Blind Guardian.

A brief summary quote from the review:

Now, I know heavy metal ain’t everyone’s cup o’ tea. But if you like Tolkien you might want to give Nightfall in Middle-earth a try. While it’s powerful and heavy, it’s as much melodic as it is bombastic, and it features singing instead of screaming (there’s none of the dreaded Cookie Monster-style vocals to speak of). Best of all it’s presented without irony: Blind Guardian’s genuine love of JRRT is evident in not only the packaging, but the well thought-out lyrics and the passionate delivery. Many metal bands have used fantasy imagery on their album covers, but very few understand and express an obvious passion for the source material like Blind Guardian.