Wildlife: A huge Whitetail male was standing in the shadow of a tall pine overlooking the tennis court. Stick around the 'hood, Bucky-boy -- they can shoot 'ya if you wander too far!

Weather: Cold, but fairly dry -- dry enough for roofing. Those cedar shingles take forever to rip off and haul away.

Charity Alert: Food supplied free to the hungry.

In the Community: The Hockaday Museum of Art's website has a new web server:
Members Only Salon at the Hockaday -- 84 local artists on display!
We are having some problems, of course, but it will get much better!

Media Watch: I miss Halloween movies -- the horror show since November started is too much to watch.
I'm reading a collection of Tolkien criticism -- all of it written by his admirers. Tolkien's friend C.S. Lewis championed Lord of the Rings early, of course. If not for his efforts, and the rest of the Inklings wanting to hear more at the "Eagle and Child" pub in Oxford, I suspect Tolkien might never have written the trilogy.
W. H. Auden's advocacy of Lord of the Rings must have surprised literary society in the early 50's -- he was definitely a non-conformist, and considered a modernist in those days.
I started reading it as a teenager in 1966, during my junior year of high school, and was very glad when so many others thoughout the English-speaking world fell under the old professor's literary spell.
I had seen the "pirate" Ace paperbacks with Jack Gaughn's splendid covers on the bookstands, but when I first saw the Ballentine edition -- with J.R.R. Tolkien's request for "courtesy to living authors" quote on the front cover -- I decided to give Lord of the Rings a try one winter's evening. I finished it in early summer, and had a great time reading the appendices afterward -- allowing the imagery of Middle Earth to further color my imagination.
I never joined any societies, or learned Elvish, but my enthusiasm for Tolkien's work continues almost forty years after I first read him. There are better writers, and better fantasy novels, but Tolkien said so himself during his life, and his recommendations have led me to some fine books.