Conference and Beachcombing

[lavendertook]

I'm going to the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts in Orlando tomorrow to deliver a Tolkien paper on Friday--wish me luck! I've been majorly stressed out the last two weeks--Raceail09 absorbed so much of my energy and emotional life these past 2 months, as with so many of us, and that put me behind in getting my paper done, but I finished it this weekend and that has been a load of stress off. And luckily nothing overly stressful came up at work the past few weeks. Now I'm stressing over packing and have some social anxiety over the conference, but I should have internet access, so I will be somewhat around, though I'll be more behind in replying. So I'm sorry I haven't been keeping up with commenting. There's also some things that have been bothering me that I've been wanting to post about, but I need to create some filters and I just haven't been able to find the time.

I'm pleased with my pregnant transgendered hobbit paper! It's much tighter than the article length paper I wrote a few years ago (before I even found slash fandom!). All those years in grad school, so I can say "I love hobbits and here's why" in theoretically enhanced language. Hey, it's a stupid life, but someone has to live it. I'll put the paper up in a locked entry later if you're interested--so many posts I want to do and never get to doing! I want to revise the article length paper when I get back--I've refigured race as gender in the paper which is problematic, and I need to go back in and work that through now that I've got more ideas on how to tackle it. Anyway, making sure I submit it to Mythlore, as Verlyn told me to do years ago, is on top of my to do list for this summer.

I'm looking forward to seeing ithiliana and aprilkat again, and meeting a couple of other Tolkien fan LJers, and meeting esmeraldus_neo, hopefully it will be OK for me to talk with supergee, and hopefully I'll get to see a couple other old friends and acquaintances.

Then I'm going to rent a car and drive down to Sanibel Island for a couple of days to collect tiny beautiful shells and walk on the beach. I'm looking forward to listening to a cd jan_u_wine sent me on the way down. And of course there will be photo shoots of hobbit dolls on the beach for upcoming storylines. The only bad thing about traveling is not being able to take my kitties with me. OK, back to figuring out what to wear and packing.

Comments

[timwb.livejournal.com]

Good luck with everything. You'll do great at the conference.
Please submit your paper. People need to see the wonder inside your brain :)
And I do worry about how much you worry about things outside your immediate physical environment, like Racefail.
I am confident you will do fine. Take pictures!

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Good luck with everything. You'll do great at the conference.
Please submit your paper. People need to see the wonder inside your brain :)

Thank you! That's a really sweet thing to say. (-: The project for this summer is to get at least one version of the article this paper is from submitted and published. I keep presenting papers and never publishing and I plan for this year to change that.

And I do worry about how much you worry about things outside your immediate physical environment, like Racefail.

Well, things outside my immediate physical environment include people, like you (After all, I saw you for what? 3 occasions last year and if that much for many years running, and yet you still matter, and internet correspondence I have with you keeps me in more contact with you than otherwise. So the "not in my physical vicinity" criteria is not really valid, don't you think?)

And hey, I haven't bugged you about not getting involved in Racefail, so why chide me (and correct me if I'm wrong for interpreting this as a kind of chiding) for being concerned and involved?

It went well and I took many pictures to prove that the waters of the Gulf of Mexico exist.

[terminalmalaise.livejournal.com]

Good luck with the paper presentation! Sounds interesting! :)

[terminalmalaise.livejournal.com]

And happy birthday!

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Thank you on both counts! *hugs*

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

I can't even fit the awesomeness of your paper's topic into words. You should have seen me; I did a little dance of glee at hearing of it, and knowing its intrepid author. I am *so* cheering you on.

(And hug Aprilkat for me!)

(PS And, happy birthday! *throws confetti*)

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Ahahaha! Awww! *hugs you tight* It's my joke title for the paper, but it does pretty much cover what it's about--I'll put it up in a locked entry soon. I took your cheer in with me and thus succeeded at my task. (-:

I hugged her for you!

Ty!

[turtleblues.livejournal.com]

You've posted about hobbits before- but I had no idea you were writing academic papers about the Tolkien world. Super cool! Enjoy the conference and the beach.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

My specialty area in my English program was early modern British women, with queer and feminist theory, but I'm nurturing my Tolkien love for now (and applying said theory) and we'll see if I'm ready to get back to my early modern women next year.(-: Thank you--they were both great!

[lbilover.livejournal.com]

I hope you have a safe and fun trip! I'd love to read your paper. It sounds fascinating. I remember shelling on Sanibel Island as a child, when we used to visit my (now deceased) grandparents.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Thank you--it was great! I'd love to get your ideas on the paper--I will post it flocked soon. Sanibel is my Tol Eressea (it even looks like a word JRR would make Elvish.) My parents took me there when I was a tot and that kindled my shelling bug.

[melyanna-65.livejournal.com]

Wow, it sounds like a fantastic and very interesting thing!! good luck for everything dear!

And Happy Birthday!! (there's an entry on my LJ for you, when you have time)

Have a safe trip, enjoy your meetings and take lots of pics!

*hobbity hugs*

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

*smooshes you*

Thank you, hon! I took a ton of pics to prove that the beaches of Sanibel do exist. I will post some soon, unlike the trip I took there 3 years ago that I never posted pics of. And of course there are Bingo and Sam pics. (-: OMG--I just noticed the kitten on Frodo's neck in your icon! Has it been there all this time or did you just add it? It's wonderful!

[melyanna-65.livejournal.com]

Awww, I can't wait to see your pics when you're ready!

That icon is lovely, isn't it? You know I'm a hopeless kitty lover (like you) and dear mole_caz manipped that pic of Frodo adding a kitty for my birthday, a couple of years ago. It just begged to be an icon too! I think that Frodo and a kitty are my perfect idea of what happiness is!

*hugs*

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

I'm in total agreement! *cuddles*

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

Have fun!

p.s. I'd love to read that paper.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'd love to read your thoughts on it--I will post it soon.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

Oh, goodie! ::bounceBounce::

And belated happy birthday wishes. I'd spaced out and forgotten yours was so soon after mine.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Hee--yay!!!

Thank you! (-:

[strangemuses.livejournal.com]

Happy birthday!

And good luck with your paper and the conference. Sounds like fun.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Thank you! It was a wonderful break.

[meiathemaia.livejournal.com]

Good luck with your presentation!! I'm sure you'll knock their socks off.

And Happy Birthday! Once you get back from gallivanting in far-off places we should do lunch or something some weekend, since we're practically neighbors and all. ;)

I'm pleased with my pregnant transgendered hobbit paper!

I so totally need to read that. :D

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Unfortunately, you are correct in your assumption that no hobbits, lacking socks to be knocked off, were present to critique my paper. )-: We do need to get together very soon. I did tone down the mpreg references I had in the article length version in this reading--I hadn't even encountered mpreg hobbit fic when I first wrote the seminar paper!

[mechtild.livejournal.com]

Good luck at the conference, Lavender, and I hope you manage to squeeze in a little recreation. Is Sanibel Island nice? I hadn't heard of it before so I looked it up just now. The pictures show a tropical place with very, very white sand.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Thank you! There was nowhere really to go at the conference, being by the Orlando airport, but I did get to spend some good quality time with ithiliana and aprilkat relaxing, so that made it a great conference. And there was a fabulous Tolkien reading one night. Sanibel is my Tol Eressea. As far as I've been able to find, it may be the best place in the world for collecting shells on the beach due to the island's orientation. Its sands are very white in places, though more mixed with grey than some other beaches along that coastline. I'll be posting pics soon.

[mechtild.livejournal.com]

What kind of a reading was it? A dramatic reading or something informal with fans gathering round and taking turns passing a book? Sanibel sounds wonderful.

I hope you post pics of that, for sure! It's so dismal and wintry still here (just had an ice storm, which is melting along with the last of the snow, hopefully completely).

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Just posted on your LJ about read_lotr_aloud. If my earphones work with this work computer, I'll listen to some of the others at lunch today. I got to listen to Jan's cd reading Frodo and Sam poems on the Causeway bridge out to the island--it was perfect--her reading voice is such a dulcet setting for her verses.

Poor you. *hugs* It's rainy and 30 degrees cooler here than what it was in Florida--and the green is so slow in coming--I want to be back among the palms! I need the green far more than I need the warmth. I'll try to get something up tonight.

[mechtild.livejournal.com]

She's good reading Roverandom, too. I don't even like Roverandom but she made it charming to me.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Same here--she made the piece for me. Every child should have a copy of Jan's reading of it.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

What kind of a reading was it? A dramatic reading or something informal with fans gathering round and taking turns passing a book?

I'm sorry, mechtild, I think I got my wires crossed on readings here with the one we're doing on LJ.

The reading at the conference was from an adaptation written up by Elizabeth Whittingham--a prof at SUNY who has a book on Tolkien's mythology--and she apparently does this every year. The scene she adapted for us and put into parts this year was when Aragorn, Gandalf, Theoden, Legolas, Gimli, and Eomer ride to Isengard after the sacking and meet Pippin and Merry, and then meet Treebeard, Grima, and Saruman and then parley with Saruman. There's also narrator parts.

We all sat around a table and read. There were around 15 of us. there were also a few people who sat apart and listened to us. Merry's, Pippin's, and the narrator's parts were divied up between a couple of different readers since they were longer parts. I was assigned Legolas's part to read. Our Saruman was truly fabulous. I'm really curious to see the other parts she's adapted for past readings now.

[mechtild.livejournal.com]

What a cool thing for her to do, adapting the book for dramatic reading. Maybe eventually there'll be a new version like the one for the BBC in the 80's evolving out of this?

As for the "read lotr aloud" thing, it never sank in for me until someone explained it (Shirebound?) that it's an online group that somehow records their readings and then links them to something so they can be listened to on LJ. I thought it was a club, like the TS, that got together and did a reading, but a real get-together, not a virtual one.

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

oooh, I'd love to read your paper on the the pregnant transgendered hobbit! :)

Please give Aprilkat an extra hug for me!

And happy yesterday birthday! *hugs*

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

And I'd love to read what you think of it! I will be posting it soon.

I did. She helped make my conference a really wonderful one.

Thank you, hon! *snuggles*

[frodosweetstuff.livejournal.com]

Have a great time! Am looking forward to pics of hobbits. :)

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Heee! They didn't get as many pics as I had hoped--not enough time, and they had my shell collecting drive to compete with--but there are some.