NYC Hobbit Moot 2009, Part 4

[lavendertook]

Here are my hobbits chilling in front of the event poster after the Friday night FotR symphony. On Saturday morning, I finally got a hold of the wonderful Jan-u-wine and we made plans to come see her after the bunch of us had brunch.




My very yummy, hobbity brunch. We met at a diner I spotted a couple of blocks from our hotel that looked to be spacious enough and decently priced called the Flame Restaurant and it really hit the spot with a big menu, all tastily prepared. We then walked 5 blocks over to The Russian Tearoom where Jan was meeting a couple of friends next to Carnegie Hall. I spotted her and we pulled her out for a few minutes to meet and hug and chat. We should have gotten pics with her, but didn't think of it until after she needed to go back in.

We said sad farewells to frolijah_fan_54, aliensouldream, verangel, honeyandvinegar, and panmodal, then lbilover, frodosweetstuff, belleferret, and I went to take a stroll in Central Park before we went back to check out of the hotel. My pics there all came out fuzzy, so I will refer you to Steph and Linda's pics here and here.

After checking out, Ellen drove us to JFK airport to send Steph back across the Sundering Sea. More tearful farewells, until next time we all moot together. Then Ellen took Linda and I back to her house nestled in the wooded country in the midlands of New Jersey, with her very happy to see us sweet doggies. We chilled for the evening reading email and sitting in the Throne of Frodo Worship before the Great Banner. I got to sleep cozy in front of the fire place, and by the Great Banner, which was a real treat.




Sunday morning, we took NJ transit into NYC for the TORN event. At the parking garage, we saw a pigeon nesting in the middle of the road; we couldn't tell if it was sick or injured, but Ellen picked it up and put it in some bushes. Then we caught a train to Penn Station and the subway down to the Bowery to the Angel Orensanz Foundation--a cool old gutted out cathedral used for art events--seeing this venue was one of the reasons I wanted to go to this.

We stopped to pick up sandwiches along the way at Katz Deli, and came in during Coleen Doran's presentation on the variety of Tolkien illustrations. David Salo's talk on his work on Tolkien's languages for the film was fun--he talked about some of the improvising he had to do for the parts of the languages that weren't fleshed out.




I was impressed with Elizabeth Cotnoir’s documentary, "Journey’s End," on the making of the music for the films, mostly focused on Howard Shore's amazing work, but also with good focus on Renee Fleming, James Galway, and Annie Lennox. I especially loved how much the documentary gave us of Lennox developing "Into the West" and her working with Shore and Fran Walsh on it.

Then Doug Adams interviewed Howard Shore in person, pictured above. I liked learning that he developed themes by not rereading/listening to what he had already written/recorded, but going with his memory, which would cause him to produce variations on the themes--kind of like playing a musical game of "Telephone" with himself. (-: I got Shore's autograph on my FotR Complete Recordings cover after the talk was over.




On the way back to the subway, we took the hobbits to a playground along the way so they could ride the oliphant--you don't want to hear the sighs the Sam's make if you don't indulge their oliphant whims, nor do you want to hear the skilled unusual sounds a Frodo and Bingo can make in sympathy . . .




. . . and then they said, "Eh, why not?" and went to ride the weird frog creature.




Bingo and Sam had gotten quite accustomed to riding the subway at this point--I overheard them calling it an "armoured mobile smial caravan."




Here they are sitting with a couple of tired Hobbit Wranglers.

When we got back to the Metro Park station, we found the pigeon where we had left hir, but laying on hir back and shivering pathetically, so I picked hir up, wrapped hir in an old t-shirt, and took hir back with us, so ze wouldn't die in the cold or get gnawed on. The warmth of being held seemed to do hir good, but we figured we were just giving hir hospice care at this point. When we got back to Ellen's house, however, the pigeon drank water like a little fiend, which gave us some hope for the first time, that ze might be more lightly injured and might make it. Ze made it to morning and I called around and found a bird rescue person in Maryland who could take hir, but after Linda headed out and Ellen and I sat and talked a bit ze passed on, probably from internal bleeding. So I took an ex-pigeon, who was quite heavy by the time I got home and would have made a fine thing to hit anyone who would give me a hard time about transporting an ex-pigeon in a box in the back of my car, and buried hir in the woods behind my apartment that evening--RIP, lil Elwing. It wasn't really sad, because I didn't count on recovery but just wanted to make hir passing more comfortable, and we did that.

I sure had a lovely time with my hobbit posse that weekend. Until the next moot!

Comments

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

She is lucky to have you and have that choice. *hugs*

Of moving more northerly, the cold does not deter me so much as the shorter season of green and less length of sunlight. In MD, I miss the longer lovely springs of NC, where I lived for a decade--the about 2 weeks are noticeable to me--but the fall foliage is much better here than in NC. I grew up in south jersey, so the length of spring and fall is slightly longer here, but it's a pretty contiguous system. This immediate area is rather devoid of pines, which green also made my winters in NC easier.

[mechtild.livejournal.com]

I went to college for a couple of years in NC, Winston-Salem, and did summer theatre for four years in Manteo, NC, just across the Roanoke Sound from the Outer Banks. I loved it in NC back then. But that was ages ago. The winters were mild compared to the places I'd lived growing up, even the Washington, D.C. area. The spring, I recall, was long and lovely.

I remember NYC and eastern Long Island (where we lived for five years in the '90's) as very cold in the winter, but with a lovely spring and fall. Perhaps south Jersey is much more temperate, though. I hear you about the short growing season and lack of sunlight for many months in a row up here in north. Bleh.

ETA: I meant to ask where you lived in North Carolina. It's a state with a lot of variety from region to region.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's colder there. I think there's a real break in the climate belt that goes through north Jersey, and south Jersey is very much part of the Delmarva peninsula area and Chesapeake basin system that goes down to coastal VA.

I lived in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, so central--I came for grad school, got an MA in folklore, then stayed on a while, before coming up here. But I did a lot of driving into the mountains for research and loved going out to the Outerbanks and Ocracoke, and south to Wilmington. The accents in Manteo are so fascinating--how you can hear the bridge between a British-Scotch-Irish and southern accents. (-:

[mechtild.livejournal.com]

Yes, the accents in Manteo are wonderful, quite in touch with their roots. They used to entertain us, the local people who were in the show, with their recitation of "it's high tide on the south side" ("i's hoy toyd on t' saow' soyd").

Ah, Chapel Hill! I was there twice in the spring for Outdoor Drama auditions. What a campus. So many flowering bushes and trees. It was gorgeous, much further along in spring than Winston-Salem.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

:-D

They do spring so well there. (-: