He is Border Collie No. 2.  He has one blue eye and one brown eye, two very sticky-up ears, a nervous disposition, a penchant for hypervigilence, as well as a deep and abiding love of snuggles.

It must be noted, however, that the ears did not always stick up.

He has also gotten himself into many, many, many odd circumstances. . . . . .

He can be paralysed by a small orange ball.

Sometimes his tongue and his paws go in different directions.

He can get tangled up in seaweed.

At nine months of age, he was outrun by nine year old Wikket.

Christmas has historically been a problem.

And then there was the moment that embarrasses him to even think about it. . . . .

(photo credit Heather Patey)

Please, Dad, do you have to bring it up?

One day, during the period when Katherine was still so small that she’d fall into the toilet otherwise, we found out why her seat kept getting moved off the toilet.  Moss had been sneaking bathroom drinks and well, he collared himself. . . . .

Yep.  Got him.

All other photos credit Vicky Taylor-Hood.

Meet Arnold:

He’s ostensibly an eraser, and so is named for the overly muscled star of that movie with Vanessa Williams in it.  Arnold is a methodical sort, given to reorganising the buttons on my phone and commencing dialogues with the Nigerian bankers who need my help with some exports.  Lately though, he’s started conversing with the nice Russian ladies who keep sending me emails.

On a completely unrelated note, my computer has gotten really cranky and slow lately.  I wonder why.

Arnold’s counterpart is Henry.  His species is indeterminate, as he calls himself a stickbug, but his expression reminds me of a chucklebug.  The jury’s still out.

Henry’s favourite activities include resorting file contents in alphabetical order according to the sixth letter of the fifth line on each sheet of paper, as well as switching my day planner for last year’s.  This last one is really insidious.  Ever try to organise your life when everyone else is one day behind you?

Sometimes, however, I find them thusly . . . .

And my heart quails are the thought of that old saw, “The whole is more than the sum of its parts.”

]]> http://johnth.wordpress.com/2012/05/30/helpers/feed/ 0 johnth _DSC1106 DSC_1109 _DSC1118 http://johnth.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/just-add-imagination/ http://johnth.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/just-add-imagination/#comments Wed, 30 May 2012 00:49:05 +0000 johnth http://johnth.wordpress.com/?p=161 ]]>

Three very important books, those.  I got into the granddaddy of all role-playing games in the mid-80s when my big sister Heather refereed a bunch of bloodthirsty ten-year-olds through the legendary adventure, T1 The Village of Hommlet.  Since then, while I haven`t played a whole lot, I`ve imagined.

The beauty of this game lies in its simplicity – you take the role of a character, warrior, wizard, thief, whatever and listen to the referee (Dungeon Master, or DM) tell a story.  The twist is that as the main character, you dictate where you go, what you do and with whom you interact.  The DM adapts the story around your choices, according to the rules of the game.

If you work with the basic scenarios and milieu, your brain can easily impose itself into classic stories: if you want a persona to accompany the Fellowship of the Ring, hey presto, you`ve got one!  Or, if you need to explore the uncharted depths of your own original stories, you can create an avatar to sit in while your brain takes you on a tour of its own devising.  In effect, you can imagine inside your imagination!

Cool, wha?

D&D also lends itself to the collector`s bug.  I`ve been assembling a pile of adventures, gamebooks, sourcebooks, idea books  . . . . . . and it`s taken up an entire shelf:

And that doesn`t count the shelf-and-a-half of Dragon Magazines.

I think, however, that D&D`s best quality is the enduring appeal of killing monsters and taking their stuff.  Katherine`s been bitten by the adventuring bug (elven fighter/mage/thief named Twillingate with a dog named Fogo and a sheep named Moreton) and I`ve DM`d games at Exploits with Katherine, my brother-in-law and my nieces.

For this year`s trip, I`ve got some different ideas . . .

Heh, heh, heh.

Imaginary people made of paper, be afraid!

This past Sunday, Mom and Dad and Katherine and I trolled around the Botanical Garden:

Mom, Dad and Katherine

Katherine is, as usual, talking.

This is what we saw . . .

Lady`s slipper orchid

Lady`s slipper orchids are one of the few such flowers native to Newfoundland.  They grow quietly on the margins, hiding under the edges of tree branches, splashing a bit of vibrant colour into the subdued earth-tones of the barrens.

Then we had a quick picnic lunch and it was off to Torbay Point, one of our favourite spots on the East Coast Trail.  My parents had never hiked it before to any great extent and were impressed with the views and the high standard of construction.  We observed . . .

Two Cool Hats

And there sure were things to see!

Berg in the Bay

Along the way, Katherine figured out how to snap her fingers on each hand simultaneously:

K learns to snap

Here`s to the first of many new posts to come!

Three of her best books are collectively called the Vows and Honor series. Oathbound, Oathbreakers and Oathblood tell the tales of one of the most engaging warrior/wizard pairings to come along since Arthur and Merlin. The one is Tarma, the sole survivor of a massacred clan from a horse-nomad culture, sworn to serve her people’s Goddess as an ascetic warrior-monk. The other is Kethry, sorceress, castoff from a noble family, possessed of an earthy sense of humour and a magical sword.

Oathbound is the first volume and establishes the pair’s twofold motives; to rebuild Tarma’s shattered Clan and to gain a respected enough reputation to open a training school for aspiring swordswingers and spellslingers. Unlike many of their literary contemporaries, Tarma and Kethry use brains as often as brawn in solving their problems and always with refreshingly ironic humour.

The book has an episodic quality, as though it was originally several short stories now bracketed by introductory and climactic scenarios. Such construction would doom many a writer, but Lackey pulls them all together with the gradual evolution of her protagonists and lively, original storytelling that prevents the book from becoming a series of “another day, another deed.”

The second volume, Oathbreakers, has the pair as established members of a mercenary fighting Company, getting involved in royal intrigue, plots, assassination attempts, infiltration, exfiltration, and True Love, to list but a few of the assorted goings-on and shenanigans that assail our heroes. This book is much more tightly plotted, with engaging minor characters and appropriately nasty villains, who really do get what’s coming to them.

If Oathbreakers has a flaw, it’s a couple of coincidences that strain credulity and seem as if Lackey was merrily writing her heroes into one progressively narrower scrape after another, when she realised that she needed the story Moved Along. It’s almost like a literary hiccup in between smooth, coherent writing. Don’t let that prevent you from reading the book, though; they’re easily forgiven as you race along to the next “how are they going to get out of this one?”

Oathblood is an anthology of short stories anchored by a novella. I think most of the tales originally appeared in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress anthologies.  This is a collection of extremely entertaining tales.  Tarma and Kethry get into and out of all manner of odd conundra and puzzling situations.  Two of my personal favourites are the cursed coin and the locked room mystery.  Enough said…….

There are plenty more Mercedes Lackey stories on my shelf.     Maybe I should stop reading and start writing about them.

They’re also among the less interesting. Eternal, noble, possessed of deep knowledge and incredible power, they’re relatively changeless and given time, can do pretty much anything to which they set their minds.

More intriguing, to this little brain anyway, are the Dwarves. They’ve a reputation for being dour, humourless and grim, but as a culture, they’ve had reason. Driven from their ancestral halls, they are a people fallen from the heights of their civilisations in Moria and Erebor. Immensely talented in the creation of works of beauty and art, they are at once savage and unrelenting in war.

Perhaps the clearest portrait of their cultural essence is rendered by the song sung by Thorin and Company at Bag End before setting off on the quest for the Lonely Mountain. Imagine it chanted by thirteen deep voices in a fire-lit, smoky, low-ceilinged hall. . . .

Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away ere break of day
To seek the pale enchanted gold.

The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,
While hammers fell like ringing bells
In places deep, where dark things sleep,
In hollow halls beneath the fells.

For ancient king and elvish lord
There many a gleaming golden hoard
They shaped and wrought, and light they caught
To hide in gems on hilt of sword.

On silver necklaces they strung
The flowering stars, on crowns they hung
The dragon-fire, in twisted wire
They meshed the light of moon and sun.

Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away, ere break of day,
To claim our long-forgotten gold.

Goblets they carved there for themselves
And harps of gold; where no man delves
There lay they long, and many a song
Was sung unheard by men or elves.

The pines were roaring on the height,
The winds were moaning in the night.
The fire was red, it flaming spread;
The trees like torches blazed with light.

The bells were ringing in the dale
And men looked up with faces pale;
The dragon's ire more fierce than fire
Laid low their towers and houses frail.

The mountain smoked beneath the moon;
The dwarves, they heard the tramp of doom.
They fled their hall to dying fall
Beneath his feet, beneath the moon.

Far over the misty mountains grim
To dungeons deep and caverns dim
We must away, ere break of day
To win our harps and gold from him!

Wow. The thing fairly throbs with power and grim determination. Where’s my axe? My backpack? Off we go! Hm. Or not. Let’s calm down and take the song stanza by stanza.

Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away ere break of day
To seek the pale enchanted gold.

Dwarves live in unforgiving environments. Driven by a desire to work and craft stone, gems and precious minerals, they make their homes in steep, rocky, damp and chilly places. It’s no wonder that they moved underground. Still, they’ve made comfortable places for themselves; the “dungeons” must refer to the use of the word as the keep of a castle, wherein the inhabitants resided. Above-ground, this was often a stone tower. Dwarven dungeons were probably underground dwellings, carved out of the rock. That they didn’t merely move into natural caves is borne out by the song’s distinction between “dungeons” and “caverns.” The last line of the verse introduces us to a Dwarven passion. Gold glitters and flashes shallowly in torchlight and the Dwarves’ love of the metal is akin to a magical compulsion to seek it out.

The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,
While hammers fell like ringing bells
In places deep, where dark things sleep,
In hollow halls beneath the fells.

The Dwarves are an ancient people of many achievements and great works. They are often portrayed as being anti-magical or at the very least, shunning the use of magic in their craft. The “mighty spells” may give the lie to that characterisation, in that the Dwarves may be able to imbue their creations with magical attributes. Conversely, it may be a metaphor for the consummate skill which the Dwarves bring to their crafts, such that their works, while untouched by the supernatural, are of unparalleled quality, seemingly magical. The rest of this stanza is a truly ominous bit of foreshadowing, as the “Dwarvish racket” resonates in the ears of things unknown to the bearded folk, yet close by whom they have delved.

For ancient king and elvish lord
There many a gleaming golden hoard
They shaped and wrought, and light they caught
To hide in gems on hilt of sword.

On silver necklaces they strung
The flowering stars, on crowns they hung
The dragon-fire, in twisted wire
They meshed the light of moon and sun.

We can take these two stanzas together, as they highlight the level of skill achieved by the Dwarves of old. Sought after by powerful Men and Elves, Dwarvish art in metalworking and gemsmithing must have far exceeded the capabilities of the other races. In their hands, cold metal and hard gems awoke to reflect back the light and wonders of the natural world.

Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away, ere break of day,
To claim our long-forgotten gold.

Goblets they carved there for themselves
And harps of gold; where no man delves
There lay they long, and many a song
Was sung unheard by men or elves.

A circle back to the ancient homelands and a sign, with the “long-forgotten gold,” that the Dwarves have fallen away from the glories of their past, begin this stanza. The second of these verses harks back to the Dwarven skill of hand and makes the important point that no matter what “gleaming golden hoards” they delivered up to Men and Elves, the best of their creations they kept for themselves. More than artisans, tradesmen and merchants, the Dwarves developed and nurtured their own culture, keeping it fiercely secret from outsiders.

The pines were roaring on the height,
The winds were moaning in the night.
The fire was red, it flaming spread;
The trees like torches blazed with light.

The bells were ringing in the dale
And men looked up with faces pale;
The dragon's ire more fierce than fire
Laid low their towers and houses frail.

The mountain smoked beneath the moon;
The dwarves, they heard the tramp of doom.
They fled their hall to dying fall
Beneath his feet, beneath the moon.

The coming of the dragon; heralded in flame. The Dwarves’ creations caught and reflected back the beauty of the world. The dragon is a destroyer, a bringer of death to the world, covetous of that which, when its source of beauty is gone, is reduced to a hard pile of lifeless rock and metal.  The Dwarves are driven out from the safety of their “dungeons deep,” out into the harsh mountainsides where the dragon, where death, awaits.

Far over the misty mountains grim
To dungeons deep and caverns dim
We must away, ere break of day
To win our harps and gold from him!

Now for the last.  The Dwarves have suffered much.  They have fallen from their high places of old; their mountains are not just “cold,” but “grim” and their caverns, once ablaze with light, are danksome and dark.  The dragon rules a dead kingdom, but the Dwarves are determined not only to take back their treasure and works of their hands, but also their lost culture, to win back the respect of the outside world and the essence of their own place in it.

But I have never sat down and seriously worked my way into the storylines of any Marvel book.  It appears I should. There’s a whole realm of geekdom I’m missing out on.

Where do I start?  All I know is that I’m most interested in the X-men of all the teams and titles out there.  The Avengers seem a little stodgy and the Fantastic Four. . . . .well, dull.  I could be wrong.

There are millions of X-men titles and graphic novels/collections out there.  I’m not really interested in “collecting”, but in reading stories with good art, characters and plot.  Where should I begin this little quest into the unknown?  What are the best X-men books?

Incidentally, I’ve always been a small Batman fan too.  What belongs in the essential Batman library?

Townie Bastard, I’ve an odd feeling you might be able to help with this. . . . .

And then a small sign Katherine chanced to espy.

“Aha!” she exclaimed, a smile lighting her face,

“These glyphs finally did fall into place!”

“See-ay-are spells Car!”, she pronounced with a grin,

And wondered why her parents’ heads did suddenly spin.

My favourite character in all this crowd is the Yeoman.  He’s a servant of the Knight and is one of the fellowship who does not tell a tale. Here he is, from www.canterburytales.org:

So here’s a pretty complete picture of a tough, competent fellow.  He’s heavily armed, with sword, dagger, buckler, bow and arrows. He knows how to care for his equipment and he’s expert in his craft.  The very model, not of a modern Major-General, but of a trusty companion to a knight-errant.  With these few lines, Chaucer captured an icon of English folklore and history: the Archer.  Men like this stood at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt, three battles of the Hundred Years’ War that infused the British conception of their place in history for centuries.  The notion of the common-born English longbowman defeating the steel-clad flower of French chivalry in a deadly arrow-storm stood all through English history as an integral part of the British national character.  See Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The White Company for details.

An equally fascinating cast of characters marches through the Tales.  Here’s another one, whom I have not read since I was admitted to the bar. . . . .the Man of Law:

It’s interesting to note that lawyers gathered as many flippant comments 600 years ago as they do today.  Seems somehow right and proper.

• carpenter
• knight
• dragon
• firefighter
• police officer
• truck driver
• master art thief
• master jewel thief
• mountain climber
• wilderness guide
• historian
• archaeologist
• archivist
• wizard
• commando
• foreign news correspondent
• journalist
• bowyer
• swordsmith
• photographer
• spy
• intrepid explorer
• diver
• wildlife biologist
• ninja
• space shuttle pilot
• regular airplane pilot
• helicopter pilot
• Jedi Knight
• toy tester
• race car driver
• highrise construction worker
• veterinarian
• musician
• magician
• escape artist
• writer
• librarian

Notice the complete absence of lawyers in there. I still think I’d have made a great dragon.

What did you want to be when you grew up? I asked Katherine that question today. She said, “Bigger.”