Currently there are active threads concerning West Coast, East Coast, and London groups of Barrow-Downers who are trying to hammer out a time to meet. There is also a thread for the Midwest (used in this sense as a vague term encompassing most of the United States). Whereas the former three threads seem to be all fairly popular and have many replies, the Midwest topic suffers from a decided lack of interest.
As I was pondering the reasons behind this curious phenomenon, I wondered: Are the Midwest Barrow-Downers not interested in meeting one another? Do most of them simply not visit this area of the forum?
Or does it go deeper? Is there a true paucity of Midwest Barrow-Downers? If so, why? Is there a corresponding (relative) lack of interest in Tolkien in this part of the country? How grievous that would be!
The ancient
Homeland stereotypes thread did influence this train of thought. But what do you think? Am I only imagining things?