[Child of the 7th Age]

Lush, Iarwain, Willie, and many others,

You are very eloquent in your defense of the here and now, and our need to have people who will stand up and try to make a difference.

This is going to sound like a very strange thing to say, but I believe I may have a different view on this because of my age.

For over fifty years, I have been butting my head against the system in various shapes and forms. I went to college in the late sixties with all that that entailed, then grad school in medieval history, and eventually ended up marrying a labor organizer from the farmworkers who went to law school because he saw it as a way to change things. I've been a college professor, librarian, old style activist way back when, teacher, mom, and wife. And, believe me, I've enjoyed every minute of it.

If I'm still lucky enough to be here for the next fifty years, I'll keep searching for new windmills to tilt at. And, of course, there are plenty more unexplored.

Still,....every so often I get a hankering for something that goes beyond what I've seen and done on this planet, all those possibilities that I sense in this present reality. Something that builds on what we have here but manages to go beyond it. That's why I love myth. So if there was really some way to explore an alternative world like middle-earth and if I could bring the people I loved with me (that's a big "If"), I think I would take a shot at it.

And, in another strange way, I wonder just how different that left portal would be. I mean Elves and hobbits and dwarves all embody pieces of what we are as Men. Tolkien even said that. Although the externals of the world would be different and the physical appearance of "people" different, maybe at some gut level there might be more similarities than we think. I will admit I have a neighbor or two who fits the mode of certain hobbits in both a positive and negative sense.

sharon

[ July 02, 2003: Message edited by: Child of the 7th Age ]