Nasmith, Ted

Rawls, Melanie

Smith Lowentrout, C.I.  Sherwood

English

SWOSU Digital Commons (Southwestern Oklahoma State University)

Volume 19 Number 2 Article 10 Spring 3-15-1993 25 Years: The Mythopoeic Society Appreciations C.I. "Sherwood" Smith Lowentrout Ted Nasmith Melanie Rawls Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore  Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Smith Lowentrout, C.I. "Sherwood"; Nasmith, Ted; and Rawls, Melanie (1993) "25 Years: The Mythopoeic Society Appreciations," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 19 : No. 2 , Article 10. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol19/iss2/10 This Letter is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact phillip.fitzsimmons@swosu.edu. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico • Postponed to: July 30 – August 2, 2021 This letter is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol19/iss2/10 pxGe 40  i s s u e  72 —  s p r i n g  19 9 3  C D Y T l T L O R €APPRECIATIONSThe following tributes were not, for different reasons, printed in the last issue. We are happy to share them  with you here.Cl. "Sherwood" Smith Lowentrout, Westminster, CAPROSITHow can one properly express appreciation for some­thing that has been a part of one's life for 25 years? I was a skinny 16-year-old when I first joined the Society, and now I'm  a matron of 41.I came to Tolkien by a somewhat circuitous route: a friend brought me these three library books, saying, "Here's a grownup who's doing what we are. And he published it!" (The 'what' being writing about another world, which I'd already been at for six years.) "It better not have dressed up animals," I said darkly. "I don't think it does," she replied. "Hobbits aren't animals, they're peo­ple —  with hairy feet." "Hah!" said I. So we sat in her attic, me hotly finishing my ninth novel about that Other Place while intermittently watching her make her way through The Lord o f the Rings. When she showed me the maps and the languages, I was ready to take Tolkien seriously. I devoured the trilogy in one weekend, and then began my quest to find others who liked that kind of thing... and maybe, maybe, someone else who wrote it.Never mind about my unsympathetic family who thought fantasy and writing weird, and the West Los Angeles schools that seemed to breed Barbie and Ken cutouts. When the hand-addressed invitation came (I still have it) to that very first picnic, I was thrilled — but my parents refused to drive me the fifteen miles to what was probably going to be a hippie gathering (they thought). So when the next invitation came, to a meeting in January of '68, 1 found a way to San Gabriel myself -- involving six miles of walking to the downtown-bound bus stop, and an all day bus ride, with a changeover on Skid Row in Los Angeles. (If my parents had known about that this thing would be a lot shorter!) There I found a discussion rich with the joy of kindred minds sharing the kinds of books they loved, chaired by a genial and extremely well-read young man not much older than I, named Glen GoodKnight, who, far from demanding one pass some arcane test in order to join his august group (as I had feared) welcomed all. After a few swiftly-passing hours of high-energy talk and laughter and book and idea-sharing, I left, dazzled by the feeling I'd come "home" at last, and I knew that I would stay with this group as long as I could.And I have. Though I didn't find otherworld seers, the ardent spirits 1 did find made life a joy, and I lived for those monthly excursions. Through the Society I broadened my reading; when, at last, I could drive, I attended as many discussion groups as I could afford gas for. And as my life changed, so did the Society. It was soon after I began driving (1969) that Glen GoodKnight held up the cover drawing for a new magazine he was proposing — Mythlore.Everyone OOOOOHHHed and WOWed. And notlong after, he announced that there'd be a conference. O joy! O exaltation! A Meeting that would last not hours, but three days! Then began the agonizing scramble to scrape up the, what, thirty dollars? for membership, room and board. A lot back then for an impecunious college freshman, but again it was worth it.How, then, to express appreciation? Sifting through vivid memories, 1 find the word "Joy!" reified through experience. At the second picnic, I won the M ost Beautiful award. Me! A scrawny, bespectacled, reject-from-the-surf- set teenager, wearing a costume handsewn of a 25 year old blackout curtain and an old bedsheet over worn ballet tights. For a few hours I could aspire to the kind of grace and panache all too rare in our dusty, noisy, tech-driven 20th Century; the award meant that someone else —  look­ing perha ps through the lens of kindness— could see it too. I still have that award, a cardboard circle with ballpoint pen-drawn curlicues and a plastic gem set in the middle.There are other bright memories: the live Narnia Chess Game; the laughter of a pun tourney in the slanting rays of an autumn afternoon; the beauty of voices intertwined in the on-going The Lord o f  the Rings opera; the applause of the audience after friends and I finished dancing my cho­reographic homage to Till We H ave Faces. But it would be a mistake to name only the superficials. There are also the intellectual and philosophical explorations, the way lit by the three authors:Tolkien putting to words the sehnsucht peculiar to sub­creation; the metaphor from Lewis "Farther up and farther in!" inspiring us to widen our awareness while always trying to achieve, and look for, and believe the best; Williams' Co-Inherence, which encourages us to look at one another with understanding and compassion and willingness to learn, while knowing that all our actions, good and bad, passionate and indifferent, weave their way into the fabric of collective human experience.W e played with passionate intensity —  and sometimes argued passionately, but this is also good, and right. Caring deeply means passion; those who rim the Society bring to it the best of motives, including desiring to give back to it some of the gifts it gave. I know that even after 25 years of helping out in myriad ways, I still have not repaid my own debt.CPyTt>l_OK€express wide-ranging interests, keen and flexible intelli­gence, care and craft, humor and hope. One could almost be hobbit-smug about such an association. I count my own publications in M ythlore and M ythprint as true feathers in my cap. (Very prominent on my resum e!) I'm  proud to have made the grade.PA .G6  41IS S U 6  72 —  S P R IN G  1993In summer of 1972,1 sat alone in Oxford's Bird & Babe and saluted the Mythopoeic Society. As I write this— August, 1992 —  a number of friends are over there now, in Oxford, and maybe even at the inn, holding their glasses high- To them, to everyone— Prosit! Here's to another 25 years!Ted Nasmith Toronto, CanadaI believe I first heard about the M ythopoeic Society through the "Small Press" column in Amort Hen. By this time, as a recent m em ber of the [British] Tolkien Society, I was familiarizing m yself with the Tolkien fans scene, and was more than a little intrigued at the several fanzines and journals available. I decided to give M ythlore a try and haven't looked back since. My first M ythopoeic Confer­ence was in 1987 at M arquette, and, as if to fully cement my com plete loyalty, it was one of the most memorable M ythopoeic Conference in many years, as those fortunate to attend will attest. I discovered with The Mythopoeic Society several things, including consistently penetrating analysis of Tolkien's work, a lively exchange of ideas in members' letters, the first objective assessment of my Tol­kien illustrations, but most im portantly, my acceptance into a warm com m unity o f kindred spirits and new found friends who rem ain am ong my most cherished acquaint­ances. After years o f painting scenes from Tolkien rela­tively isolated from  other fans, I now could enrich my work with ideas and inspiration that contact and exchange with friends and members of the M.S. (and T.S.) provide.I'd always known there was an audience for my art, but The M ythopoeic Society gave that notion shape and iden­tity. Interacting with certain m em bers has challenged me and inspired me to ever new heights.Melanie Rawls Tal lahasse, FLA burden shared is halved; a pleasure shared is doubled.Sounds like som ething Bilbo Baggins would say doesn't it? I'm  not sure where I heard or read this apho­rism, but the later half of the statement certainly applies to The M ythopoeic Society. I know that my pleasure in the mythopoeic im agination and all that it produces —  tales, poetry, music, drama, art, dance, etc. —  has been more than doubled by knowing that other people share my enthusiasm. I'm  positive that other Society members feel the same.Most of the contact with the Society is through its publications. I can't w ait to receive M ythlore in the mail. A quality publication —  lovely to handle, easy on the eye, obviously a labor o f love. And the contents! Such a satis­faction to belong to a group whose members' contributionMything Persons are so often regarded by n o n - Mything people as folk who have som ehow gotten stranded in childhood or whose elevators go sideways. Explaining one's interest in fantasy literature and related fields can be so unrewarding: "How can you read this stuff?" people ask, and go on to proudly add that they've "never read that kind of thing." This kind of proud igno­rance can be m ost exasperating when you wish to share something wonder-full, exciting, thought-provoking, moving. The Mythopoeic Society is a refuge from that kind of condescension. W hat a relief to be able to discuss and display mythopoeic imagination w ithout having to re­count plots, explain that Tinkerbell isn 't all there is to magic, or justify justify justify your interest. Kick back, w e're all on the same wavelength here.That's the Mythopoeic Society —  forum, refuge, and association that doubles the pleasure. A satisfying exam­ple o f fellowship.^  Mythopoeic if l  CIore Beading I ast B^  MyTHLORe frequently publishes articles that presup- ev pose the reader is already familiar with the works they dis- ^  cuss. This is natural, given the purpose of this journal. To s j )be a general help, the following might be considered a core '“ I reading list, with the most well known and frequently dis-cussed works. Due to the many editions printed, only the jZ-J title and original date of publication are given. ( f t% X H -H - XolHicnThe Hobbit, 1937; "Leaf by Niggle," 1945; "On Fairy- G% ^  Stories," 1945; The Lord of the Rings : The Fellowship of 'w the Ring 1954, The Two Towers 1954, The Return of the O  King 1955; Smith of Wootton Major 1967; The Silmarillion 1977. Go% I/C U li8  QOut of the Silent Planet 1938; Perelandra 1943; That Hid- Go eous Strength 1945; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe ^  sh  1950; Prince Caspian 1951; The Voyage of the Dawn ^Treader 1952; The Silver Chair 1953; The Horse and His Gj? s ’ Boy 1954; The Magician's Nephew 1955; The Last Battle1956; Till We Have Faces 1956. O^  C|haRlc8 Gilliams ^War in Heaven 1930; Many Dimensions 1931; The Place of O  the Lion 1931; The Greater Trumps 1932; Shadows ofEcst- \fy s ’ acy 1933; Descent Into Hell 1937; All Hallow's Eve 1945;Taliessin through Logres 1938, and The Region of the r j .  Summer Stars 1944

25 Years: The Mythopoeic Society Appreciations

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25 Years: The Mythopoeic Society Appreciations

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