Updating Again

I'll use punctuation this time. I, might? even/ use-it properly! as the pos,t goes on.

Another two weeks have passed. I don't have a job but am applying for an interesting position at a local high school doing original and copy cataloging for their library. Otherwise I'm still looking. Thanks to Jenn and Matt for the USAjobs suggestion. I haven't checked it out yet but will tomorrow or Tuesday. I'm having a bit of trouble in that I don't really feel the sense of urgency I should. I like being laid back but usually it's a bit too much.

I had a good time travelling with Matt and Rebekah down to Elkhart, Indiana for the Chicago Area Theological Library Association Spring meeting at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary. The theme of the meeting was "Library as Place". We heard a report on an ongoing research project about student use of seminary libraries and the plans for an addition to the Library at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne. That also led into a discussion of reading as a practice and the future of printed books. In the afternoon we heard a presentation on the new library at AMBS. It is a green building (not in the same sense as a "blonde house", but environmentally speaking). We had done a presentation for the Trinity library staff last year on trends in library buildings and I had done some research on the AMBS library then, but wasn't able to do a tour at that time. It was nice to see the building and what they had done. You can read about it here.

I mentioned somewhere that I'm auditing a course at Trinity College, History of Middle Earth, with Dr. Steve Fratt. For that we've read the Silmarillion and the Lord of the Rings with a lot of reference to Karen Fonstad's Atlas of Middle Earth. Tolkien said that he was attempting to invent a mythology for the English and we've been trying to approach our discussions as though we were reading actual ancient histories. It says something about his work of world building that people believe it passionately enough to try to argue and puzzle out ways in which it can consistently hold together. We've also been playing a number of games. Dr. Fratt is developing a set of games based on the battles of Beleriand in the Silmarillion and game versions of the Battle of the Hornburg and the Battle of the Pelennor fields from LotR. On Monday night we'll be playing his version of The War of the Ring which covers most of the events from LotR after the Council of Elrond. Last Monday we went as a class to the archives at Marquette University in Milwaukee where they have Tolkien's original manuscripts for LotR and the Hobbit, as well as other bits of Tolkiana. I had seen a lot of this collection when they held a museum exhibit at Marquette's art museum a few years ago. Still it was cool to see it again and to hear archivist Matt Blessing's presentation. We saw a number of manuscripts and lots of original artwork. Often when Tolkien was dealing with a knotty problem in the story he would map it out and it was fun to see these maps, including the original map of Erebor from The Hobbit. It was a good time also to fellowship with Dr. Fratt and my classmates on the ride up and walking around Milwaukee.

As I said, the rest of life is going well. Several of the youth went on Wednesday to set up bedding at a homeless shelter before our group meeting while others of us stayed back at the church and prepared bag meals for the homeless. My adult small group is nearing the end of our study of the book of Romans and our church just had a really awesome missions Sunday this morning. Yesterday I attended a session at Trinity for alumni and this springs grads focusing on resumes and job searching and in the afternoon I went to a Christian Youth Theatre production of The Wizard of Oz that some kids I know are in. I'm getting to do lots of reading and t.v. watching and am generally enjoying myself. Steve was sick this weekend but it appears not to have been H1N1 flu and I didn't pick any of it up myself.

That'll do. Maybe next time we'll try a sentence fragment update.