Some Harry Potter behind the scenes fun

When I say I like The Lord of the Rings, people will sometimes immediately assume I'm some big Sci-Fi/Fantasy fan.  I'm not.  I like LoTR despite the fact that it's fantasy, not because.  Same goes for The Hobbit and the rest of Tolkien's vast universe.  I appreciate the quality and the talent and passion behind it all.

Likewise, I dis on Harry Potter quite a lot, and people sometimes confuse that with some profound dislike for it.  I don't dislike it, though I feel the later books of the series lacked the same charm and quality that the earlier books possessed.  As one of my sons said, Rowling tried to make an epic fictional universe that ended up being too big for her talents to fill.  To me it was like the movie Titanic, not as bad as its harshest critics suggest, but nowhere near deserving the accolades and success it enjoyed.

In the same way, I enjoyed the movies, though their quality tended to diminish along with the books.  Those radfans who insisted Rowling was the holy mother of authors and Potter was the Gospel incarnate, and who blamed directors and Hollywood and evil fundamentalists and bad editors and everything else for the quality problems were just blowing fanboy hot air.  She just hit it big at the dawn of the  global internet era and Harry Potter Org. was the result.  The disparity with her abilities was more to do with market shifts and worldwide consumer base than a fool editor causing her books to be what they became.

Nonetheless, I have fond memories of that whole phenomenon, just as I do The Wiggles and Miss Pattycake and Barney the Dinosaur or everything else that defines my boys' younger days.   That, as well as The Lord of the Rings (and their subsequent delving into all sorts of fantasy RPG sci-fi interests) are, for me, a special part of my life.  I can still remember the final book release and the big midnight HP party at a nearby Barnes and Noble.  My oldest son, who looked a lot like the boy wizard, was quite the conversation piece (I think he enjoyed the attention no matter what he said at the time).  Likewise, when the credits of the last HP movie rolled, I felt a certain sadness that a period in my boys' life had come to a close.   The same feeling I had when Luke beat the crap out of Vader in Return of the Jedi.

But that's the way of things.  So this was a fun little piece to go back and look through.  I'm sure actual fans of the movies (and maybe the books) will have more fun with it.

Making friends among the Nazis

So I've been looking over Jonathan Larson's book Making Friends Among the Taliban.  I wondered how it would work if someone published a book titled Making Friends Among the Nazis.  Maybe in today's climate, it would be OK.  After all, time heals all wounds, and perhaps people are starting to look past the one dimensional monster portrayal of the Nazi phenomenon and are wanting to delve into what turned perfectly good, thoughtful and well meaning people into the epitome of evil in the 20th century.  I'd be fine with that.  I'm one who believes in the complexities of history, and feels that our tendency to paint with ridiculously broad brushstrokes does a disservices to what we can learn from those who came before.  As long as we are in an age where we can buddy up with the Nazis, or the KKK, and it is as acceptable as making friends with the Taliban, I'd say we've turned some sort of corner, and perhaps it's for the better.  If not, however, and if the immediate reaction is 'how dare you! That's entirely different!', then I also think we've turned a corner,  but one that is far, far worse than where we were to begin with.

Happy Birthday King James Bible

Today is the official 400th birthday of the single most published English language text in history.  It's what has helped make the Bible the biggest selling book of all time.  Few other singular texts can boast the influence over history, culture, civilization, attitude, language, and education that this translation can claim.  As a Protestant, I never scoffed at the translation.  As a Catholic I still admire its poetry, its beauty and power.  Certainly when set in juxtaposition to recent translations that appear to follow our tech age's flushing of the spoken language down the tubes, the King James translation stands among the greatest translations of the Sacred Scriptures.  I won't even go into comparing it to the New American Bible used exclusively by America's Roman Catholic Church as the official translation.

Is it perfect?  Is it without problems?  Was it a product of its times?  Sure.  Why not.  As a Catholic, I have no fear in seeing God at work in the history of His Word, not merely in the jots and tittles of a singular written expression of it.  If it is all these things, then it probably only puts it in line with every other attempt to wrap the written word around the inscrutable mysteries of God.  And if it reflected its time as we often accuse it of doing, all I can say is that there was a beauty and grace in that time that has long since been lost from our self-congratulatory generation.

So happy birthday KJV.  And thanks for all of those who have come closer to the grace of God through your lovely and stirring pages. 

Frontispiece to the King James' Bible, 1611

Everything you know is wrong!

I'm always skeptical about any history book written with the underlying theme that everyone is wrong about what they think really happened.  Usually, that means everyone who really doesn't study history but gets their knowledge from the History Channel, the Movie Channel, or USA Today.  Most historians have a pretty good idea of what we know about this or that period of time - even if they argue about different interpretations of events.  Oh, you have disagreements, and usually those can be traced to the biases and belief systems of the historians in question.  But it's typically not because they just don't know.

I also find books like this can overstate the case, and try to make too much out of a little anecdote here or document there.  Most historians worth their salt know that the picture presented in the popular mindset about the Middle Ages is inaccurate.  It's more in line with a Hollywood fantasy film than accurate history.  Also, this book appears to be written by someone with more interest in science than history.  The fact that the period of time properly falls within the period of the Early Middle Ages, rather than the Dark Ages as the book's title suggests, gives me pause.  Still, I haven't read it, so perhaps it will be a great resource for Medieval Studies.  We'll have to see.

In fact, it could be a good companion to help add to the documentation that our popular perception of the Medieval Period is largely based on myth, fables, and fairy tales.  They weren't everything we are often led to believe, and therefore, even something as over the top as 'everything we know is wrong' can't help but set some of the record straight.