It’s that time of year when you wait for your spouse as s/he shops for diced tomatoes or umeboshi paste by hanging out at the illustrated calendar rack and flipping through the pictures. Sadly, unless you’re a cat lover, a goner for anything to do with covered bridges, or someone who still dreams of a trip to Tibet’s high steppe Buddhist monasteries, there’s very little of excitement for you to peruse.

This wasn’t always the case. Throughout the years of the Harry Potter book publications and movie releases, Hogwarts calendars could be found everywhere. Now they can be had online — check out the 2015 variety at Amazon.com — but they, along with illustrations from Tolkien and Lewis and Dickens collected works, are much harder to find, especially ones not just stills from movie adaptations.

Back when I was a lad and dinosaurs walked the marshes of northern New Jersey, though, every year featured at least one new calendar, usually several, which featured heroic works of art derived from J. R. R. Tolkien’s Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. My favorites? The ones by the Brothers Hildebrand. Check out their 1978 set for Ballantine books at The Compleat Gyde to Tolkien Calendars. The pictures are a cross between Walt Disney and Norman Rockwell and I loved ’em all.

A friend recently sent me a link to the Russian illustrator Sergey Yuhimov’s work based on Tolkien’s magnum opus. I confess to being enthralled. The pictures on this post are all his work and there are many more (see them here, here, and here). The blend of Orthodox Christian iconographic scale and symmetry with western medieval elements adapted from the Bayeaux tapestry and illuminated manuscripts is such an apt choice for representing the otherworldly qualities of Rings.

If you know anyone out there who makes calendars for a living, please urge them to pursue the rights to Yuhimov’s Middle Earth works. Happy New Year to you all!

Visit & Learn More about Harry Potter’s World Article With Photos

Don’t miss this fantastic, summer study abroad course offered by California State University San Marcos! Anyone over 18 may apply, students and non-students.

This course is not licensed, endorsed or approved by, or affiliated with, Warner Bros. or J.K. Rowling.

A few of the many locations we will visit: many London cultural & historic sites, Warner Bros. Studios: The Making of Harry Potter (where the films were made), Platform 9 ¾ at King’s Cross Station, ride the Jacobite steam train used for the Hogwarts Express, see Oxford University, Alnwick Castle (including broomstick flying lesson) and the many scenic and historic castles & cathedrals where filmmakers shot scenes of Hogwarts classrooms, visit the beautiful Scottish Highlands (Hogwarts School, Hagrid’s hut, the lake where Harry & Sirius Black were attacked by Dementors), see Edinburgh locations where J.K. Rowling wrote the novels (including the Elephant Café and Balmoral Hotel, where she worked on the first & final novels) and much, much more!  All travel in Great Britain, lodging, breakfasts & admission fees are included. Airfare, other meals not included.

• Ø Cost: $4900 (+ $252 to earn course credit).
• Ø See the webpage: http://www.csusm.edu/global/studyabroad/ — look under “Summer Programs”
• Ø Deadline to register: Dec. 12, 2014 (I know I’m late in posting this — but write Prof Pershing and ask for a Christmas Day gift extension!)

For information, contact Professor Linda Pershing, Lpershing@csusm.edu, Calif. State University San Marcos

I am giving a talk tomorrow night in Washington, DC, about Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. It is part of the St Columba’s Episcopal Church’s Advent Retreat; learn all about it here.

If you live in the District of Columbia or close environs, I hope to see you there! If you cannot make it, enjoy Jim Dale reading Christmas Carol here so you can join us in spirit…

I received a brief but pointed note yesterday from a friend in the UK, a correspondent I admire very much for his insights not only about Harry Potter and all things literary but also the postmodern world we live in. We had exchanged notes with attached pictures and links to videos previously about whether J. K. Rowling had had cosmetic surgery after her great success as author of the Hogwarts Saga. He wrote:

John — I think these two videos will persuade you.

• Before: Harry Potter author JK Rowling in early interview
• And after: JK Rowling on her love of Hufflepuff

In the first vid she has an ‘underbite’ malocclusion which gave her a slight speech impediment – she has since had her jaw made smaller, and set back.

 

And she has clearly had something done to enhance the cheekbones – so her face has a completely different shape now – wider cheekbones and a smaller narrower chin.

 

Also the skin is now shiny and smooth. The eyes look different.

 

In short, the modern JKR just looks like a different person – and *superficially* has not aged or has got younger over 15 years.

 

Myself, I prefer the 1998 JKR in every way, but especially as a person!

In our previous notes, I’d shared the famous Daily Mail take-down detailing her transformations (Rowling makes Uncle Vernon a Daily Mail reader in Goblet to make her feelings clear — if her several suits against the paper weren’t sufficient — about this newspaper). I’d included as a counter-weight, however, a link to a video of what must assume is her intentionally frumpy look in court in 2011 when she testified about the excesses of the Third Estate (picture, left) to note that she just dresses up nicely when that suits her purpose.

I responded to the Before and After videos I was sent with these three notes: [Read more…]