Phew! And it only took a month!
Actually, it’s something of a miracle that the site’s essays survived the crash of its server and host so I am only grateful to be back without having to start as a clean slate. Thank you, Erick, for all you have done to bring us back on line as you have. The Forums (my private boards) are in something like suspended de-animation — Stoppered Demise? — but I hope we can bring them back in some form this summer.
I leave Friday for the Sonorus Harry Potter conference outside Los Angeles where I will be talking about (surprise!) Deathly Hallows. When I return, in addition to posting about that fun event, I’ll be writing about the several things that have been happening in the HogPro world while the site was vacationing at the Zossima.com home page. The Wall Street Journal article was a big deal, being interviewed for the Warner Brothers teevee special on Phoenix to be aired on A&E July 8th was fun, and even the nasty-gram from Scholastic was interesting enough to deserve some comment, too.
And, yes, more on the heretofore unknown importance of ‘Shipping on understanding literary alchemy (who knew Harry was a point to point stand-in for Alchemical Sulphur!) and, more seriously, the essay on Snape as Machiavelli’s Prince. Thank you for your patience with me during the site’s long absence and for passing the word to shared friends that HogPro is back. Now that school is out, I hope to be posting frequently through the summer. I look forward to reading what you all have been doing this past month! Time to pack for Sonorus….
Welcome back to cyberspace!
I look forward to finally meeting you in person this weekend.
Linda
So good to have you back, John. I’ve missed the site and all the discussions on the private forum as well.
Have a wonderful time in California–sounds like it’s going to be an interesting day. I wish I could be there, but I have too many commitments this time of year with day camp coming up in July.
I’ve bookmarked many of the live journals/blogs from people at the forum, but not everyone had one, so I hope they find their way here. I see from the comments that Mpol did, and I just hope the rest are checking as well. I wonder if we might do some sort of voluntary email exchange so we can keep in touch when servers aren’t reliable, or to let people know to come back now that the site is up again. (Or do you or Erick have that sort of list? If so, it might be good to send out an email letting people know.)
Anyway, glad to see you back–and travel safely, have a great time.
Pat
Looking forward to getting the forums back on line – those are a whole bunch of smart people.
Hello,
It was wonderful to hear you speak at Sonorus last night!
Thank you for accepting Ann-Laurel’s invitation.
…and a good time was had by all!…
Kath
Welcome back John. I don’t know what I would have done if the site continued to be down leaving me deprived of your perspective of the alchemy in Harry Potter series. Perhaps reread all your books. Anyway I look forward to your future posts and have a safe trip to the Sonorus conference. 🙂
Welcome back, John!
I’ve been missing everybody … and so wanting to hear rumor’s thoughts on the deluxe edition cover art (along with everybody else’s … could that be Norbert all growed up?) I can’t wait until the old forum is up and running once more (because I have a number of pieces to add)
Hi friends,
I was just looking at the June 2007 issue of National Geographic this AM, and came across an article entitled, “A Passion for Order” about Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern botanical classification. In his first 1735 published classification, he included Animals, and he had a category entitled “Paradoxa” where he placed unicorns, phoenixes, and dragons. The duel-page spread on “Building the Tree of Life” is also fascinating.
I though my fellow HP nuts and fans of John’s work would enjoy reading it.
Coppinger
woot!
i like the wordpress usage. i’ve had a wordpress blog running for over a year now. good stuff, and easy to configure and taylor to your tastes. I just added captchas to my comments sections because I had been getting hit by a bunch of comment spammers (to the tune of 100+ each day). But if you have a login required to post comments, that should not be a problem for you.
cheers!
tc
On TrudyK’s question on the deluxe cover art … the question intrigued me so I grabbed Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them.
Of course, the usefullness of any of the following is based on the assumption that GrandPre’s artwork of the dragon is based in the type of dragon according to species specifics Rowling has provided in FBaWtFT, which might not be the case, it could be a completely more free-form interpretation, but GrandPre’s stuff seems to me like she generally tries to be pretty on with details that fit with what Rowling has provided about the Potterveres, so here goes:
Norbert was a Norwegian Ridgeback. I can’t be super sure but I don’t think there is enough possibility of “particularly prominent jet-black ridges along its back” (FBaWtFT p. 13). The placement of the trio seems to preclude that as well – Hermione (I think) seems to be lying across, and Harry straddling, right where the ridges would run through (another interesting facet of the cover art is that Ron and Hermione are both wearing their robes, albeit rather torn, whereas Harry, as also in the regular artwork with Voldy, is not wearing robes, but rather his “civies” – or maybe a better adaptation would be his “muggies”).
My guess is either an Antipodean Opaleye or a Romanian Longsnout. Either way I suspect the scenery beneath to be Romania because FBaWtFT states of the Romanian Longhorn “the native territory of the longhorn has now become the world’s most important dragon reservation, where wizards of all nationalities study a variety of dragons at close range” (FBaWtFT 14). The Hebridian Black’s batlike wings might be a possibility but the lack of an arrow shape to the tail tip seems to preclude that.
I personally go for the Opaleye because of the lack of pupil in the eyes. Also, this dragon comes from an area which is specifically seen to be as “the other” from the English Isles … Australia originally being a prison colony of Great Britain, if I am not mistaken. I think Rowling would also be drawn to using the dragon with this name, also on the grounds of “the other” themes, by the regional name itself, which comes from its physical global relation to England, Antipodean means “opposite foot” (literally polar opposite, as in the place directly opposite on the globe) … the whole thing of “opposition” involved in “otherness” seems right up her alley.
(The scene over which they are flying seems to be river valley, which the Antipodean Opaleyewould seem to like for living area [FBaWtFT 11], but then there are towns down there too so maybe not … and anyway, there is nothing that says that the scene they are flying in is a natural living or nesting ground for the dragon/species … since the scene looks somewhat Romanian and Romania is the area with the multi-national multi-species reservations, that is the main reason I guess Romania and that area would be both valleys and mountains, so I don’t think there is too much conclusive in those factors)
anyway, just some thoughts,
Merlin the Map-Boy
Trudy I am so gald you are back too. I did leave my deluxe cover comments under the March folder under the fire away article. I hope this comment makes it cuz my last on Bad Snape did not.
My bad … it looks like Harry is wearing a robe over his “muggies” on the regular cover for DH, but what threw me is that it does not look like the “standard issue” black ones … I guess maybe this could be merely stylistic on GrandPre’s part, but it also seems to me like it could have some other significance, I just can’t think for the life of me what it would be (this isn’t necessarily the world of the Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic RP/Strategy/FPS games where you can get different kinds of robes of different ranks and branches of Jedi and Sith, but I guess there could be a little of that coming or somehing … but the only difference in robes noted thus far, outside of dress robes and personal choices of style etc, are with the 3 schools, which seem to be more along the order of differences in style simply of regularly boarding school lines … the thing the robes on the regular cover remind me of most are the rough brown usually associated with mendicant monastic religious orders, friars etc, of the middle ages)
Trudy, to answer your question about if Norbert could the the deluxe cover dragon, my answer is yes. If you look on 228 in SS hardback, you will see baby Norbert. If you look at the large one on the cover, it is uncanny.