Randy Hoyt » myth

Calendar Change: November

Randy Hoyt — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 03:00:33 +0000

November is here, and today I changed my Tolkien calendar and my desktop wallpaper. I have the 2009 Tolkien calendar illustrated by Ted Nasmith, with landscapes from the First Age of Middle-earth, and I continue to use a monthly desktop wallpaper from Smashing Magazine. (The scene in the Tolkien calendar depicts the opening of the mountain range that leads to the land of the gods.)

Vancouver 2010 Olympic Medals

Randy Hoyt — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:00:51 +0000

I’ve always been a huge fan of the Olympic Games, particularly the Winter Games. The twenty-first Winter Olympic Games will be held in Vancouver, British Columbia in February 2010. (I grew up in the Northwest United States, an area that I absolutely love; we had thought about going to Vancouver for the Games, but decided it was a little too much for us to handle right now.) Information about the design for the medals was posted to the Vancouver 2010 web site this week, a photo gallery and a video describing the design. The medals are based on abstract artwork by a Canadian designer of Tlingit heritage: the artwork is in the same style as the carved totem poles from that region with which many people will be familiar. (Check out my article on totem poles for more information.) I plan to write about these medals — particularly the use of Raven in the medals for the Paralympic Games — for the next issue of my online myth magazine Journey to the Sea.

Journey to the Sea #14

Randy Hoyt — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 03:00:31 +0000

I published the fourteenth issue of my online myth magazine Journey to the Sea this morning. This issue includes an article by my friend Jason on Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Cycle and one by me on the book Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, both typical examples of the kind of modern myth-making we write about on the site. But in addition to these two, I’m incredibly pleased with the third article that looks at the film Katyń by Polish film director Andrzej Wajda. The film is not fantastical at all — it would qualify as historical fiction, I suppose, looking at the tragic 1940 massacre in the Poland forest Katyn — but Laura Gibbs looks at how Wajda wove the Greek myth of Antigone into the film.

Katyn: History, Lies, Fiction and Myth - Laura looks at the 2007 film Katyn, exploring how director Andrzej Wajda wove Greek myth and his own biography into the fictional character of Agnieszka to give a true account of the tragic 1940 massacre in Poland.
Welsh Mythological Underpinnings of Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Cycle - Jason considers Lloyd Alexander’s careful borrowing of material from Welsh mythology (especially stories from the Mabinogion) to create a compelling backdrop against which to tell his own stories.
Imagination in Where The Wild Things Are - Randy examines some subtle details in the illustrations of one of his childhood favorites to see what Maurice Sendak’s classic picture book has to say about the transforming power of imagination.

Calendar Change: October

Randy Hoyt — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 03:00:25 +0000

October is here, and today I changed my Tolkien calendar and my desktop wallpaper. I have the 2009 Tolkien calendar illustrated by Ted Nasmith, with landscapes from the First Age of Middle-earth, and I continue to use a monthly desktop wallpaper from Smashing Magazine. (The scene in the Tolkien calendar comes from one of the best and most tragic stories in The Silmarillion, when Féanor betrays the other elves leaving Valinor with him.)

Mythcon 39

Randy Hoyt — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 01:41:12 +0000

This past weekend, I traveled to New Britain, Connecticut (just south of Hartford) for Mythcon 39, the annual conference of the Mythopoeic Society. The society is devoted to the enjoyment and study of “mythopoeic” literature, literature that creates new mythological material or transforms and incorporates existing material. To paraphrase the editor of the society’s scholarly journal, this type of work at its best inspires the reader to examine the importance of mythology in his own spiritual, moral, and creative development (source).

The conference contained papers and panels that examined this kind of literature. The society definitely focuses on J.R.R. Tolkien, but I managed to hear a few papers on the works of other authors. I attended some panels that provoked some good conversations on myth, fantasy, and their value to our lives. The scholars and guests that attended were very friendly and approachable, and I had the opportunity to conduct two interviews with people whose Tolkien-related work I greatly respect, one a scholar and one an artist, for upcoming issues of Journey to the Sea. I also had some exciting conversations with people that I hope to get to know more over the coming months.

This trip doubled as a family vacation, so I only attended about half of the programming. My wife has a goal of visiting all fifty states, and we were able to check Connecticut and Rhode Island off the list on this trip.

In Rhode Island, my wife, my son, and I visited the Roger Williams Park Zoo, took a historical trolley tour of Providence, and got our national park passport stamped at the Roger Williams National Memorial.
In Connecticut, while I attended the conference, my wife and son visited Mark Twain’s house and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s house, the Hartford children’s museum, and an event at the public library with music, dance, and food from India. (My son made an image of the monkey Hanuman from the Ramayana out of construction paper and popsicle sticks.) After the conference, we made it to “Children’s Day” at the Billings Forge Farmers’ Market.

All and all, the trip was a success, and I’m hoping I’ll be able to attend Mythcon 40 next summer in southern California.