Just for nice

Michael Martinez essay on the mundane lives of elves.

Maybe the Elven women sang the mollusks loose from the rocks and placed them in light baskets. Maybe the Elven men sang to the crabs and lobsters, enticing them to walk out of the water into cages. Perhaps when the nets were cast the Elven fishermen combined their wills and drew the fish to their baited lines and quickly drew in large catches.

well, maybe. But I do remember the book Jacob I have loved, where the protagonist helps her father collect  shellfish, and the father sings to them...

and Martinez notes that although there are no churches in middle earth, the elves do make pilgrimages to the towers west of The Shire.

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Hieropraxis has an essay on the poet William Cowper, and his struggles with depression, his nephew, and working on his translation of the Iliad:

As Cowper worked, his physical and mental health improved. “We had no longer air and exercise alone,” Johnson recalled, “but exercise and Homer, hand in hand. He even followed us thrice to the Sea; and whether our walks were

on the margin of the land,

o’er the green summit of the cliffs, whose base

Beats back the roaring surge,

or on the shore

of the untillable and barren Deep,

they were always within hearing of his magic Song.

Project Gutenburg has the translation here. It is not the best nor the easiest translation to read, alas...
Factoid: Cowper is pronounced "Cooper". He is mostly known for his hymns, and he wrote a poem against slavery...(in 1788) link2

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a couple days ago, there was a full moon with a partial eclipse (and yes, I did see it in the early evening here)


The Astronomy picture of the day: Eclipsed Moon Over Wyoming
Credit & Copyright: Mack H. Frost

h/t fatherz