Happy Downfall of Sauron Day, Middle-earth denizens! I will be honest, this year it's a feat just to remember to post. I've had zero brain cells to spare for Middle-earth.

I usually get to spend March 25 in my hometown, which is usually lovely at this time of year, but this year, the dates were such that I spent all day driving from California back to Oregon (about 8 hours), so no commemorative hike. My town is still lovely, but it's really showing the effects of climate change this season. It looks more like May than March, the grass already quite dry and peas already out in full force. So that was depressing.

Not a bad thing but a very emotionally trying thing: my hopes to get our family property situated in some form that would protect it long-term, hopefully in concert with Indigenous people of the region blew up spectacularly. Basically, my mom (who is the owner) overrode it with another plan, and it will be okay. It's fine, but it's requiring a huge cognitive shift on my part after years of trying to figure out land-back. It has also been, by turns, embarrassing, humbling, disappointing, and contentious, which has left no mental space for Tolkien.

So if I have anything to say about LotR today, it may be that I feel a little bit like Frodo saying that the Shire has been saved but not for him. Except thanks to rabid necrophilic (just recently heard that adjective) imperialism driving climate collapse, I can't really say it's been saved, but it has been put in nearly as favorable a position as the necrophilic empire allows. But not for me, not as the home it once was. As with Frodo, it's still there, and I'm still welcome, and (unlike Frodo) I'll still be around, but I can't really go home again.

Well, as my mother put it today, "It would be nice if Sauron had actually fallen." We can only hope.

Happy Saturday!

I'm going to be doing a little maintenance today. It will likely cause a tiny interruption of service (specifically for www.dreamwidth.org) on the order of 2-3 minutes while some settings propagate. If you're on a journal page, that should still work throughout!

If it doesn't work, the rollback plan is pretty quick, I'm just toggling a setting on how traffic gets to the site. I'll update this post if something goes wrong, but don't anticipate any interruption to be longer than 10 minutes even in a rollback situation.

Update to my previous entry: I heard from my friend in Baghdad, and she and her family are okay. She is, however, worried about her friends in Iran. Thanks to everyone for your kind wishes.

On a totally different subject, here is a Bookshop.org code for 20% off your first purchase (only ships to US):

https://refer.bookshop.org/egkfmyy2rdr6