Welly-moot #7.1 - a date at the museum (May 20th, 2pm)

It's high time for a meetup, people, and I've got just the occasion! If you've been following my Facebook page lately, you may have seen the rumours that Wellington has a new Museum - and no, I'm not talking about Peter Jackson's "may-happen-soon" film museum. This one is a dedicated LOTR Fan museum!

The One Room Fan Museum

http://www.theoneroomfanmuseum.nz/

 

In Wellington's suburb of Newtown, a small privately run museum has opened its doors last year. Two huge fans of the LOTR movies, Kathy and Liz have dedicated a part of Kathy's house to showing the fans journey during the making of LOTR. They have props, they have costumes, and they certainly have enthusiasm to burn. A lot of my personal collection has made its way there, and on top of that, they've even turned their experiences into a professionally made 30 minute movie!

Now, they need our help. They need people to hear about it, online and offline. So here's the plan. Kathy has invited us all as a group to the museum, on Sunday May 20th, at 2pm. They'll provide coffee and tea, if we can provide any other refreshments. It's not a cafe, so if somebody wants to bake some cookies or a cake or something, that would be most appreciated.

It's not hard to find (although parking can be tight, so be prepared to walk a block or so. Trust me, it's worth it). Full instructions are here: http://www.theoneroomfanmuseum.nz/contact/ but in brief, the address is 4 Corunna Avenue in Newtown. It's close to the Wellington Central Hospital, and nestled against the hills (where LOTR was filmed, incidentally).

If anyone needs a ride, let me know, we have space for two (or three small) people, leaving from the Johnsonville area.

Now, I know we haven't had a meeting in quite a while, so I'd REALLY enjoy seeing lots of you this time. Lots has happened around the world on the subject of Tolkien as well - like the upcoming 5-season LOTR TV show - so let's get together.

 It's business as usual!


  - Jack & Alex

Developments for Welly-moot, and myself

Hello everyone. It's been a while, but things are looking like they're settling down to some sort of normality again. A lot has happened since the last post.

For starters, I'm no longer a LOTR tourguide. After 13 years, and almost 2,500 LOTR tours (almost 1,500 were full day tours) and over 300,000 kms driven, I finally hung up my cloak and called it quits. To begin with, I'll be doing a year of study, hopefully gaining a Diploma in Business, and after that I'll see where that takes me.


So, where does that leave Welly-moot? Everything has been on hold for eight months, but doesn't mean I've sat still in that time. My collection of LOTR and Hobbit memorabilia has found a new home - more about that in the next post. Alex and I have been thinking about what we want to do with the Welly-moot group. It would be a shame to see it disappear, after the hard work we've poured into it. I would like to see what other people's opinions are.

Here are some options:

• Go back to normal - a regular meeting every two months, discussing Tolkien related topics (or perhaps every three months?)
• Have special meetings, but a little less often. For instance, we could hold an autumn party in Isengard, a spring picnic in Rivendell, a summer beach party in Scorching Bay on the beach, and a winter feast at someone's house. I'm sure we could convince the Roxy to host another repeat Hobbit/LOTR marathon, from time to time.
• Keep the blog going but stop the planned meetings altogether. That's pretty much where we are now. I would love help with writing some material, if we're going that way though.
• Something else. What do you think?

So what do you all think? I'd love to hear from everyone, even if it's just a "goodbye" email.

Drop me a line at jack@welly-moot.com, or leave me a message on facebook.

  - Jack

Update: no update

Heya all,

You may have noticed that nothing has been updated for a while. There's a few things going on in my life that's taken a higher priority lately, and Welly-moot has taken a backseat for a bit.

I'm not sure when the next meeting will be but I'll announce it as soon as I know. Give me a couple of weeks at least.

In the meantime I have postponed/cancelled all the upcoming calendar dates.


Sorry about this, folks!

  - Jack

Welly-moot #6.4 will be held on July 30

Another meeting coming up, back at the Embassy. We're repeating the theme of last meeting - this time we'll actually get to it.

Reality vs Metaphor
In The Hobbit, the Rock Giants are portrayed as real in the films, but many believe they are just metaphors - what are are thoughts on this? And are there any other instances of this in the stories?

Rock Giants - are they real or did Bilbo imagine them?

So, if you're keen on a good fun afternoon with a bunch of fellow coffee drinkers and cake eaters, come join, and add your $0.02 worth to the discussion - or just come and sit back and enjoy the bun-slinging.

Usual time, usual place: 2:00pm, upstairs at the Embassy cafe. Entry is free and gives lifetime membership as a Welly-mooter, but bring money for coffee and cakes.

  - Jack & Alex

Technical details behind the scenes at Welly-moot

Nothing major to report right now. Our next meeting is coming up later this month, so expect an update for that soon.

Meanwhile I've been updating our website, mostly behind the scenes, and hopefully without anyone noticing. Really just future-proofing the automation behind the blog, to make sure all the robots still do the right thing. This post is a test of that, as much as anything. Twenty minutes after I post this, hopefully I'll have a big smile on my face - alternatively, I know I'll have more work to do.

In essence, it ensures that everyone can read this blog in whatever form they wish, and I just have to post it in one place. The available options can be found on our blog at http://www.welly-moot.com, and they take the form of those brown "wooden" buttons on the right. You can stay updated through the blog itself, facebook, twitter, the RSS feed, yes even Google+, and the mailing list.

The only one that has extra content is the facebook page where a few other people have posted things, or left comments.


PS - does anyone actually use Google+? I know I never check it without getting a notification first.

Welly-moot #6.3 report - Forgot to discuss the theme. Oops.

The group met at the Embassy Cinema today, and although our intentions were to discuss the set theme of Reality vs Metaphor (were Bilbo's Rock Giants real or were they a metaphor for something entirely different?), in the end we kinda never got around to it. The discussion went a lot of different ways instead, everything from politics (VERY briefly), various educational models around the world, Bela Lugosi's role in early horror films, and yes, some Middle-earth.

The group was pretty relaxed about it all. Coffee was drunk, cake was demolished. Last week was Armageddon, so that was a nice catch-up since most people had been to it - Wellington's annual Sci-Fi and Fantasy convention at the Westpac Stadium. And speaking of Sci-Fi, the Wellington Sci-Fi group came and sat beside us in the cafe and started their monthly meeting as well. Looks like a good place to hold these things, I guess.


We'll be meeting again in a few months, perhaps we'll get around to the theme then! The silver lining of today's meeting - it's great to see that this is such a social event, and I hope it always stays that way.


Till next time!

Final date change - Welly-moot #6.3 will be held on June 11 (not June 4).

Due to the Sci-Fi/Fantasy convention Armageddon being held over the same weekend as our original Welly-moot scheduled meeting, we've decided to change our moot day to June the 11th.

Apart from the date change, we now also have a fun theme for the discussion:


Reality vs Metaphor
In The Hobbit, the Rock Giants are portrayed as real in the films, but many believe they are just metaphors - what are are thoughts on this? And are there any other instances of this in the stories?

Rock Giants - are they real or did Bilbo imagine them?

So, if you're keen on a good fun afternoon with a bunch of fellow coffee drinkers and cake eaters, come join, and add your $0.02 worth to the discussion - or just come and sit back and enjoy the bun-slinging.

Usual time, usual place: 2:00pm, upstairs at the Embassy cafe. Entry is free and gives lifetime membership as a Welly-mooter, but bring money for coffee and cakes.