Elrond, Toffler and the breakdown of the family

I saw Fellowship of the Ring tonight for the first time in four or five years.

I think one of the more touching things about Lord of the Rings, and maybe sword-and-scepter epics in general, is the presence of powerful parents. Literally. The books are scattered with the fantasy of vigorous, independent adult children whose parents are still at the top of their game.

Maybe this circumstance is actually a lost treasure of the entire pre-industrial past, the days before everything we learned was constantly being torn apart by discovery.



Frodo is wounded, lying on the ground in a forest. "We have to take him," Arwen says, "to my father."

On the job

Even these days, being part of a newspaper's big voltron body requires a close acquaintance with caprice. We tear through the day on a few dozen slapdash decisions whose outcomes are probably worth tens of thousands of dollars to the beneficiaries or the victims.