Still Room

[altariel]

The second best decision of Éowyn's life.

Still Room

Ithilien, in the Fourth Age

Barring the children from the still room this summer was, Éowyn thinks, the second best decision of her life. Here, all is fierce order – material proof of her skill, capability, and art.

Outside, the chaos of young voices continues unabated, as it will for years – laughter, shrieks, the occasional yell. Eight children, family and friends, make a royal racket. Hardly noticing what she does, Éowyn untangles the voices one by one, interprets them… And stays in her seat. Nobody is hurt.

The door opens. A kingly head looks inside. “Headache,” says her liege-lord and healer. Éowyn points to the shelf.

Comments

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

I am glad you enjoyed the pictures. I grew up with prints of the domestic scenes on the walls and as cards for various occasions; they are the idealised Swedish family life to me, though definitely not typical of the life of the general population at their time. The Midvinterblot now does hang in the place in the stairway of the Nationalmuseum Carl Larsson painted it for; I have seen it and it is impressive, though to me his domestic scenes are still my favourites.

I have recently given my first actual lectures, and it has brought home to me how important any type of reaction is. Actually the more I see of the teaching side of things, the more I feel I was a horrible student! I went to most of the lectures and tutorials, performed the labs and very much pulled my weight in the various assignments and I thought that along with passing my courses with good marks in most cases meant I did well. Now I sometimes cringe to think how little feed-back I provided to the poor souls who were working hard trying to teach me! You should read my apology for not commenting in this context, so while yes your words about appreciating knowing people read your texts did spur me into replying, it was only the straw that broke the camel's back on top of my guilty conscience from long-past undergraduate days!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Oh, I sympathise! Particularly when one is teaching a new course. Often you're kind of left scratching your head, thinking, "I wonder if that worked?" Small group teaching is better in that respect, but with lecturing it's sometimes like shouting into a void!