Tag Archives: University of Kentucky

Tolkien’s Kentucky Hobbits — Pinstripe Pulpit

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Tolkien’s Kentucky Hobbits — Pinstripe Pulpit

Tolkien’s Kentucky Hobbits

Read more at Alan Cornett’s blog, Pinstripe Pulpit —

http://pinstripepulpit.com/tolkiens-kentucky-hobbits/

I have been rereading J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit in anticipation of tomorrow’s movie release. When I first read There and Back Again thirty years ago as a boy in Kentucky the Shire seemed very far away. I would have loved to run into a round door in the side of one of the hills around my house.

One of the more interesting, and obscure, essays on the background of The Hobbit was written by the late Guy Davenport, and collected in his book The Geography of the Imagination. Davenport was a native of South Carolina, but spent most of his career as a professor at my alma mater, the University of Kentucky in Lexington. A Rhodes Scholar, and ultimately a genius certified by the MacArthur Foundation, Davenport is the sort of fellow who constantly exposes one’s own lack of knowledge and sophistication with every essay of his you read.

J.R.R. Tolkien

As a Rhodes Scholar at Merton College, Oxford, Davenport had been a student of Prof. J.R.R. Tolkien. Davenport writes in his short essay “Hobbitry” that Tolkien was a “vague and incomprehensible lecturer” who “had a speech impediment, wandered in his remarks, and seemed to think that we, his baffled scholars, were well up in Gothic, Erse and Welsh….How was I to know that he had one day written on the back of one of our examination papers, ‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit’?”

But it was a chance encounter Davenport had in Shelbyville, Kentucky with a former classmate of Tolkien—a history teacher named Allen Barnett—that changed Davenport’s perspective about his former professor’s clever tales. To Davenport’s amazement, Barnett had no idea that Tolkien had turned into a writer, and had never read any of the adventures of Middle Earth.

“Imagine that! You know, he used to have the most extraordinary interest in the people here in Kentucky. He could never get enough of my tales of Kentucky folk. He used to make me repeat family names like Barefoot and Boffin and Baggins and good country names like that,” Barnett told Davenport.

“And out the window I could see tobacco barns,” Davenport writes. “The charming anachronism of the Hobbits’ pipes suddenly made sense in a new way….Practically all the names of Tolkien’s hobbits are listed in my Lexington phonebook, and those that aren’t can be found over in Shelbyville. Like as not, they grow and cure pipe-weed for a living.”

It is no surprise, then, that Wendell Berry, a friend and colleague of Davenport, writes hilariously about the adventures of fictional Kentucky farmer Ptolemy Proudfoot, not named after a hobbit, but rather the genuine country people of Kentucky.

When I first read Davenport’s “Hobbitry” twenty years ago I felt like the earth had moved. It was revolutionary! I had grown up around that tobacco and those tobacco barns.

New Zealand may provide the dramatic scenery for Peter Jackson’s movies, but it was the rolling hills and tobacco country of Kentucky that was the real backdrop for Tolkien’s Shire.

The Shire hadn’t been as far away as I thought.

Read more at Alan Cornett’s blog, Pinstripe Pulpit — http://pinstripepulpit.com/tolkiens-kentucky-hobbits/

Where Were You?

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Numerous posts on Facebook and other social media by friends (virtual and real-life ones) have asked, “What were you doing on 9/11?”

I was prepping to lecture to my Tuesday classes at the University of Kentucky – History of Journalism (JOU 535) and an introductory survey section of HIS 109 – grappling with Reconstruction (which A. Lincoln called the greatest challenge ever presented to practical statesmanship) and the aftermath of the Civil War (stagger your imagination by thinking of the loss 9/11 EVERY Tuesday for four years).

After a brief lecture, I let the students, disturbed and full of emotion (as we all were) talk and ask questions – “Does this mean we are at war?” or “how could this happen?!” – and then dismissed to gather around the TV sets tuned to news broadcasts all over campus. Many of the History of Journalism students (and I) were scheduled to leave the next day for the annual meeting of RTNDA (Radio and Television News Directors’ Association – professional society of the equivalent of “managing editor” bosses in TV newsrooms) which was scheduled for Nashville that year.  The convention was cancelled – which did not help any of the NDs who had already assembled there for advance-prep and committee meetings, and had to manage the biggest news story of their careers via cell phones, trapped hundreds of miles from home with flights cancelled, airlines grounded.

That was one of the eeriest things about the day – the absence of air traffic.  The only aircraft flying that day were Blackhawks transporting the 101st Airborne from Ft. Campbell to guard the Bluegrass Army Depot (chemical weapons storage) south of Lexington.  The other really disturbing matter was the phone conversations with one of our daughters who then worked in one of Atlanta’s a tall buildings. Even routine things were disturbing; trying to eat while watching breaking news on the restaurant TV was appetite-suppressing – even at one of my favorite places near campus (Billy’s Hickory-Pit Bar-B-Q, if you’re ever in Lexington).

Today we live in a Chicago suburb (Naperville) which is on the approaches to both O’Hare and Midway – as well as the flight school at Lewis University and “Clow International Airport” (general aviation) as well as several “flight communities” (homes with attached hangars and access to runways) .  The planes overhead, high enough not to be a nuisance, are comforting in a routine sort of way – a subliminal reminder of the freedoms we enjoy of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (or, property, as Jefferson originally wrote).  The other day we were buzzed several times by a B-17 on tour – a reminder of Bette’s father, W.C. Ashworth of blessed memory, who was a B-17 pilot in World War 2. Gotta love suburban Chicago.

Random reflections on a somber day by an average guy happy to be living, despite all its imperfections, in the land of the free and the home of the brave. God bless America!

Lexington Theological Seminary Sells Campus to UK

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Lexington Theological Seminary Sells Campus to UK

University of Kentucky to buy campus of Lexington Theological Seminary

Published: May 13, 2013

By Linda B. Blackford — lblackford@herald-leader.com

The University of Kentucky will buy the Lexington Theological Seminary’s 7-acre campus on South Limestone for $13.5 million, officials announced late Monday.

The UK Board of Trustees is expected to approve the deal at its meeting Tuesday, adding room for expansion on the west side of Limestone. The seminary has moved almost all of its instruction online since 2011 and plans to relocate to a smaller campus in Lexington.

“When high-quality space adjacent to your campus becomes available, the responsible thing is to explore the possibilities,” UK President Eli Capilouto said. “The Lexington Theological Seminary space represents great potential for the university as we grapple with how to grow and manage within our existing footprint.”

In the immediate future, UK plans to use seminary buildings as “swing space” for the Gatton School of Business as it starts a major renovation and expansion across the street.

The 63-year-old seminary property includes 131,000 square feet of built space, including four classroom buildings, 44 apartments, 16 townhouses, a maintenance building and a parking lot. For the past 20 years, about 75 percent of the seminary’s housing has been rented to UK students, said seminary President Charisse Gillett. UK officials said they would honor any current leases made with Lexington Theological Seminary for the next academic year, then fold those spaces into UK Housing.

Gillett said the seminary’s move — which she hopes will be to a downtown location — is part of the school’s new identity.

“Change for every academic institution is inevitable, and change has been our mantra,” she said Monday. “This is another step in our transformation and revitalization.”

Eric Monday, UK’s vice president of finance and administration, said the sale would be a cash deal, paid for with $13.5 million in excess funds created by increased enrollment last fall. Going forward, recurring money from increased enrollment will be used to soften budget cuts across campus, Monday said.

Bob Wiseman, UK’s vice president for facilities, said the seminary’s buildings probably would become a temporary home for various programs during the next five to 10 years as UK embarks on construction and renovation projects throughout campus.

Wiseman said the seminary’s academic buildings and housing spaces were in good physical shape. “With the amount of building we are doing, we have a great need for swing space,” he said. “This is very helpful for short-term.”

In addition, the 284-space parking lot will help ease UK’s chronic parking woes, he said. Wiseman said the new property would be folded into UK’s ongoing master planning process, but there are no immediate plans to designate a permanent use for the land. Although the property is across the street from UK’s law school, which is looking to expand, “you couldn’t easily reconfigure the space for a law school,” he said.

Lexington Theological Seminary was founded in 1865 as part of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Gillett said the seminary once was on the campus of Transylvania University, then moved closer to UK when it became a residential seminary.

The 2008 economic downturn hit the seminary’s finances and enrollment hard, pushing the school to put much of its instruction online by 2011. Today, enrollment has climbed to about 110 students, 55 of whom are full-time. Most still seek a master’s degree in divinity, Gillett said, but a growing number of students are seeking certificates in pastoral ministry.

Half the coursework is online and half is done in congregations. Students also come to campus twice a year for two weeks of intensive residential instruction.

The seminary’s 23 full-time employees were notified about the sale Monday.

Gillett said the $13.5 million from the sale of the property would help establish a new location for the seminary and give the school more financial stability.

Linda Blackford: (859) 231-1359. Twitter: @lbblackford.