[Cúdae]

I am going to make everyone very angry at a school again...by telling you about mine!

I go to a private school in Massachusetts, U.S. This year the school officials banned all of Tolkien's works from school grounds. We are not even allowed to talk about anything Tolkien (a major problem for me since my first name was created by Tolkien and I had to shorten it to simply "Aran" or go by my middle name). Besides that, several things have been cut out of the English curriculum-- Beowulf and Romeo and Juliet among the casualties-- and all of the "dead" and "dying" language courses are being either destroyed or terribly cut back.

But the Tolkien ban is one of the worst. The school principle already issued a ban against J.K. Rowling, C.S. Lewis, Ray Bradbury, Marion Zimmer Bradley, T.H. Whiter and others, so it didn't come as a huge surprise. But it was awful for the first few days for the hardcore Tolkien fans. The library had to be searched head-to-toe and the art department's gallery was ransacked for anything remotely Tolkien inspired. This meant my painting of Maedhros had to go as well as my very un-Tolkien painting of the crescent moon.

FYI, I will not disclose the name of my school for reasons that are my own. So in other words, if you want to yell at them in person, you are going to have to do a lot of searching first.

Thanks for reading my little rant...