Erik MH:

Six-month check-up

Good after­noon, friends!

Kar­en just reminded me that I should let you all know that I had my six-month fol­low-up check-up at the end of June, and that there was no sign of any can­cer. (I did­n’t send an update then, because they were con­cerned about elev­ated biliru­bin levels — but it looks now as if these are due to a com­pletely benign con­di­tion called Gil­ber­t’s Syn­drome — so that’s all right!) It’ll be anoth­er 4½ years before they’ll give me the “all clear,” but for this par­tic­u­lar can­cer, the first year is by far the most likely time for any recur­rence. So this is really good news!

As for the book chapter, I’m afraid I have to report that they had to go to press without me — I just was­n’t able to pull everything togeth­er quite in time. This may turn out to have a sil­ver lin­ing, how­ever, as there are many col­or graph­ics that would­n’t have come out very well with their avail­able print­ing meth­ods; so instead, I will shortly be sub­mit­ting the work to a peer-reviewed on-line journ­al. If approved, the chapter will appear as an art­icle there, with all the graph­ics avail­able in their full high-res format. So that’s good, too!

As some of you have seen on Face­book, I was able to go to Eng­land this sum­mer to attend two con­fer­ences in Leeds (a small Tolki­en con­fer­ence and the annu­al Medi­ev­al con­gress, which has ses­sions relat­ing to Tolki­en and also to maps) and to do some research at Oxford Uni­ver­sity. All of this was very use­ful for the work I’m doing, of course, but just being at these places in Eng­land was both hum­bling and exhil­ar­at­ing — and, rather obvi­ously, I was amaz­ingly grate­ful to be well enough to travel and work abroad.

This next sum­mer, the Tolki­en Soci­ety will be host­ing what I believe is expec­ted to be the largest Tolki­en-focused con­fer­ence ever, in Birm­ing­ham, Eng­land, a few weeks after the annu­al Medi­ev­al con­fer­ence in Leeds. I’m hop­ing to be able to attend both (and to give a paper on Tolki­en’s first map for The Lord of the Rings), and to spend the inter­ven­ing time doing fur­ther research at Oxford.

I’ll only men­tion it here on Pos­tHope this one time, but if you might like to sup­port my Tolki­en research and tool devel­op­ment in a tan­gible way, please take a look at my new Patreon page.

I’ll send a quick update in Decem­ber after my one-year follow-up!

Grate­fully,

— Erik

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