My protracted absence from the Ink Desk has been due to sundry travels that have kept me away from home (and from blogging) for a whole week.
 
After driving to Atlanta last weekend for a homeschooling conference and spending some time with my good friends, Jef and Lorraine Murray, who will be well known to visitors to this site, I proceeded to Birmingham, Alabama, for a week of filming at EWTN. Throughout the week we filmed two new Tolkien specials,one on The Hobbit and the other on The Lord of the Rings. It was shot on location in woods and meadows in Hanceville and clambered throuch caves at Rickwood Caverns in search of Gollum. Returning to the EWTN studios, I was joined by Kevin O’Brien, also no stranger to the Ink Desk, who plays the part of Tolkien in the two specials. He and I filmed scenes in a reconstructed hobbit hole and in a set designed to look like Professor Tolkien’s rooms in Oxford. Kevin also shot some “green screen” scenes in which he walks into Jef Murray’s paintings and talks to a computer animated Bilbo Baggins!
 
For more details of the week’s adventure at EWTN, please read the article in the following link: www.insideewtn.wordpress.com