| The following history of Tolkien's Ring was graciously provided by Stormrider of that group. Tolkiens Ring was established on Jan. 31, 2002, with 24 members who came from a Barnes & Nobel Lord of the Rings online class. We had enjoyed the discussion at B&N immensely and decided to keep the discussion going after the class ended. Former manager, Algamesh, along with Glorfindel, started up a forum at MNS Groups. http://groups.msn.com/tolkiensring During the height of the Peter Jackson produced Lord of the Rings movies, Tolkien�s Ring flourished and thrived at MSN gaining a whopping 439 members. There are many interesting and entertaining discussions at the forums on the old site: http://groups.msn.com/tolkiensring/messageboard.msnw On April 18, 2004, we moved our forums to Proboards http://tolkiensring.proboards30.com because our members wanted a more user-friendly forum to post their messages. However, after the hubbub from the movies faded and we had discussed many topics at the MSN forum, fewer members switched over to the new forum. Currently we have 83 members. We have had Tolkien poetry and art contests throughout the years and put together our members� talents in calendars which we added to our Tolkien�s Ring Store at CafePress http://www.cafepress.com/tolkiensring which was established in 2002. Over the years, members have gotten together to actually meet! The East Coasters had several picnic gatherings. Several members from Texas, Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin, and the East Coast have gone to Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI, to attend the Tolkien Conference and viewed the Tolkien manuscripts archived at Marquette. The European group has gotten together at several gatherings from time to time. A couple of the East Coasters went to the Tolkien conference in Europe as well. Several members from Illinois and Georgia went to Indianapolis to see the movie prop exhibit. |
