Category Archives: Latin

Latin, Minnesota, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

GO D Park

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                                                       Valentine Moon

Saw the full Valentine Moon rising over Gold Medal Park near the Guthrie yesterday late afternoon.  Some clever vandal has knocked out the L on the large metal sign there so it reads GO D MEDAL PARK.  This is the park given by plutocrat and former CEO of UnitedHealth Partners, William McGuire.  Why both rich people and the public seem to think the wealthy have a fine aesthetic that should get public spaces for expression continues to be beyond me.  The saving grace here is that a well-known landscape architect designed the park, Tom Oslund.

Back to the Latin this morning, resuming my work on Ovid and about to start up on the novels again, reading the last of the Eddas today and tomorrow.  Still a good bit of reorganizing work to do, but the vast bulk of it in here (study) has been accomplished.

Latin, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Oh, My

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                                                      Valentine Moon

Up at 7:00 am.  Crack of dawn at this time of year and a good hour before I normally unfurl myself.  So a little groggy.

Breakfast with Mark Odegard at Keys.  More feedback on Missing.  Very helpful stuff.  He’s doing some archival work as a volunteer at the American Refugee Committee.  Sounds like a really good fit for him.

Back home for Latin.  I’m getting called out less and less by Greg.  We translate at times as colleagues, at other times as teacher and student.  I’m getting better.

Family, Feelings, Friends, Latin, Third Phase, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Getting My Kicks

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                                                             Valentine Moon

Woke up, saw fluffy white snow outlining the trees, shrubs and fences.  A beautiful way to start my 66th year.  Spoke with brother Mark, Mary kept off by technical issues.  A new hard drive.  Always a good way to lose a program or two.  As they say in the Old Testament, blessings and curses.

I’ve been motoring along this morning finishing up a lengthy session in Ovid.  Or, I should say, several one hour or one hour + sessions that equal a lengthy one.  I’ve translated 21 verses and I’m confident of most of what I’ve done.  There are still hitches in my git along, but at least for right now I seem to have a flow underway.

Almost finished with the Eddas.  Then I’m going to put pencil to large format desk pad and start roughing out Loki’s Children.  I want to get it thought through to some extent before I start my revision of Missing.  That way, if I have to change things in Missing (and I think I will) I can do that in the upcoming 3rd revision.  I hope #3 is what will make me ready to start the search for an agent.

As I said the other day, I’m cruising into the third phase of my life, which I count as having started with the arrival of my Medicare card, with clarity of purpose, emotional support from family and friends, and good health.  Here we go.  Charlie, the final chapter.

Aging, Dreams, Family, Garden, Latin, Our Land and Home, Third Phase, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

The Life Ahead

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                                                Valentine Moon

So.  66.  Tomorrow.  How that long-haired, green book bag carrying, dope smoking political radical could be turning 66 is, I admit, a puzzle.  Yes, he looks a bit different in the mirror.  Well, ok, quite a bit different.  Instead of long hair, little hair.  Instead of the book bag, a kindle.  Not smoking at all.  Hmmm, still a radical though.  Guess the other stuff is detritus of past fashion.

After passing the last great social milestone before the final one, that is, signing up for Medicare, my life has taken on a new cast.  I’ve written about it here, a change that came gradually but with a strange persistence.  That new cast has home, writing, Latin and friends as its core.  It entails reduced traveling into the city, a much lower profile in terms of volunteer work in either politics or the arts.  A word that sums it for me is, quieter.

Quieter does not mean less energetic or engaged, rather it signals a shift in focus toward quieter pursuits:  more reading, more writing, more scholarship, more time with domestic life.  Unlike the pope I do not intend to give up my beloved theological writing. (Kate believes he’s suffering from dementia.)  I intend rather a full-on pursuit of the writing life, novels and short stories, a text on Reimagining Faith.  This full-on pursuit means active and vigorous attention to marketing.

The primary age related driver in this change is greater awareness of a compressed time horizon, not any infirmity.  How many healthy years will I have?  Unknown, though I do actively care for myself.  Still, the years will not be kind, no matter what I do.  So, I had best get my licks in now, while I can still work at my optimum.

So, the man turning 66 has a different life ahead of him than did the man turning 65.   An exciting and challenging life.

 

Asia, GeekWorld, Latin, Literature, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Just Stuff

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                                                                 New (Valentine) Moon

The images, each moved from their numbered folders into new folders named for the organizational scheme that moved me at the moment, have a new home.  I’ve checked the prior machine for missing images, found a few and they’ll get added in tomorrow, but in essence the big image reorganization, self-inflicted, is over.

(Valkyrie (1908) by Stephan Sinding located in Churchill Park, Copenhagen, Denmark)

On March 1st I’m going to hit Missing with my third revision.  I’m hoping this one puts me close to finished that I can begin shopping it to agents.  I think it will, but until it’s done, I won’t know.  Research for Loki’s Children goes well, too. I’m almost done with all the Eddas, then I’ll go back over them again, looking at my notes and underlining, taking pieces here and there that I’ll use.

With the image reorganization I’ve felt a bit off my game this last week, but I’m back now.  Time to step up again.

Each day, though, I have (for the most part) finished a sentence of Jason and Medea.  That doesn’t sound like a very ambitious rate, but by the time a sentence is done, which can be between 2 and 14 lines long, I’m ready to put away the Lewis and Short, the Wheeler and the Anderson, close Perseus and go upstairs.  It’s a pace that, for now, allows me to work at an intense level, get work done steadily and yet allows enough time to do a quality job.

Been reading Civil Servant’s Notebook by Wang Xiaofang.  Author of 13 novels, all about Chinese bureaucracy, this is his first translated into English.  Published by Penguin.  Of all the material I’ve read on China of late this one seems to have the most insight into contemporary China.  Wang gives a satirical perspective on life inside municipal government, but he also strips the veins of a culture deep with history and short on ethical guidance.  I’ve read elsewhere of a moral aimlessness that inflicts contemporary China, but I was never able to put my finger on it until reading Civil Servant’s Notebook.  I don’t have it down here with me now, but tomorrow I’ll quote a few lines from it to show you what I mean.

Cinema and Television, GeekWorld, Great Work, Health, Latin, Our Land and Home, Translating Metamorphoses

95%

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                                                                Cold Moon

So the parade of salesmen has begun.  First up was Reliant heat and cooling.  They sent out a really good guy.  Told us what would fit, how much it would cost.  Very reasonable price.  Good furnace.  If I hadn’t had the others scheduled, I would have bought this one.  Still, we’ll hear the others out, too.  You never know.

This furnace runs at 95% efficiency.  As opposed to our current 80%.  Think about a difference of 15% less gas used.  Then multiply it by hundreds and thousands of homes.  Hard to believe.  Of all the strategies to combat global warming, the easiest and most immediate ones involve conservation.  More fuel efficient cars, furnaces.  Better insulation in homes.  Switching from coal-burning electricity generation.  Having cleaning crews in large buildings clean during the day.  Strategies that have broad application yet involve relatively straightforward choices and proven technologies.

Finally wrenched myself away from the image moving to work on the Edda’s some more.  Brunhild today.  A sad story.  Sigurd jumped into that burning ring of fire, but boy it really didn’t work out for him or Brunhild.

Also back to my one sentence of Latin.  Again, it seemed to flow today.  Based on past experience I’ll hit an impossible head-slapper tomorrow, but today.  All right.

I’m in my second week of rest for my patella-femoral syndrome.  I’ll start back on the workouts on Monday.  I’ll see how, or whether, this helped.

Been watching House of Cards on Netflix.  As the brave new face of television, I like it.  13 episodes up all at once.  We can watch it as we like it.  Cool.

 

GeekWorld, Latin, Weather +Climate

Off the Plateau

Leave a comment

Winter                                                             Cold Moon

Bitter this morning.  -15.  Headed toward a high of 2.  Which we might reach and we might not.

Awake for a couple of hours in the middle of the night.  It happens.  Not often.  This morning I kept turning over ideas for rewriting Missing, rewriting ideas spurred by my beta readers. I’m not ready to get started on that because I’ve got other readers yet to report in, but already the feedback has been very helpful.  Their thoughtfulness will make for a stronger book.

This is a Latin day, a time with Greg.  I felt better translating this last chunk of Jason and Medea and the time with Greg confirmed that my skill level has begun to increase again.  I hit plateaus where I seem to slog along, not doing well, not doing poorly, then bump up to a different, higher capacity.  This was one of those days.  Feels good.

This afternoon I plan to reorganize my images.  I’m on a two-week layoff from working out due to knee pain, most likely patella-femoral syndrome.  Best treatment?  Rest.  So, I’m resting.  I don’t like it; I’m very attached to regular workouts, but the long term is more important than the short term.

GeekWorld, Humanities, Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses

Moving Day

Leave a comment

Winter                                                              Cold Moon

A lot of time today going back over translation of Jason and Medea, trying to fix broken phrases, suss out mysteries hidden behind Ovid’s syntax and word choices.  I’m beginning to get a taste now of what the task of translation entails.  I’ve spent three years now levering myself up over the transom; I’m in the room; but, I can’t sit down to work yet.  Too much still to know.  But, I can see myself working in that room in the foreseeable future.

(The Ancient Roman Temple of Bacchus, commissioned by Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius and designed by an unknown architect c. 150 AD)

At the same time I had set today as moving day for all internet related tasks, all tasks requiring good security, all task but writing, really, and even there, the blog moved over to this new(ish) computer.  I’ve had this one for six months or so, but the work required to transfer all those functions over here is, at least for my tech level, significant.

Anyhow, I’ve got most of it done now, all the necessary stuff and I’m writing this entry on the new machine.  In the way of computers this work (the writing) is much the same.  It’s the guts that differ.  A terabyte of storage.  8 gigs of ram.  A bigger screen.  A fresh hard-disk and room to swap another one in when I need it.

[YOUR ALUMINUM FUTURE]

I now have a land of forgotten computers, brave electronic servants whose capacity got left behind by changing times.  This computer, though, I think will last a while.  The PC is fast becoming a less and less expensive door-stop though I still prefer them to laptops.  That’s  in part because I work at home; but it’s also because I love the ergonomic keyboard and  greater capacity for less bucks.

I did encounter one head scratcher in the transfers I did today.  I moved 25 gigs of images onto this machine.  I had them organized in folders.  Folders I understood.  For some reason, undoubtedly a reason of my own making, each image got its own folder on this new machine, meaning I have to sort through and reorganize literally thousands of images.

It’s not all bad. I’ve wanted to cull and reorganize my images for awhile, but I hadn’t decided on now.

Meanwhile Kate’s come down with a cold.  I convinced her to go to bed and try rest and fluids.  These are not necessarily obvious moves to the physicians among us.

Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses

Fafnir and Medea

Leave a comment

Winter                                                                              Cold Moon

Read the lay of Fafnir today.  In this lay Sigurd kills Fafnir, a dwarf transformed into a dragon by the Aegis-helm (helmet of Aegir–terror), then seizes “the cursed gold ofAndvari‘s as well as the ring, Andvaranaut.”  Loki seized them to ransom Odin and Hoenir.  When he did he was told the items “…would bring about the death of whoever possessed them.”  Wikipedia

(Fáfnir guards the gold hoard in this illustration by Arthur Rackham to Richard Wagner‘s Siegfried.)

This is core material both for Wagner’s Ring Cycle and for Tolkien.

Later I spent more time with Jason and Medea, in particular Medea right now, who is plotting, in a long soliloquy, to marry Jason, brush off her father the King and escape backwards Colchis for the wonders of Greece.  She’s trouble right from the very start.

Tonight Kate and I are headed to the Butcher and Boar for a carnivore’s night out.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Latin, Myth and Story, Poetry, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

A Life Long Passion

Leave a comment

Winter                                                            Cold Moon

“A mythology is the comment of one particular age or civilization on the mysteries of human existence and the human mind…”                                                                                                                                            H.R. Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe

A life-long fascination with mythology and its companion fields, ancient religions and folklore, can be explained by this quote.  We have multiple ways of understanding the world, of asking and answering big questions.  In our day science is regnant, queen of the epistemological universe, but it is not enough.  Not now and not ever.

(Charles Le Brun, Fall of the Rebel Angels, 1685)

Science cannot answer a why question.  It can only answer how.  Neither can science answer an ethical question.  It can only speak to the effects of a course of action over another in the physical world.  This is not a criticism of science, rather an acknowledgment of its limits.

Mythologies (usually ancient religions), ancient religions, legends and folklore are our attempts to answer the why questions.  They also express our best thinking on the ethical questions, especially folklore, fairy tales in particular.

Where did we come from and why?  “1 In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.”  NRSV

(edward_burne-jones-the_last_sleep_of_arthur)

Want to live a good life?  Live like Baldr or Jesus or Lao Tze or Arthur.

How can we tell a just society from an unjust one?  Look at the 8th Century Jewish prophets.  Look at Confucius. (not a religion, yes, but functions like one)  Look at the Icelandic Sagas.  Different answers in each one.

I fell in love with these complex, contradictory wonderful narratives when I was 9 years old, maybe a bit younger.  Aunt Barbara gave me a copy of Bullfinches’ Mythology.  I loved Superman and Batman and Marvel Comics.  I was an attentive student in Sunday School and later in seminary.  Over time I’ve come to recognize this fascination as a ruling passion in my life, one that guides life choices with power in my inner world.

It will not, I imagine, fade.  It means writing fantasy is a work of great joy and a hell of a lot of fun.