Category Archives: Humanities

Humanities, Letters

Latin, more Latin

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                    Waning Cold Moon

Another Latin day.  Started out with a review of vocabulary cards.  I had a number to put firmly into memory so that took some time.  After that I began translating sentences.  With the vocabulary on board the translating went fairly smoothly.  I also had to do the English to Latin translation, too.  That’s still harder, but I hope it will get easier as we go along.

Doing the Latin puts a concrete accomplishment in the day and that feels good.  With the retreat, our Monday usual business, yesterday’s time at the capitol and today’s Latin, I’ve fallen behind on my words per day on the new novel.  That should pick back up starting tomorrow.  Of course, there will be chapter 5 in Wheelock, too.  And that tour a week from Friday.  Tonight the Sierra Club’s legislative committee.

Off to workout.

Humanities, Letters

Critiquing Salvation

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                     Waning Cold Moon

OK.  To finish up the thought that got strangled as Morpheus took over my body last night.

Salvation through technology has infected our thinking, a direct consequence of the relentless application of reason to larger and larger spheres of knowledge.  Astronomy, physics and chemistry, geology, later biology all have had their mystery peeled away to reveal orderly, predictable processes.  As mystery drained away from the natural world–though note that mystery is not gone.  It lurks still behind quantum mechanics, life, consciousness, unified field theory–a slow build of an irrational hubris grew in inverse relation.  Because we knew some, we believed we knew enough.

Salvation through economics has infected our thinking, a direct consequence of the relentless application of reason to the idea of value and its diverse manifestations.  The ancien regime has been replaced by capitalism in many flavors, Marxism, socialism and even state socialism.  Again, as mystery drained away from the field of economics–though note that mystery is not gone.  It lurks still behind market crashes, the failure of planned states and the strange amalgam called socialism with Chinese elements–an irrational hubris grew in inverse relation.  Because we knew some, we believe we knew enough.

Salvation through religious dogma has infected our thinking, a direct consequence of an aversion to the application of reason to matters of faith.  The axial age faiths continue and have split, many claiming exclusive paths to human redemption.  They have not been replaced and  the mystery is why?  The strong brew of metaphysics, gods and goddesses and an answer to the perennial question of death keeps reason at bay when it comes to matters of faith and belief.  Because we believe we know enough, we believe.

The only way to examine these outsized claims lies in the disciplines that fall under the broad rubric of the humanities.  Only by going deep into the ways humans have lived their lives and responded to it through the arts and through historical reflection can we critique those splinters of our humanness that clamor for our attention.  Technology, economics and religion seem to offer hope for the future if only we can subjugate ourselves to their demands.  The unexamined aspect(s) of our lives poses the greatest threat to control us.

It is to this project that I have donated my life, the project of never taking anything for granted, of trying to see as many sides as possible of a claim, of using unexpected tools.  Poetry as a defense against the outsized claims of economics.  Music as a foil to the reach of technology.  History as a way to place religious systems within their proper context.

In that sense, then, yes, knowledge is the fuel and I do know where I’m going.  I also know I will never find the end of this ancientrail.  Its end lies beyond all of us, perhaps beyond the gates of death itself.

Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Humanities, Letters, Literature, Writing

Not Known To Self

Leave a comment

Imbolc                             Waning Cold Moon

“It is clear Charles, you know where you are going, and knowledge is the fuel.”   a fellow Woolly

Have you ever heard of the Johari window?  Here’s a graphic that illustrates it.  The white or open box represents common information shared between yourself and others who know you. The reddish brown box contains the stuff of which you are aware, but have shared with no one.  The third box is the one I’m interested in here, the green box.  It contains material not known to you, but known to others.  This is information to which you are blind for one reason or another, yet is apparent to at least one other.

This comment from a Woolly falls in the blind box for me.  Or maybe not.  A bit hard to tell.

It did make me reflect.  If someone else thinks where I’m going is clear, why would they think that?  Do I really know where I’m going?  Why is knowledge the fuel?

Here’s what came to me, after rolling the idea around for a week or so.

Long ago, perhaps in adolescence, the notion of a liberal arts education became central to my personal project.  How did it get there? It may have been my parents, could have been teachers, might even have been a minister, perhaps all of these plus things I read. The notion of a broad and deep education in the humanities, an education that began at least by the time of college.  There exposure to the great ideas, to the breadth of the human experience, to literature, art, music, theatre would open up a way of perception.  Perception that would inform life, even create a life.

There’s a lot more to this, but I’m tired.  Later.

Aging, Humanities, Letters, Weather +Climate

Latin at Home with Snow

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                     Waning Cold Moon

If any of you want to hear about Blue Cloud Abbey, you need to know that I have experienced technical difficulties.  If and when I resolve them, I’ll post the retreat notes.

I let the snow going fast past my window and the MNDOT warnings and the weather predictions convince me driving in to St. Paul was not wise.  My eyes and I don’t find night driving compatible in snowy weather.  Headed out to Blue Cloud we drove for about an hour in the dark.  The snow coming straight at the headlights hypnotizes me, not a good state for driving.

Instead I worked out, ate supper, played with the dogs and got through the vocabulary in chapter 4 of Wheelock.  This chapter has second declension neuter nouns, predicate nouns and adjectives and the irregular verb sum.  This verb, whose infinitive is esse=to be, is irregular, just like in English and has to be memorized.

That was a full evening anyhow.

Aging, Humanities, Letters, Writing

Back To School

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                  Waning Cold Moon

The snow has stopped.  Our neighbors, the Perlich’s, had relatives visiting today with snowmobiles which they happily drove on the Perlich’s lot.  I hope it was to make Greg feel better.   By city ordinance snowmobiles cannot come below a street about a mile north of us, but in this situation I won’t complain.

Chapters 2 and 3 in Wheelock completed.  That means I’ve copied declensions for 1st and second declension nouns, taken a shot at learning them, but count on repetition over time to cement the case endings.  I’ve also read about grammar, syntax and word order.   Then Wheelock has sentences from Latin writers like Horace, Catullus, Phaedres.  My job is to translate them.  At the end of the Latin sentences are sentences in English to be translated into Latin.  After this, once for each chapter, there is a paragraph, again from a Latin man of letters.  Today it was Horace.  I don’t recall yesterday’s.

This work demands nose to the grind stone type studying.  Create flash cards.  Review flash cards.  Copy declensions.  Use declensions.  Learn grammar.  Use grammar.  Translate from and into.  It feels like real studying, which it is, I guess.

So far, I like it.  A lot, actually.  In fact I’m a little surprised at how much I like it.

The novel  keeps on spooling out, nearing mid-way or somewhere close.  I plan to write on it during the retreat using my handy net book and my take along keyboard.  I suppose I’ll study some Latin there, too.  Very appropriate at a Benedictine monastery where Latin is still a living language.  Sort of.

Humanities, Letters

And yet more Latin

Leave a comment

Winter                                         Full Cold Moon

First session with the Latin tutor this noon.  Conjugations, translations, declensions all the stuff you remember from high school, or not.  He thought my background showed, so we decided to move to two chapters a week, rather than one.  That’s fine with me because the Wheelock book sets me up well to begin my own translations.

Picked up the Tundra tire, but will not put it on until tomorrow.  More work to do on the novel yet today.

Busy guy this week.  And the next.  And the one after that.

Aging, Humanities, Letters, Politics

Tires, Novels, Latin

Leave a comment

Winter                                       Waxing Cold Moon

A productive day.  Moved forward on the novel.  Removed the tire, took it in to Carlson, discovered it would require a new tire.   Over to the pharmacy to pick up meds.  Pharmacist recommended 40 mg pills instead of 20’s.  Cuts our co-pay in half for an expensive med.  Lipitor.  Good deal.  The kind of things that will help us once we’re both on medicare.

Finished up the translation section of the Latin chapter.  We’ll see, but it seemed straightforward to me.  Fun.

Work out and tonight at 7:00 pm the first Legcom conference call.    Rock and roll.

Humanities, Letters

Veni, Vidi but no Vici

Leave a comment

Winter                              Waxing Cold Moon

Did something today I’ve not done in many years, decades, certainly not this millennium.  I conjugated verbs.  Latin verbs.

Laudare (to praise)

Laudo     Laudamus

Laudas   Laudatis

Laudat   Laudant

What do you know?  Next is translating some sentences.  Kate’s already started on that.  I’m saving it till tomorrow.  On Thursday we have our first phone call with the tutor.

This is, for me, an effort with two purposes.  First, I need some intellectual rigor in my life.  The docent class finished almost three years ago and my other recent immersions:  astronomy and Jungian thought have receded even further.  Rather than artificial brain exercise, I prefer to learn something useful.  Second, I want to read certain authors in their original Latin:  Ovid, first, but Tacitus and Horace, too, among others.  Julian the Apostate.  That goal lies further down this ancientrail, but the trail leads there.

Wrote more on the novel, too.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Literature, Writing

Theodicy

Leave a comment

Winter                                      Waning Moon of Long Nights

Explanations of theodicy run aground on Haiti, just as they do on the Holocaust, Rawandi, Sudan.  When a nation as poor and crippled as Haiti gets hit with a major earthquake, how does one reconcile that with a loving and just God?  No intellectual fancy footwork can answer that question.

I’m reading a book sent to Kate by Jon, Children of Dust.  It’s a memoir of a young Punjabi who makes several circuits through various perspectives on Islam from conservative to fundamentalist to ethnic and, I understand, eventually out.  This is the second memoir I’ve read recently, the other being Escape, about the FLDS.

With this one I have doubts about the accuracy of it.  Memoirs are tricky at best, memory changes as we remember, in fact it changes before it becomes solid memory.  Eye witness accounts are, according to some criminologists, the most unreliable testimony.

There is, of course, the need all of us to be the heroes in our own story,  the need to smooth out the most raggedy parts of our performance as a human being.  There is a desire to be accepted that goes beyond this tendency to encourage putting the very best light on what we do.  In addition, the most memorable moments are emotionally  highly charged and therefore subject to distortion in the moment, much less over time.

And each of these can loop back on themselves to create another level of distortion.  That is, I admit my tendency to smooth out the raggedy parts so I show you raggedy parts.  In fact, I may make them grimmer than they were in order to convince you I’m honest, which I’m not.  Anyhow, the labyrinth here is difficult at best.

Children of Dust is worth a read, perhaps less as a memoir than as an impression of the complex lives Muslims live in contemporary world culture.  It succeeds brilliantly in doing that.

Humanities, Minnesota

Logicomix

Leave a comment

Samhain                           Waning Wolf Moon

Sigh.  The Vikings.  Going to the Cardinals for a big game has proved unhappy for us.  Again.  I don’t even know the final score because I turned it off with 6 minutes to go.  Not a pretty sight.

Logicomix is a great read.  If you love philosophy and logic.  Which I do.  I had forgotten my passionate affair with logic until reading this graphic novel.  In my freshman year of college I took Symbolic Logic from Professor Larry Hackestaffe, most famous for wandering the main yard of Wabash College with a six-pack of Budweiser fastened to his belt through one of the plastic can holders.

This was logic in the formal sense with proofs and theorems, logical symbols and head breaking chains of reasoning.  This was my second semester in college.  The first had been tough because German and I did not see eye to eye and I dropped it to avoid failing.  After my valedictory year at Alexandria-Monroe High School, that defeat stung.  The grammar and writing guy was also not impressed with my work, giving me a C for the first term.

Symbolic Logic came along because philosophy was what had been missing in my life up till then, intellectual rigor, unafraid, thought seeking understanding at the most basic, essential levels, colorful characters like Heraclitus, Socrates, Aristotle, William of Occam bursting upon the stage, contradicting each other, going one step further or pulling others one step back.  God, it was exciting.  That was the first semester at Wabash, the same semester as Freshman English and German.

In history and philosophy I did outstanding work, so I dove into them the next semester with a second course in the history of philosophy and the course in Symbolic Logic.  It was hell at first.  The kind of intellectual rigor required for logical reasoning can bring on headaches.  The night before the mid-term I stayed in the library past midnight, my book open, pencil working out proofs, scratching out false starts, feeling dismayed.  It was German all over again.  I didn’t get it, wouldn’t get it.  This was impossible stuff.

I do not remember the problem, but I do remember the moment when, like a lightning bolt, it came to me.  Like Moses parting the Red Sea, the path to logical clarity opened up.   I did very well in that course and learned something about persisting in an academic area that at first seemed impenetrable.  Intuition was a part of my learning style.