• Tag Archives Latin

  • Latin, more Latin

    Posted on by Charles 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.


    📂This entry was posted in Humanities Letters 📎and tagged

  • Latin at Home with Snow

    Posted on by Charles 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.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Humanities Letters Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • Contemplative

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                Waning Cold Moon

    Ancientrails hits the road again this afternoon for sunny eastern South Dakota, high above the plains.  There I will reside, for three nights, in a local instance of a 1,300 year plus institution, the Benedictine Monks of the Roman Catholic Church. It’s interesting to me that the international website for the Benedictines has St. John’s in Collegeville as its host.  I have always found the monastic or even the hermetic life appealing which is why I eventually made my peace with Andover and its relative seclusion.

    The quiet, contemplative atmosphere encouraged by monastics the world around and in various faith traditions serves a calm heart to a frenzied world, a place to which we can retire if we need.  I’ve had a long stretch with no regular  contemplative or meditative practice, this weekend I plan to enter a new phase, one appropriate to this time in my life.

    Aging itself requires a contemplative spirit, an accepting spirit for the challenges that it holds include the inevitable and long shunned confrontation with death.  (Ironic note:  In the midst of this thought I got a robo-call from Congress Michele Bachman which I allowed to trigger upset.)

    Kate and I need to check our answers for Chapter 2 right now.  Back at ya.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Commentary on Religion Faith and Spirituality 📎and tagged

  • Back To School

    Posted on by Charles 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.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Humanities Letters Writing 📎and tagged

  • And yet more Latin

    Posted on by Charles 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.


    📂This entry was posted in Humanities Letters 📎and tagged

  • Tires, Novels, Latin

    Posted on by Charles 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.


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  • Veni, Vidi but no Vici

    Posted on by Charles 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.


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