Tag Archives: Latin

Dogs, Family, Humanities, Politics

In 80 Degree Weather You’d Do It, Too. If you fit.

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Beltane                              Waxing Planting Moon

Vega the wonder dog continues a puppy habit.vegainwater Even though she’s quite a bit bigger now she can make herself small enough to fit in the rubber water bowl.  This means that when I fill it up, it soon empties.  I have to go buy a smaller bowl, one she can’t use for cooling off.

In other dog related news I bought two sprinkler heads to replace the ones purloined by either Vega or Rigel.  They have a high degree of energy and intelligence.  That makes them inquisitive and with dogs this size that means destructive.

I spent the morning on Ovid, translating verses of the Metamorphoses, 11-15.  This is a slow process for me because I have to look up each word, discern which of the possible words it probably is, determine its possible declension or conjugation, then go back and try to put all this together in an intelligible English line.  Latin poetic conventions make this difficult since words that below together are sometime split apart by as much as a verse.  Also, Ovid, like Shakespeare loved neologisms so sometimes the word he’s used is the only time it was ever used in Latin.

Don’t get the wrong impression though.  When I finished this morning, I whistled and sang, a sure sign I feel good about what I’ve just done.   It’s a fascinating process for me.

Kate has a big month taking shape.  She leaves on Tuesday for San Francisco and two continuing medical education conferences which will take until June 6th.  On June 30th she has hip surgery.  She needs the surgery, her hip is painful for her and painful for me to watch.

The violence in Bangkok continues and some of it happens right outside my brother’s soi, a sort of side street with no exit that is peculiar to Bangkok’s urban design.

Final Sierra Club legislative meeting for the 2010 session tonight.  There will probably be work upcoming related to next year’s session, but for the near term future, that work will come to a close.  No more weekly meetings.  Happy hour after this meeting.

Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Work, Humanities

Under the Planting Moon

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Beltane                                Waxing Planting Moon

Under the planting moon a large batch of potatoes will hit the soil, companion planted with bush beans.  Nasturtiums go in today, too.  I may have to replant a few things I optimistically sowed a couple of weeks ago.  I knew better.

Finished Wheelock chapter 15.  Gonna let that sink in for today, then I’ll hit the Ovid tomorrow.

Kate and I head out to the new Hindu Mandir in the northwestern burbs tonight for a tour and a meal.  Should be fun.

Goin’ outside.

Humanities

Latin

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Beltane                                  Waxing Planting Moon

An all day Latin day.  I know, a beautiful day and I stayed inside with Wheelock.  Well, I worked outside all day yesterday and will work outside some more further on in the week.  I’ve discovered that, for me, when learning Latin, sticking close to one unit and working with it in a solid block of time allows me learn, integrated and reinforce new ideas.

Today the focus was on cardinal and ordinal numbers, ablative and genitive particulars.  I’m not quite done, but I got far enough along that the new stuff has begun to sink in.  My goal is to finish the chapter, then spend another block of time on Ovid.

If I wait until the weekdays, things begin to interfere and I don’t have the large chunk of time I need when confronted with new material.  I always perceived myself as a poor language student, now I think I never devoted enough time to it.

It feels good, learning new things then putting them to use in translating Ovid.

Aging, Art and Culture, Bees, Friends, Great Work, Health, Humanities, Woolly Mammoths, Writing

When Do Many Avocations Become a Vocation?

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Beltane                                       Waning Flower Moon

Beekeeping, it seems to me, must always fall under the avocational** rather than hobby* definition, because it engages one’s time in a manner similar to an occupation, only perhaps not in as time intensive a way.  Under the latter definition I have an avocational interest in gardening, writing, art, religion, politics and now Latin.
Add them all together, as I do in my life, and the result is a vocation composed of many parts integrated through my particular participation in them.

I like the idea of a hobby as an Old World falcon, that is, engaging the world with grace and speed, stooping now and then to pluck a prize from the earth below then returning to some nest high and remote to enjoy it.

Whoa.  Worked out last night at the new, amped up level, after advice given to me by an exercise physiologist.  My polar tech watch which monitors my heart rate began to fade so I didn’t have a reliable way of checking my heart rate.   Guess I overworked myself because when I finished dizziness hit me and nausea soon followed.  Kate was home last night so she took care of me, eventually giving me a tab of my anti-nausea med.  That calmed things down, but didn’t put me right.  So I went to bed early.  Even this morning my stomach was sore, like someone had removed it and wrung it out like a dish rag.  Kate says I may have too little fluid during the day yesterday combined with salty foods.  Combined with the more vigorous workout it upset my body’s homeostasis.  It put me temporarily in the same place as the benign positional vertigo.  No fun.  No fun at all.

Lunch today with Paul Strickland.  He still doesn’t know for sure why his hemoglobin levels dropped so far.  He had a five-hour iron infusion last week and his color is better as are other symptoms.  We talked about his and Sarah’s place in Maine which has the possibility of a large LNG port being created nearby.  This is Eastport, Maine, roughly, and borders Canada, so the Canadian government has a voice as well as environmental groups.  Sounds horrific, an example of big corporate power taking on a relatively weak local government.  Bastards.

More sleep after.  I have returned to near normal but I’m going to skip the workout tonight just to be sure.

I have never sought nor do I plan to seek retirement though most folks would call me retired and I so call myself at times in order to give folks a handle easily understood.

At 6:00 pm I’m going to my first meeting of the Minnesota Hobby Beekeeper’s Association. It raises an interesting question for me about the difference between a hobby and an avocation.

The first two definitions here are of the word hobby:

*1. Etymology: Middle English hoby, from Anglo-French hobel, hobé
Date: 15th century

: a small Old World falcon (Falco subbuteo) that is dark blue above and white below with dark streaking on the breast

2. Etymology: short for hobbyhorse
Date: 1816
This one comes from an entry on avocation:

: a pursuit outside one’s regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation

** Etymology: Latin avocation-, avocatio, from avocare to call away, from ab- + vocare to call, from voc-, vox voice — more at voice
Date: circa 1617   : a subordinate occupation pursued in addition to one’s vocation especially for enjoyment
Art and Culture, Family, Health, Humanities, Letters

Transformations

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Beltane                                       Waning Flower Moon

A calmer day today.  After the bee work I planted bok choy and monkshood, finished raking the potato patch level, dead-headed tulips and daffodils.  A productive day.  The stuff I protected last night survived the frost well, though some of the coleus got nipped a bit the night before and I forgot three coleus plants in the park.  They don’t look great, but I think they’ll survive.

I said the other chapter 14 in Wheelock was half way through the book.  Not quite.  Chapter 20 is halfway.  It’s still a steep learning curve and that’s what I like.  Even the 9 verses of the Metamorphoses I’ve translated have already given me a deeper appreciation for the whole project Ovid set himself.  He correlates the painful and often vindictive transformations he records in the book with the kind of transformations the Gods have made to the whole of creation.  A dark thesis.

Kate’s hip is giving her fits.  I’m really glad she has the surgery scheduled for June 30th.  Won’t come too soon.

Cooking, GeekWorld, Humanities

Going for the Circuit

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Beltane                                                  Waning Flower Moon

So much for a quieter day.  I group errands until I have enough time to do many at once. Today I hopped in the car and took off for the post office where I got my long delayed Oxford Latin Dictionary.  It now stands right next to my OED.  Can’t wait to use it.

Next stop, Lights on Broadway in Brooklyn Park, trying to get the halogen light fixtures we bought there a couple of years ago repaired.  Got great assistance from Adam, but no joy on an immediate fix.  He’s going to see if we can get a warranty replacement.

When I left Lights on Broadway, I gritted my teeth and prepared to encounter that most oxymoronic of all terms:  Comcast Customer Service.  Whoa.  Big surprise. Went smoothly.  Talk about disintermediation.  I pick up, deliver and install all of my electronic devices for them.  I’m old enough to remember the smiling gas station attendant who would offer to check under the hood.  Sigh.

Next stop Teavana where I picked up 4 ounces of Copper Hongcha and 4 ounces of Jasmine Pearl.  After tacos at a place next to the Sleep Comfort bed folks, I headed back home.  2 hours plus round trip.

Bees, Garden, Politics, Weather +Climate

A Quieter Period of Time

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Beltane                                            Waning Flower Moon

We had a light frost last night.  Many flowers are now gone, tulips mostly, and a few leaves have that sickly green color that comes from burst cells in the stem.  The weather service has predictions of 29 tonight, that means I’ll for sure have to cover the sensitive plants this evening.

A really busy week last week with several trips in and out of the cities, meetings or events at various times of day and three days in a row at the MIA.  It’s nice to have a few days where I can organize my time on my own.  Not like there’s nothing to do, of course.  My three bee colonies each will need inspection today or tomorrow and there’s weeding and other gardening chores.  Latin, chapter 14 in Wheelock, will put me half-way through this text, usually used for a year long college level course.  Then I’ll tackle my next four verses in Ovid.  There is also a tour to prepare.

This is supposed to be the last or next to last week of the legislative session, but the Minnesota Supreme court’s ruling on Pawlenty’s unallotments of last fall has thrown the whole situation into a big mess.  We may end up with a special session, in which case the legislative committee’s work is not yet done.  You may have seen that the Minnesota House voted to lift the moratorium on nuclear energy though with some important provisions.  Until such legislation is also passed in the Senate, worked out in conference committee, then signed by the Governor, it is not law.

Art and Culture, Friends, Health

Marx and Global Art

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Beltane                                              Waning Flower Moon

I checked and rechecked my Latin today and still had a couple mistakes; but, mostly it was much improved over last week’s work.  Greg and I also made our way through 4 more verses of the Metamorphoses; if I count right that leaves only 14, 991 or so to go.  That was the morning.

When I finished, Kate put a blue sack in my hand and I headed off to the MIA.  The sack had a grilled cheese sandwich, a banana, mochi, pickles and a diet rootbeer.  I polished that off on the way while listening to a very interesting lecture on Marx’ theory of alienation.  When I’ve had a chance to absorb it a bit more, I’ll write about it here.

At the museum I attended a lecture on contemporary art with an emphasis on its global expression.  The woman, Kristine Stiles, has impressive academic credentials and has compiled a key text for the study of contemporary art:  Theory and Documents of Contemporary Art.  She tried to stuff a consideration of Until Now and ArtRemix into an already existing lecture on her new book, World Trends in Global Art Since 1945.  It was too much.  She spoke fast, trying to finish, leaving little room for the audience to write or absorb.  Even so, there was a lot of interest and it will help frame tours of the Until Now exhibit when I have to begin.

(much of the contemporary art in Vietnam uses socialist realism, sometimes done on billboards, but also, sometimes using oil paints on silk.)

Spoke a moment with Wendy Depaolis who had surgery February 1st.  She looks great and credits her exercise and healthy eating.  Something’s working well for her.

Bees, Garden, Humanities

Queens, Vegetables and Latin

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Spring                                         Full Flower Moon

Under the full flower moon I inspected my new colony of bees.  In this instance I checked the frames for larvae.  I couldn’t tell if they were there or not.  This is important because it indicates the presence or absence of a laying queen.  I’ll check again on Saturday.  The queen excluder went into the overwintered colony.  The queen excluder prevents her from moving either up or down in this instance.

On the weekend when I try my first division, I’ll take the hive box with no new larvae (the queen is not there since it takes larvae four days to appear) and put it on a new hive stand and bottom board.  Then, I’ll slow release a new queen.  That is, I’ll put a mini-marshmallow in the end of her cage, suspend the cage between the two central frames and let the queen eat her way out or the worker bees eat their way into her.  This makes her acceptance more likely.

One undignified note.  A bee crawled up my pants leg and stung me on my butt.  Boy did I howl.  Jumped around.  OUCH.

After the bees I spent time in the garden planting dill, basil, marigolds, radicchio, foxglove, spinach, swiss chard, kale, golden and red beets.  A few more bags of composted manure went onto the raised beds, too.

The garden worked preceded a session with my Latin tutor.  He’s good, supportive but demanding.  I like that.  This was not my best week.  I did this work a couple of weeks ago and had not gone over it again, so I sounded somewhat like the village idiot.  Being a good student is important to me, so I promised Greg I would do better next week.  He said, “Be a good boy, you mean?”  Yes, that’s exactly what I meant.  Geez.  Even at 63.

Aging, Health

Mens sana in corpore sano

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Spring                                     Waxing Flower Moon

VO2.  I’m not even sure I know what it means though I do recall that bicycle racers have an abnormally good rate.  Still, on Monday next, I’ll know for sure that I’m not a bicycle racer.  But, I may know a bit more about my exercise physiology and what kind of things will work best for me.

Mens sana in corpore sano, a healthy mind in a healthy body. This is a Roman interpretation of the Greek ideal, one I’ve believed in since coming in contact with it many years ago.  I have, from time to time, managed a healthy body, then a healthy mind, but getting the two together has proved formidable, especially so as I get older.

So, I went over to the institute for Exercise Medicine and had them put me through my paces with a VO2 mask and heart leads.  They also had me do a stretch test, a jumping high test, measured my blood pressure and, oops, took my body fat.  The body fat was in the margin on all parts of my body except my tummy, which managed a wide divergence from a healthy norm.  This did not surprise me.

I peddled for 15 minutes on a bike with a blue mask (this guy is not me.)  At the end they then had me go two more minutes.  It was not too tough a test, but I don’t find out my results until next week.

What I want is a better handle on my workouts, a handle related to this actual body that I have rather than the statistical average I’ve worked with in calculating my workouts up to this point.  I also need a push to get going again on resistance and flexibility work.  I’m hoping this will do it.

An interesting experience.  Worth it.