• Tag Archives Latin

  • Sickle Moon

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                     Waxing Last Frost Moon

    That last frost sickle moon hung in the western sky as I drove home from sheepshead last night.  The sickle’s always seem to have somebody sitting on them when I look up.  An old woman with a conical hat and a skirt filled with stars.  A boy dangling his legs.  Or, as in one meditative state long ago, Moses on one side and Jesus on the other.  These moons are pregnant with possibility, with the dreams and the hopes littering our lives, just waiting for fullness.  It will swell, grow fat.  May your dreams.

    Those card gods that have been so good to me over the last few months abandoned me last night.  In the first four hands I didn’t have enough total trump to pick up the blind and play.  A night of 7’s, 8’s, 9’s and the occasional 10.  Two decent hands the whole the night.  As Ovid points out over and over, the gods are fickle.

    Today Latin.  I’m down to line 228 on the Diana and Actaeon story.  I still need to watch those words separated from each other but with the same endings.  I also need to watch the situation which Greg, my tutor, analogized to fixing a car and having a part or two left out.  I translate sentences and from time to time I have a word or two left over.  Hmmm.

    We’re just getting to the good part where Actaeon’s own dogs tear him to pieces.  That’ll teach him to to see naked goddesses.

    Leslie and I had our next to last meeting and she encourage me to attend an event at UTS for those of us who have been mentors.  A tough sell, but I decided, for Leslie, that I would go.

    Afterward had to drive back into Minneapolis because I forgot to pick up fliers for the mining conference I’m attending in Duluth tomorrow.


    📂This entry was posted in Humanities 📎and tagged

  • A Garden, Some Latin, Ai Weiwei

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                     New Last Frost Moon

    The potatoes are in the ground.  The lettuce has two leaves, as does the spinach, a few beets have emerged.  The leeks look a bit droopy, but they’ll pick up.  The garlic is well over 6 inches now as it makes the final push for harvest in late June, early July.  None of the carrots have germinated yet and most of the beets have not either. The onion sets we planted havecropped-free-ai-weiwei mostly begun to show green.  The bees show up now around the property, working as we do, tending the plants in their own, intimate way.  The gooseberries we transplanted look very healthy.  The daffodils are a carpet of yellow and white.  A few scylla out front brighten up the walk with their blue.

    Most of today went into Diana and Actaeon.  I’m down to verse 227, the finish line is 250.  I’m close and moving faster now than I was.  One of the things I’ve learned is that doing this at a pace which would allow you to complete a project in a reasonable time frame would require real skill.  I’m a hobby Ovidist, to be a Latin scholar would take decades.  Who knows though?  I might make it.  When I finish this first tale in the Metamorphosis, I’m going to have some kind of celebration.

    Buddy Mark Odegard has come up with three remarkable designs for a Free Ai Weiwei t-shirt.   Here’s an example and the one most seem to prefer:


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Asia Bees Commentary on the news Friends Garden Politics Woolly Mammoths 📎and tagged

  • If You Can, Speak

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                    Waning Bee Hiving Moon

    More fun with poor Actaeon.   I translated this short speech of Diana’s and it really gets to the point of what Ovid had in mind.

    Diana has just sprinkled Actaeon with avenging water and his transfer to a stag is complete, though he doesn’t know it quite yet.  She says to him:

    “Now let me show you the garment you saw set down,

    If you can tell about it, you may.”

    When he tries, all that comes out are a groan and tears, “only his pristine mind remained.”  Ouch.  You want to stay on the good side of any goddess in your vicinity.

    We’ve decided to change my tutoring sessions to a reading course format.  I will prepare several verses, translate them, but on the day of our session, I will read the Latin out loud, then translate as much as possible from sight.  This should speed up my learning.

    On Friday’s Kate goes to the bank to get our weekly cash, goes to the pharmacy which is close by (our credit union is at Mercy Hospital and the pharmacy in the medical office building across the street) and often comes home with lunch.  When she gets home, she says,  “I’ve got money, drugs and food.”  Those little domestic rituals.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Humanities 📎and tagged

  • Daffodils Are Up. The Bees Are Coming. Growing Season Is Underway.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                              Waning Bee Hiving Moon

    Tomorrow afternoon is the day the bee’s come to their new home.  They will have traveled by truck from Chico, California, spent a night at Jim’s Nature’s Nectar and will leave Stillwater for Andover around 2:00 pm.  Back home here at Artemis Honey they will go into their colonies, one per package, a tuft of grass tucked in the entrance reducer for the first 12 hours to keep everybody home the first night.  Sounds like 3 folks will come for the festivities.

    Today is the first Latin day in three weeks.  I’ve had an unusually full period that eliminated the full day slots I like to use for translating Ovid. I find I have to get into a flow with it which takes some time.

    In addition to bee hiving I have vegetables to plant this week, too.  Succession planting plus new veggies, cool weather veggies like peas and carrots.  My potatoes came two days ago.  They’re on a cookie pan while the eyes grow a bit more before I cut them up and plant them, probably late next week.

    Mark will have been here two weeks tomorrow.  He takes long walks here in Andover, goes into the city with me when I won’t be long and takes walks in the city.  Still calming down after a tough period.

    On to Diana and Actaeon.  I’m getting there with this story.  When I finish my first pass on the translation, mostly literal (which is not easy for me), then I’ll take on the next, equally difficult challenge, putting my translation into idiomatic English.  Prose, most likely.  Translating it as poetry feels like a different, more complex process, one I’m not ready to take on right now.

    Also, Grandson Gabe’s 3rd birthday.


    📂This entry was posted in Bees Family Garden Great Work Humanities 📎and tagged

  • Still At It

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                    Waxing Bee Hiving Moon

    Below freezing tonight, howling winds all day, gray clouds scudding across the sky.  Ah, Minnesota in springtime.

    A full day translating Ovid.  I’m now down to verse 201, only 49 verses to go.  I’ll probably make it before the end of the Titian show.  The impetus here was to try and imagine what went through Titian’s mind.  I know he probably used a corrupt translation, but I’ll still get some sense of the process he may have gone through as he moved this classic of Roman literature to a 2-d painting.

    I can’t say it’s easy, but it is easier now than when I started.  I’m getting what I want from it, a language learned and a book important to me embedded in my  consciousness.


    📂This entry was posted in Humanities Writing 📎and tagged

  • Week’s End

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                          Waxing Bee Hiving Moon

    Kate and Annie (her sister) are off to Omaha, Kansas City and various quilt shops in between.  When asked what they do on the bus (she’s done this before), she said, “Talk.”  Me, “No quilt-road-tripsinging, no poker, no beer?”  Nope.

    Brother Mark is here, decompressing from a tough six months, and inhaling American culture, “Something there, but being brought forward from far back in the mind.”  He’s not been back to the US in over 20 years.

    Today is the first day I’ve had any lengthy time to myself this whole week.  Gonna spend it doing Latin.

    The kale and chard starts have germinated; the tomatoes have yet to break the surface.  All this is under the lights.  I’ve not checked the beets, spinach and lettuce planted outside earlier in the week, but they should get started in the not too distant future.

    Next weekend the bees should arrive, so there are bee related chores this week:  cleaning frames and hive boxes, moving everything to the orchard, checking the honey supers.  The smoker needs cleaning out, too, a lot of soot collects over the course of a season.  Tomorrow I have advanced bee keeping, open only to those who have kept bees at least a full season or two.

    But, since this is Minnesota, first we may have to have some snow.


    📂This entry was posted in Bees Family Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • The Latin Diaries: Diana and Actaeon

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                             Waxing Bee Hiving Moon

    All morning on 5 verses of the Actaeon story.  I’m not sure now that I’ll make it before May 1st when the Titian exhibit leaves.  I’m aiming that way still.  It’s a goal, but one dependent on my continuing to gain skill as a Latin novice and gain skill fast.  I’ve only now just gotten to the good part where Actaeon has entered the sacred grove, seen Diana and she’s going for her arrows and her bow.  After that?  Well, it’s not good news for our Actaeon.

    Translating Latin, and I’m sure this is true with other languages too, requires holding several different pieces of information in mind, all at the same time.  That’s different conjugations, declensions, clause forms, word meanings (usually multiple for the same word).  The thing I still find hardest is not jumping to a conclusion and locking in a translation.  If I do that, I end up with words that don’t fit and decisions that go down wrong paths.

    The very complexity of it is what appeals to me right now, that and the fact that I’m digging deep into a text and therefore an author and therefore a world that fascinates me, the world that sustained Greek and Roman gods and goddesses.  Ovid challenges this world, challenges it vigorously, with stories of transformation and injustice, but, in a great irony, also propagates it.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Humanities 📎and tagged

  • Habitus

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                                   New Bee Hiving Moon

    The dogs, that is, Sollie and Rigel, still have energy for the fight.  Damn it.  I’ve not yet figured out a foolproof strategy for keeping them away from flashpoints.  I will.

    Kate called and she says both Ruth and Gabe have had a change in habitus.  That’s pediatric speak for body change.  Gabe is taller and thinner.

    Ruth’s face has begun to elongate, moving from pre-school to school age.  This means, Kate says, that Ruth will hit puberty early.  Uh-oh.  She’s already lost a tooth.  This is stuff that usually happens around 6 and she was still 4, turning 5 on Monday.  Ruth is bright, athletic, blond and blue-eyed.  Can you imagine that combination in junior high?

    Meanwhile I have a quiet weekend to devote to the novel and to Latin.  Novel first, then Latin.  Probably a trip to the grocery store and definitely another go at seed starting.  I still have some tricks.

    A conference call at 5:00 pm about making a Sierra Club endorsement in a special election, the seat, Senate District 66, vacated by Ellen Anderson when she took a position on the Public Utility Commission.


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

  • Ovid and Me

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                               Waning Bloodroot Moon

    The Latin work has gone past difficult learning, though there is still that, too, into a different, almost ecstatic place.  Reading the words of another language and making sense, poetry, from them still seems magical to me.  I’m really doing it.  The closest analogy is my first set of glasses that corrected my far vision.  All of a sudden I saw individual stars in the sky.  william-turner-ancient-italy-ovid-banishedThe moment was extraordinary.  What had been a fuzzy, blurred night sky became black velvet set with bright points of light.

    Now it appears I will finish Diana and Actaeon before the Titian show closes on May 1st and I might make my way through Diana and Callisto, too.  I’m enjoying translating the different stories, so I think I’ll move on to Medea, Pentheus and other discrete stories rather than try the full frontal assault I had planned, start with Book I, verse 1 and soldier through to the last verse of Book XVI.

    Another idea that seems possible now is to investigate the Latin texts behind other objects in the museum:  Theseus and the Centaur at the Lapith wedding,  Ganymede and the Eagle,  Lucretia,  Germanicus.  I’m sure there are other objects that have particular Latin texts behind them.  I have no particular reason for doing this except to deepen my knowledge of mythology and of the specific objects in our collection with Latin connections.

    Taking up a new intellectual challenge later in life is not only possible, it’s exhilarating.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Humanities Myth and Story Retirement Writing 📎and tagged

  • Path of Most Resistance

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                         Waning Bloodroot Moon

    I have a new round of resistance work underway in addition to the Tai Chi.  This work I got from Brad at the Y.  It involves squatting on a balance board while doing curls, then shoulders followed by a second round, also squatting, focusing on the chest and triceps.  Every other day I do crunches, too.  That plus the aerobics and the Tai Chi, plus the Body Flow I attend with Kate should be quite enough for now.  My goal with the Tai Chi is to learn it well enough to practice it while on the cruise.

    (in case you couldn’t tell, this is not me.)

    As to the cruise, I’m buying books, reading, talking to friends who’ve been to various spots, trying to figure out the logistical possibilities for trips other than the usual shore excursions.  At Stefan’s suggestion I’m going to look into a day flight to one of the Galapagos Islands as well as the potential trip to Aerquipa.  Part of travel’s allure for me lies in this preparation, the ingestion of different places, cultures and histories, different natural and environmental histories, different literature and art.

    Meanwhile we work at the legislature, the Sierra Club and the committee for which I am responsible, the folks keep coming to the MIA, the Woolly’s meet and talk, the Latin continues to flow and Kate and I learn more and more about retirement.  The novel?  Well…  Not so much right now.  You see, there’s the garden, too, and next will be the bees.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Family Politics Travel World History Writing 📎and tagged