Winter \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Moon of the Winter Solstice<\/p>\n
How’s this for irony? \u00a0My Latin tutor, Greg, and I conduct our sessions on the phone. \u00a0Have done for three years now. \u00a0Yesterday I had read out a line from the Loeb translation of a sentence we were having trouble with and I waited. \u00a0Nothing. \u00a0That had happened before so I hung up and called him again. \u00a0His phone picked up. \u00a0I spoke. \u00a0Nothing.<\/p>\n
Well, then, he called me on my cell phone. \u00a0The landline works better for an hour or so of tutoring, so we usually use it. \u00a0I answered. \u00a0I spoke. \u00a0Nothing. \u00a0We traded attempts back and forth until Greg sent me an e-mail. \u00a0Was my phone on mute? \u00a0No, I e-mailed him back. \u00a0Weird.<\/p>\n
We continued for a while, then we decided to scrap the session and move into January. \u00a0He e-mailed me later and said that both his and Ana’s phone had had the same problem. \u00a0AT&T.<\/p>\n
Anyhow this tickled my funny bone. \u00a0Trying to learn how to communicate with a long dead poet in his own language, two of us, speaking \u00a0a common language, couldn’t communicate because the technology prevented it. \u00a0When we switched to e-mail, on which we could communicate, we could not use it for continuing our communication focused on Ovid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Winter \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Moon of the Winter Solstice How’s this for irony? \u00a0My Latin tutor, Greg, and I conduct our sessions on the … Continue reading a failure to communicate<\/span>