2009: The Summer of the Word Nerd, and related topics

A local institute of higher learning has an embarrassment of riches offered in the way of language courses this summer. This is convenient, because I have an urgent desire to apply myself to the acquisition of more language skills. It is double convenient that the school in question does not have the deliberately gatekeeping schedule that so many schools pretend happens by accident.
So, though the intensive Latin course starts early enough to get the students fresh from a short family break after final papers, they are late enough at night to make it possible for people to come home from work, throw a sandwich at their children, and spend the remainder of the night at Latin class. Hooray!

I really need the structure of a class for a language, I find. I have all the resources for Latin, but I keep having to start over because it's very easy to put the "my hobby" thing down when the teacher stuff needs doing. And the teacher stuff always needs doing. I hope that with an instructor holding my feet to the fire, I'll prioritize the Latin a little higher up on the scale.

One thing. Teacherling at work heard "summer of the word nerd" and wanted in. He's a smart kid. So smart I almost forget he's barely in big boy pants sometimes. He's also extremely competitive in the "I will twist this issue every possible way until you tell me I win" way that young men often are. I don't tend to tell people they win if they are arguing disingenuously, because I am like that. When I was his age, I would have probably told him he was right to shut him up, but I am currently old and mean. Hilarity is almost guaranteed to ensue.

Local church has a Latin Mass which it has had forever, which makes the rector a heretic. Latin practice for me, a chance to live a memory for Mama. Good stuff all around. Except, I have read the rector's website and, um, he's the suckiest heretic that ever was heretical. I mean, generally I enjoy all things transgressive, but this dude totally ruins it. His heresy is of the "We demand that the authority beats us more often and more vigorously" kind that might make for an interesting weekend if you're into that sort of thing, but is just awful in a person setting himself up as a sort of authority. So, I'm not sure I want to understand his Masses, because ew.

[Edited to protect innocent readers from stupid, whiny rant.]

Happy Spring!

I managed to get out among the cherry blossoms for an hour or two today. Yay! I guess all of us who experience a winter get a little goofy in the spring. I tell myself that is so because otherwise I'm just a slightly modernized version of my corniest relatives. And that can't be. Because I'm not corny. I'm weird, which is way better than corny.

Anyway, a bit early ...

Sumer is icumen in.
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweth sed and bloweth med
And springth the wde nu.
Sing cuccu!

Awe bleteth after lomb,
Lowthe after clave cu,
Bulloc sterteth, bucke verteth
Murie sing cuccu!
Cuccu, cuccu,
Well singes thu cucco
Ne swik thu naver nu!

Sing cuccu nu, Sing cuccu!
Sing cuccu, sing cuccu nu!

And sunshine and flowers and hooray!

Slainte!

Hope you are enjoying a fine celebration.*








*Unless you're British, then confusticate and bebother you! (Only for today, though. Regularly scheduled Anglophilia will resume tomorrow.)

Meet the Kitty!

This is Finn, as a new kitty in my new apartment, just after Christmas. We thought he was a female kitty then, and gave "her" a very studious woman's name to go with "her" love of books, papers, and pens, and also to satisfy my pretentions to intellectualism. There have since been decidedly unfeminine developments that occasioned an emergency name change.

I, however, remain a pompous ass. Kitty is now named after two Finns; the Germanic Finn of Fragment fame, and the Celtic Finn of general Badass of Antiquity fame.


Since reaching adolescence, Finn has taken to curling up in the shamrock pot,


and protesting all human activities that do not produce food.

A Clear Message

One of the struggles I have had as a teacher is creating assignments that are just challenging enough to promote intellectual growth without accidentally convincing anyone that s/he is a hopeless dolt. Because I teach in a middle school, that's supremely hard to do. The young people come to school overwhelmed. They are adjusting to multiple teachers and multiple sets of expectations. Also, they are being beaten silly by hormones and the general self-consciousness that arises when one's own body turns on one. Since the work of just BEING is so strenuous, all homework assignments I give are greeted with a groan that loosely translates to: "Why, oh why, must adults always ruin my life with their incessant demands?"

So, as a teacher, you learn to seek feedback from other teachers, parents, and your daily horoscope before you ask the children if you make them work too hard. But, sometimes, the young people perceive that one assignment, more than any other in their memory, is the biggest suckfest of suckiness that ever sucked. And they find a fun way to express that.

Do you know how you can tell that your students consider the project you have assigned them over the next couple of weeks to be excessively demanding?

Well, I'll tell you. After you have explained the project, the students look around at each other, dumbfounded. And then one brave soul stands up, points his pen at you, and shouts:

EXPECTO PATRONUM!

Eloquent, no? I laughed so hard I almost changed the rubric.

A Monastic Existence?

When I am in one of my egregiously sentimental moods, I can ignore even my own pet peeves about the rewriting of history for the purposes of selling a neat, cutesy, Kinkade-level narrative about the past in order to imagine myself a part of that idealized and terminally gag-worthy imagined past. It's truly obnoxious, and one of my least favorite things about myself.

And yet I do it. I sit in the draftiest corner of my urban dwelling, and take out my translating work. I then carefully transcribe the next ten lines, and begin checking in my books and sources to create an interlinear gloss. And that stuff is actually necessary for me to translate, a part of my process, so that's all OK.

But THEN, I imagine myself somehow a member of a double house, with no responsibilities other than work in the scriptorium. And my imagination creates a world very like a 1960s-era film of a monastery would be, and completely unlike any reality that probably existed. And somehow my imagination puts my uncle, the dominican priest, in benedictine tonsure while in my celtic monastery with me. Because he's the only clergyperson I know who would want to be in a scriptorium, and makes a damned fine Bloody Mary besides. And if you're going to be in a monastery, there should be family and alcohol around.

And everything is all very peaceful. And all the nuns and monks are rosy-cheeked and get along well. And they smile at each other while singing. And at some point Julie Andrews or Sally Field or that singing nun from France show up.

Sickening, right? But anyway, there's a subjunctive on the seventh line and a technicolor confection in my head, and I'm happy.

But THEN something like this happens, and I read about it, and I remember that nuns and monks are often completely badass, and the real history of the monasteries was so much better than my maudlin technicolor imaginings can be now.

Finally Gruntled

I have spent the majority of the past few months in and out of various funks and moments of introspection that acted as bridges between funks. This is, to be honest, my natural state. And yet, there are times in which I become so bone-weary at the thought of my voice being linked with complaint that I simply refuse to speak much about any topic. My best friends find this very vexing, but I assure them as I do you that they/you would find my incessant existential crises vexatiously tedious. At best.

Anyway, I am back to gruntled now. Or, I'm at least gruntled enough to be willing to examine any random disgruntlements. Full gruntlement is outside the reaches of my DNA, I'm afraid. Frankly, I find people who are thoroughly contented with their own lives, work, and minds a little scary. And sad. I mean, really? Middle management, Khaki pants and a golden retriever and you're good? That is seriously FUBAR. I'm pretty sure they have pills for disorders like that these days.

So, one of my existential crises was this: May I really call myself a medievalist if I spend the majority of my time attempting to increase the lexile scores of midgets? I do sometimes find some time to fiddle with older texts and stuff for my own enjoyment, but doesn't that make me a dilettante? And then that train of thought runs me straight into pissedoffville.

You see what I mean about the transient nature of the gruntles.

I have come to this conclusion, anyway. Even if I am not currently engaged in going from dilettante to profi medievalist, I will damned well be the best little dilettante in the Intertubes.