The text of the poem below was taken in both Middle English and Modern English versions entirely from the website of Wessex Parallel WebTexts, a source I happened upon while seeking a printable text of The Owl and the Nightingale that I can scribble on. The poems are introduced and annotated on the site, in case you'd like to check it out!
Bytuene Mersh ant Aueril,
When spray biginneth to springe,
The lutel foul hath hire wyl
On hyre lud to synge.
Ich libbe in loue-longinge
For semlokest of alle thynge;
He may me blisse bringe;
Icham in hire baundoun.
Refrain:
An hendy hap Ichabbe yhent;
Ichot from heuene it is me sent;
From alle wymmen mi loue is lent
Ant lyht on Alysoun.
On heu hire her is fayr ynoh,
Hire browe broune, hire eghe blake;
With lossum chere he on me loh,
With middel smal ant wel ymake.
Bote he me wolle to hire take
Forte buen hire owen make,
Longe to to lyuen Ichulle forsake,
Ant feye fallen adoun.
An hendy hap, et cetera.
Nihtes when Y wende ant wake---
For-thi myn wonges waxeth won--
Leuedi, al for thine sake
Longinge is ylent me on.
In world nis non so wyter mon
That al hire bounte telle con;
Hire swyre is whittore then the swon,
Ant feyrest may in toune.
An hendi, et cetera.
Icham for wowyng al forwake,
Wery so water in wore;
Lest eny reue me my make
Ychabbe y-yyrned yore.
Betere is tholien whyle sore
Then murnen euermore;
Geynest vnder gore,
Herkne to my roun.
An hendi, et cetera.
Translation
Between March and April,
When the leaves begin to open,
The little bird takes its pleasure
In singing in its own language.
I live in love-longing
For the most beautiful of all creatures;
She is able to bring me joy;
I am in her power.
Refrain:
I have been given a piece of good fortune;
I know it has been sent to me from heaven;
My love has been withdrawn from all women
And settled on Alysoun.
Her hair is fair enough in colour,
Her eyebrows dark, her eyes black;
She smiled at me charmingly,
With a slim and well-shaped waist.
Unless she is willing to accept me
To be her own partner,
I will give up living for long,
And collapse, fated to die.
I have been given, etc.
At night, when I toss and turn---
That is why my cheeks grow pale---
Lady, all for your sake
I am seized with longing.
There is no man in the world so talented
That he can describe all her goodness;
Her neck is whiter than the swan,
And she is the most beautiful girl in the world.
I have been given, etc.
I am worn out with lying awake for love,
Weary as troubled water;
In case anyone steals my partner from me
I have been anxious for a long time.
It is better to suffer greatly for a time
Than mourn for ever;
Kindest of women,
Listen to what I say.
I have been given, etc.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Odd Development from War with Service Providers
People who know me personally know that I hate my local cable company like dogs hate fleas, and for much the same reason. They extract more than I am willing to give, and are an at least intermittent irritant. So, when I moved into new non-mom-memory laden apartment, I was already primed for a storm of vitriol and the shame that follows because they treat me (and everyone else) really badly, and I let them get away with it. And the vitriol was compounded by the fact that we were recently snowed in for about six months in Northern Virginia. So, new apartment, plus boredom, plus no cable and intertubes. Rage.
Then the snow was finally cleared, and the cable company called to reschedule, and then kept me on hold for 30 minutes. Hate that. Then they skipped a few more appointments. Hate that more, because I was trapped in the apartment without actually being quite TRAPPED after just being freed, you know? And all for nothing. So, I called. And I said "I am extremely displeased with the service I am receiving from your company." and detailed the non-emergency related eff-ups of the past few weeks. And the dude on the other end of the phone said, "Well, ma'am, what are you going to do? Do you want to be without television?" And I thought that was a fair question. Cable Co has a monoploy in my area, and they suck.
So, I reflected. AND GUESS WHAT? My life has been quite a bit better without television. I mean, the back to back blizzards sucked, and being stuck waiting for cable dude that never showed was really annoying. But being without TV and intertubes has made me read a lot more, and work out a lot more, and go out to all the free museums around here a lot more. Despite being just moved in, my apartment is together and cute-ish. I went to see a production of Richard II. I had a dinner party at which I griped about Bushy and Green being 'dispatched' on Bolingbroke's orders with a pistol. In 1399. (I'll bet they were never expecting that.) And asked my friends what they thought of all the fiftyeleven minutes of backstory before Richard II started where I remember it starting. I am Niles Crane, apparently, because I still enjoyed myself while having some reservations about the production. But my therapist has declared me sane, anyway!
So I called cable back, and informed them that I've decided I really do want to be without TV. They were not expecting that.
Friends are mocking me for "Going Henry David" on them, but that's OK. I have a library card. I am writing from the library now. I am really enjoying my break from watching idiots try to outwit each other on islands and in apartments and at fat camp for prizes or jobs or the public shame that passes for fame now. So, while I have classes to teach and homework to grade and limited free time, I'm cable-monopoly free.
Then the snow was finally cleared, and the cable company called to reschedule, and then kept me on hold for 30 minutes. Hate that. Then they skipped a few more appointments. Hate that more, because I was trapped in the apartment without actually being quite TRAPPED after just being freed, you know? And all for nothing. So, I called. And I said "I am extremely displeased with the service I am receiving from your company." and detailed the non-emergency related eff-ups of the past few weeks. And the dude on the other end of the phone said, "Well, ma'am, what are you going to do? Do you want to be without television?" And I thought that was a fair question. Cable Co has a monoploy in my area, and they suck.
So, I reflected. AND GUESS WHAT? My life has been quite a bit better without television. I mean, the back to back blizzards sucked, and being stuck waiting for cable dude that never showed was really annoying. But being without TV and intertubes has made me read a lot more, and work out a lot more, and go out to all the free museums around here a lot more. Despite being just moved in, my apartment is together and cute-ish. I went to see a production of Richard II. I had a dinner party at which I griped about Bushy and Green being 'dispatched' on Bolingbroke's orders with a pistol. In 1399. (I'll bet they were never expecting that.) And asked my friends what they thought of all the fiftyeleven minutes of backstory before Richard II started where I remember it starting. I am Niles Crane, apparently, because I still enjoyed myself while having some reservations about the production. But my therapist has declared me sane, anyway!
So I called cable back, and informed them that I've decided I really do want to be without TV. They were not expecting that.
Friends are mocking me for "Going Henry David" on them, but that's OK. I have a library card. I am writing from the library now. I am really enjoying my break from watching idiots try to outwit each other on islands and in apartments and at fat camp for prizes or jobs or the public shame that passes for fame now. So, while I have classes to teach and homework to grade and limited free time, I'm cable-monopoly free.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Am I Still A Medievalist?
I’m still a little bitter with Spivak for making me read through 20, 30, 50 pages of extremely dense prose to get to a one-word answer. I don’t claim to be able to create an essay like Spivak’s, mostly because I don’t like to be scoffed at openly. But I do know that I can also go on a bit. Anyway, I will spare you the discomfort of slogging through pedestrian meta-navel-gazing and assorted ickiness. She who spends many hours of her days thinking about, studying, and working with the medieval is a medievalist. The answer to the title’s question: dunno.
If you’re the busy sort, have a great holiday! If you, like me, have a snow day and time to kill before you travel, you are most welcome to stick around for the whole thing.
When I began this blog, lo these many years ago, I placed ‘medievalist’ first on the list of descriptors located below the title. It was hubris, likely, to claim that title for myself with just a few classes in medieval language and history at the undergraduate level, and a shot at a graduate school education that had not yet begun, but I did anyway. It was a ‘dress for the job you want’ decision, and I shrugged my self-consciousness off as a repeat of the resistance to adopting an authoritative voice I had experienced as an undergraduate. I lectured myself I fit the above description of a medievalist, and therefore I counted. I occasionally added a “damn it!” to that, for emphasis. In desperate moments, I even imagined my undergrad mentor shouting “Get over it!” at me, as Mentor was wont to do when anyone got neurotic.
Like most medieval bloggers, I considered and then quickly abandoned the idea of making the blog fully medieval. As a first year grad student, I didn’t have all that much to say. I also entered graduate school determined to follow in the footsteps of my female professors, who managed to be full PEOPLE who studied and wrote about medieval or even renaissance topics. I specify female professors because a great majority of my male professors in undergrad showed themselves to us as stereotypical ‘professors,’ the brain on a stick phenomenon. They were smart, certainly, but also very single-minded in their activities and seemed very alone in their lives. Given the choice between becoming a fussy, out-of-touch megalomaniac – the all medieval, all the time route – or a full person with a multiplicity of enthusiasms, the greatest of which is my job, I chose to try to become the latter.
And then I started the Grad school experience. Oy. Watching the really unseemly faculty wars in my department at that time, I began to think that perhaps academia was not the place for me. Though I maintained a love for my work, the people I worked with made me want to jump out of my own skin on a fairly regular basis. And then that life I was determined to have got unwieldy. Heomodor could not physically, financially or emotionally handle being alone. And so she came to Microburg with me, and I was responsible for an elderly and infirm relative who would have what I suspected were anxiety attacks, but could also have easily been cardiac issues, every day as I got ready to leave for class. Looking back now at Heomodor’s quadruple bypass and advanced PAD, I think they probably were cardiac, and I’m glad I risked censure and eye-rolling and a whole mess of aspersions cast on my character and intellect to attend to them.
Now, I don’t tell that story simply to feel sorry for myself in public. I recognize that the department I was in was far more dysfunctional than most. I know several of my professors would start classes by telling us not to let ourselves be scared off by what was going on at Microburg, because simply nobody behaves like that; not really. But I thought I saw something structural in the academy that wouldn’t work well with my personality and my responsibilities. I also saw myself becoming a neurotic mess who was convinced that my self-inflicted poverty was actively killing my mother.
I didn’t apply to the PhD program at Microburg or anywhere else, but took my ‘terminal MA’ and a deep breath, and moved on to teaching youngsters about gerunds. It’s more fun than you think, but it isn’t medieval studies.
Heomodor came with me here to the shadows of the capitol as well, and developed other health issues that required attending to, and the medieval, being far from an immediate need, fell to the wayside. And now, while I go through Heomodor’s things, and mine, and finally begin to think about who I am when I am not centrally a caregiver, I have to consider whether two and a half years is too many to catch up on. Or if I even want to catch up as a professional. I mean, I am looking middle age straight in the eye, and I am less patient now than ever before. Besides, penury sucks.
Though I have largely dropped out of the conversations that started so promisingly, with Ancrene Wiseass and Dr. Virago, and Karl and later Medieval Woman, and Bardiac, and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, and Scott Nokes and others who were so helpful and supportive and funny and smart and generous, I love that blogging allows me to eavesdrop on the best parts of the academic experience, the parts where people who love the same stuff get together wherever they are to talk, think, share, and even just geek out about it. (Wlonk!) Sometimes I’ll even venture in to add my admittedly now naïve, dilettante voice to the conversation.
So, I really don’t know if I am a medievalist anymore. I mean, yeah, I do spend an awful lot of time drawing parallels between the modern and the medieval. Also, if you could see my bookcase, even after I thinned it out, you would see that a large percentage of my reading time is spent between, oh about 800AD and Caxton. I do know that I’m happy that this blog exists, lame as it often is, and that the blogs of others more active in the field continue to exist in significantly less lame form. And I also know, that now, thanks to Jeffrey Jerome Cohen's recent, eloquent article about blogging and medievalism, I'm feeling a little pressure to be less lame about this blogging thing. Possibly the best inadvertent application of guilt by a non-Catholic this year! Well done, Jeffrey!
If you’re the busy sort, have a great holiday! If you, like me, have a snow day and time to kill before you travel, you are most welcome to stick around for the whole thing.
When I began this blog, lo these many years ago, I placed ‘medievalist’ first on the list of descriptors located below the title. It was hubris, likely, to claim that title for myself with just a few classes in medieval language and history at the undergraduate level, and a shot at a graduate school education that had not yet begun, but I did anyway. It was a ‘dress for the job you want’ decision, and I shrugged my self-consciousness off as a repeat of the resistance to adopting an authoritative voice I had experienced as an undergraduate. I lectured myself I fit the above description of a medievalist, and therefore I counted. I occasionally added a “damn it!” to that, for emphasis. In desperate moments, I even imagined my undergrad mentor shouting “Get over it!” at me, as Mentor was wont to do when anyone got neurotic.
Like most medieval bloggers, I considered and then quickly abandoned the idea of making the blog fully medieval. As a first year grad student, I didn’t have all that much to say. I also entered graduate school determined to follow in the footsteps of my female professors, who managed to be full PEOPLE who studied and wrote about medieval or even renaissance topics. I specify female professors because a great majority of my male professors in undergrad showed themselves to us as stereotypical ‘professors,’ the brain on a stick phenomenon. They were smart, certainly, but also very single-minded in their activities and seemed very alone in their lives. Given the choice between becoming a fussy, out-of-touch megalomaniac – the all medieval, all the time route – or a full person with a multiplicity of enthusiasms, the greatest of which is my job, I chose to try to become the latter.
And then I started the Grad school experience. Oy. Watching the really unseemly faculty wars in my department at that time, I began to think that perhaps academia was not the place for me. Though I maintained a love for my work, the people I worked with made me want to jump out of my own skin on a fairly regular basis. And then that life I was determined to have got unwieldy. Heomodor could not physically, financially or emotionally handle being alone. And so she came to Microburg with me, and I was responsible for an elderly and infirm relative who would have what I suspected were anxiety attacks, but could also have easily been cardiac issues, every day as I got ready to leave for class. Looking back now at Heomodor’s quadruple bypass and advanced PAD, I think they probably were cardiac, and I’m glad I risked censure and eye-rolling and a whole mess of aspersions cast on my character and intellect to attend to them.
Now, I don’t tell that story simply to feel sorry for myself in public. I recognize that the department I was in was far more dysfunctional than most. I know several of my professors would start classes by telling us not to let ourselves be scared off by what was going on at Microburg, because simply nobody behaves like that; not really. But I thought I saw something structural in the academy that wouldn’t work well with my personality and my responsibilities. I also saw myself becoming a neurotic mess who was convinced that my self-inflicted poverty was actively killing my mother.
I didn’t apply to the PhD program at Microburg or anywhere else, but took my ‘terminal MA’ and a deep breath, and moved on to teaching youngsters about gerunds. It’s more fun than you think, but it isn’t medieval studies.
Heomodor came with me here to the shadows of the capitol as well, and developed other health issues that required attending to, and the medieval, being far from an immediate need, fell to the wayside. And now, while I go through Heomodor’s things, and mine, and finally begin to think about who I am when I am not centrally a caregiver, I have to consider whether two and a half years is too many to catch up on. Or if I even want to catch up as a professional. I mean, I am looking middle age straight in the eye, and I am less patient now than ever before. Besides, penury sucks.
Though I have largely dropped out of the conversations that started so promisingly, with Ancrene Wiseass and Dr. Virago, and Karl and later Medieval Woman, and Bardiac, and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, and Scott Nokes and others who were so helpful and supportive and funny and smart and generous, I love that blogging allows me to eavesdrop on the best parts of the academic experience, the parts where people who love the same stuff get together wherever they are to talk, think, share, and even just geek out about it. (Wlonk!) Sometimes I’ll even venture in to add my admittedly now naïve, dilettante voice to the conversation.
So, I really don’t know if I am a medievalist anymore. I mean, yeah, I do spend an awful lot of time drawing parallels between the modern and the medieval. Also, if you could see my bookcase, even after I thinned it out, you would see that a large percentage of my reading time is spent between, oh about 800AD and Caxton. I do know that I’m happy that this blog exists, lame as it often is, and that the blogs of others more active in the field continue to exist in significantly less lame form. And I also know, that now, thanks to Jeffrey Jerome Cohen's recent, eloquent article about blogging and medievalism, I'm feeling a little pressure to be less lame about this blogging thing. Possibly the best inadvertent application of guilt by a non-Catholic this year! Well done, Jeffrey!
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Requiescat In Pace
Heomodor passed last Saturday, October 3rd, at 4:40 am. Just to be ornery, she died of a Pulmonary Embollism rather than the illness she has been fighting for the past few months. She is now buried next to my brother, as she wished.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
On Being a Black Hole of Emotional Need
The best news I have to share with friends these days is this: my fear that enrolling myself in educational programs was somehow causing my loved ones to develop life-threatening or life-ending illnesses is now demonstrably untrue. For the first time, a loved one has been diagnosed with one of the "oh shit" illnesses while I am not anyone's student.
So, there's that.
I tend to hole up somewhere when I am in this sort of emotional state, and wait for six months or so until I can call people and chat about my life without getting sloppy about it. It seems tacky to emote all over people who just want to be happy and tell you about how their 2 year-old draws perfect replicas of Monet's greatest hits. But that wouldn't really be fair this time, because the person who is now mortally ill is Heomodor, and, truth be told, EVERYONE likes her. My friends like her more than they like me. By a lot. My ex-friends lament the loss of my mom in their lives. They do not miss me.
I'm a grouch. I scare people. I stand outside libraries in my leather jacket and discuss battle poetry. I ask uncomfortable questions. Since working as a CNA for years, I have very little sympathy for people with bruises and papercuts. Hard to get worked up about a papercut when you've seen a gangrenous leg almost fall off a guy. Since studying medieval literature, I have very little decorum left. Things that other people think is the most filthy thing imaginable I would say in church, because I got it from 12th century nuns anyway. I have been called tough countless times, and people were astounded and amused when I attempted to object.
My mom is not like me. She was raised to be ladylike, to be stoic when necessary, to be taken care of when possible, to listen. Strangers tell her their life stories because they feel like she will understand. People confess crimes to her, because they "know" she won't judge them harshly. Repairmen charge her less than they charge others, because she's so gentle a soul they can't take advantage of her. Once, when I was in undergrad and my income did not allow us to live in a great neighborhood (OK, but not great), I was reprimanded by a plumber for making my mother live in a working class town, when she clearly belonged "by the water." This was code for on the North Shore of Long Island, where the wealthy to obscenely wealthy live. Richard Nixon once pronounced my mom adorable and gave her a little booklet full of newly minted five dollar bills as a souvenir of meeting him. Luciano Pavarotti once hugged her when she "gently corrected" his phrasing. I'm not kidding.
Due to a fear of being alone, and some financial and health issues, gentle Heomodor has followed surly old me around for quite some time now, from undergrad to grad school cities, and now resides with me several states away from home in Virginia. So, I am the party responsible for disseminating some very bad news to lots of people with whom I don't always communicate as much as I should. Again, I hole up when stressed, and being responsible for my mom has often stressed me out. So, I have to call these folks and say "Mom is dying." And I really, really want to have a nervous breakdown, and get very uncharacteristically sloppy about it all. But I can't really request that level of support from people with whom I have not put in my time in some time. And they will be suffering themselves. Plus, I am so very bad at being emotional. I do it all wrong and upset people.
I really, really hate being weak and needy.
So, there's that.
I tend to hole up somewhere when I am in this sort of emotional state, and wait for six months or so until I can call people and chat about my life without getting sloppy about it. It seems tacky to emote all over people who just want to be happy and tell you about how their 2 year-old draws perfect replicas of Monet's greatest hits. But that wouldn't really be fair this time, because the person who is now mortally ill is Heomodor, and, truth be told, EVERYONE likes her. My friends like her more than they like me. By a lot. My ex-friends lament the loss of my mom in their lives. They do not miss me.
I'm a grouch. I scare people. I stand outside libraries in my leather jacket and discuss battle poetry. I ask uncomfortable questions. Since working as a CNA for years, I have very little sympathy for people with bruises and papercuts. Hard to get worked up about a papercut when you've seen a gangrenous leg almost fall off a guy. Since studying medieval literature, I have very little decorum left. Things that other people think is the most filthy thing imaginable I would say in church, because I got it from 12th century nuns anyway. I have been called tough countless times, and people were astounded and amused when I attempted to object.
My mom is not like me. She was raised to be ladylike, to be stoic when necessary, to be taken care of when possible, to listen. Strangers tell her their life stories because they feel like she will understand. People confess crimes to her, because they "know" she won't judge them harshly. Repairmen charge her less than they charge others, because she's so gentle a soul they can't take advantage of her. Once, when I was in undergrad and my income did not allow us to live in a great neighborhood (OK, but not great), I was reprimanded by a plumber for making my mother live in a working class town, when she clearly belonged "by the water." This was code for on the North Shore of Long Island, where the wealthy to obscenely wealthy live. Richard Nixon once pronounced my mom adorable and gave her a little booklet full of newly minted five dollar bills as a souvenir of meeting him. Luciano Pavarotti once hugged her when she "gently corrected" his phrasing. I'm not kidding.
Due to a fear of being alone, and some financial and health issues, gentle Heomodor has followed surly old me around for quite some time now, from undergrad to grad school cities, and now resides with me several states away from home in Virginia. So, I am the party responsible for disseminating some very bad news to lots of people with whom I don't always communicate as much as I should. Again, I hole up when stressed, and being responsible for my mom has often stressed me out. So, I have to call these folks and say "Mom is dying." And I really, really want to have a nervous breakdown, and get very uncharacteristically sloppy about it all. But I can't really request that level of support from people with whom I have not put in my time in some time. And they will be suffering themselves. Plus, I am so very bad at being emotional. I do it all wrong and upset people.
I really, really hate being weak and needy.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Burgerification Continues Apace
I have evidence.
1) My kitten has health insurance. I didn't have health insurance until I was twenty. I didn't have good health insurance until last year.
2) I take Latin and advanced German classes for giggles. This knowledge will not help me financially. Even if I manage to pass the near-fluency German test, um, I think the Germans have all the Anglo-Saxonists they need. They certainly have all the English teachers they need.
3) As of this afternoon, I have been to a therapist. A therapist who advised me to: practice mindful breathing, keep a 'feelings journal,' and read Eckhart Tolle. I just paid a guy $150 to listen to me explain my childhood and give me advice I could have gotten at home watching a single Oprah show. And apparently, I have to be Buddhist.
4) I actually said, without irony, just the other day: "I wish I had time to get a facial."
1) My kitten has health insurance. I didn't have health insurance until I was twenty. I didn't have good health insurance until last year.
2) I take Latin and advanced German classes for giggles. This knowledge will not help me financially. Even if I manage to pass the near-fluency German test, um, I think the Germans have all the Anglo-Saxonists they need. They certainly have all the English teachers they need.
3) As of this afternoon, I have been to a therapist. A therapist who advised me to: practice mindful breathing, keep a 'feelings journal,' and read Eckhart Tolle. I just paid a guy $150 to listen to me explain my childhood and give me advice I could have gotten at home watching a single Oprah show. And apparently, I have to be Buddhist.
4) I actually said, without irony, just the other day: "I wish I had time to get a facial."
Monday, April 13, 2009
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.]
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.]
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