By Request

At the request of Lux, following his recent engagement to Melisa (yay!), the story of how J and I were engaged:

People love and need traditions, especially the ones who are convinced that they don't. No matter how determined someone is to buck convention at every opportunity and to be their own person, when it comes to getting married, having babies, paying off a mortgage, or turning twenty-one, they will do exactly what everyone else has done for hundreds of years, even if by handing out kazoos as party favors instead of candles they've managed to convince themselves that they are doing something original. This is a very good thing. A healthy human community is one that is strongly connected to its past by way of these traditions, and the western traditions of love and romance are well worth keeping up.

I had a ring in my pocket.

It was Christmas break, and I was flying with J back to her parent's house to spend a little bit of the holidays with them before coming back to New York for Christmas at my parent's during my last year of graduate school. J was pretty sure that a proposal was coming. Her parents certainly knew that a proposal was coming. I knew that a proposal was coming, and I was attempting to work out the last few details of how to pull it off.

I felt like it needed to be creative. It wouldn't be enough to just take a knee and open the ring box. I'd been teasing and hinting J all semester long that this was going to happen and that it was going to be special. It was characteristic of our relationship at that point to write elaborate and extravagant letters to one another which might be coded in characters or contain crossword puzzles or be written from five years in the past or five years in the future. We hardly ever saw each other, and it was one of the ways to make letter (and email) writing more interesting for two people who were expecting to get married and (in my case, at least) just waiting for school to be over.

I did my research beforehand, and tied in what I planned to do with an idea that had been coming up in our letters for the previous few months. The idea was that J was a princess. I was particularly into the theological idea of the Messiah as a royal figure and his people as adopted into the royal family in my reading and thinking at that point. I think, though you'd have to ask her, that J was in a place where she found it encouraging to be told that she was special--special like a princess. At any rate, I repeated some variation of that sentiment to her quite often.

We started the evening by dining at a restaurant in Hanover that I knew she held in high regard, a place where she'd only ever been a handful of times on special occasions. She knew almost from the beginning that something was afoot, and her Mom confirmed it further when she told her to relax and enjoy herself no matter what happened.

We went to Bay City and ordered some food of which I have no recollection. I was too nervous to have much of an appetite, and I don't think that she was particularly hungry either. She was apprehensive about being proposed to in public, and I wanted dinner to be over quickly so that we could get to her church.

I'd planned something like a coronation service at a church. I had originally planned for it to take place at a grand looking cathedral-style Methodist church downtown, but the plans had fallen through at the last moment and I ended up resorting to her home church, which was not particularly impressive looking on the inside but may have helped her to be more at ease as we drove into the parking lot.

There were other people there. Other people that we knew.

As she asked why her friend Meg was there, I could only stammer that I truly didn't know as I tried to think of a way to clear out the space. The friend was meeting and counseling another woman in one of the back classrooms of the church. J went to say hello to them and I attempted to complete the setup that I needed to do in the sanctuary. I gave her a pink gown that I'd hidden in the back of the car and asked her to change into it, if she wouldn't mind.

She obliged, and then I came out of the sanctuary to look for her. Everything was ready.

One of the ongoing differences I've had with J's religious upbringing is the whole point about the rapture and the so-called "last times." Occasionally I'll chat about it in a friendly sort of debate with her father or brothers, and it remains a big part of her church's worldview.

I walked out behind the sanctuary to the big Sunday School timeline of bible history that shows approximate dates of the patriarchs through the New Testament times, the early church, Protestant reformation, and ending in a giant question mark slightly past the modern era with the word RAPTURE? written over a picture of a big cloud. Underneath the cloud were J's shoes, coat, and clothes.

I pursed my lips, looked at the pile of clothes and shoes for a moment, and thought to myself: "Well, I'm PRETTY sure I wasn't wrong about that."

J appeared several minutes later having changed into the gown. She looked beautiful.

The details of the service are embarrassing. I recently found a copy of what I'd prepared to say to her (because of course I wrote it down beforehand) and apparently my instincts on how to have human conversation haven't changed at all in seven years. (I might be a little better at self-restraint now.) There were a lot of pompous things said that sounded quite lofty, including some Latin words with a definition. I talked about how she really was a princess in Real Life, and gave her a tiara. For some reason which I don't currently recall, I put on a wumple at one point. I think that I'd come up with another reason related to the service, but mostly I just liked the word wumple.

When it came time to take the ring out, I couldn't remember whether I was supposed to descend to one knee or both knees. I frantically tried to recall a time when I'd heard the tradition talked about, and the only association I could come up with for the phrase "take a knee" (in the singular) just echoed of Bills games ending sadly. I decided I ought to get down on both knees, just to be safe. (This turned out to be wrong.)

She waited a moment and looked at me, unconsciously twirling her dress back and forth, before she said yes.

She changed again before we left, and her friend Meg was the first to know the news. She even snapped a picture of us (I think I still had the wumple on) before we left.

Traditions are very good things. The best parts of that night were the parts most traditional, and the parts that ended up being a little silly were the parts that I thought were original and creative at the time. But I wouldn't ever take back having to formally ask the question, or having to get into a bowing posture to do so, or even having to save and scrimp for months beforehand to purchase a precious stone.

When you're going to speak with a real Princess, it's best to follow the practices of time-honored tradition.

Thanks to L

We owe a thank you to Lux and Melissa, who were kind enough to come to our house last night and put James and Owen to bed while J and I went out for no other purpose then to have a nice evening out. In fact, James didn't even believe us. As he was whacking randomly on his drum pad at the top of the stairs last night and shouting new improvised words to the tune of "Veggie Tales" he sang about how he "hoped Mommy and Daddy would have fun at their concert." I shouted back to him that we weren't actually going to a concert, but he didn't pay any attention, mostly because he was singing about baseball at that point. But still, the point did not escape me that he has no other conception in his young life to this point of why an adult would leave the house in the evening dressed reasonably nicely other than to attend (and probably perform in) a concert.

I'm not sure that the evening went great for them. Owen went down fine, apparently, but James has a bit of a cold, and he woke up crying inconsolably about an hour after he went down to sleep. When we arrived home we found him passed out on Uncle Lux's lap, George and Steven clutched in hand. Lux said that he'd lulled him to sleep by talking about Hayden, the thought of which apparently makes everyone tired.

We had a great time, though. As we ate our cheesecake and sipped our martinis, I thought about what it would have been like to bring the boys along on our date.

For one thing, we wouldn't have been able to drive eastward on Empire without James asking whether we were going to visit Alexa, and then expressing his indignation at our rudeness if it turned out that wasn't in the plans. ("We will need to visit her tomorrow. We will eat lunch there")

We went to Old Navy and to Kohl's looking for spring jackets. (We didn't get any.) Owen would have needed to be held in his carseat, which would have been a massive pain to lug around either store. James would have insisted that he walk from the car to the entrance, but then he would have been terrified by the mannequins at the entrance of Old Navy and begged to be held. Once held by whichever parent was not holding Owen, he would have periodically requested "can we go home?" until he became so heavy that it was necessary to set him down, and then he would have started crying loudly in the middle of the store. There would have been no trying on clothes in dressing rooms.

In Kohl's James might have done a little better, but this would have been about the end of Owen's patience with the carseat. I would have attempted to put James into one of the small Kohl's shopping carts, but he would have insisted on a real shopping cart. "I need a real cart. I want a steering wheel cart. We should go to Wegman's and get a cookie."

There would have been no hunting through clearance racks or trying clothes on in Kohl's either. We would have left early with both boys crying. From there, we'd have been back in the car, and if we attempted to stop at the bank to make an ATM deposit (as we did) we wouldn't have been able to escape without the traditional liturgy of:
"Hey Daddy, do you know where we are?"
"I do know where we are. We're at the bank."
"Do you remember the bounce house that's by here?"
"I do. I don't think we're going to the bounce house tonight though."
"Maybe...maybe we could go to the bounce house yesterday?"
"That won't work for a number of reasons."
"Maybe George would want to go to the bounce house in the morning. George, you want to go to the bounce house in the morning?"
(He nods George's head and makes an uh-huh monkey noise.)
"George says we DO go to the bounce house in the morning!"

There would have been no chance of martinis and cheesecake at a fancy restaurant either. We would have been well past both boys' bedtime, Owen would have been unwilling to sit in his carseat, and if we'd taken him out he would have tried to bounce up and down on the lap of whoever was holding him until he caught the attention of a passerby or fellow diner. James would have gradually flopped around the table until he was lying under it alternately asking to watch a George or if he could order a peanut butter and jelly.

So clearly, it worked out best for everyone to have Lux and Melissa come to our place and stay with the boys while we went out and bought a shirt and fancy drinks.

"Ingratitude appears to me to be a dire evil; a dire evil indeed, yea, the direst of evils. For when one has received some benefit, his failing to attempt to make any return by at least the verbal expression of thanks, where aught else is beyond his power, marks him out either as an utterly irrational person, or as one devoid of the sense of obligations conferred, or as a man without any memory. And, again, though one is possessed naturally and at once by the sense and the knowledge of benefits received, yet, unless he also carries the memory of these obligations to future days, and offers some evidence of gratitude to the author of the boon, such a person is a dull, and ungrateful, and impious fellow; and he commits an offence which can be excused neither in the case of the great nor in that of the small."---Gregory Thaumaturgus

So, to Lux and Melissa, thank you..

Also, does anyone have a resource they'd recommend about the practice of patronage in the Roman empire? I think that this whole sections of Gregory Thaumaturgus (a panegyric to Origen) would read more interestingly if you could place it within the category of a patron-client relationship?

Smith Academy

It's been a longstanding joke between the brothers that we ought to buy houses next to one another and split up the tasks of childcare and education between all six households. That way every set of parents has one busy day and five days off. And the sabbath, I suppose. Our wives all find this to be a hilarious and innately practical idea as well.

I've actually been doing some preparatory reading about homeschooling recently. I found a copy of Susan Bauer's The Well Trained Mind and read it over the summer. It was helpful to see a structured K-12 arrangement of what a classical education might look like for James. I made notes of the resource lists, and nodded in agreement with her curriculum recommendations. I even tried to do a little bit of introductory phonics with James. This is how it went:

"Okay James, if you can tell me what this letter is I'll give you one raisin."
"I want five raisins."
"You can have five raisins if you spell five letters."
"George is wanna eat five raisins, don't you George?"
<George nods>
"Okay, what's this letter right here?"
"ARREE YOUUU WEADDYYY...FOR CHWISTMAS DAY TO COME!!!"
"James, do you want any raisins?"
"I want five raisins."
"Then what's this letter?"
"SIIIING IT WIT MEEEE, OR IF YOU A MONKEY HUMMM!!!!"
"James, what's this letter?"
"George is not wanna look at the letter C."
"That's right! This is the letter C! And what sound does it make?"
"I want five raisins."
"George George George George George."
"What sound does C make? C says...."
"Daddy, you wanna go outside?"
"After you tell me what the letter C says."
"I need FIVE raisins."

At any rate, Bauer's book confirmed many of the inkling ideas I had about classical education: that the grammar school years should be spent doing, well, grammar. Kindergarten through 4th grade for James (and for any of his cousins who live across the street from us) will be heavy on the reading, spelling, and composition. There will be lots of talk about how to take apart a sentence and put it back together. The mathematics will be about building blocks, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Insofar as there is any foreign language work, it will be more about vocabulary and grammar than spoken fluency or cultural background. There will be very little in the way of tech education, and lots in the way of history and stories. Music lessons will probably be a little heavier on the music theory and a little lighter on the lesson book tunes than a traditional method. Then in 5th through 8th grade or thereabouts the emphasis will shift towards logic and argument in each of the disciplines, ending with rhetoric and specialization in the high school years.

But first I need to buy more raisins.

The preceding blog was brought to you in part by Lucas Smith, who promises to send me a prompt every day for the next thirty days in conjunction with my promise to respond to each prompt with a short blog.

The Notebook(s)

I bought a new notebook tonight. I was a little disappointed. James (who was with me, desperately trying to twist his way out of the shopping cart restraints while shaking a bottle of parsley) and I looked through several aisles of office supplies, but we couldn't find my standard Mead Five Star 2 subject college ruled 9.5*6 notebook. We had to settle for a knock from Norcom, Inc.

I'm not picky about many things. Only black gel pens, notebooks, practice routines, intonation, tempi, articulation, ornamentation, coffee preparation, tea preparation, wine, food, garnishment, scheduling, grammar, spelling, pronunciation, etiquette, and tying my tie to exactly the right length.

I'm quite flexible about everything else.

I know I'm particular about notebooks, anyway. Ever since my senior year of undergrad I've kept a small 9 by 6 notebook (exclusively a five star, up till now) to use for letter writing and a catch-all for my thoughts. Each one has pages missing from written and sent letters. There are to-do lists, practice itineraries, financial columns, New Years resolutions, Greek paradigms, translations, book notes, paper outlines, and even drawings.

I like the smaller notebooks because they fit easily into a backpack or gig bag. I tried using legal pads and 9 by 11 notebooks unsuccessfully. I tried using fancy manuscript diaries too. But they don't stick. I work best out of a notebook. Each time I break in a new one I flip to the very back page of the second section and make two columns. The right-hand column is a "to-read" list that usually goes back several pages. Some books on my latest "to-read" list have been there since the oldest notebook I can find. If anyone has a copy to lend of either William Wymark, Guy Mannering, or Precious Bane, please let me know. On the left-hand side of the back pages, starting from the very back, I try (with varying success) to keep track of what I've read. It's fascinating to go back and look through old readings lists from 3 or 4 years ago. I was on a Chesterton kick for a long while, and then I read a lot of Shakespeare all at once. I guess N.T. Wright has saturated the last few notebook. (Also, coffee stains. There are coffee stains on every old notebook I have.)

 I know there are several really old notebooks buried in a box in our laundry room somewhere. I flipped through them when I was cleaning in there recently and found one that was old enough to have a page with "proposal ideas for Julie." (Several of those ideas definitely needed to be rejected.) I don't have any of the really old notebooks out in front of me, but here are some quick hits from the ones that were sitting in the kitchen desk:

-Phone numbers for places that I was applying for work when J and I moved to North Carolina. There were several schools listed, and even some auto care centers. (I remember quite vividly when I was so desperate for work that I attempted to convince an Advance Auto Parts they ought to hire me. I said "I may not know anything about car care, but I learn very quickly.")

-An outline for an academic paper on the use of the term sostenuto in Beethoven.

-An old Scrabble scoresheet from a game with J. Written at the bottom is "combine milk & haircut"

-Notes from a sermon at J's church that devolved into us passing notes to each other about how all we want is "one muffin"

-A to do list for getting our apartment ready for J's return after she'd been away for a two weeks at Csehy. Among the tasks were: Clean car spotless.  Flowers ready on Sunday AM (Vestal's Florist, 3001 Pinecroft Road) Pictures of Battleships, Firetrucks, Barad-dur; Notes spread around room (Under pillow, On table, In Cereal boxes, in Flute Case, in Mailbox, etc.)

-A list of questions for us to ask each other on the long drive from Greensboro to Hanover. (Including:) What's the best thing to find in a little brown paper bag? Who will be the next of our friends to get married? What's your favorite odd meter to play in?

-Call numbers to about 20 library books

-Notes on reading The Education of Henry Adams. Including this quote: The boy had a large and overpowering set of brothers and sisters. As far as the outward bearing went, such a family of turbulent children, given free reign by their parents, or indifferent to their check, should have come to more grief. Certainly no one was strong enough to control them, least of all their mother, the queen-bee of the hive, on whom 9/10 of the burden fell, on whose strength they all depended, but whose children were much too self-willed and self-confident to take guidance from her, or from anyone else, unless in the direction they fancied...by some happy chance they grew up to be decent citizens...they were born, like birds, with a certain innate balance.

-The master verb chart from Wallace's Greek Grammar, copied out by hand. On the next page are Colwell's Rule and Sharp's Rule, copied out by hand.

-A half-completed letter to Sam, asking about Kaitlyn, who was pregnant with Hayden.

-A list of trumpet ideas and items to practice. (slide mouthpiece up slightly; spring octave jumps from louder lower note a la Parsifal; conceptualize on rotary for color) Verdi Requiem is May 18, 19, 20, 22

-All the scansion marks written in for some Hendecasyllabics of Catullus

-A solemn promise that 1) I will not use pointlessly excessive modifiers and 2) I will not use the ubiquitous they. (Signed, Roy Smith)

-Various letters are tucked into the central pockets of each notebook, including a letter from Lucas written during the Dinner Dance, about which he says that though Oliver is conducting the Alumni Band, he is not as cool as Lucas because he is not dressed in a cape and beret.

-A small slip of paper that would enable to me entered into a drawing for a free product from the Collingsworth Family. (Sadly, I did not fill out and submit the slip)

-A list of RPO checks from the fall of 2010

-Notes on the book Deep Church, among which I wrote, in all caps, AUGUSTINE OUT OF CONTEXT...HULK ANGRY!!! (wants the dignity of classical scholarship w/out the work)

-A summer to-do list for Martha, including sewing lessons, entrepeneuring, and practicing the dulcimer

-A list of trombone players with names and emails, as I was apparently attempting to put together a quintet

-The email address of a woman at Gates Presbyterian, with whom I needed to confirm within 24 hours that I would be accepting the position they offered me

-A to-do list reminding me to email my quintet, pick up an anniversary card, pay our Verizon bill, write a letter to Emily in boot camp, and renew my library books

-Several phone numbers to prospective apartment leads, including one to a woman named Vivian Robbins

-All of Herrick's Julia poems copied out

-A sketch for the toast I gave at Oliver's wedding

-A list of projects I wanted to work on over the summer. Left unfinished: Read Home Repair book, learn upstate NY birds, subscribe to a periodical, read Wolterstorff, coerce Lydia into playing at O'Lacy's with the Uncles, buy a copy of the Liber Usualis

-An unfinished letter to Lucas in which I ask "I suppose the foremost thought for you these days is your new girlfriend..when did this happen? What should we know about her? (Besides that she plays the trombone.) I know practically nothing other than that and her name.

-The following list: Scrufulous. Wright, Scott @RWC library. Debt article (Egypt) 2 qt. milk 2 qt. orange juice. mustard. cereal (fibrous). P. per what's the Difference

Old notebooks I've filled since about 2009

Eventually I started using legal pads for whatever translations I was doing. This is the last two years or so of Greek and Latin reading.

The new lame notebook. It will have to do.

And now I have my new red notebook. I can't wait to see what ends up in it!

Creators

On Wednesday evening, I was looking for music for my choir. I should do this much earlier than Wednesday evening, because they rehearse on Wednesday evenings. I could take care of this at school, or even on Sunday after the service. When I try to work on our laptop computer at home, I never get anything done. James' greatest pleasure in life is "typing" on the keyboard. He doesn't even look at the screen, but presses down as many keys as he can over and over again. This, I think, makes him feel like an adult. If we accidentally leave the laptop on and someplace where he can reach it, we'll find that the screen has been resized, the fonts changed, and several yaks purchased from China the next time we turn it on. Needless to say, if you try to get any work done on the computer during his conscious hours (Sunday through Saturday, 6:30 AM to 7:30 PM and then at 11:30 PM and 4:30 AM for 15 minutes each) he will scream and holler at you to let him "share" the keyboard until you either open a word document and let him type (this is not a good idea--he immediately pulls up the mail order yak website) or turn off the computer and put it away out of reach.

Anyway, I was trying to pick music for my choir while listening while James hollered at me, and an email came into my inbox. It was from Calvus, and it had an attachment. He had written an original piece of choral music, a four minute a capella number for church choir. I was saved! I printed it off and copied it, and had my choir sing through it that night. It was beautiful. It sat in their voices well, wasn't terribly difficult, and had a lovely text and melody. (I still have the tune stuck in my head). The setting was tasteful, and I was impressed again with his talent as a composer.

Calvus doesn't need to write music. He is currently a seminary student, so he needs to read endless books on systematic theology and church history. He writes music because creating is part of who he is. Actually, I think it's part of who everyone is, but many people have regretfully let that part of their humanity atrophy. I don't know if he could give you a reason for why he creates. I'm sure there is some pleasure in the process of working out all of the details of a musical composition, but I know from experience there's also quite a bit of tedious drudgery and frustration. I suspect it's more intuitive than that. In fact, I think my whole family are intuitive creators. They just do creation. It is in their nature to reflect beauty, to tell stories, and to give order and meaning to their worlds.

Sam, for example, writes Chemistry papers for the pleasure of the exercise. He reads constantly, and then he writes about anything and everything he's reading. Sometimes he'll ask me to look at his papers, and I'm always astounded at 1) how motley they are--he writes about every book he's read in the past month all at once and 2) how enthusiastic they are. Sam loves his discipline so much that he gets caught up in the splendor of all scientific knowing. He can't write about only ion bonds, because he's too amazed at particle physics to refrain from saying something about it. (I have no idea if those are actual scientific terms or not, but they sound like the sorts of things he'd write about.) He and Kaitlyn are constantly experimenting with new coffees, lattes, teas, and cocoas. There's no particular reason for them to do so--they aren't dissatisfied with the coffee they regularly drink--they are just natural creators, and they have to have an outlet for experimenting and enjoying the process.

Pax and Kylie recently redid their bedroom over the course of a weekend. There was no pressing need to do so. Their bedroom was already clean, warm, and well-decorated. (Especially compared to my premarital sleeping quarters, which were always just four bare walls with a bed. They basically served as a functional place to sleep and to pile up books and laundry.) Yet when they were finished with it, their sleeping space was transformed. It had become not only a beautiful room, but now a part of the amazing story that their whole house tells. Hilltop has become and incredible place under their care. It is elegant but very inviting, and reflects them in many ways. They are not professional decorators. They don't even own the house. But they have created a narrative in that house with such nuance that anyone who enters the house is caught up in the story.



Lux, as you might know if you follow The Old Crow, writes poetry. He does not harbor, as far as I know, any aspirations to be a professional poet. He doesn't publish his work widely, and doesn't get graded for it. Yet somehow he must translate his world into meter and rhyme, and not only traditional meter and rhyme, but forms of his own invention. His work isn't the sort of simpering mush you find in Hallmark cards or anthologies of blank verse about self-discovery either. It's real work, which has been carefully sculpted, edited, and studied--yet it comes out sounding as authentic and spontaneous as if it were just improvised. He never imposes his work on anyone or presumes that it must be heard. He just puts the world in verse quite as naturally as he puts his feet in shoes.

Martha might be the most remarkable of all them. For starters, she always has several long term projects going at once as a true visual artist. She paints, sketches, and sews quality work all year long to decorate her room and to give as gifts. Christmas this year was particularly remarkable. All of us received handcrafted items from her that must have been days each in the making. There were a series of beautifully written Robert Frost poems, framed in a painting of her own imagination. (Mine was about fireflies.) She had crafted a number of household items as well, and I won't pretend to know enough about sewing/knitting/crocheting/whatever else she does to prepare those to give any sort of comment except to say that I'm sure they took a very long time. But not only does Martha plan and work on big projects, her entire day-to-day existence seems to be in a sort of amplified technicolor that none of the rest of us can see. She scribbles and draws constantly on any piece of paper she can put her hands on. She notices and pairs unusual colors in her clothing, her books, and everything she touches. I would love to see the world through her eyes for only an hour. I think I would see more details of shade and hue than I ever knew existed. Martha doesn't even think about creating as a hobby...to be Martha is to recreate the world constantly and to make every minute of the day brand new in her notebooks and on table napkins.

At the risk of being over-prideful, I think this is a part of being human that too many people have forgotten. This is what reflecting the Creator God back into the world looks like.

And I think that maybe we are not called "smiths" in vain.

Iliad IV

οἳ δ᾽ ὅτε δή ῥ᾽ ἐς χῶρον ἕνα ξυνιόντες ἵκοντο, σύν ῥ᾽ ἔβαλον ῥινούς, σὺν δ᾽ ἔγχεα καὶ μένε᾽ ἀνδρῶν
χαλκεοθωρήκων: ἀτὰρ ἀσπίδες ὀμφαλόεσσαι
ἔπληντ᾽ ἀλλήλῃσι, πολὺς δ᾽ ὀρυμαγδὸς ὀρώρει.
ἔνθα δ᾽ ἅμ᾽ οἰμωγή τε καὶ εὐχωλὴ πέλεν ἀνδρῶν
ὀλλύντων τε καὶ ὀλλυμένων, ῥέε δ᾽ αἵματι γαῖα. ὡς δ᾽ ὅτε χείμαρροι ποταμοὶ κατ᾽ ὄρεσφι ῥέοντες
ἐς μισγάγκειαν συμβάλλετον ὄβριμον ὕδωρ
κρουνῶν ἐκ μεγάλων κοίλης ἔντοσθε χαράδρης,
τῶν δέ τε τηλόσε δοῦπον ἐν οὔρεσιν ἔκλυε ποιμήν: ὣς τῶν μισγομένων γένετο ἰαχή τε πόνος τε.

 
And when then indeed they arrived coming together to the place, then they cast with hide-shields, and with lances and fury of the brass-cuirassed men. Yet the studded shields filled one another, and aroused much din. And thither at the same time lamentation and prayer moved the men destroying and being destroyed, and blood flowed upon the earth. And as when winter-swollen rivers flowing down the mountains to the glen basin where the heavy waters unite from their great sources within the torrent of a gorge, and their thunder in the heaven instructs the shepherd afar, thus came both the cry and toil of their meeting.

I subbed a half-day today for high school choir, a class M&Lux both take. Lux came down during the empty first block and we took turns reading aloud sections of Paradise Lost IX, coming through the part where Satan "like a black mist low creeping" inhabits the serpent. Currently reading more Iliad IV, Matt 25, Joshua 15, Livy, and Rabelais. J&I , who have done well in our resolutions to cleanliness and order, rewarded ourselves with Monopoly Streets, which we stayed up playing far too late into the night. J is officially in her second trimester, and I've begun to experience some paternal anxiety. Not on behalf of myself, of course, (though I am frightened I'll become the sort of single-minded person whose social interactions consist entirely of talking about his children...my parents did an exemplary job of protecting themselves and their children from this embarrassment) but for the tumbles and scrapes of the baby. Two nights ago Baby H fell in the bathtub, and chipped a tooth badly; her smile is awfully crooked now. It's a hard enough thing to hear about secondhand to your niece; how could I watch something like that happen to a son or daughter?

Poem from Lux

Bringing My Typewriter to School…Written during AP Language and Composition

My typewriter stays home, as a rule,

And does not accompany me to school,

But today I received a huge reaction

When I brought in my old contraption.

“What is that ridiculous machine?

It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen!

Observe the way it shifts and quakes

And the ‘clackety-clacks’ its keyboard makes!”

But what causes my vexation

Is the astonished congregation

Who wander out of hall and class

To surround me in a screaming mass.

“It must be wireless,” someone yells,

“What with all the knobs and bells!

What sort of service do you get

When you surf the internet?”

Who would think this dinosaur

Would cause such a mighty uproar?

And if my typewriter gets a laugh,

What will they think of my phonograph?”

Poems from Lux

My rooster is King of the coop,
He rules his fine poultry troupe,
With a dignified air
And authoritive stare
He struts all about in the poop.

My cats are interesting creatures.
They all have malignant features
When the door opens wide,
They all run inside,
And I kick them back out on their keisters.

I have four chickens and two ducks
Tow make quacks and four make clucks
I love them all dearly,
As the cats see clearly,
And they all think that it sucks.

From M. Laine

From the marriage of Darryl and Tom many children were born. Some of the children were very beautiful; others were terrifying monsters. They were called Smiths. They were six in number and of great size and strength; like men, only much grander. There was R. Dudlius, who ruled the library, Samuel Magus, master of carpentry, Pax, otherwise known as the guitarsmith; Calvus, the breadmaker, Lux, author and poet, and M. Laine, youngest and most powerful of them all.

Damnation

Hic, quos durus amor crudeli tabe peredit,
secreti celant calles et myrtea circum
silva tegit: curae non ipsa in morte relinquunt.

Here, those which rude love devoured in cruel decay
wander in hidden in paths and the myrtle wood cover
them round; their cares in death they have not left behind.

If, as C.S.L. points out in Problem of Pain, one the healings of the resurrected body shall be a restored will which no longer requires the disciplined exertion of the Christian who must teach it to obey, all the time guarding against its "journey homeward to the habitual self." We shall ourselves be resurrected, but we shall no longer struggle against that curse of our mortal flesh which set up our self as its own god. The self will recognize fully the master which, fighting against its own imbalance, serves imperfectly now. I wonder if Virgil is not so far off of Hell in his Campi Lugentes. A sinner restored to his body with all the memory of all his sorrows, and no inclination towards the dulling medicine of forgetfulness and self-commendation would decay indefinitely pining for those imperfect goods he bowed before in this life. His cares would not leave him behind in death, neither being released from his hands nor pardoned for him. He would be just like a disappointed lover, ever tormented by himself. Also, if it needs to be said, exspectamus resurrectionem mortuorum!

I taught 8th grade Spanish today, and supervised the cafeteria. Lux and M came over after school and we had coffee, talking about Ethan Frome (which Lux finished), Baby H, Lemony Snicket, and Shakespeare Night, which is beginning to take shape. I read Aeneid VI, Iliad II, Rev. 10, Is. 40, Cicero, and Udolpho. This is a little gem from The Sea-Nymph

Sometimes, a single note I swell
That, softly sweet, at distance dies
Then wake the magic of my shell,
And choral voices round me rise!

It could be called "The Lot of the Tam-Tam"

Romney, I'm convinced all people shall be saved!

LOL!

Poem from Lux

My mother calmly sips her coffee
In content repose she's sighing.
But if there were no coffee, well,
She would be terrifying.

 and in Latin:

 Placide libat coffeam Mater
Suspirans in quietem posita est.
 Sed nisi caffea esset, O vae!
Vero ipsa formidolosa esset.