North And Hillard Exercises (Latin Prose Composition)

A poor soldier was one day leading a mule laden with gold which had been sent to Alexander the Great. The mule was so tired that it could no longer bear the burden, and the soldier was compelled to carry the gold himself. But by chance Alexander himself was following the man, and he admired his kindness so much that he said, "My friend, try to carry the gold home, for I give it all to you."

Miles pauper aliquando mulum oneratum auro quod missum erat ad Alexandrum Magnum ducebat. Mulus tam fessus erat ut non diutus onus ferre posset, et miles aurum ipse portare cogeretur. Sed accidit ut Alexander ipse illum sequebatur, et humanitatem tantum mirabatur ut diceret, "Amice mi,  domum aurum portare conare, nam omne tibi do."

A poor father was one day leading a child laden with poop which would not sit on the toilet. The child was so tired that it could no longer walk, and the father was compelled to carry the child himself. But by chance two other children were following the man, and they so admired his kindness that they said, "Father, we have broken one of your windows and stolen your phone."

Pater pauper aliquando puerulum oneratum stercore quid latrinae insidere nolebat. Puerulus tam fessus erat ut non diutus ambulare posset, et pater infantem ipse portare cogeretur. Sed accidit ut duo alii filii illum sequebantur, et humanitatem tantum mirabantur ut dicerent, "Pater noster, vitra fenestrarum tuarum perfregimus et telephonum gestabile tuum furavimus."

Felix and the Fox

 J was pulling out of the garage with the kids in the van. James suddenly gave a mighty yelp. There was a toy rattling around on the top of the van. (Sometimes it pays to have the sunroof.)

J got out and found, not just the one, but several toys on top of the van. 

Time for a chat.

James, who is honest beyond reproach, denies any involvement. Owen, who lies habitually, pointlessly, and recreationally, also denies it. Despite pushing from J. 

When asked, Felix's eyes get very big. He says, earnestly, "I sink a sox jumped up on the woof and put it there. A big surry sox."

J looks away. She looks back. Felix nods MOST seriously.

Felix, spelling out Apples to Apples words with Aunt Martha. 

"What's this letter?"

"That's a 'S!'"

"Good, and what's the next letter?"

"That's a 'M!'"

"Good, and the next one?"

"This one is a 'A!'"

"Right...and what is--"

"That's a 'eleven.'"

Felix, plunking down a stack of books between James, Owen, and me.

"Read these books to me!"

<Thinking better of his manners while he met with silence.>

"Read these books to me, please."

<Seizing an opportunity to be even more polite.>

"Read these books to me, please, gentlemen."

Owen's Day

 Last Saturday we masked up and took a long walk in Pittsford. The real reason for the trip was replace Owen's broken glasses. (Again. Thank goodness for the warranty on those frames.) We ended up taking a several miles long walk to a bakery since there was lovely weather, and Owen complained the whole time. He complained about rocks in his shoes, about a stuffy nose, about needing water, about James and Felix giving him mean looks, about James and Felix not looking at him, and about not being permitted to go in the bounce house. He basically complained about whatever happened to be in his head at the moment.

Once you understand that Owen loves the sound of his own voice, you have a little more patience for walking next to him for an hour. He just has to process the world out loud. I don't have as much patience for how he needs to process the world by touching it.

He touched old gum stuck on the asphalt. He touched a massive pile of horse poop along the side of the trail. He even stuck his head into a lidded garbage can because "It looked nice and shady."

I also don't understand why all of his words disappeared as soon as he was at the optometrist's. (When asked questions by the doctor he barked like a dog.)

He was plenty talkative to the barista at the bakery. He told her "Excuse, my name is Owen. And this little kid over here is called Felix. Wait, there's more. I have more to tell you. This guy is named James. And those are called Roy and Julie. And do you know what? All of us have the same last name! It's SMITH! I'm going to have a Cookie Monster cupcake and Felix--he's the little guy--is going to have the Elmo cupcake. I don't know what James is going to have yet, but I'll tell you when he makes up his mind. Hey, don't go away, I have more to tell you!"

We were happy to get him home, although less than thrilled when he brought his new "pet centipede" inside. (And then got teary when we told him he couldn't have a pet snake either."

Bonus Owen Story:

Owen: "Daddy, from now on we're going to call Felix 'Eli Manning.' Okay?"

Me: "Okay?"

Owen: "Good."

Me: "Good."

Owen: "I have some news. Eli Manning pooped in his diaper."

Felix had to be brought down to lunch after sobbing inconsolably on his bed for 20 minutes because of a piggy bank fiasco. Our neighbor paid each of the boys $3 to pick up sticks from her yard, and J put Felix's money in a plastic container. Then (this is where she made her big mistake) she wrote his name on the side. 

"YOU SPELLED IT WRONG!!!!" 

He shrieked. He screamed. He sobbed. He made threats. He stormed upstairs.

It was spelled F-E-L-I-X. 

But, as we noticed after, the L and the I were slightly touching. 

Some kids can't stand to have any of their food touching on their plate. Apparently Felix can't stand to have the letters touching in his name. 

In a perfect encapsulation of how school has gone this semester, I had to call James back downstairs to have him correct some of the grammar copywork he'd done. 

Here was one of the sentences:

A sentence is a group of words that begins with a capital letter and ends with a punctuation mark.

James' version:

a sentence is a group of words that begins with a capital letter and ends with a punctuation mark

Clearing the List

 I have a list on my phone notes of potential blog topics. Today I empty that list. 

There are occasional short-term guests (something funny that the kids said or did) that will get written up right away, but today we are dealing will all of the multi-year tenants. These are ideas that I've thought "I should write about this" for years. But then I never do, because it would either involve a lot more research, or it's way too controversial, or I'm not sure what to think about it. 

I'm spring cleaning my phone (goodbye, duplicate pictures of old rehearsal schedules) and this is what's finally going to make it happen.

PRIMING

Priming is the psychological phenomenon (I think I first read about it in Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow) whereby one stimulus influences (usually unconsciously) the response to another stimulus. (A classic example is the greater support for propositions to support school funding increases when the polling station is physically located within a school.) Priming is exactly the sort of unconscious and semi-rational thought that steers us without our being aware of it. J and I had a conversation where we reverse engineered an entire morning's worth of conversation and action with the question "in what contexts was this thought/action primed?" And it turns out that everything is primed by something. The effect might be extraordinarily miniscule, but it's there. Then we did the same experiment with a typical worship service flow...

EVERYTHING IS THE FEAR OF DEATH

Drugs are a way of escaping your fear of death. Sex is the ultimate biological insurance against death. Feeling busy (and thereby important) is a compensation for your anxiety about death. The habitual avoidance of restful sleep is a fear of death. My struggle against meaninglessness is a fear of death. Just like everything can be partially explained by priming, so can nearly every human action (especially destructive and irrational ones) be explained by the fear of dying. I think that one of the healthiest things a person can do is to look himself/herself in the mirror and acknowledge, "I am going to die. I am mortal. I am aging, growing weaker, and the time in my hourglass is running out. I don't know what will happen when I die, and I will not know. I do not know when I will die, and I cannot control it." This is why the Ash Wednesday service is (in my opinion), one of the most beautiful moments of the Christian year. We grasp that nettle in hand and are told "From dust you came, and to dust you shall return." It's like taking a swim in cold water. It's horrible, but it reminds you what being alive for this moment really is.

THE BOOK OF JOB

The Hebrew word that we usually translate "God/god" is actually plural...elohim. (Masculine plural hebrew words form the plural with an -im ending, feminine words with a -oth ending.) There are a few obvious sentences in the Psalms where you clearly have to translate the "elohim" as gods, because of the the syntax of the rest of the sentence. Most of the rest of the old testament uses a plural noun but a singular verb. 

There are 58 instances of the singular form of God/god, which is eloah. 42 of these are in the book of Job. 

Why? (Like most questions raised about the book of Job, lack even the beginning of a useful answer.)

ADULTHOOD

The biggest difference between adulthood and young adulthood is that nothing ever happens. Or, rather, almost everything (good or bad) happens in tiny/incremental ways. Sure, every once in awhile there is a 9/11 or a global pandemic. But most of the things that matter most to you are like how you gradually put on 10 lbs over the winter. (Or you work out every day for six months and gradually lose 10 lbs.) Or get slightly better at wrapping gifts. You don't learn six new sonatas every semester like you did when you were in college. You work on one sonata over two years, and you gradually can play it at level 88 instead of level 85. (Or you don't really practice much for two years and then you find out that you can no longer play the sonata at level 85.)

You make sourdough bread over and over again, and each loaf gets 1 percent better.

It's neither a good thing nor a bad thing that life is like this. But it is definitely what your life is now. It's mostly the same thing every day, and as you look back over the sweep of time you see the tiny changes, but you hardly ever notice it in the moment.

TE KALOU KAI KAKOU

Sometimes an idea is conspicuous by its absence. One idea that is conspicuously absent in scripture is the binary division of people/things/ideas into straightforward good and evil. This idea (which is central to the neoplatonism that so profoundly challenged and influenced the church of the 3rd/4th/5th centuries) still has powerful assumed resonances in many pockets of modern Christianity. But where in the Bible can you find any of the authors splitting people into "good people" and "bad people." Or good ideas and bad ideas? There's the parable of the sheep and the goats, but that becomes more complex with cultural and scriptural context. The closest thing you get in philosophical terms (thinking about the theory of forms and ontological goodness/badness) is a one-liner in Hebrews 5. 

GIVING YOUR CHILD A SWORD

I recently re-read the foundational text for our classical education efforts. For one thing, I'd read a strong critique of liberal arts education in general and was working through my own response to that book. For another, we needed some updated recommendations for curricula, since the edition of the book (Well-Trained Mind) that we own is almost thirty years old now.

Here's what I think about teaching a child Latin. It's like training them how to use a sword. Yes, it's a dead language. No, you would never use a sword in actual combat anymore. It's a ceremonial tool, one that's meant to evoke the past and does so with a certain panache. 

But there's more to learning swordsmanship than mere utility. A soldier who has been trained with a sword and is then handed a modern weapon is a more complete soldier than a solider who is handed a modern weapon straight off. Because the use of the sword requires greater sacrifice and discipline. Ultimately the sword is only as useful as the skill of the one who wields it. It is an extension of the soldier's own strength, grace, and courage, not a substitute for them.

A classical education (and learning Latin) is like training a soldier with the sword. The point isn't to train them to speak Latin. The point is to train them learn how to do any task (whether it's engineering, playing the piano, teaching science, or driving a cab) with the diligence, precision, and humility of a classical scholar.

They are learning swordsmanship.

Quotes from the Boys

 Owen, upon being read a story by a babysitter: "Tell you what...why don't you stop reading it, and let me read it. Because I will read it with better expression." 

(The babysitter later confirmed that Owen was correct.)

Felix, upon being told that it was time to leave Nama and Papa's house. "I don't want to go! I will not be a nice guy! I will make bad choices! I will poop in my pants MANY TIMES!"

Owen, coming downstairs well past his bedtime: "Is one of you named Roy Smith? I think you should know that a certain Felix Smith is out of his bed and playing in the sink."

James, upon being told that we were going to swap out his Wheelock for an easier Latin curriculum: "Oh."

When asked if he was sad about this decision: "No."

More to come soon...by the miracles of digital recording I was able to play in Easter morning services at 5 different churches yesterday. That was great, but we are all recovering today...

Buffalo Vacation Highlights

 We desperately needed to get out of our house.

Here's how a typical day of school was going:

James: "Dad, I don't understand what I'm supposed to be doing for this page."

Me: "James, we've been going over long division for two months. What don't you understand about it?"

Felix: "RRReewww...RRRAaAA...SMASH! The Hudson Hornet smashes into anudder car!"

James: "Felix don't drive your cars on me."

Owen: "I hate school and you can't make me do it."

Felix: RRewwww....SCCREEE!!! The Hudson Hornet smashes into Owen!"

Me: "Owen, don't hit Felix."

Potty training was a constant exercise in frustration. Felix wasn't sleeping. It was just time for a change of scenery. We booked a suite at the Embassy in downtown Buffalo, figuring that getting out of Rochester would force us to change our pace and have some quality family time. We knew that the pool was shut down because of COVID, but we figured that we would at least give ourselves a chance at it with so many amenities starting to reopen. I would leave my trumpet at home. J and I would sleep in late while the kids watched movies on the big hotel TV, and then we'd sip espresso in our pajamas. We would drink wine and get exotic takeout and work on puzzles together. Maybe, since there were two rooms to the suite, we could even have some "privacy" without being interrupted by a child pounding on the door. It was a lovely dream.

The kids got into the excitement too. James was excited to "live in an apartment for awhile." Owen was disappointed that it would only be for two nights. "I thought it would be for at least a couple of weeks!" And Felix kept repeating, "I hope that Josh Allen is excited to meet me." We explained that Josh Allen was probably visiting his family in California. "Oh," said Felix "then I want to stay in a hotel in California."

On Tuesday morning I urged the boys to do their school quickly so that we could be ready to leave for the hotel that afternoon as soon as our room was available.

Me: "Come on Owen, we just have to figure out which words are adjectives and which words are adverbs. What do adjectives modify?"

Owen: "Uhh...words that stand in place for someone's name?"

Me: "Well, you're describing a pronoun, and adjectives might modify a pronoun. But pronouns are part of a bigger class of words called...

Owen: "...words."

Felix: "RRRewwww...pakow! pakow! pakow! The Hudson Hornet is in flames!"

Me: "What about adverbs. Do you remember what sorts of words adverbs describe?"

Owen: "Nope."

Me: "Come on guys, we can't leave for the hotel until we get school done. James, can you tell us what kinds of words adverbs describe?"

James: "How, when, where, how often, and to what extent."

Felix: "RRrewww, RREWWW! Oh no, oh no!"

Me: "Well, those are some of the types of adverbs, but what sorts of words do adverbs modify?"

James: <staring blankly> "Maybe...describing words?"

Felix: <exasperated> "They descwibe verbs!"

On the drive out to the hotel James announced to J that he had a story to tell her. James' stories are literal epics. He composes them up in his room, and they involve characters from every subject and on every topic that he is even remotely interested in. He paces back and forth memorizing the entire tale (which usually takes about 2-3 hours to tell in its entirety) and then he recites it with zero inflection/pauses/emotional cadence as quickly as possible to J while they take a walk. He will only tell his stories to J, and it doesn't matter if she pays attention. He has to get it out of his system. If he doesn't get to finish it he remembers exactly where he left off and will resume the recitation from there at the earliest opportunity. But he's no good for anything else until he's downloaded it to her. ("James, you're going to pace a groove into your floor. James, you're standing in traffic!) He attempted to tell her a bit of the story in the car (it involved Julius Caesar and Cleopatra making a wager about whether she could build a magnificent temple, but somehow also involved Harry, Ron, Hermione, and the Mandalorian and Baby Yoda.)

The check-in at the hotel was very exciting. We folded out a luxurious fold-out sofa for the kids to sleep on, and ordered them a Domino's pizza. They argued (as they would each time we would ride the elevator) about who got to press the buttons, and then we found out that our Chromecast wouldn't be able to stream movies on the hotel TVs. (So much for the promises of watching whatever movies they wanted.) The evening ended with the kids pounding on our decidedly non-soundproof door, and me receiving a call at 9 PM instructing me to quarantine in place because one of my COVID tests was inconclusive.

Wednesday was a blur. My COVID test turned out to be negative after all. Felix spent most of the morning racing/smashing his matchbox cars around, and also spread LEGOS that we didn't even know he'd brought all over the floor of the suite. (J: "I swear these kids shed LEGOS like a dog shedding hair.") Owen watched superhero cartoons on TV in rapt stupor and wiggled a loose tooth. James paced restless and unending lines through the suite, periodically asking whether J was ready to hear his story yet or not. We fed them a boxed hotel breakfast of microwave waffles, cold bagels, and sugary yogurt. We got decent espresso from across the street and decided to do some exploring.

Owen immediately entered a furious sulk upon leaving the hotel room, and spent most of our time in the Broadway Market attempting to get lost on purpose. We did ride two escalators, through, and let the kids try cotton candy for the first time. (James: "It melts in my mouth in a funny way. Are you ready to hear my story yet?")

Then we went up to Delaware Park and had a picnic near a playground. Owen and Felix played on the playground while James finally offloaded part of his story to J, and then Felix announced that he had pooped in his diaper and that it had run down his legs into both his shoes. (He was telling the truth.)

I drove him back to the hotel to attempt to change/sanitize him, and then drove him back to J, who was trying to keep the other two from throwing rocks and sticks into the lake while she wasn't looking. Valet parking sounds like a real luxury, but it isn't helpful at all when you're trying to unload a three year old as quickly as possible, and then you need to hustle back to the park because your other children all need a restroom and everything is shut down due to COVID. So far it all felt like a typical morning, except with more downtown city driving. We tried to do a little walking along the trails, and ended up doing more scolding for playing near/throwing things into decorative bodies of water. 

We drove back to the hotel to find them some supper.

Felix: "Daddy, what number comes after eleven?"

Me: "Twelve."

Felix: "And what number comes after twelve?"

Me: "Thirteen."

Felix: "And what number comes after thirteen?"

Me: "How high is this going to go?"

Felix: "I'm counting to one hundred."

Me: "After thirteen is ninety-nine."

Felix: "No it isn't. It's fourteen. What number comes after fourteen?"

Owen: "I KNOW! It's fifteen!"

We fed them hamburgers and fries on Wednesday night and set them up with the only kid-friendly movie that was showing on the hotel cable--The Parent Trap, which, fortunately, they loved.

That was the best part of the trip for J and I. We opened a nice bottle of wine (a 2013 Amarone) picked up some French food from a good restaurant downtown, (Owen, upon hearing me ordering, shouting in the phone: "HEY! DO YOU HAVE FOOD THAT'S GOOD FOR KIDS?") and had a romantic dinner beside our city-view window in our room of the suite while the kids dropped off to a late-night movie and gently fell asleep. 

Just kidding, of course. They started pounding on the door to our suite as soon as their movie was over. Oh, and Owen's loose tooth came out.

We stopped by the Galleria on the way back to Rochester and attempted to upgrade our old/dying phones (turns out we aren't eligible for anything other than paying full price for decent phones, so we will stick to our old/dying ones) and to buy the kids new LEGOS on the basis of they want LEGOS and we are too tired to say no.

We had lunch at the Cheesecake factory, which was an interesting study in just how savagely three small boys can treat a basket full of complimentary bread. It's always interesting to see how these kids interact with the general public after a year in seclusion. James made part of his order request in Latin. Owen was astonishingly polite and well-mannered to the waitress when placing his order, but lost points when he opened the door to the women's bathroom, poked his head in, and yelled, "Hey, this is the ladies' room...there are ladies in here!" Felix sucked his fingers, crawled under the table, and mostly fell asleep on his Curious George. 10 PM movies are too late for three and a half year olds.

Was it a glamorous, once-in-a lifetime getaway? No. But was it a restful chance to recharge and slow down the pace for our family? Also no. But did we make some memories that will last a lifetime? I don't know if I'll remember anything else, but I know I'll remember to pack more pairs of pants for Felix in the future. (Maybe he'll be potty-trained by the time we do this again in ten years.)

Not Funny

 None of this is funny yet. But it probably will be in a few years, which is why I am writing it down. We'll want to look back on this week and remember it, and we won't be able to come up with all the details unless I get them all out somewhere.

This was the week when it truly felt like we had been locked up together for a year.

The week when I was shopping for health insurance, because our plan through the college was getting cut as part of the adjunct cutbacks.

And when I got so frustrated by the process that I decided to go for a run. And then I slipped and fell and sprained a toe (and busted up my thumb, and pulled a bunch of muscles in my chest) in the middle of the woods, and had to call (with a dying phone battery) J and the kids to come rescue me.

So I was hobbled and on the couch for most of this, like when Owen decided that he wasn't going to do any more school unless it was -9 worksheets and would sit in the time-out corner and scream at the top of his lungs the whole time James was trying to get his done.

And how Felix thought that the only appropriate response to Owen's behavior would be to empty boxes full of puzzle pieces into random piles in the library whenever unsupervised.

And how I had to threated Owen with public school to make him stop.

And how Felix wouldn't sleep in his own bed anymore, but would climb into our bed or into Owen's bed or into his dresser drawers or onto his changing table to fall asleep. And how he'd turn on all the lights in his room after bedtime every night, even when we taped over the light switches. 

ASIDE: In a slight positive, this is the week that Felix started exclaiming "By Jupiter!" with most of his exclamations, because of reading the Asterix comics.

And how we had to move Owen into James' room on a mattress so that he and Felix would stop fighting in the middle of the night. And how Felix was so tired in the mornings that he would come down holding Owen's George and then looking confused about where his was.

And how all of a sudden Felix (though supposedly potty-trained) decided to start pooping in his pants again.

But it all came to a head yesterday, when J and I were going to try to record some long-overdue projects for our churches in the afternoon. The theory was simple: Set the kids up with screen time in our room, set up our recording equipment, and record for an hour or so before dinner. You can do this with a hobbled foot. It's easy.

Except that it wasn't. Because the music that I'd written didn't format correctly, so we had to take apart the whole recording rig to reset the computer, pull up the notation software, and generate new parts. And then in the middle of the master piano track you could hear doors slamming and somebody apparently jumping up and down in Owen/Felix's room. 

But we pushed ahead, because we only had so much time. And then, in the middle of the trumpet track, James came down and announced that he'd thrown up on our bed. 

It was my side of the bed. And he threw up all over my clothes, too.

So we paused the recording process, got him cleaned up, got the laundry going, and then set up the kids in a different room with a different computer to watch more George.

We were going to finish this recording, by Jupiter.

It was in the middle of a flute track that out-of-control thumping sounds erupted from the basement. The washer had spun itself out of center because of all of the bedding inside. And also, the first load still had gunk in it and would need to be rerun. It was at this point that we realized we didn't have enough laundry detergent to wash everything that was hit. 

We got the washer fixed and the flute track down, and I went back to do another take of the trumpet part. That was when the wireless headphone batteries died mid-take. 

We sat down (with only 45 minutes left until my evening lessons) to eat a risotto dinner that should have been lovely and leisurely. I tried to eat mine slowly enough to enjoy it, and then drove out to pick up a new bottle of laundry detergent, offering to J to pick up some dessert (which we normally do only on feast days) since it had been such a hard day. She declined.

While I was out J texted to say that James threw up again and that she'd changed her mind about dessert. The text message never arrived.

I taught a lesson, and had a zoom meeting with prospective student who was 15 minutes late to the interview. Then we finally sat down and listened to the recordings we'd made. They were unusable. Each of us played with decent intonation with the guide track, but our pitch playing together was like the sound of cats fighting in octaves.

And it would still be three hours before all the bedding was washed. 

I worked at the computer and messed around with some of the tracks and drank scotch. J sat on our bare mattress with a glass of wine and her book. I made some progress, and we eventually put layer after layer back on our bed. By the end of the night, we'd salvaged this.

Deep, Deep Love.mp4

It was, without qualification, an awful day. But we made something beautiful by the end of it.

Today, I am getting my first vaccine shot. And there is some light at the end of this tunnel, by Jupiter.