What’s on your mind?

[LizKat]

I think I am going to start learning Classical Greek.

Brilliant idea, yes! Learning some classical Greek in the time of the coronavirus sounds like a great idea if you can find quiet times to home in on it. Should help this time of more isolation than usual pass by faster. Unless of course, the kids... so good luck with it!

εὖγε! I'm currently taking a New Testament Greek class and I've had three quarters of Ancient Greek. It comes much recommended.

I love the idea of being able to go back past all the still proliferating translations to some of the source material. I remember one day looking anew at the confirmation verse that the priest of my high Episcopal parish had chosen and inscribed in the front of a copy of the New Testament I was given on that day.

Ephesians 2:19 (RSV) "So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God."​

​

It was decades later that I had bumped into a different translation of it in some book I was reading, where it had appeared as an epigraph. The main difference was that in the epigraph, the word "sojourners" was put as "foreigners". I so preferred what I was used to, probably just because I was used to it, that I felt affronted when I read that epigraph (which I believe was just a standard ol' King James Version anyway). It was as if someone had robbed me of my confirmation verse.

At that moment, I did wonder how it would be to be able to look at the original Greek and decide which translation into English I believed was more appropriate, (not that I was some great scholar of scripture, just in the way that one might reach for this or that word when translating from any one language to another).

But... sigh... by then I was somewhere around 65 and was already connecting to how much more difficult it is to pick up a "new" old language at that age. Hell I had enough trouble just picking up another coding language in my 40s as time marched on in the workplace...

Yes, I studied Latin in our equivalent of Junior High; the teacher was excellent, but I learned a lot more Roman history (which I loved and still love) than actual Latin.

My admittedly flimsy grasp of Latin is primarily liturgical, based on an interest in sacred music forms, but I did [supposedly] study it in grade school for a couple years, found it useful in Romance languages taken up in college and as root of so many English words as well.

I've only become fascinated by history in my retirement, mostly working my way backwards from the WWII that I only vaguely remembered winding down while I was a child... but meanwhile skipping well back to some ancient eastern reigns, so I'll likely run out of time before I even properly read up on the Ottoman Empire. I have a feeling the Romans will probably escape my close scrutiny even though I'm interested.

For all thinking that I might remember the bits of Roman history we laboriously translated in grade school Latin classes: "You may not have been there..."

 

[0388631]

Really shouldn't have ate all those peppers last night...

 

[Scepticalscribe]

......



My admittedly flimsy grasp of Latin is primarily liturgical, based on an interest in sacred music forms, but I did [supposedly] study it in grade school for a couple years, found it useful in Romance languages taken up in college and as root of so many English words as well.

I've only become fascinated by history in my retirement, mostly working my way backwards from the WWII that I only vaguely remembered winding down while I was a child... but meanwhile skipping well back to some ancient eastern reigns, so I'll likely run out of time before I even properly read up on the Ottoman Empire. I have a feeling the Romans will probably escape my close scrutiny even though I'm interested.

For all thinking that I might remember the bits of Roman history we laboriously translated in grade school Latin classes: "You may not have been there..."

Mary Beard's brilliant "SPQR", and Tom Holland's excellent "Rubicon" are two very readable, superbly written and endlessly interesting books on Roman history that I cannot recommend highly enough.

 

[chown33]

I see some stores have now placed reflective tape on the floor at 6-ft intervals where people would be expected to line up. I've now seen it at a CVS drug store, a Trader Joe's, and a Costco. Didn't see it at Target, but that was a few days prior to my other shopping runs.

I almost feel like carrying around a measuring tape, and extending it whenever anyone approaches. It's probably a bit too passive-aggressive. Maybe a laser distance meter instead.

 

[compwiz1202]

I see some stores have now placed reflective tape on the floor at 6-ft intervals where people would be expected to line up. I've now seen it at a CVS drug store, a Trader Joe's, and a Costco. Didn't see it at Target, but that was a few days prior to my other shopping runs.

I almost feel like carrying around a measuring tape, and extending it whenever anyone approaches. It's probably a bit too passive-aggressive. Maybe a laser distance meter instead.

I keep saying we should be wearing 12ft diameter hula hoops around our waists.

 

[yaxomoxay]

Mary Beard's brilliant "SPQR", and Tom Holland's excellent "Rubicon" are two very readable, superbly written and endlessly interesting books on Roman history that I cannot recommend highly enough.

Guess which two books are already in my Amazon cart... plus Michael Grant's "History of Rome"

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Brilliant idea, yes! Learning some classical Greek in the time of the coronavirus sounds like a great idea if you can find quiet times to home in on it. Should help this time of more isolation than usual pass by faster. Unless of course, the kids... so good luck with it!



I love the idea of being able to go back past all the still proliferating translations to some of the source material. I remember one day looking anew at the confirmation verse that the priest of my high Episcopal parish had chosen and inscribed in the front of a copy of the New Testament I was given on that day.

Ephesians 2:19 (RSV) "So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God."​

​

It was decades later that I had bumped into a different translation of it in some book I was reading, where it had appeared as an epigraph. The main difference was that in the epigraph, the word "sojourners" was put as "foreigners". I so preferred what I was used to, probably just because I was used to it, that I felt affronted when I read that epigraph (which I believe was just a standard ol' King James Version anyway). It was as if someone had robbed me of my confirmation verse.

At that moment, I did wonder how it would be to be able to look at the original Greek and decide which translation into English I believed was more appropriate, (not that I was some great scholar of scripture, just in the way that one might reach for this or that word when translating from any one language to another).

But... sigh... by then I was somewhere around 65 and was already connecting to how much more difficult it is to pick up a "new" old language at that age. Hell I had enough trouble just picking up another coding language in my 40s as time marched on in the workplace...

.....

In the outstanding book (not the movie, which covers approximately only the final quarter of the book) East of Eden, by John Steinbeck, there are a number of astonishing - and quite brilliant and powerful - dialogues between the philosopher Samuel Hamilton and Lee - the educated and erudite and wonderfully intelligent (and kind) Chinese servant of Adam Trask - about biblical translations, and the importance (and different meanings) of key verbs which can be used interchangeably in some contexts but can also come to mean something completely different, depending on how they are used.

 

[chown33]

I keep saying we should be wearing 12ft diameter hula hoops around our waists.

Doorways would look like shipwrecking reefs.

 

[decafjava]

εὖγε! I'm currently taking a New Testament Greek class and I've had three quarters of Ancient Greek. It comes much recommended.

My father studied Ancient and some New Testament Greek to the point when invited to a bible study group by some family friends who were evangelical he corrected some points by people on the basis of the original texts.

 

[D.T.]

I keep saying we should be wearing 12ft diameter hula hoops around our waists.

When we go over to the beach, we draw a big "social distancing" circle in the sand, the other day, we drew some viruses on the outside, Daughter drew some people that didn't make it ... she's kind of dark

 

[LizKat]

I see some stores have now placed reflective tape on the floor at 6-ft intervals where people would be expected to line up. I've now seen it at a CVS drug store, a Trader Joe's, and a Costco. Didn't see it at Target, but that was a few days prior to my other shopping runs.

I almost feel like carrying around a measuring tape, and extending it whenever anyone approaches. It's probably a bit too passive-aggressive. Maybe a laser distance meter instead.

A FedEx guy was approaching my back door from the west side just as I was rounding the corner towards him from the east, having stepped out to go fetch my mail from the road. He had a small package in his hand and we agreed I'd open the screen door to the deck and back away and he'd then set the package in a corner of the deck and leave... I then stuck a box over the package (and my mail) and figured it can all sit there for a few days.

We were both acting like that little box he carried was in the category of "suspicious abandoned package" like back in the 1970s when some banks and companies in NYC were getting bomb threats over revelations of corporations having aided the CIA in the coup that removed Allende from office in Chile.

Anyway I know what all the stuff under that box is and it's certainly not as perishable as I might be these days. I certainly admire those who go to work daily in these times of risk to their own health in helping other people maintain social distancing.

 

[yaxomoxay]

Ok, now I learned how to read and write (uppercase and lowercase) the greek (classical) alphabet up to theta. Took me about 45 mins an hour, lots of repetition. Heck, I feel back in elementary school - learning from ZERO, tabula rasa.

 

[0388631]

Ok, now I learned how to read and write (uppercase and lowercase) the greek (classical) alphabet up to theta. Took me about 45 mins an hour, lots of repetition. Heck, I feel back in elementary school - learning from ZERO, tabula rasa.

Consider hiring an individual in a hazmat suit to rap you on the knuckles should you do something wrong. Gotta relive those private school days!

 

[yaxomoxay]

Consider hiring an individual in a hazmat suit to rap you on the knuckles should you do something wrong. Gotta relive those private school days!

Wife will gladly take care of that.

 

[LizKat]

Consider hiring an individual in a hazmat suit to rap you on the knuckles should you do something wrong. Gotta relive those private school days!

Yeah rap you on the knuckles or worse! A neighbor I used to look in on while his daughter was trying to round up an assisted living facility was reminiscing about pranks he'd pulled at his RC school in Brooklyn as a kid... the nuns made him kneel in his short pants in the gravel at the edge of the courtyard for half an hour over throwing a found piece of chalk at the blackboard while one of the priests (standing at board with back turned) was filling in for an absent instructor one day. He then went home and complained to his parents, but his papa said the kid got off too easy for disrespecting a cleric and then proceeded to take off his belt and whacked the kid with it a few times "to make up the difference."

Ai ai ai. And all that time before then I had thought I was practically persecuted for having been detained one afternoon in an after-hours study hall for an hour, after being part of a group the principal had caught mimicking the way our French teacher wore her hats. The only way he knew what we were about on that occasion was hearing us speaking bad French as we winked and adjusted imaginary hats and asked each other if we'd finished our homework. I guess he got the picture all right even if he didn't speak a lick of French himself. She was the only teacher who wore a hat to class.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Ok, now I learned how to read and write (uppercase and lowercase) the greek (classical) alphabet up to theta. Took me about 45 mins an hour, lots of repetition. Heck, I feel back in elementary school - learning from ZERO, tabula rasa.

Ah, excellent.

I can relate completely to this.

Actually, that brings back memories of learning the Russian (Cyrillic) alphabet as an adult.

 

[0388631]

Wife will gladly take care of that.

Put some Al Bano on and the kids will leave you two alone.

 

[JayMysterio]

A true master of horror...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1243638441834930186

 

[kazmac]

A FedEx guy was approaching my back door from the west side just as I was rounding the corner towards him from the east, having stepped out to go fetch my mail from the road. He had a small package in his hand and we agreed I'd open the screen door to the deck and back away and he'd then set the package in a corner of the deck and leave... I then stuck a box over the package (and my mail) and figured it can all sit there for a few days.

We were both acting like that little box he carried was in the category of "suspicious abandoned package" like back in the 1970s when some banks and companies in NYC were getting bomb threats over revelations of corporations having aided the CIA in the coup that removed Allende from office in Chile.

Anyway I know what all the stuff under that box is and it's certainly not as perishable as I might be these days. I certainly admire those who go to work daily in these times of risk to their own health in helping other people maintain social distancing.

Very well said.

UPS will allow you to show them your ID at a distance, Fed Ex, I have to request the same for Monday. I cannot leave packages outside, so inside the front door they stay for at least a day unless perishable.

I make sure to say thank you at least once to folks delivering stuff to us, and any customer service people I talk to on the phone.

Hope everyone here is okay.

 

[Gutwrench]

 

[D.T.]

OMG, we laughed so hard at this ...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1243560442435338242

 

[Scepticalscribe]

My sister-in-law is on my mind.

Have just been chatting to Other Brother, the husband of my sister-in-law.

I had mentioned in some earlier posts that the father of my sister-in-law, (who is German) died at the very beginning of March, having spent a few weeks in a nursing home, and having developed early Alzheimers, and he also suffered from cardiac issues. He was a big, strong, powerful, well-built man (around 6'5") - in his early 80s, who had been pretty healthy until last year.

Fortunately, my sister-in-law (who is a third level teacher of German, economics, marketing, and business here) had been able to fly over and back to Germany several times between Christmas and late February, when it was clear that he was deteriorating, although nobody expected him to die quite so soon - and had been able to help to arrange for his care needs and spend some time with him (as her mother is elderly, unwell, and not terribly mobile).

Then Covid-19 put in an unwelcome appearance, and the world changed.

Initially, the plan had been to have the memorial service today, but the family had hoped to postpone that until everyone who wished to travel to Germany (such as my sister-in-law, my brother, and possibly Decent Brother and myself) were able to do so once travel restrictions imposed by health requirements had been lifted.

However, the local authorities in that part of Germany (it is in the state of Baden-Wurttemberg, not all that far from Heidelberg) have insisted that the service go ahead as initially planned today, as, I suspect, they fear a large increase in the number of funerals and memorial services that will need to be held over the coming weeks.

This is very hard on my sister-in-law, who was close to her father, who had been very supportive of (and proud of) her ability, ambitions, career and studies.

They were a working class family, - the UK is not the only country in the world with a rigid social class structure and system - for, her father had been a foreman in a steel factory; actually, both her parents had travelled from what was then East Germany to West Germany in the late 50s, recently married, with absolutely nothing, just hope and courage and a stout work-ethic, a few years before the Wall went up, while, earlier still, her mother, as a small child, had fled with what remained of her family from what was then Danzig in early 1945, fleeing from the Russian advance. My sister-in-law was the first ever in her family to attend university where she obtained a number of degrees.

So, today, my sister-in-law is sitting at home with her husband, my brother, thinking of her family in Germany who will have to attend a memorial service for her adored father in her absence, and unable to say goodbye in person, and express one's sorrow and grief with the (public, shared) support of kin, friends and community, which is what funeral services or memorial services (at their best) allow for.

Very, very tough.

Mind you, as Decent Brother reminded me last night, when we chatted, that had I been posted or deployed abroad at this time, and Mother still alive but in the process of passing away, I would not have been able to get home for either her death or her funeral. Those conditions could well give rise to the sort of emotional scars and private hurts that you would carry with you to your own grave.

 

[chown33]

Last night I decided to start re-reading some books that have been on my bookshelf for awhile, which I haven't opened in years.

It was a grave mistake to start with Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death":

Spoiler: The Final Paragraph

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

I think I'll switch to something by H. P. Lovecraft instead of continuing with Poe. After all, what's soul-sucking raving insanity and being eaten by friendly ghouls (or even becoming one), compared to "illimitable dominion over all".

 

[LizKat]

Surely I'm not uniquely guilty of subscribing to email briefs and newsletters I don't always read. I'm curious about what they focus on now though, and so try to make time to read more of them.

The latest one from The Atlantic hit some familiar chords with me, in noting what some of its contributors have been doing as they too struggle to carry on more remotely from usual tasks and stimuli. This one in particular, from Isabel Gillies:

"I’m not going to get through these days by doing puzzles or baking bread, although I have pulled out the puzzles and we are baking a lot of bread. What has sustained me during the challenging times are noticing the small parts of my life that I love. The sound of a radio dial, making the bed, a dirt road, pencils. Just the sight of a pencil is cozy, and if you look, you will see them everywhere. There is something about a pencil that says, I will help you try."​

​

It does seem to be the little things that reassure, and their being out of place can exasperate. But Gillies is right in that pencils, at least in my house, are just about everywhere, even in this age of portable gear and notetaking apps.

So it's only the paper to write on that's usually gone missing when I most need a scrap of it to record a phone number or a fabric measurement. Something about paper in my house usually mutters I'm definitely not going to help you out here.

 

[Septembersrain]

I think it's about time I start reading books again. I do read, just mostly manga or historical documentaries. I'm thinking it's really time I pull out my old love for Danielle Steel and Nora Roberts. I cannot fill my anxiety pit fast enough these days.

My cleaning has gone from overkill to borderline mental disorder obsessive. I'm running out of ideas on historical documentaries, anybody got suggestions? I've read about pretty much every king from Egbert (Ecgherht) to the current Queen Elizabeth II. Then from Narmer to Cleopatra (Cleopatra VII Philopater).

I need help. *Sighs*