19th
July
2006
I am one of the fortunate generation that received an education which was based on a a mature curriculum. Yes, I studied Latin. Over a five year period, I mentally wrestled, in the finest Greco-Roman sense, with five (six!) noun declensions and four verb conjugations, plus irregularities, while carrying on my real career of adolescence. Just for the sake of it: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, ablative (let’s pretend the locative doesn’t exist)
My contact with Latin started very early, when a priest poured water on my head while praying softly for my soul. I learned my prayers in two languages, so that Vatican II did not mark me indelibly, as had baptism (’tis the truth; the nuns told us so) . By the time I arrived in Grade Nine, Latin was as familiar as …
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posted in history |
12th
July
2006
I grew up in the land of single-channel TV, where shows were really sponsored and the best was saved for Sundays. To be precise, the Ed Sullivan Show.
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posted in history |
24th
June
2006
Today marks the graduation from high school for son #2. Congratulations!
We began the long trek to the diploma back in 1994, so this wasn’t a two-hour movie. The final sprint, today, began at someone’s house, where the difference between the preception and a wedding reception could not be seen in the dress. Tuxedos, ball gowns, parents with cameras. The excitement was palpable, as the papers would say. I found the girls to be akin to gorgeous butterflies. The young men all looked, well, tuxedo-junctioned. Some will never dress this way again.
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posted in environment, history |
15th
April
2006
Just checking my agenda, and our classes are all over. No, hold on there Rip Van Winkle, that was the 1976 agenda pages.
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6th
April
2006
A recent search brought back some early electronic music and a whole grab-bag of memories. The “Switched On Bach” albums began back in 1968, when Wendy Carlos was still Walter. I was newly trained in the use of the audio carrels in the school library, and the most esoteric LP in their collection was a true bits and bytes sound experience.
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25th
March
2006
The spillover from one background to another is sometimes manifested in the odd details supplied by my children in our cross-cultural household. This morning, son number two headed off to write his entry examination at a local CEGEP. After a return delayed by the family taxi which went missing in action (note to self, place a road map or a GPS in the next vehicle), the obvious question was about the difficulty of the exam session. The response “A bit like a Fun With Dick And Jane reader” caught me off-guard. Except for the briefest of contact with a reprinted copy at my sister’s earlier this month, there is no way in any context that he’s had the intense pleasure of reading that particular work of literary history.
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3rd
March
2006
I had the enriched childhood of a band member; in this case, concert band and all its variations. That my childhood was also enriched by good music is parallel to that.
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posted in history, technology |
14th
February
2006
Today the net brought me the sad news that Urban Carmichael lost his ongoing match against cancer. The boxer won’t be catching any more nickels off the back of his elbow, at least not in the usual ring.
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