state of the Hobbit, on the road

[redbird]

I have my new glasses, which adrian_turtle kindly picked up and held for me (the optician is on vacation right now), and I can see better. Not perfectly: the best they can do for me these days is 20/30. But better, and they're lighter, which is nice. Adrian reminds me that they are purple, which is also good: subtle, but definitely purple.

Adrian and I are house/pet-sitting in a pleasantly air conditioned house in Belmont. The coolth is very nice; the stairs are a disadvantage; it turns out I sleep very well in a waterbed, and my lower back, which has been aching at a low level for a couple of days, likes it.

We had a pleasant chat with nineweaving yesterday in Harvard Square: we had stopped for ice cream rather than just changing buses in the bus tunnel, and she was picking up copies of A Midsummer Night's Dream. We talked about the pitfalls of con programming, and about different editions of books: she wanted several the same for a play reading, which led to me remembering my high school English class in which we were doing Homer. The school owned, and therefore we all were given, paperback copies of a prose translation. However, my Greek teacher had sung the praises of Richmond Lattimore, I owned his version of the Odyssey, and so I brought it in to class. I half expected criticism. What happened was that Mr. Baratta saw it on my desk, and proceeded to borrow it to read to the class from. (I hadn't gotten to Homer in Greek at that point; the next year, I did a little of the Iliad. I've forgotten almost all of it, as happens with a language one doesn't use. But I'm glad to have done that.)

Comments

[minoanmiss]

Oooh!
(Email ahoy)

[bugsybanana.livejournal.com]

That is so like Mr. Baratta to do. Mrs. Cohen was my favorite English teacher, but I remember Baratta fondly. (He died a couple years ago, unfortunately.)

Does this mean you took Greek from Mr. Kizner? Kizner retired from Hunter (I think he moved to Dalton, better pay) the year before I took third-year Latin (the Cicero year - I skipped from first-year to third, so I didn't do Caesar), so I had to study with Ms. Pauly again. Fortunately we liked each other and I enjoyed the class a great deal.

[redbird]

Yes, I took Greek from Mr. Kizner. Unlike most of the class, I hadn't taken Latin (with him or anyone else): I more or less stumbled into taking Greek because I happened to be walking down the hall with some of my classmates, who had convinced him to teach it. (I suspect he hadn't taken much convincing.) He asked "Who's taking Greek?" I raised my hand on the spur of the moment, and he said "OK, who are you?" and that was that.

[pameladean]

I found the Lattimore entirely perfect for reading while learning Greek. He has the rhythms and structures down really well. Reread after a period of some years, he sounds rather awkward. I am thinking of switching my allegiance to the newish Fagles translation. I like Fitzgerald, but he is too cinematic for me. I know all those colors and images and sounds are not really in the original.

P.