I forgot -
He says that the Vatican secretary of state's nephew's an architect, and Maciel used to show up in Rome with big fat checks of like $50,000 and commission churches from him.
Also, the priest noticed when in one of the 1st sessions of class we were doing examples of recent Latin and he told us to open up our workbooks to a certain page, and when we did, it opened up to "Rerum Novarum", and I did a little gasp "oh!"... At that, he gave me a quizzative (sp.?) look, and was like, "You know it?".
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
Choice words from the priest who runs my Latin class.
The priest from my Latin class said about JPII that he could never understand why people wanted to beatify him right away, and added, "He was a very hard and wicked man."
He said that everyone in Rome warned him about getting involved with Maciel, but he wanted the Legionnaires and Opus to be the shocktroops of his revived church, and had these grandiose plans that they would flood into former communist countries and revive the church.
"Have you seen the church in Poland?", the priest asked. "It is weaker than it was under communism." He said that communism kept the drugs and the pornography out, but when the Poles threw off communism, many chose to throw out the church as well... He said he first got to know of Wotyla (the future jpii) because every other month he was sending him letters from Paul VI telling him not to go around calling communism the spawn of Satan or what have you from the altar every Sunday.
"He really destroyed the ostpolitik of Paul VI," the priest said. "Paul VI was smart, he knew that communism wouldn't last and so he wasn't looking to make too many enemies, and was already planning for the day when it wouldn't be around."
He also made another backhanded comparison to jpii when he was reminiscing about translating some document for Paul VI that was talking about how dioceses sent their best people to seminaries for the priesthood, and how he used this word that is attested classically and looks like the word for "oaks" but means "best men, best part", and after Paul VI read through the document, he wrote back in "this small, delicate hand - kind of French-like, you know, he was all French-y, and philosophical", and the only marking was a question mark by that word, so he wrote up the classical attestations for the word and sent it back along with a list of synonyms (e.g. "electi", "selecti"), and Paul VI wrote back, and had written "cosi!" by the list of synonyms.
"It wasn't that way with John Paul II at all," he was like, after the story. "No," he said, "He wasn't at all philosophical."
(Isn't jpii known for his theological writings, too? - the Latin of which the priest said was "serviceable".)
Then, he said that for the first encyclical, which was like 148pp. and very repetitious for no good reason, he wrote back with suggestions for editing like he always had, and jpii sent it back right away with a note just saying (I think - I should check the Vulgate) "quod scripsi, scripsi" ('what I have written, I have written') - the line that Pilate says in the Gospel of John when 'the Jews' complain that the sign above the cross that is supposed to record Christ's crime says "King of the Jews", and not "This man said, 'I am King of the Jews.'"
(That part of the gospel is a famous unintended proclamation of Christ, in line with other such occurrences throughout the gospel - it's a big, unique theme of John.)
"That was that," he said, and when I asked him more about jpii, he said that he only really talked to him for 20 minutes for all the 27-some odd years he worked for him.
He also said he killed Vatican II (and this conversation was in front of the entire class, though I strike it up when the people I suspect who are conservative are gone on break, the break between the 1st and 2nd sessions is the best time).
"Where have all the flowers gone?", he asked, and then was like, "Or, rather, I should say, 'Quo abierunt flores?'".
...really, the whole conversation reminded me of that one conversation I had with my mom where she said she had never paid attention to jpii, but had just always gotten this authoritarian vibe off of him...
He said that everyone in Rome warned him about getting involved with Maciel, but he wanted the Legionnaires and Opus to be the shocktroops of his revived church, and had these grandiose plans that they would flood into former communist countries and revive the church.
"Have you seen the church in Poland?", the priest asked. "It is weaker than it was under communism." He said that communism kept the drugs and the pornography out, but when the Poles threw off communism, many chose to throw out the church as well... He said he first got to know of Wotyla (the future jpii) because every other month he was sending him letters from Paul VI telling him not to go around calling communism the spawn of Satan or what have you from the altar every Sunday.
"He really destroyed the ostpolitik of Paul VI," the priest said. "Paul VI was smart, he knew that communism wouldn't last and so he wasn't looking to make too many enemies, and was already planning for the day when it wouldn't be around."
He also made another backhanded comparison to jpii when he was reminiscing about translating some document for Paul VI that was talking about how dioceses sent their best people to seminaries for the priesthood, and how he used this word that is attested classically and looks like the word for "oaks" but means "best men, best part", and after Paul VI read through the document, he wrote back in "this small, delicate hand - kind of French-like, you know, he was all French-y, and philosophical", and the only marking was a question mark by that word, so he wrote up the classical attestations for the word and sent it back along with a list of synonyms (e.g. "electi", "selecti"), and Paul VI wrote back, and had written "cosi!" by the list of synonyms.
"It wasn't that way with John Paul II at all," he was like, after the story. "No," he said, "He wasn't at all philosophical."
(Isn't jpii known for his theological writings, too? - the Latin of which the priest said was "serviceable".)
Then, he said that for the first encyclical, which was like 148pp. and very repetitious for no good reason, he wrote back with suggestions for editing like he always had, and jpii sent it back right away with a note just saying (I think - I should check the Vulgate) "quod scripsi, scripsi" ('what I have written, I have written') - the line that Pilate says in the Gospel of John when 'the Jews' complain that the sign above the cross that is supposed to record Christ's crime says "King of the Jews", and not "This man said, 'I am King of the Jews.'"
(That part of the gospel is a famous unintended proclamation of Christ, in line with other such occurrences throughout the gospel - it's a big, unique theme of John.)
"That was that," he said, and when I asked him more about jpii, he said that he only really talked to him for 20 minutes for all the 27-some odd years he worked for him.
He also said he killed Vatican II (and this conversation was in front of the entire class, though I strike it up when the people I suspect who are conservative are gone on break, the break between the 1st and 2nd sessions is the best time).
"Where have all the flowers gone?", he asked, and then was like, "Or, rather, I should say, 'Quo abierunt flores?'".
...really, the whole conversation reminded me of that one conversation I had with my mom where she said she had never paid attention to jpii, but had just always gotten this authoritarian vibe off of him...
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Class composition.
For my Latin class, the class composition is -
- mostly male.
- mostly college age / early 20s.
- mostly into Classics (e.g. one reads Homer on breaks, a large number of them tend to chew with their mouths open and be on the hairy side with poor grooming skills).
An exception is an older guy who's a Latin teacher and his daughters (I think) and their friends, and he wears some sort of scapular thing (I could see it on under his shirt), and the girls wear long skirts in simple, sedate patterns, and one of them is named "Iacintha" or whatever the heck that one kid from the Fatima apparitions was named.
In addition, there's a couple younger guys from like Notre Dame or something who know them (I'm assuming from conservative Catholic circles?).
The kids talk a lot to the priest, but mostly about Cicero or "what do you think of Catallus?", and when I ask about modern church politics, they usually take some minor minor thread of the conversation and derail it with requests for trivia-like information that classicists are so fond of and could probably wikipedia (e.g. with, "Has there ever been a non-Italian pope before Benedict?", or, "Has there ever been a pope from the mendicant orders?").
They also do the thing that classicists do and look weirdly upon other eras of Latin like church Latin. "Did they really do that?", one asked with mouth open, when he saw a new use of a conjunction that seemed odd to him.
I think one of the biggest flaws of Classics is that classicists (like most people who never think about moral topics) don't understand the difference between analysis (i.e. description leading into argumentation, but no moral judgments) and evaluation (i.e. moral judgments), and so they don't see that their field involves a very normative decisions about the height of Latin or Greek, and so although some people may slum with koine Greek and the non-literary papyri from Egypt or something like that, they would *never* start to study Christian literature in their departments, even when it's contemporaneous with other stuff they study.
Honestly, what the fuck is up with that? You would never get away with such snobbery in English departments or other modern language departments, where people have been actively trying to de-center the canon while they teach it. Classics is so behind the times that it's sick.
Also, when the priest talked about knowing the importance of vowel length if you want to speak Latin or read it out loud correctly, and for that you have to consult the dictionary and memorize - "You have to know everything!", he says - one asked where the dictionaries got it, and the priest said that alternate vowel lengths in dictionary entries usually indicate options for poetic usage, and after that, I politely chimed in and said that another important source for accents/vowel lengths for a language like Latin is to make reconstructions from daughter languages, and also check them against reconstructions of Indo-European roots, to the extent that that is known, and the priest was like, "Oh yes, definitely," and then mentioned you can also look at the treatment of the vowels of Greek words borrowed into Latin.
Honestly, the difference between a classicist and someone who knows his shit is the decision to stop idolizing trivia and learn the damn system that lets you make sense of all the shit you've memorized (the same is probably true of egyptology as a whole, too, from what I've seen of it).
- mostly male.
- mostly college age / early 20s.
- mostly into Classics (e.g. one reads Homer on breaks, a large number of them tend to chew with their mouths open and be on the hairy side with poor grooming skills).
An exception is an older guy who's a Latin teacher and his daughters (I think) and their friends, and he wears some sort of scapular thing (I could see it on under his shirt), and the girls wear long skirts in simple, sedate patterns, and one of them is named "Iacintha" or whatever the heck that one kid from the Fatima apparitions was named.
In addition, there's a couple younger guys from like Notre Dame or something who know them (I'm assuming from conservative Catholic circles?).
The kids talk a lot to the priest, but mostly about Cicero or "what do you think of Catallus?", and when I ask about modern church politics, they usually take some minor minor thread of the conversation and derail it with requests for trivia-like information that classicists are so fond of and could probably wikipedia (e.g. with, "Has there ever been a non-Italian pope before Benedict?", or, "Has there ever been a pope from the mendicant orders?").
They also do the thing that classicists do and look weirdly upon other eras of Latin like church Latin. "Did they really do that?", one asked with mouth open, when he saw a new use of a conjunction that seemed odd to him.
I think one of the biggest flaws of Classics is that classicists (like most people who never think about moral topics) don't understand the difference between analysis (i.e. description leading into argumentation, but no moral judgments) and evaluation (i.e. moral judgments), and so they don't see that their field involves a very normative decisions about the height of Latin or Greek, and so although some people may slum with koine Greek and the non-literary papyri from Egypt or something like that, they would *never* start to study Christian literature in their departments, even when it's contemporaneous with other stuff they study.
Honestly, what the fuck is up with that? You would never get away with such snobbery in English departments or other modern language departments, where people have been actively trying to de-center the canon while they teach it. Classics is so behind the times that it's sick.
Also, when the priest talked about knowing the importance of vowel length if you want to speak Latin or read it out loud correctly, and for that you have to consult the dictionary and memorize - "You have to know everything!", he says - one asked where the dictionaries got it, and the priest said that alternate vowel lengths in dictionary entries usually indicate options for poetic usage, and after that, I politely chimed in and said that another important source for accents/vowel lengths for a language like Latin is to make reconstructions from daughter languages, and also check them against reconstructions of Indo-European roots, to the extent that that is known, and the priest was like, "Oh yes, definitely," and then mentioned you can also look at the treatment of the vowels of Greek words borrowed into Latin.
Honestly, the difference between a classicist and someone who knows his shit is the decision to stop idolizing trivia and learn the damn system that lets you make sense of all the shit you've memorized (the same is probably true of egyptology as a whole, too, from what I've seen of it).
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
The horror of silverfish...
A few nights before I left for the summer I woke up in the middle of the night in my apartment, and I felt like someone was drawing a feather quickly up my forearm, so I drew my arm out of the blanket and that sensation was still there, so I brushed my arm quickly, and it was gone.
Then, I turned on the light, and nothing was there.
And then, I shook my blankets, and a small-to-medium silverfish ran out and across the carpet and under the coffee table and then the couch.
Then, I turned on the light, and nothing was there.
And then, I shook my blankets, and a small-to-medium silverfish ran out and across the carpet and under the coffee table and then the couch.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Waste, deplorable waste.
I've had a complex about clearing out my fridge and unplugging it over long absences from my apartment ever since my one (former) neighbor who I used to volunteer with for the Obama campaign down in Indiana told me that she did that, because it was good for the earth.
So, I carefully measure my groceries, and on the evening before I left I ate the last of the jar of a tahini that was in the fridge with my dinner, and the morning I left I ate half of a small jar of gourmet stone-ground mustard so I wouldn't have to throw it out.
Though, I still threw out -
- 2 frozen sticks of chorizo (the 1st stick was iffy anyhow from the pack, I shouldn't have bought so much).
- some frozen ginger in a bag in my fridge (ginger stays forever that way, it was leftover from ginger-honey tea I make in the winter when I have a cold).
- 2 sticks of butter (though I had toast with a ton of butter at breakfast to use as much as I could).
- some leftover bean soup that was spoiling (though I was able to eat a bowl-and-a-half of it a few days earlier when it was on the edge of spoiling, I am glad to say).
I feel so guilty about the waste. I put my coffee can full of ground coffee and my packet of Greek coffee in the cupboard to use when I get back, though it loses its flavor that way, and I used 2 lemon slices by squeezing them and rubbing them in my hair on the day before I left and again the morning I left in the hopes that the citric acid would give me highlights.
So, I carefully measure my groceries, and on the evening before I left I ate the last of the jar of a tahini that was in the fridge with my dinner, and the morning I left I ate half of a small jar of gourmet stone-ground mustard so I wouldn't have to throw it out.
Though, I still threw out -
- 2 frozen sticks of chorizo (the 1st stick was iffy anyhow from the pack, I shouldn't have bought so much).
- some frozen ginger in a bag in my fridge (ginger stays forever that way, it was leftover from ginger-honey tea I make in the winter when I have a cold).
- 2 sticks of butter (though I had toast with a ton of butter at breakfast to use as much as I could).
- some leftover bean soup that was spoiling (though I was able to eat a bowl-and-a-half of it a few days earlier when it was on the edge of spoiling, I am glad to say).
I feel so guilty about the waste. I put my coffee can full of ground coffee and my packet of Greek coffee in the cupboard to use when I get back, though it loses its flavor that way, and I used 2 lemon slices by squeezing them and rubbing them in my hair on the day before I left and again the morning I left in the hopes that the citric acid would give me highlights.
Monday, June 14, 2010
I love the Midwest!
I'm in Milwaukee for that one latin program with the pope's latinist... People really are so much nicer here.
When I biked over to the grocery store and was locking up my bike in the bikerack, this older (white) lady was waiting to get her bike, and so I was all nice and was like, "Oh, I'm sorry, I hope I'm not in your way!", and she was like, "Oh no, not at all, you're not at all... Or you won't be right after I knock you out!"
Then, somehow she started telling me about her new young boyfriend who teaches people how to boat at the local yacht club, and how people under 62 aren't allowed to live in her building, and she's hoping that they don't put up a sign that he'll see when he comes to visit her.
"How old is he?!?!?", I was like.
"Oh, 60, I think," she said.
Later, I was at the drugstore and I couldn't find the coffee filters - turns out they weren't by the coffee! - and the fro'd up young (black) guy working the cash register was really nice and directed me, and then when I came up to check out, he was like, "Find them, bro?"
Also, when I arrived, I had my bike in a bikebox - it's $5 to check and $15 to buy the box, and I'm going to use it all summer - and I asked the train people if I could throw it out, since it was too big to take to my summer apartment.
"We could keep it for you, if you want," the one younger (black) rail clerk said, and when I told him that I was leaving at the very end of July, he told me that they do that for people who come up with their bikes for a couple weeks, so what's the difference for a couple months, they have the room.
So, I did that, and wrote my cell phone on their to call me if they had any questions. And, I wrote on there to give it away rather than throw it out, in case anyone needed a bikebox, because I'd hate to see it go to waste.
When I biked over to the grocery store and was locking up my bike in the bikerack, this older (white) lady was waiting to get her bike, and so I was all nice and was like, "Oh, I'm sorry, I hope I'm not in your way!", and she was like, "Oh no, not at all, you're not at all... Or you won't be right after I knock you out!"
Then, somehow she started telling me about her new young boyfriend who teaches people how to boat at the local yacht club, and how people under 62 aren't allowed to live in her building, and she's hoping that they don't put up a sign that he'll see when he comes to visit her.
"How old is he?!?!?", I was like.
"Oh, 60, I think," she said.
Later, I was at the drugstore and I couldn't find the coffee filters - turns out they weren't by the coffee! - and the fro'd up young (black) guy working the cash register was really nice and directed me, and then when I came up to check out, he was like, "Find them, bro?"
Also, when I arrived, I had my bike in a bikebox - it's $5 to check and $15 to buy the box, and I'm going to use it all summer - and I asked the train people if I could throw it out, since it was too big to take to my summer apartment.
"We could keep it for you, if you want," the one younger (black) rail clerk said, and when I told him that I was leaving at the very end of July, he told me that they do that for people who come up with their bikes for a couple weeks, so what's the difference for a couple months, they have the room.
So, I did that, and wrote my cell phone on their to call me if they had any questions. And, I wrote on there to give it away rather than throw it out, in case anyone needed a bikebox, because I'd hate to see it go to waste.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
...another rash reaction...
So, when I met my one lit prof friend at the student bar and told her about that one rash on my scrotum that turned out to be from an African parasite, it turned out that she's *fascinated* by parasites, and she started telling me about how one of her favorite YouTube clips that she watches over and over is people extracting this flesh-eating fly from a gaping would when the fly larva pokes its head out to come up for air.
I told her that that was very lit person-ish of her, to like parasites - that, and androids.
The other day I texted her and told her that her next book should be about parasites and the permeability of the modern self.
I told her that that was very lit person-ish of her, to like parasites - that, and androids.
The other day I texted her and told her that her next book should be about parasites and the permeability of the modern self.
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