"What is home without / Plumtree’s Potted Meat? / Incomplete. / With it an abode of bliss."


"What relation existed between their ages?
"16 years before in 1888 when Bloom was of Stephen's present age Stephen was 6. 16 years after in 1920 when Stephen would be of Bloom's present age Bloom would be 54. In 1936 when Bloom would be 70 and Stephen 54 their ages initially in the ration of 16 to 0 would be as 17 1/2 to 13 1/2, the proportion increasing and the disparity diminishing according as arbitrary future years were added, for if the proportion existing in 1883 had continued immutable, conceiving that to be possible, till then 1904 when Stephen was 22 Bloom would be 374 and in 1920 when Stephen would be 38, as Bloom then was, Bloom would be 646 while in 1952 when Stephen would have attained the maximum postdiluvian age of 70 Bloom, being 1190 years alive having been born in the year 714, would have surpassed by 221 years the maximum antediluvian age, that of Methusalah, 969 years, while, if Stephen would continue to live until he would attain that age in the year 3072 A.D., Bloom would have been obliged to have been alive 83,300 years, having been obliged to have been born in the year 81,396 B.C."


"O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."

(I'm done!)

The lack of posts recently has been because I'm trying to minimize my computer use--I'm dead set on healing my wrists as quickly as possible. (I'm also not playing piano at all, which is sad.) But quick update: Latin is good, and I've started reading Ovid, though I have to look up about 9 out of every 10 words in the dictionary; teaching is looking fine, and quite easy (turns out the instructor mainly expects me to show up and do the grading); I start "summer early music ensemble" today, which should include some stunning sacred pieces by Gesualdo; I have fruit flies infesting my African violet, which (the fruit flies, not the flower) I set aside a few minutes every day to hunt down, to no avail; it's hot; I'm swimming pretty regularly; ista decent umeros gestamina nostros/qui dare certa ferae, dare vulnera possumus hosti,/qui modo pestifero tot iugera ventre prementem/stravimus innumeris tumidum Pythona saggitis,/tu face nescio quos esto contentus amores/inritare tua, nec laudes adsere nostras!" (Take that, Cupid!)

The Calf-Path, by Sam Walter Foss

I.

One day, through the primeval wood,
A calf walked home, as good calves should;

II.

But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail as all calves do.
Since then three hundred years have fled,
And, I infer, the calf is dead.
But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.
The trail was taken up next day,
By a lone dog that passed that way.
And then a wise bell-wether sheep,
Pursued the trail o'er vale and steep;
And drew the flock behind him too,
As good bell-wethers always do.
And from that day, o'er hill and glade.
Through those old woods a path was made.

III.

And many men wound in and out,
And dodged, and turned, and bent about;
And uttered words of righteous wrath,
Because 'twas such a crooked path.
But still they followed - do not laugh -
The first migrations of that calf.
And through this winding wood-way stalked,
Because he wobbled when he walked.

IV.

This forest path became a lane,
that bent, and turned, and turned again.
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load,
Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And traveled some three miles in one.
And thus a century and a half,
They trod the footsteps of that calf.

V.

The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The road became a village street;
And this, before men were aware,
A city's crowded thoroughfare;
And soon the central street was this,
Of a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half,
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.

VI.

Each day a hundred thousand rout,
Followed the zigzag calf about;
And o'er his crooked journey went,
The traffic of a continent.
A Hundred thousand men were led,
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way,
And lost one hundred years a day;
For thus such reverence is lent,
To well established precedent.

VII.

A moral lesson this might teach,
Were I ordained and called to preach;
For men are prone to go it blind,
Along the calf-paths of the mind;
And work away from sun to sun,
To do what other men have done.
They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.
They keep the path a sacred groove,
Along which all their lives they move.
But how the wise old wood gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf!
Ah! many things this tale might teach -
But I am not ordained to preach.

In my last post I mentioned that I'm caring for four different places (a house, two apartments, and a condo), including two cats. Well, today, I biked my whole route, with a stop at the health center for physical therapy (which I just started) for my wrists and a stop at home for dinner. Here, courtesy of gmap-pedometer.com, is a map of Bloomington and my route:

All of the friends who I normally hang out with have left town, as of this morning, and I now have the dubious honor of being not only Master of Music but also Master of Keys to four apartments besides mine, located in all different parts of town, and a few associated mailboxes. So if anyone needs an apartment showing, I've got some contracts, and you can move in anytime this weekend.

Singular, communed the guest with himself, the wonderfully unequal faculty of metempsychosis possessed by them, that the puerperal dormitory and the dissecting theatre should be the seminaries of such frivolity, that the mere acquisition of academic title should suffice to transform in a pinch of time these votaries of levity into exemplary practitioners of an art which most men anywise eminent have esteemed the noblest.
-James Joyce's Leopold Bloom, thinking about the bawdy younger men around him

Kyle needed a ride to the airport last Friday, so Sara and I took the opportunity to visit grandma and grandpa. It was a really nice stay. We took the usual boat ride, and Sara caught a lot of fish. Then the next day we were planning on biking door-to-door from grandma and grandpa's house to the art museum--there's actually a combination of 4 bike paths that would take us the whole way--until about 3 miles in I made the mistake of changing the back gears on my borrowed bike, which promptly stopped moving. The back gear shift mechanism had somehow bent dramatically. In fifteen minutes we'd gotten the wheel to move again, but the gear shifter was hanging off the side, so we walked back and drove to the museum. The museum, fortunately, was wonderful--we toured the whole contemporary art floor and walked around the Lilly House grounds with their beautiful gardens, followed by a trip to Trader Joe's. (Wow, two Chenettes blogged about Trader Joe's in one week.) Then we had dinner with grandma and grandpa and aunt Nancy, which was really fun. This was the third fun weekend in a row: first the trip out to LA for Nate's graduation, then the canoeing trip, and now this trip to Indy. Maybe I'll take a weekend to be lazy next week, but we'll see.

In the meantime, I can't wait for my trip(s!) out to Colorado--first in early July (less than a month!) to Ouray for the Kern reunion and then in mid/late August to camp and visit Claire at Aspen. Both trips sound great. It's been too long since I've seen, hiked, and camped those beautiful mountains!

Ouray:



from the Bridge of Heaven:

I wanted to take advantage of Memorial Day, so last week I tried to plan out a canoeing trip with some friends. The water levels across the state were getting a bit low, but late in the week it became clear that it'd rain over the weekend. Unfortunately, that rain (and thunderstorm) chance got pushed to Monday, and then it turned out that we'd get charged for a 2-3 day rental for each canoe from IU Outdoor Adventures because they weren't open Sunday or Monday, but we still picked up the canoes on Saturday and got together at my place on Monday morning at 8 to figure something out. Involved were my friends Ben and Christy:



(pictured here paddling, perhaps somewhat quixotically, upriver--but hey, it was their first time ever)
Mitch and Tali:



(okay, well, you can see Tali at least)
and Sara and I:



We decided to head out despite the rain and gray skies, and to head for the West Fork of the White River, which was at a relatively average (for this time of year) water level and only a half hour away. So we got in our respective vehicles and headed to Martinsville, where we got out at the bridge and tried to find the entrance to the water. The book I'd checked out recommended the "SE corner of SR 39 bridge." There was indeed a road there leading to the water, but it came off of what was clearly someone's very long driveway and appeared to be marked as private property. I walked down to the water and it had clearly been used as an entry point into the water, but I called Dad, as an experienced canoeist, to ask his advice on what to do. He recommended we ask the farmer if we could use it, as the polite thing to do. So Sara and I drove down the driveway a ways until we saw a sign, "NO UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLES PAST THIS POINT." So we parked the car and walked a few yards until suddenly three fierce, muscular dogs sped at us from the direction of the house, barking ferociously and clearly threatening. We were pretty scared--I thought they might actually attack--but as long as we kept moving back towards the car they just growled. Well, we got in the car and backed out of there pretty fast.
So we drove en masse to a motel across the road, to ask someone's advice. There was a janitor outside looking at us suspiciously, and I got out of the car and had a conversation with him:

Me. Hi, we'd really like to canoe this river, and I was wondering if you have any advice on how to get to the water.
Him. Well, that guy over there, he don't want no one on his property. He'll shootcha. I know him, and he'll do it.
Me. I see. Well, do you have any suggestions?
Him. Well, I don'know. That guy over there, he definitely don't want anyone on his property. It's all signed and everything, he's got security cameras.
Me. Well, I guess he has his right to his property.
Him. Yeah, he's, well, you'll excuse my language.
Me. Of course.
Him. He's a bastard.
Me. Huh.
Him. Yeah, I mow the grass over here, and he's come over and tol' me if I need to get on his property I can do it, but if I see anyone else on there, I have his permission to shoot'em right there.
Me. Wow. Well, do you know where we could get on the river?

The conversation was longer than I would have liked--the guy definitely didn't want us to get away without the impression that we'd get shot if we went on the other guy's land, and he also definitely wanted us to know (several times) about the nearest places in either direction where we might get to the river. He also mentioned that we might be able to use the road I'd originally walked down to the river, but oddly enough we weren't too excited about being anywhere near the property in question. I think I won him over with my Iowa farmboy charm, because by the end of the conversation he was wishing us a fun trip, and to take care of ourselves now, because he knows if he'd get in one o' them canoes he'd definitely get wet, and he's 68, so he doesn't get around much any more. We thanked him and headed downriver to Paragon (pronounced PAIR-a-g'n, and ideally with a strong southern Indiana accent) and took a small road a few miles to the river. There were some people fishing there, and it seemed otherwise pretty deserted and pretty safe.

So we unloaded the canoes, accidentally breaking Ben and Christy's sideview mirror in the process, and Tali, Christy, Sara and I all drove down to Spencer, IN where there was a public access. We headed back in Tali's green Windstar (a good van if ever there was one) to find that as Ben and Mitch had been pulling canoes down to the river, the fishermen/women had left and so had their cooler. They were understandably upset and, I think partially just to vent, filed a police report. Apparently the Paragon sheriff's reaction was, "Yeah, people'll steal anything around here."

This whole time, the sky had been completely overcast and threatening, and it often rained, occasionally hard, though generally just for a few minutes at a time. We expected to have to pull over occasionally for such outbursts. However, by the time we had worked all this out, it was 11:30, and, though the sky continued to look threatening, it didn't rain once (!) after we got into the canoes. So there was one thing that went very right!

The trip was pretty uneventful. It was a good beginner's river (which was good for Christy and Ben)--the water level was plenty high, so we didn't have trouble with shallow water, but the current was still not overly powerful, so even if one was pushed up against something, one would not be capsized. However, it was unfortunately not a good beginners' distance. I was thinking of the previous trip Sara and I had taken, which was 8 miles and too short. So rather than the canoeing book's suggested route from Gosport to Spencer, which it claimed was 8.6 miles, I had us get in at Paragon (suggested by the janitor). I figured that added about 2/3 again of the length of the trip, putting us at about 13 miles. Well, google maps begs to differ (it looks like the book is wrong, and keep in mind that this route shaves off a lot of curves):



We got on the water around 11:40 and took out around 4:50, and Ben and Christy were looking pretty worn out by the end. (To be fair, between circles and zigzags, they had probably gone a mile or so farther than the rest of us...) It didn't help--at least in this way--that about an hour into the trip the sun actually came out and the sky started getting blue, and then bluer, and by the end it was really hot. In fact, the day had been so gray and rainy, and forecast to continue in that way, that most of us hadn't even considered bringing hats or sunscreen or tons of water. Fortunately, we had enough water to barely get us through despite the cooler theft, and Mitch and Tali had brought sunscreen. Still, by the time we realized it was necessary, it was too late, and we're all burned to one extent or another. Ah well.

To close, here's a picture of the whole group before setting out:

Parts of Andrew Lloyd Webber you probably never wanted to hear about.

Would I like a noun and an adjective?

NO!!!!!


Sorry, I've got a Latin quiz tomorrow and I've been practicing declining my nouns and adjectives a fair amount this afternoon. As you can tell, I've gotten pretty good at it. Among other things, I've declined "great sister" (you choose whether great means "awesome" or "large" or both):

A great sister (nominative): soror magna, plural sorores magnae
Of a great sister (genitive): sororis magnae, pl. sororum magnarum
To/for a great sister (dative): sorori magnae, sororibus magnis
A great sister (accusative): sororem magnam, sorores magnas
from/in/with/by a great sister (ablative): sorore magna, sororibus magnis

Other great phrases I've declined are "happy rock" (saxum laetum? no thank you!), "beautiful voice" (vox pulchra? uh-uh), "happy love" (amor laetus? not a chance) and "eternal father" (pater aeternus? well, maybe--okay, no.).

There are lots of fun options. I still need to get to "ancient fire," "harsh mother," "pious brother" (clearly, I'm just going through my family members), "gold mountain," "true light" (ooh--that's a good one, but I think the answer will still be no), "honest foot."

Some nice Latin sentences. First from our first exam:

Femina mala cum nautis pugnavit magnis cum insidiis, sed viri non deleti sunt.
The evil woman has fought the sailors with much treachery, but the men have not been destroyed.

Magnum est periculum poetae bono, sed si magna cum diligentia scribet, magna bonaque faciet ut turba non timeat.
Great is the danger to the good poet, but if he writes very diligently, he will do great and good things that the crowd will not fear.

Si de periculo cogitabunt, incolae multis taedis et saxis magnis pugnabunt, ne inimicis superarentur. Mali enim poenam dabunt.
If they think about the danger, the inhabitants will fight with many torches and large rocks, lest they be overcome by the enemies. For evil men will pay the penalty.

And demonstrating the efficiency of Latin (as, really, have all of these sentences), conveying in two words what we'd convey in five:

Amari opto.
I want to be loved.

Numbers it is. All music when you come to think. Two multiplied by two divided by half is twice one. Vibrations: chords those are. One plus two plus six is seven. Do anything you like with figures juggling. Always find out this equal to that, symmetry under a cemetary wall.... Musemathematics. And you think you're listening to the ethereal. But suppose you said it like Martha, seven times nine minus x is thirty-five thousand. Fall quite flat. It's on account of the sounds it is."
-Leopold Bloom, thinking about music in Ulysses by James Joyce

I have one of those shirts that says "Where the hell is Grinnell?" on the front and "Who the hell cares?" on the back. It's a funny thing: I'm always worried that it will be noticed only by people behind me who will presumably think I'm some angsty guy with a bad attitude. However, I've gotten more grief about the front: it offends a surprising number of people! Just yesterday I wore it to a choir rehearsal, and a fellow member, upon seeing it, looked offended. "Sue and I grew up in Iowa, you know," she scolded. "I grew up in Grinnell," I informed her, and that was the end of that, but it's still funny. Surely if I didn't have a connection to Grinnell, I wouldn't care about it enough to wear the shirt?

...To continue my previous post, here's a picture of the graduate and his family:



While he was packing up, there was time for the family game of Boggle, which Claire apparently finds ridiculous:



It was really nice to see everyone, despite the long travel time. Since then, I've been back to Latin, and cleaning the apartment, which, as you can tell, is very exciting.

I had a really nice trip to California last weekend for Nate's graduation from Harvey Mudd College. It was fun to see Nate graduate, and especially nice to see the family. I hadn't seen Claire or Nate especially in a long time. Grandma came too, which was really nice--we took the same (long) flight(s).

Here are the 5 Cs (Chenettes, or representing the Claremont Colleges, whichever you prefer):



On Sunday morning, we took a walk through Harvey Mudd's botanical gardens. They were nice, and contained many plants that can take a very dry climate. Here I am posing by Poor Man's Timothy:



Fortunately, I wasn't the only one photographed in a foolish pose (thank you, Claire!):



I'd continue with this post, but Blogger is for no apparent reason not letting me upload any more photos... So more later.

Turba nautae feminas taedis terrebant.

---

Off to my first Latin test, then Indianapolis for the night, then Nate's graduation out in California.

I felt really stupid on the first day of Latin yesterday, because I wasn't able to follow the discussion of parts of speech, tenses, moods, aspects, qualities, principal parts, etc. However, after a frustrating day of wrestling with the material, I feel a lot better now, and I'm starting to get excited about translating. We're going awfully fast--we were translating full sentences after the first day and we're getting through 300 pages of material (not counting the review pages and appendices) in 6 weeks. Sentences which I translated today (the second day of class) as homework:

Incolaene dē glōriā patriae tacuērunt? (Were the inhabitants silent about the glory of the country?)

Rēginam dē incolārum īnsidiīs monuī. (I warned the queen of the inhabitants' plot.)

Glōriam enim optāverint. (Indeed they will have desired glory.)

Puellas neque lacrimās neque culpam cēlāverant. (The girls hid neither their tears nor their guilt.)

Pecūniam rēginae ē terrā cēperat. (You had hidden the queen's money from the land.)

And the sentence I failed to translate today (I think I'm close: it sounds like it should be deep, but what I have doesn't make sense):

Sententiās dē animā mūtāre incēperāmus sed sententiās nōn mūtāverātis. (We had begun the thoughts of changing the soul but you had not changed the thoughts?)

Yesterday was my one weekday off from classes before starting the summer session, and the weather was supposed to be amazing, so Sara and I decided to do something awesome and go canoeing. Canoeing was the first order of business, and despite getting lost on the way there (I stupidly got the address of the canoe livery from a list of liveries instead of their own website), got off at about 10 on the Driftwood River near Columbus, IN. The water was high and pleasantly fast, with some points of moderate excitement, and was fairly pretty. Here's where we stopped for lunch:



And here's Sara after 8 miles of canoeing:



And here's where Sara insisted on taking a picture of me in an uncomfortable tree trunk:



Then, since it was only about 2, we decided to make it a *really* special date and head to the City of Love, also known as Columbus, Indiana. Columbus, despite its heavily-accented population of 39,000, was apparently ranked 6th in the nation in architectural innovation and design in a list which included NY, Chicago, Boston, and many other much bigger cities. It's kind of baffling that a city with this honor would be located in the middle of Southern Indiana, especially considering that most of the locals we talked to could not really have been called by any stretch of the imagination "highly cultured." But then, it's also kind of baffling that one of the world's greatest music schools is also in the middle of Southern Indiana. So we went on a self-guided walking tour, starting from the 19th-century Visitors' Center. Here's Sara within a Henry Moore sculpture, in front of a striking church:



And me in front of the veteran's memorial and courthouse:



There were more striking buildings than these, including a lookout tower, covered bridge, and some stranger churches, but these were the best places for pictures.

Finally, after our walking tour, we were pretty tired, so we went out to Bistro 210 for an altogether too expensive but really excellent dinner, then headed back to Bloomington. About ten minutes from Bloomington I remembered that I had rehearsal for Voces Novae in about 25 minutes.

I had no trouble getting to sleep last night! But it was a really fun day, and it was great to spend virtually all of it outside. The whole time we were canoeing, the weather could only have been described as perfect--it wasn't too cool or hot at *all*, and we were even comfortable wearing our life preservers the whole time. The whole thing was definitely terrific.

I'm all done with masters coursework! That's exciting.

I had my most difficult exam ever last night, in History of Theory. I didn't do as well as I'd have liked in the paper for the class, which was the only other source of our final grade, so I took it really seriously and studied for basically the whole preceding week. And while I wasn't feeling like I'd exactly aced it last night, the more I think about it, the more I think I did well. I think I correctly identified the "unknown sources" (Aristotle, perhaps the Politics and Heinrich Glarean, Dodecachordon) and discoursed intelligently on the Alia musica, the problem of Mode 8, the sedes troporum, ethos, Lodovico Fogliano, and mensural theory 1200-1500 (the Discantus positio vulgaris, Johannes de Garlandia, Magister Lambert, Franco of Cologne, Philippe de Vitry, and Johannes de Muris). I'm hoping, anyway.

Today I entered my final grades, then picked up my course evaluations. Overall, they're very positive, giving me high marks especially for making a "dull" subject (? ...surely not!) "interesting," being well prepared, and being "almost overly" enthusiastic. Unsurprisingly, there was the usual contingent who said the class moves too quickly. More surprising, there was a larger number who complained that I made the tests too easy with hints. Well, fine, I'll change that, and they'll be cursed by generations of T132 students. But some real highlights:

enforce discipline, i.e. assigned seating, no talking, etc. pop music is silly - nobody is in a program about pop music.

You use tons of filler words such as um... uh... and er... after every sentence. It questions your intelligence and is very distracting and annoying.

More extra credit.

I like the daily, beautifully set up powerpoints!

You are a gangsta, who plays his cards right.

I didn't believe it when I read it, but Mac OS X's dictionary widget confirms this is a word: