Latin Kid- Prima

Ashley G.

Professor Zoller
Life Narratives
9/27/2012

Latin Kid

     I was a bit of a dork in high school. I had intellectual conversations about sci-fi movies, was in band, choir, theatre, and Latin Club. “Latin Club?” You may say in confusion. “I thought Latin was a dead language, who would voluntarily study that in school?” Well, it’s not and I did. I took Latin because I thought it sounded cool, in a I- can- go- around- speaking- Latin- and- no- one- will- know- what- I’m- saying sort of way. I saw it as a secret code to be deciphered and an adventure to be had. After all I had always enjoyed Greco-Roman mythology and I decided that Latin was something that I could study for five years (my school started languages in eighth grade).

                      On my first day of Latin I was formally introduced to Mrs. Perry, the one and only Latin teacher at my middle/ high school. She was quite a character to say the least. Her attire was simple yet elegant and reflected the teacher style that dominated schools twenty years ago; she wore long skirts and blouses often with little flats. But the most noticeable aspect of her appearance was her hair. Mrs. Perry, Magista or Gistra to those of us who came to love her, had white hair that was in a sort of frizzy triangle shape. It stuck close to her scalp then puffed out in a conical shape that came just below her petite shoulders. A student once made a toilet paper roll doll of her that had a literal cone of white paper on the top; she kept it and thought it was hilarious. That was another thing I loved about Magistra (the feminine form of the Latin word for teacher), she was perhaps the happiest and funniest teacher I have ever had. She was always happy to go off on a tangent about something that was even the slightest bit related to our lesson and was humorous. In our first year of Latin she had us do exercises where she would say “Insperata, experata,” repeatedly as we breathed in and out. Then she would have us point to various parts of our bodies in a Latin version of “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes,” which always concluded with us bending and straightening our legs while we did spirit fingers. Perhaps you’re thinking, “Oh then you must be a very good speaker of Latin if you had such a good teacher.” for all those years of Latin I can honestly say that I cannot form more than a few sentences in Latin, but nowadays the approach to Latin is to have it be more of a literally supplement that having it become a second language. It’s not a dead language (though my older sister would disagree) but it is not spoken fluently in common conversation.  

                This brings me to Latin Club.  When a Latin student reaches junior year they are automatically inducted into Latin Club. Its primary, and really only function, was to provide a way for us to go on a trip to New York City every other year. Well my junior year finally came I was ecstatic to go on the trip, despite the fact that the AP European class was tagging along- none of us liked the teacher and weren’t really friends with the students. I myself had not been to NYC in a few years and was excited. We rode down in the morning, hot chocolate and pillows in hand as we boarded a charter bus the club had rented. Then came the three  hour drive to the city, I remember nothing of it, the return ride however was a bit more eventful but I’ll get to that later. Our morning was spent in the Cloisters Museum, a small hodgepodge building drawing from numerous medieval styles. It houses many medieval pieces of art and is an offshoot of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where my class was headed later in the afternoon. I can still visualize the rooms and the layout of the small museum that houses sculptures of Christ from numerous periods, the tombs of knights and the famous Unicorn Tapestries. Being in the Cloisters is like going into a castle, you feel as if a knight is around a corner going toe to toe with his greatest enemy. Or that you are a princess walking around your expansive home. A few friends and I were quite fascinated by the all the old doors in the Cloisters and decided immediately that each one led to Narnia. I always hate leaving the Cloisters, it is like watching and amazing movie (but better) about medieval times and then having the television break halfway through, you feel unsatisfied and craving more.

The main part of the Metropolitan Museum is equally impressive. The first time we went for Latin Club I had been waiting all day to see the famous “Washington Crossing the Delaware” painting by Emmanuel Leutze, you see I am rather fascinated by – obsessed with- the American Revolutionary War. To my deep disbelief the painting was out getting restored. My friends tell me that I nearly bawled my eyes out in the middle of the gallery. So the second year we went my friends all made sure that I got to see Washington, and see him I did. I never knew how huge that painting is, but it was somehow just as impressive that my friends cared enough to make sure that I saw my painting. There are other tales about that second trip that are currently swirling in my mind at the moment but I will refrain in order to finally make my point.   

People sometimes ask me, “Ash, if you can’t speak the language then what was the point?” Well to that I say, first off that I can more effectively determine a word’s meaning by using a Latin root then my non- Latin versed schoolmates. Second, when I hear phrases like, carpe diem, bona fide, or caveat emptor, I know what they mean. Nevertheless the best things I got out of Latin were relationships. Magistra Perry became an essential part of my day; I never dreaded but always looked forward to Latin class and now in college I miss her dearly. Also several of my close friends took Latin alongside and in grades below me; I would never give those times with them away. We were all in a way part of this little secret society and even had Latin names that we chose for ourselves; I was friends with Andromeda, Ulysses, Silenus, Aurora and Minerva and I was Athena. I will never forget those trips to NYC or the hours spent in Magistra Perry’s classroom with her and my friends. I will always be a Latin kid; it will always be a part of who I am. A small part of me will always be Athena.  

Trigger from Such, Such Were the Joys...

Ashley G.
Professor Zoller
Life Narratives
9/25/2012

“And the child thinks of growing old as an almost obscene calamity, which for some mysterious reason will never happen to itself.” George Orwell in Such, Such Were the Joys

                You would think that by college it would have hit me already. I should feel, at least somewhat, like an adult. But I don’t. I guess I never have liked change. When I turned five for example, I hid under the table at my birthday party with my family because I didn’t want to turn five. I didn’t grasp the idea that I was turning five no matter how much I whined; I did not have the power to stop the clock. Though it is not just the fact that I want to stop the clock, it is the fact that I don’t think that the clock moves as fast as it does. When I was in elementary school, high school students looked so big and I never thought I would be that big, not in a million years. Despite the fact that I am still vertically challenged, I did make it through high school. Never in my childhood did I think I would actually get to college. It’s not that I didn’t think I was smart enough, I just thought, “I’ll never be that old.” Growing up in a Christian home my belief that would never reach adulthood increased by the book of Revelation.  After hearing all about the Rapture and the fact that many Bible scholars thought that it could be near I decided that the Rapture would come before I was “an adult.”

Okay maybe that’s a weird way of looking at things but even now I think, “I’m never ever going to be as old as my parents.” The concept just makes my head spin. Even as I am a college student working to be en elementary school teacher somewhere in the back of my mind I think that I will never actually get to my career. Perhaps this is my way of pacifying the part of my personality that hates change. I say to that part of my brain, “No, don’t worry I’m never actually going to be that old.” The anti- change part of my brain breathes a sigh of relief and wipes its imaginary brow. But another part of brain, however small and quiet, knows that the inevitable is coming; someday I will be twenty five, thirty, and forty. The anti- change part of my brain is still reeling that I’m going to be nineteen in three months.

That’s not to say that I’m not excited about getting older but somehow I feel like I’m never going to get there. Even in high school I couldn’t comprehend that I would graduate eventually but I did and I’m still processing that fact. I remember sitting next to my friends in the front row looking out at all the parents in front of us in the bleachers. I tired so very hard to drink in every word that my friends said in their valedictorian and salutatorian speeches and still I felt like a passive observer, like this wasn’t my graduation. Well it was and now I’m a college student. Weird huh?

     Now my anti- change brain has moved onto my next graduation. “You’ll never be twenty-two, you’ll never graduate college. You’re smart and everything, but it just isn’t going to happen.”  I’ve given up arguing with the anti- change brain, perhaps it will always be back there under my dining room table screaming that I will never be five for as long as I live.       

               

               

Circus Girl

Ashley G
Professor Zoller
Life Narratives
9/18/2012

 

Response to “The Ring of Time” by E.B. White

                I think that the main point that E.B White is trying to get across in his narrative, The Ring of Time, is that no matter how much we want it to stop, time moves on. At the beginning of the essay, White tells the story of a girl who is a performer at a circus and whom he sees riding a horse. The circus girl performs various tricks on the horse while trotting around a circular ring and White comments that the girl has no grasp on time. He believes that the girls goes around the track and does not realize that time is passing. She is absorbed in her activity and in her youth. White remarks that, “The only sense that is common… is the sense of change- and we all instinctively avoid it, and object to the passage of time, and would rather have none of it.” In connection to his narrative about the circus girl, White seems to say that all people entertain puerile thoughts of wishing to stop time. The very title of the narrative, The Ring of Time is a reference to the circus girl and how she continued to go around the track, satisfied to believe that she would always be going around the track, that she would always be as happy as she was in that moment. White is saying that we all struggle with wanting a “ring of time;” we all, at some point in our lives, want to remain as we are. 

 

 

Soft Sand and Salty Scents

Ashley G.
Professor Zoller
Life Narratives
9/13/12

Response to “One More to the Lake”

            In the opening paragraph of the short story, Once More to the Lake, E. B. White speaking of his family’s summer beach home said, “We returned summer after summer- always on August 1 for one month.” This resonated with me; my family has almost always gone to the shore and always in August.

            Years after his childhood, White returned to the lake of his childhood with his own son. He remarked how the place had changed, become more modern; the peace of the shore interrupted by the motors of boats. I can relate. The beach of my childhood was quieter and more subdued but never boring. White recalls the smells and the sensations that brought him back to his youth. As our car approaches the beach each year, I ask my mother to crack the windows so I can breathe in the salty vapors that tell my body that we have arrived. When we finally get down to the beach I remove always my flip flops and dig my toes into the soft sand. With each step I grind the balls of my feet into the coarse material and feel it go in between my toes. I like the sand just before the water best; it is damp and flexes beneath my feet but does not give. Like White I will bring my (future) children to the shore, to smell the salty air and feel the sand between their toes.        

 

Mount Up On Wings Like Eagles

     I remember very little from the “first” September 11^th. I was in early elementary school and didn’t even hear about the attacks until I got home later in the afternoon. However, I can see clearly in my mind my mother standing before a television in our home glued to the screen. Though I am sure I paid the TV no mind my brain has seen fit to insert a video clip onto the TV screen in the memory since I now know what happened. I recall my mother telling me something bad had occurred by I didn’t worry about it very much, bad things happen every day on the news, I thought to myself.

      Only now do I realize the significance of that day, only now do I cry along with the rest of the country when those oh so famous newsreels are replayed. This past 9/11, I watched many of the TV specials about the attacks and will never forget what those Twin Towers looked like. This past year a trip to NYC gave me only a glimpse of the new memorial and its massive reflecting pool. As I passed I said a prayer for the families and thanked God that He protects me every day. I know there will never be enough words for the families of the victims but I hope a few of God’s words bring, at the very least, some comfort.  

     Isaiah 40: 31, But those who wait on the Lord Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.

 

Response to “Glory Days: What We Watch When We Watch the Olympics”

Ashley G.

Professor Zoller

Life Narratives

9/11/2012

Response to “Glory Days: What We Watch When We Watch the Olympics”

            I thoroughly enjoyed watching this year’s Summer Olympics. Strangely enough I do not usually enjoy sports, playing them or watching them. Theatre became my sport in junior and senior high school. Nevertheless, just a few weeks ago I was fully glued to my TV, enthralled by the 2012 Summer Olympics.

            It was interesting to read the article “Glory Days” by Louis Menand because he starts off by saying that he likes sports even though his family does not; I am mostly the opposite. Menand, in my opinion, rambles on about the Olympics. He touches on the fact that if you look at the games, forgetting all the idealism that surrounds them, they are rather strange. They have become a tradition woven into our world culture. He also makes the point that you cannot simply read about the games, you must watch them to receive their full effect. I thoroughly agree. Archery has been a vague interest of mine since watching Disney’s animated version of Robin Hood as a child and I will confess that I got rather worked up when the US men’s archery team only got silver.

            I do agree with Menand that it does not particularly matter what the games mean. They exist and we should do well to enjoy them. Besides what other time does the world come together and compete simply for the sake of competition without starting a war?