Frustules, not Frustrating

Posted on September 25, 2012 by Kathy

My friend Jerry, a scientist who studies Lake Erie algae, visited the GED class where I tutor to talk about his work. I learned a lot about his research, and I also learned some new words, which I’ve had fun investigating.

A diatom that resembles 16 mm. film. Who knew?

Jerry studies diatoms, one-celled plants that have a silica shell called a frustule. I rushed home to check out this word’s etymology and was gratified to find an interesting history. A frustum is a little bite or piece of something, both in English and in Latin, and the -ule ending (Latin frustulum), called a diminutive, makes it even littler and cuter. The frustules of diatoms are so cute and so little, you need a microscope to see them, and, fortunately, Jerry brought one today to allow us to gaze upon them.

Looking further, I discovered that the root of these words is the verb fruor, which means enjoy, as you would enjoy a little bite of food.

So frustule is related to the words fruit, fructose, and frugal, all derived from the verb fruor. (But not frustrate, from frustra, meaning “in vain.”)

Then I grew curious about diatom and found it means cut in two, because diatoms appear to be in two parts. Each one has two thecae, or coverings. So a theca (and I’m going to share this first-declension singular and plural with my students tomorrow — theca and thecae) is a shield or container in Latin, borrowed from the original Greek word. Hence the words bibliotheca or bibliotheque for a library (holder of books) but also — wait for it — cinematheque (holder of movies!)

As my husband John, director of the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque, points out, everything in the end comes back to the Cinematheque.

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Moby and Me

Posted on September 8, 2012 by Kathy

Howard Vincent, author of two books about Herman Melville, The Trying-Out of Moby-Dick (1949) and The Tailoring of Melville’s White Jacket (1970), was my favorite professor at Kent State University. He had, in my memory, an elfin appearance: white of hair, bushy of brow, red of cheek. Quintessentially professorial, he wasn’t imposing, at only about five and a half feet tall, or handsome; by the time I knew him–in the 1970s, in his seventies–no college girl would have had a romantic crush on him, but some of us were infatuated nonetheless. He was charismatic. He was articulate and funny, and, most of all, inspiring. A Howard Vincent groupie, I took every course he offered as he neared retirement, and I hung on his every word. My friends made fun of me for loving him so much and taking, first, his Melville course, then his Transcendentalism course, then his course called The Creative Process. I was smitten, and he still influences my reading and my thinking.

An English Ship in a Gale Trying to Claw off a Lee Shore by Willem Van De Velde The Younger

Dr. Vincent (or “Moby,” as we called him among ourselves) is on my mind these days, as I’m rereading Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding, a lovely novel published late last year about a college baseball team. It centers on a shortstop phenom named Henry–who develops the yips and just can’t play baseball for awhile–along with teammates and friends who undergo their own crises. The college president, a Melville scholar, reminds me of Howard Vincent. The book, as it happens, is also about Moby-Dick and choices and friendship and reading and recovering after grief and hardship.

Dr. Vincent taught me that writers are nearly always writing about writing. That’s the theme of his own books, as well as most of his lectures. He said that in Bartleby the Scrivener, Melville’s somber late novella, Melville was saying, “I’m not going to write popular whaling sagas anymore. I would prefer not to.” Full of Melville allusions both whimsical and trenchant, The Art of Fielding is also about the art of writing. Like Harbach’s characters, a writer sets out into unknown, scary waters. He or she fails, often, and has to wait out the storm or dark, depressing doldrums and, sometimes, fight through them. A writer is often alone.

In 1974 or so, I wrote a paper for Dr. Vincent based on “The Lee Shore,” the famous brief chapter in Moby-Dick, which happens to underlie The Art of Fielding. I was nearing the end of my time in graduate school and sick to death of writing papers and grading freshman papers. I felt debilitated by my students’ often tame and tedious efforts–shaped within the safe borders of the five-paragraph essay. One I remember chose as her subject the three types of dorm rooms at Kent State University. I was equally tired of my own papers, churned out to please somebody else, only infrequently concerning a topic I cared about.

So I wrote something that didn’t fit Dr. Vincent’s assignment, your standard fifteen-page, end-of-the-semester term paper. My opus was only about five pages long, and it was about teaching freshman composition and writing papers. I said I wanted my students to push off from the lee shore–to head off into deeper, scarier waters, in Melville’s formulation. And I wrote that in my little way, I was trying to step off the shore and try something different in this assignment, knowing that my professor would be well within his rights to give me an “F.”

True to his unconventional habits, Dr. Vincent gave me an “A,” probably mostly for effort, with a wry comment that he hoped at least I had read all the assigned works by Melville. I admire Chad Harbach for his more intrepid effort, daring to use Moby-Dick (Moby-Dick!!) as a referent for his first novel. I love that “The Lee Shore” served as a metaphor for his characters’ embarking out of safety into adulthood and, more subtly, for his own writing–launching into the landlessness of deep, earnest thinking.

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Difficult Moms

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Kathy

Medea, a Difficult Mom

Whenever I talk about the subject of my book, at parties or with other groups, a few women around me begin to nod and then chime in with stories of their own mothers. I hate to malign moms, being one myself, but it seems that a number of us had challenging relationships with mothers who may not have had borderline personality disorder but at least exhibited some of its traits.

This is not so surprising. Studies have shown around two to three percent of Americans suffer from BPD (most of them women). A 2009 study, in fact, indicated that a whopping six percent are so inclined. That amounts to three times the number of Alzheimers patients, an astounding 18 million people. If these figures are true, a lot of us had borderline mothers. I’ve written about this phenomenon before (here and here).

When people hear my experience, they want to share their own. The dialogue begins with horror stories, but after some venting, it can move gradually toward understanding and even forgiveness. The more you know about the disorder, frustrating and infuriating as it can be, the more you realize that the sufferer struggles more than you do. I’ll admit this is an easier realization when your mom is gone, you have time to reflect, and you’re dealing with painful memories rather than ongoing anger and judgments.

Even unpublished, my book has begun the dialogue on a small scale.  Maybe you can relate. If so, what stories would you share?

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Tootle Your Horn with Vigor

Posted on August 11, 2012 by Kathy

Many people will recognize “tootle your horn” as a weirdly wonderful translation, from Japanese to English, of an admonition to drivers. When one translates from one language to another, normal usage sometimes falls by the wayside, and screwy translations result. (Find more funny examples here.) In my last post, I wrote about the pitfalls of translating English into Latin tattoos, permanently inscribing grammar mistakes onto the skin. Adding to those examples, I have a Latin tattoo story of my own to share.  

Derek Jacobi with Henry

A few years ago, a grad student at Case Western Reserve University I’ll call Steve emailed a colleague of mine at Cleveland State for help with translating some favorite lines into Latin for a tattoo. My colleague was sick and passed the email on to me. Questions immediately arise. CWRU has a classics department, so why did he contact a stranger at CSU? No answer to that one. The other questions I’ll leave till later.  

Here’s his original email.  

I have a rather strange request for you. I am getting a tattoo of a well known phrase from a Shakespeare play (Henry V) in Latin and I want a professional to verify for me that this is in fact correctly translated. I am getting this phrase in Latin: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;  For he to-day that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.” 

Based on what some of my friends have told me, this is roughly (I use this term loosely) what it is in Latin: “Nos pauci, nos gauisus pauci, nos manus manus of frater; pro is ut-dies ut effundo suus cruor me vadum exsisto meus frater.” 

Forgive me if this is an embarrassing attempt at the classical language!  

Readers may recognize the English lines as part of the famous St. Crispin’s Day speech, in which Shakespeare’s Henry V urges his troops on to battle the French. If, by the way, you’ve never seen the 1998 film version directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh, I recommend it. Great music, too.  

Anyway, as my CSU colleague said, “Where to start?” It should be evident to anyone that “manus manus of frater” is not good Latin, because “manus” should not be repeated and, more obviously, “of” is not Latin. Most people would, I believe, recognize “of” as an English word. Which makes one suspicious of Steve’s so-called friends helping him with the translation. 

Quite likely, Steve’s friend was Google Translator or one of its similarly inept cousins. The nouns and adjectives don’t agree, and the verbs don’t have the proper endings. The Latin word for “today” is “hodie.” The online translator couldn’t decipher “to-day” with a hyphen and and translated it as two separate words, “ut-dies.” In short, it’s not even a rough (I, too, use the term loosely) translation. It’s nonsense. I re-translated the passage as well as I could for Steve and then couldn’t help asking. What’s the point of a Latin translation, even a correct one? He responded thusly: 

Thank you for your help. I greatly appreciate it. Well that particular part of that speech in Henry V really just hits hard for me and I get a lot of meaning out of it. I guess getting it in English would seem to ‘cheapen’ it (to me at least) and so I thought Latin would be an appropriate alternative. What are your thoughts?    

Here is my reply, which I made as calm and reasonable as I could:

Well, it’s interesting. Shakespeare is Shakespeare, after all. The reason those lines are so famous and effective is because of the way Shakespeare wrote them. He’s pretty much the gold standard in English. The Latin translation is a literal one which doesn’t convey the sound of the English poetry, and none, of course, of the context of the play.

Steve never responded.

I kind of get, actually, why people think Latin looks elegantly mysterious on their skin. But I wanted to convey to Steve as kindly as possible how idiotic I felt this enterprise was. Shakespeare’s words, Shakespeare’s brilliant English words, moved him to begin with. In what universe is “manus fratrum” an improvement on “band of brothers”?

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Ad Astra Per Errores Multos

Posted on August 7, 2012 by Kathy

Caleb’s Crossing by Gwendolyn Brooks, a recent selection of my book group, concerns young Puritans in early America, growing up and getting educated. The Latin they were studying contained a number of errors, showing exceeding carelessness, I thought, on the part of the author. Latin is maddeningly fussy about case endings and verb forms, but, really, why not just get a Latin teacher to advise you?

Latin depends on inflections–the changes made to words–to make meaning, so that in the sentences The boy kisses the girl and The girl kisses the boy, for example, the forms of the nouns boy and girl have to change in order for the sentence to work. When my students write a sentence with incorrect forms, I say, “I can’t translate it.”

Some websites record the sad errors that Latin tattoos often reveal. People imagine that Latin makes their tattoo extra elegant, and I’ve received requests to help wiser tattooees get their carvings correct. But the gibberish permanently inscribed on many people’s bodies shows evidence of notably unreliable internet translators. The profound sayings, alas, make no sense.

Vos Quod Mihi, a simple phrase cited on the website Classical Turns, is probably supposed to mean You and Me (which would have been pithy and effective in English, no?). Instead, the garbled Latin says something like All of you because for me. The vos messes things up from the start, because it connotes the plural you. Maybe the wearer means y’all, the only real English equivalent. Y’all because for me?

Even the prestigious Signals catalog, which appeals to the pretentious among us, contains a Latin error. Ad astra per alia porci, inscribed on a tee shirt, is supposed to say To the stars on the wings of a pig, reportedly John Steinbeck’s favorite humorous Latin saying (along the lines of to the heavens even with inadequate equipment). This faulty Latin is all over the internet. The correct Latin would be Ad astra per alas porci.

All the difference in alia versus alas. As written, the Signals tee shirt nonsensically proclaims To the stars through the others of a pig.

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Ignore Reviews, Except for This One

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Kathy

Women should see the new Pixar film, Brave, especially women with problematic relationships with their mothers, or, as my friends say, women. Girls should see it, too. That’s my opinion. (And it’s fun for men, too. At least my husband liked it.)

Others disagree. It’s gotten fairly good reviews, but lots of them are also patronizing or damning with faint praise. A New Yorker blurb writer, Bruce Diones, for example, calls the film “beautifully animated,” but then says it “holds together enough to thrill intermittently” and it’s “filled with standard into-the-woods adventures.” Maybe willo-the-wisps (I never knew what those were before) and witches who hawk their wood-carvings from their forest cottage are standard. I guess I just haven’t seen enough movies.

Pixar has made some of the best films of the last fifteen years. Not animated films, not children’s films, just films. All three Toy Story’s, Finding Nemo, WALL-E, and Up garnered great reviews and lots of money. These are among my favorite recent movies, with original stories, surprising wit, and great heart.

Now, employing a woman as one of the film’s directors and writers, it’s combined all these virtues with medieval Scottish (but archetypal) themes about mothers and daughters. If you’ve got some issues to work out with your mom, hie thee to the theater.

Then tell me what you think.

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Forgiveness

Posted on July 6, 2012 by Kathy

Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could’ve been any different.

I’ve heard this quote about forgiveness many times. It’s one of Oprah’s favorites and apparently originated with the Buddhist teacher and writer Jack Kornfeld. I’ve always thought it was catchy and probably wise, but it didn’t move me or have much effect on me.

Until last week, that is, when I read it again in Martha Beck’s Finding Your Way in a Wild New World, and all of a sudden, it made sense to me. I realized that holding on to hurt is a kind of wish. It’s a (futile) desire that what has happened didn’t happen. This tiny epiphany moved me, just a little, toward letting go of some grudges and hurts. At which I’m not generally skilled.

The thing is, I don’t think just hearing that line or telling it to someone “works.” I think you have to be ready to take it in, and that takes however long it takes.

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Plastic Progress

Posted on June 30, 2012 by Kathy

I just saw the film Surviving Progress at the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque, which lays out many dangers to human survival on earth, graphically portraying overpopulation and over-consumption. It makes you want to read the book that inspired it, A Short History of Progress, by Ronald Wright, and to do something, just one little thing right away to help the environment.

Here’s a very small thing we can all do: use fewer plastic bags. In itself, this is not going to save the earth, but it’s doable, and it’s helpful. Right now, fewer than 5 percent of American consumers use their own bags. The U.S. alone consumes about 100 billion plastic bags every year. Maybe you’re already a plastic-boycotter. I’m a well-intentioned, inconsistent one.

When I was a kid, every store used paper bags. Nobody worried about dangerous leakage from carrying your frozen chicken in a paper grocery bag. Now, the people in front of me at the grocery store insist on an extra plastic bag or two to carry their items, and the clerks sometimes fuss over my lack of plastic. “Are you sure you don’t want your milk in a bag? How about your bag of potatoes?” Why, I wonder, do I need to put my bags inside other bags?

So, what’s the problem with plastic? For one, plastic poses a danger to wildlife. National Geographic says, “The success of the plastic bag has meant a dramatic increase in the amount of sacks found floating in the oceans where they choke, strangle, and starve wildlife and raft alien species around the world, according to David Barnes, a marine scientist with the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, England, who studies the impact of marine debris.”

In addition, plastic bags take 1000 years to break down, and they never really biodegrade. They sit in landfills or our oceans and lakes for centuries. You’ve seen them blighting our trees and landscapes. They’re everywhere. I snagged one blowing around my backyard yesterday. A few short decades ago, we got along fine without them.

Here’s what to do. Put a couple of tote bags from around your house (or cloth bags purchased from the store) in the trunk of your car. Then, you’ll have them with you when you stop at Target or the grocers. Remember (this is the hard part) to take them into the store with you. If you have no cloth bags, keep a couple of old plastic bags in the car to re-use.

You don’t have to be perfect. You’ll forget a lot of the time, but, gradually, you’ll start remembering to use your cloth bags. Clerks are much more cooperative about this than they were, even a few years ago. Sometimes, I used to get in an argument in the checkout line, because they didn’t think my bags were sanitary, or they just took offense for some reason. Now they usually fill up my disreputable bags without a peep.

Here’s another idea. If you’re just buying a tube of toothpaste, walk it out to your car and into your home with no bag. You can do it. Really.

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

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Truth in Jest

Posted on June 11, 2012 by Kathy

My dad, Martin Miller, wrote a weekly column for the Canton Repository, called “Letters from Max.” Sometimes he commented on news and politics, but other times he shared amusing facts about our household. I remember his commenting, for example, that our dog Abbie made a scratchy noise when she arose from sleeping, because the burrs in her coat made her stick to the carpet. At the time, I was always torn between feeling ashamed about our housekeeping peccadilloes (which were legion) and realizing that such problems were common, humanizing, and funny.

I’m reminded of my dad’s revelations because of my essay, “You’re Already Organized!”,  just posted on The Happy Woman, an online magazine parodying the relentless self-improvement advice in women’s magazines. My piece suggests that your home’s floors, chair cushions, and stairs provide excellent storage spots for your clutter.

Like my dad, I based this piece on real life. Around the time I wrote this, I had just ended a weeks-long “experiment” (as my husband resentfully called it), in which I left a newspaper on the living room floor, instead of picking it up, as I was wont to do. After several weeks, I pointed it out to my family. Nobody believed it had lain there that long, but I probably showed them the paper’s date to support my claim.

The useful space under the cushions of chairs and couches also had its basis in real life. When, at rare intervals, I cleaned these areas, I always found a TV Guide, assorted Cheerios and other snacks, and the occasional Pop-Tarts wrapper. In fact, once I actually pulled out a pristine, wrapped Hershey bar, as I say in the piece. People might think I was kidding.

Finally, the way upstairs became, in fact, the Bermuda Triangle I describe. Once my daughter was beside herself about a lost college application. There it was, in a stack of items on the stairs, intended for family members to take up to their rooms. Who knows how long it had lain there? That’s when I got the idea. If I ever really wanted to hide something–an illicit love letter (on the off chance I ever received one) or an exorbitant department store receipt–the stairs would be the place to put them. No one ever looked there.

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Measuring Education

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Kathy

I tutor once a week in a GED program in the Kinsman neighborhood of Cleveland, where my church used to be. I’ve been touched, the last two weeks, by my interactions with students. Touched, infuriated, sobered, and enlightened.

Last week, a young man showed me a problem he had missed on a worksheet: 3 feet = _____ inches. He’d written some crazy number in the blank. I said, “First, how many inches are in a foot?” He looked at me and said pointedly, “I don’t know. That’s why I missed it.”

I told him how many inches are in a foot. Then I got out a ruler. I showed him three rulers, in fact. I’ve been working at this program for years and assumed I had no illusions about the sorry education these folks had received before they dropped out of school. This incident, however, got to me. How do you get to be a young adult in America and not know how many inches are in a foot? This is a bright kid, with no evident learning disabilities.

Yesterday, I worked on science with another young man. We were reading a passage about Gleevec, a cancer drug. He stopped to ask me if I smoked and then told me he was thinking about quitting since seeing those especially grisly and effective TV messages currently airing, showing people recovering from cancer and chemo.

He asked me a bunch about cancer. I realized as we talked that he has no concept of what the disease really is and probably lacks a concept of the cell, which, if you ever try to explain cancer to someone, you realize is pretty important to the whole matter. It reminded me of the excellent The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. In that book, the relatives of the woman whose cells have contributed to treatments for all kinds of diseases have no idea what a cell is. They’re lacking the basic knowledge that would help them understand how to deal with the medical establishment.

No surprise that life is unfair. Sometimes, though, injustice smacks you in the face. My GED students know a lot that I don’t know, it’s true. Many of them are, no doubt, blessed with more native intelligence. But my middle-class background dumped a huge heap of privilege in my lap–easy access to knowledge, good reading skills, basic math intelligence–that I did nothing to earn or deserve.

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