Arrr! Matey!

Well, I tried talking like a pirate today, I really did, wishing my Latin class �Arrr good mornin��, but, except for Oliver across the room, no one was even slightly amused. Oh well. We discussed the ablative absolute today. It�s not a difficult concept to understand or identify, but one of my classmates had a dazed look on her face for much of the period. By the end, after we had translated several sentences, each containing an ablative absolute, she started to get the hang of it. For instance: The weather being fine, we had a picnic. Simple, no? For homework, though, Patsy gave us a paragraph of her own devising which we had to translate into Latin, using as many participles as possible, and I managed to stick a few ablative absolutes in there as well. Go me!

I taught my first student of the year today, my baritone who is, I discovered much to my dismay, bypassing his third-year half-recital and doing a full concert in the spring. This means planning a complete recital programme, something I wasn�t ready for. It also means that he will graduate at the end of this year. Sigh. You nurture them and then they leave. It�s like that G0rdon Lightf00t song:

�The way I feel is like a robin
Whose babes have flown to come no more
Like a tall oak tree alone and cryin�
When her birds have flown and the nest is bare.�

Today we worked our way through Erlk�nig by Schubert, something he had learned last year but saved for this. I also gave him the bass aria from Handel�s Messiah, �Why do the nations so furiously rage together?� He loves this stuff. I told him to go to the library and look up Vaughan Williams� Songs of Travel and listen to a whole bunch of m�lodies. Suddenly I like being a singing teacher again.

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