Elgan speaks
...and her words thunder across the land

If I update my diary daily, I will produce a plethora of pithy phrases for public perusal.

Wednesday, Mar. 8, 2006
9:21 p.m.
As my daughter did in her last year of high school, my son will be going with his English/History class to Europe for a 10-day trip over the Easter break. Tonight there was an information meeting at his school for the parents and students involved. I found most of it I already knew, having been through the same deal three years ago, but I got to learn the internet access name for the trip diary, and the times of the flights. It so happens that they will be leaving the same evening that Hubby�s chamber orchestra performs its concert, the one where I am singing in a guest spot, which means we will have to arrange some way for Buddy Boy to get to the airport without us. It shouldn�t be too difficult, but it�s still another detail to iron out.

I had a breakthrough with my annoying student today. It all had to do with a mental image I invented to try to get her to place her voice in her cranial sweet spot, to get her to raise her soft palate and not force the sound out by lunging forward with her chin. I was trying to get her to put the sound behind her, so to speak, so I told her to imagine that she had a mouth in the back of her head singing in that direction. Suddenly it was as though a light went on behind her eyes, and she got it, not consistently, but she did make some advancement. Yay for unconventionality!

I considered not going to Latin this morning, since I knew Patsy would still be absent, but in the end I went and I�m glad I did. The entire class was there, and we discussed conditional sentences in Latin, arguing quite animatedly about the proper translation in English and French (we have both anglophones and francophones in the class) and about what actually made a sentence �conditional�. �If I were wearing a sweater, I would be warm now� is a present conditional sentence, and in Latin uses the imperfect subjunctive for both clauses. The future conditional uses the present subjunctive--�If I wear a sweater, I will be warmer tomorrow�--and the past conditional uses the pluperfect--�If I had worn a sweater, I would have been warmer yesterday.� We spent almost an hour just getting all that straight.

Buddy Boy asked me to buy him a lily at the florist�s, a white lily to present to the girl he is asking to the prom. My son, graduating from high school already. Oy. Where did the time go? Anyway, he asked her and she did not give him a conclusive answer, but was encouraging nonetheless. I hope she�s not just stringing him along until something better comes along. Sixteen-year-old girls, especially pretty ones, are so cruel. I know, I was one once.

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