Geek Mania!

I'm a geek. Not only do I use phrases from moderately obscure 1950s poetry for my domain name, but I also wrote 50 odd pages about said same 1950s poetry and some Latin poetry from, oh, 2000 years ago, give or take.

Anyway, I love poetry, and I'm pretty proud of the thesis I wrote as an undergraduate (there are some things I'd change now, of course, hindsight blady blah). If for no other reason than my being able to find it and print it when I need it (you know, Latin Emergencies and such), I've uploaded it onto this site. Check it out here.

Also, Latin is truly a fabulous language. As a Latin major, I encountered people saying, "Isn't that a dead language?" On a pretty regular basis. However, anyone who's ever studied any etymology at all knows that Latin is very much alive. It just happens to be alive in English. Want to improve your standardized test scores? Study some Latin roots. Want to understand sentence structure a little better? Again, break out some Latin.

One of the things that I find truly sad is that fewer and fewer high schools are teaching Latin. My high school dropped their fabulous Latin program a little over a year ago. Latin had a reputation for being "hard," and, at least in the case of my high school, enrollment was low in the program. True, it's not easy, and it's often taught very differently from Spanish or French and can be a challenge. The rewards, however are so immense. Improved vocabulary, cultural knowledge, history are only a few of the benefits from studying Latin.