March 2, 2011

My Latin teacher

I just think he is really, really great.


He has been teaching for fifty years. He wears the same clothes everyday, he gets his hair cut seasonally (head and face), he does not have email, and he has a rotary phone in his office at Sarah Lawrence. And he once referred to a word processor as a "computer machine." And he told us a story about how he went into Radio Shack here in New York the other day and asked for a transistor radio—and the girl working there had no idea what he was talking about.

But he has a true understanding of the classical world—it makes you despair to think of everything he knows that you will never know.

2 comments:

  1. Oh dear, I'm starting my day badly: First I almost cried when a photographer friend sent me a pic of a stark, forbidding building he'd taken, and now this handwritten letter got me all teary. Perhaps another cup of tea before I start working is in order.

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  2. Aw... one of those emotional days, I know them well.

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