Pop Culture

Yesterday on a day trip to Lee, Massachusetts, a friend and I sought out an antiques store specializing in finds from the 1950s. We found the store, but it was closed. Nevertheless outside the shop was a dented beverage cooler with an advertising name of Dirigo. I wished I had my camera, but tucked the name away for further investigation today. Here you can see an old label from a Dirigo Bottling Company product, and here you can read a little about the company. Earlier I had written about Dirigo kayak/canoe models; I guess residents of Maine find their one-word motto (Latin dīrigō, I direct) a handy name for all kinds of things. If you watch on television a news conference that takes place in Maine, you can sometimes see the word on the Maine flag.

I Think I Can

Earlier this evening I attended my first Zumba class, or as I think of it, Zumb-ah-h-h-h-h! I really enjoyed the workout, and was so happy that I did not collapse or pass out. I have a feeling that I will not be able to walk tomorrow without pain, but I feel great right now. While waiting for the instructor I walked around the gym and as always was tickled to discover some Latin, this time on the label of the exercise balls tucked up against the wall of the Zumba room. The labels read VALEO, Latin for “I am strong, I am able, I CAN.” The root of valeō appears in English words like valid, invalid, valence, covalent, prevalent, and countervail, to name a few. It is so nice to know that I can Zumba! For a little more information about the Valeo brand, check here.

ROMA AETERNA

At least a couple of my current students are visiting Rome this spring vacation, so I'll post a few photos from time to time from my last visit in 2008. I love details like sewer grates and covers!

More Than A Hundred Anniversaries

This morning I spied the word quasquicentennial in a recent issue of Real Simple magazine. Familiar with sesquicentennial, observation of a 150th anniversary, I did not know quasquicentennial until I looked it up online, first at the Oxford English Dictionary and then in a back issue of American Speech, via the JSTOR database available through my school’s library. Students who have read the book Frindle by Andrew Clements will be amused by the story of quasquicentennial, which turns out to be a word invented in 1962 to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the town of Delavan, Illinois. The Latin roots of the word work out to one-quarter plus one hundred. How wonderful that next year, 2012, will be the fiftieth anniversary of the word quasquicentennial!

Best Car

An ad in the Sunday paper caught my eye, this time for a car manufactured by Kia. The new car is called an OPTIMA, and, following up on yesterday’s post about meliora (better things), the next step in the comparison is optimus, a, um, a Latin adjective meaning very good, the best, excellent. Other English words containing this Latin root are optimist and optimal. So the Kia company modestly believes this new model must be the best, either that it has ever made, or perhaps among all cars available now anywhere. You will have to judge for yourself. I am pretty happy with my Jaguar X-type, which has come out of hibernation, a wonderful way to celebrate this first day of spring!

Ever Better

The young woman who checked out my purchases at Agway earlier this afternoon was wearing a bright yellow sweatshirt with the seal of the University of Rochester, whose one-word motto is MELIORA. One of my favorite English derivatives from a Latin word, ameliorate, comes from this Latin word, meliora, which means better things or, as the university translates, ever better. When you ameliorate something, you make it better in some way. Earlier I had written about the motto of Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, CT: moniti meliora sequamur (having been warned, let us follow better things).

Beautiful Music

Watching reruns of Pawn Stars on the History Channel last night, I was delighted to learn about musical boxes made by Kalliope Musikwerke in the late nineteenth century. Searching today online for more information about Kalliope Musikwerke, I found instead lots of videos of Kalliope music boxes in action as well as, as often happens on the internet, the equally delightful discovery that many nineteenth-century music boxes have Latin tradenames, including Mira (amazing), Stella (star), and Regina (queen). You can hear how beautiful the sounds of a music box are here. Kalliope, we spell Calliope in English, is the German (and Greek) spelling of the name of the muse of epic poetry, one of the nine daughters of the Titan Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, and Zeus. The name comes from two Greek words, kalos, beautiful, and ops, voice; if you were going to sing an epic poem like the Iliad or the Odyssey, you would need a beautiful voice. Other English words that contain the root kal- include calligraphy (beautiful writing), calisthenics (beautiful strength), and kaleidoscope (beautiful image seeing). In addition the word calliope, spelled with a lower-case c, is a festive musical instrument, a steam or pipe organ heard at merry-go-rounds or on riverboats. You can hear the Delta Queen's calliope here.

Flying Horses

In the automotive section of this past Sunday's edition of the New York Times, I read a review of the Hyundai Equus, because, of course, I was attracted by the name of the car. The reviewer was puzzled by the logo of the Equus, because he thought the logo was a bird. When I showed the logo (via my new SmartBoard) to my Latin 3 class on Monday, one clever student remarked that the logo is actually Pegasus, the mythological flying horse. Upon closer inspection and when I squinted my eyes, I, too, thought that Pegasus is what the Hyundai designers had in mind. You also may ponder the Equus logo here. For lots of information about Pegasus, his origin and adventures, check the article found here.

Stronger Through Loyalty

The Atlas Football Club just entered my world as I searched for the Latin motto FORTIUS QUO FIDELIUS. I read in the Sunday (3/13/2011) edition (sports section) of the Sunday Republican newspaper from Waterbury, CT that A.J. Burnett, a pitcher for the New York Yankees has a Latin tattoo on his pitching arm, and I serendipitously came across another classical allusion online. The Atlas Football Club in England has such a cute logo that I could not resist making mention of it.

Wired for Sound

At a dulcimer festival in Latham, New York on Saturday, 5 March, I was amused to make a classical connection as I was waiting for the open-microphone afternoon concert to begin. The sound folks were setting up multiple microphones and attaching them to the sound board and amplifiers through a box that was sitting on the stage. I walked up to investigate and laughed when I noticed that the brand name on the piece of equipment was the Whirlwind MEDUSA.You can check out the Whirlwind company and see some examples of the Medusa snake here. In this age of so many wireless devices, it is interesting to see a fully wired one that recalls the ancient world. Medusa was a mortal Gorgon, once a beautiful woman, who was greatly transformed as a result of offending the goddess Athena. In her final incarnation Medusa is most famous for having snakes instead of hair on her head and for being so ugly that she turns anything that looks at her into stone. The hero Perseus slays her and cuts off her head. From drops of her blood the winged horse Pegasus is said to have sprung. More about Pegasus soon.