Faithful Care

Yesterday I watched a nice commercial for a company called Fidelis Care. I was struck by how calm, peaceful, and happy all the people in the ad appeared. I was moved to investigate the company name, knowing that fidelis, fidele is a Latin adjective meaning "faithful." I smiled when I discovered on the Fidelis Care website that it is the New York State Catholic Health plan. The logo also makes sense, as it shows a dove, a common symbol representing the Holy Spirit, superimposed on a human figure.

Fidelis may also be familiar because it is part of the motto of the United States Marine Corps (semper fidelis, always faithful), and it is in the title of a Christmas carol sometimes sung in Latin (Adeste Fideles, O Come All Ye Faithful).

Sweet Confetti

In Latin class yesterday my seventh-grade students were wrestling with the word confectus, a, um, an adjective meaning finished. I asked if anyone could think of an English derivative from this word, and several students suggested confection and confectionary sugar. We discussed that confections--sweet treats often made with confectionary sugar-- are often eaten at the end of a meal, and therefore they finish the meal. And so we determined that confectus, a, um means "finished."As we were talking, I also wondered about the word confetti, an Italian word brought into English. According to my dictionary confetti, from the Latin confectus, a, um, was originally candy or "candy" made from plaster thrown at carnivals or other festive events, and then later was replaced with bits of paper as we know confetti today. Etymology is definitely a sweet treat.

New Year Reflection

One of my favorite excerpts from the poetry of Ovid captures the four seasons in two lines. I surely must have written of these lines before, but I believe in repetition, so here they are, courtesy of The Latin Library:

Poma dat autumnus: formosa est messibus aestas:

Ver praebet flores: igne levatur hiems.

                                                                                    Ovid, Remedia Amoris 187-188

Translation:  Autumn gives fruits: beautiful is summer with crops:

                                    Spring offers flowers: by fire winter is lightened.

I sit on this fourth day of the New Year before a woodstove. Flames dance above glowing coals, and the rain falls on last night's snow. Within the fire glows orange, the pale daylight reveals the orange spine of Millennium: A Latin Reader/374-1374 by F.E. Harrison, on the cover of which St. Jerome looks out from his writing at a slanted desk.

Reading, setting one's thoughts on fire, also lightens the dark winter. In addition to Millennium, I have Sarah Ruden's translation of Vergil's Aeneid at hand. The Latin excerpts in Millennium, balanced by the spare English of Ruden, set in the landscape of snow, before a fire--no better way to welcome another year than to look back, way back, and, catching fire, reflect the light of millennia.