Road washed in sunlight

Ahhh! That's the sound of absolute contentment as warm weather settles in and summer with it.

It's been a great week of heat, sunshine and the bliss of trusting that these conditions are here to stay. 

Our cool May, now so nearly done, has rewritten its lines in the nick of time.

It's thrown off the last of the malaise known as the season that stayed too long. Am relishing this new regime very much!

Up North, where the holiday took us last weekend, was pretty in its spring colors.

The lakes region has beauty through the seasons but it's this time of year, with the long light and the imprint of the regenerative earth on the green wooded hills, that ties me to this area of outstate Minnesota. 

On our arrival, glad that the tees and shorts we packed were going to be the standard wear, we felt almost tricked.

Warm as it was, the trees were barely leafed out. We were further along at home with leafage. We weren't quite expecting this. It was a step back to the open views of early spring.

With a string of 80s lining up for the holiday, as if the balmy days were in on the secret from the start that this treat awaited us, the trees quickly leafed out.

There were a few trees stunted by the duress undergone but most trees, with the birds singing in their boughs, played hasty catch-up to compensate for the late start.

Lilacs were the same way. They were bushes with more bravado than leaves when we got there. Dry southerly winds acted like a blow dryer set on HIGH. The lilacs got the message. 

Bushes in protected places or with southerly exposure were able to produce tenuous blossoms to pick for Memorial Day. The wand-like grace of the lavender flowers took center spot at the Memorial Day table. 

Lilacs made an apt holiday bouquet. They bloom at Memorial Day in this part of Minnesota. We associate their blooms and their lavish scent with this national day of appreciation and remembrance.

The gravel road that rises on the other side of the river from where we stayed catches the evening light. 

The hill, and the hills falling away behind it, brought me to reverie as evening deepened and the sun continued strong.

This country road, and many others like it, unroll from our lakes region across the prairies and mountains to our Western coast. 

Aglow with late sunlight, bright enough to need to shield the eyes, this steep incline of a road leads out of sight to places that lead me on.

The dusty road reminds me of pioneers and ones drawn to seek out that which lies over the next hill. The road beckons, the road calls.

These daring souls, believing in destiny, or in luck, or driven by the compulsion to explore or compunction to readdress their lives, follow the roads that in the end are new beginnings.

I think of this with this road. It’s one small road climbing from the river it crosses. At the top is blue sky and the fields and hills to which it presses.

The road is identified by Google but relatively few come upon it other than those with reason to be there. But to me the road is huge. It’s the track to the open spaces of my interests and wonder.

It’s the direction of dreams. It’s the way to possibilities. It’s the roadbed of intentions. It’s the winding route which is the pursuit of steadfast hope.

Washed in sunlight the road stokes my imagination. Its course is to places unknown. It summons something of courage and curiosity to which I respond.

Ro Giencke – May 28, 2014 

2018 Super Bowl

Basking under the warmest skies since late September was good enough for many of us.

It turns out there was more to come. 

The Twin Cities was handed a plum today which gives us more than beautiful weather to cheer about.

News out of Atlanta is that Minneapolis has landed the 2018 Super Bowl.

It’s such a delectable announcement for us. It’s eases the pain, a little bit, for all the Super Bowl games the Vikings came close to winning but didn’t.

Kudos to the Minneapolis bid committee. Good job, well done! Congratulations also to the NFL owners who decided the 2018 site. You made a great selection.

“Our Super Bowl” (as already sounds natural to call the Super Bowl to be held here) is February 4, 2018. 

Minnesota will make a good winter host. We excel at this winter kind of thing. It promises to be a good party. 

Minneapolis was host to the 1992 Super Bowl. So it’s been awhile. That game was at the Metrodome. 

Super Bowl 52 (easier to remember than LII, most of us rusty with Roman numerals) will be played at the new Vikings Stadium.

With glory affixed to it already by the honor of being chosen as the 2018 Super Bowl site, the stadium is not an actual structure at this time. 

Construction is underway following demolition of the Metrodome and December 2013 groundbreaking ceremonies.

The new stadium will rise on the Metrodome site in downtown Minneapolis. It’s slated to open in 2016.

The Metrodome was a baseball pilgrimage site of sorts for faithful Minnesota Twins fans. We attended nearly 30 years of baseball games under its marshmallow-like, often maligned roof.

Indoor baseball, ignominious as some considered it, saved us from chilly spring starts like this year at our new outdoor Target Field, and from rain-outs which are a nuisance.

Some of us had no bones to pick with the Metrodome. We have many fond memories of being there. 

With protection from pelting rain, or an occasional thunderstorm, we watched our Minnesota Twins lose and sometimes win, and we kept believing in them.

We wildly waved our homer hankies in 1987 and 1991. They were the years the Twins, considered underdogs against Detroit and Atlanta, won the World Series.  

Their October championships put us on top of the world as we savored the success of the hometown team.  

Now the Metrodome site is set to initiate an era of football in its own football stadium. Vikings Stadium is the crown jewel in the plans. 

News that the 2018 Super Bowl comes to the stadium an amazing journey to this point. 

Sketches of the stadium, as it will be ready for the 2018 Super Bowl, are eye-catchingly beautiful. They’re a combination of fantasyland,  fabulous and football dream come true.

Super Bowl 52 is four years away but it’s okay to dream early in the game.

Snowflakes lazily falling in the frosty pre-game air is the image that comes to me. It clears to a crisp sublime Super Bowl Sunday. Tailgaters grill and excitement swells as the game is about to start.

There’s pleasant escape in dreaming. Anything that sharpens the focus or revs up interest adds to the end result of enjoyment put in and received. There are 1356 days to February 4, 2018 if we begin to dream now.

Closer in, the Twin Cities and the Minnesota Twins play host this summer to major league baseball’s All-Star game. The action is July 15, 2014 at Target Field, Minneapolis.

Ro Giencke – May 20, 2014

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Dance of Spring

The dance of spring continues in our Northland. It’s a strange dance this year.

The past weekend was mild. It led us to believe spring was at last falling in step with us. 

We figured it was heeding, none too soon, our desire to get to the warm weather. We're so ready to put the gray, wet, cool days behind us.

Our hopes, rising on the weekend tease of good weather, cooled as quickly as the jet stream which followed. 

A punch of air from Canada is keeping us below average this week by several degrees.

Average temperatures are high 60s. We’d give plenty for a seventy-degree day. We can only imagine it as we hunker down for the dash to the Memorial Day holiday.  

Temperatures not compliant with our wishes, we scout out other ways to feel the assurance of spring.

Greening is well underway. The grass is what we’re really noticing, but the tiny leaves on the trees are starting to unfurl.

Last week the leafing was barely perceptible. Branches wore their buds like miniature gloves.

A boxelder tree on my driving route last week was the exception. 

The boxelder struck me as one who hurries and dresses as if for a party that, at no costs, it wants to miss.

As useless a tree as people declare boxelders to be, let’s give the tree its due. It was decked out in green well ahead of the rest.

In other signs of spring, lakes are open and the boats are out. Plentiful rain has caused creeks to rush along. High water levels are turning lakes, or some bays of lakes, into no-wake zones.

This doesn’t impact sailboats, which have been on the lakes since ice-out. Sails create a calming effect as you take them in. Sails are one of my favorite sights on the lakes.

This is the time of year when every day brings change in nature. You have to look quickly or miss it. It’s like our apricot tree.

The apricot tree in our yard is in blossom. I watch for it every year.

Last week the apricot buds were negligible. You needed a microscope to ascertain they were there.

If you made a point of seeing them you could. They were like baby pink marshmallows on a lollipop stick. One moment barely discernible, the next they’re an image of glory. 

The concentrated blossoming is like a cupful of pink kernels popped in the air popper. These popped to perfection.

The apricot blooms are magnificent. They’re pinkish white, large and cottony. You could mistake them for a perfect batch of popcorn.

The blooming almost always happens behind our backs. You turn away and the miracle of blossoming is there on our return.

Outside scenes daily evolve into the fuller state of the season. Buds become leaves, goslings paddle behind their parents on the ponds and blue robin eggs hatch in their nests.

Everywhere you look there’s something to note that lifts the heart.

Sunny days, which have evened out the periods of rain, are made for doing and appreciating. 

Yard work is going on at our place. There’s raking and picking up of twigs and branches. Shaping up the garden for planting is underway.

Residential blocks are brightened by the plants from the nurseries coming home with us.

Lilacs, on the other hand, are absent. They’re another of the seasonal blooms with a late start.  We often have the fragrance of their blooms by Mother’s Day but they held off this year.

The lilac bushes, however, are greening right along. The blooms will be here shortly, and with them their intoxicating scent.

Even as we dig in the soil or hang our pots or put out the wind chimes the joy for some of us is more than the present satisfaction of being in touch with nature.

Spring then gets to be, as much as anything, dreaming and planning for summer. 

This is certainly true for those of us who thrive on heat, days of long light and change of activity pace.

Green-up time in Minnesota is precious. It’s short-lived and this adds to the sense of the season running through our fingers.

The dance of spring deepens into the profound loveliness of summer.

With that said, there’s never the first gentle aspect of tender spreading softness in nature as it makes known to us in May. 

Ro Giencke – May 14, 2014

 

Mary, Undoer of Knots

In the entry of a church we visited recently an easel with a picture of Mary on it stood to the side.

Mary, mother of Jesus, is venerated in the Catholic Church as our heavenly mother and one who intercedes for us as we take our prayers to her.

Many Catholic churches have statues and other representations of Mary. The picture of Mary on its easel wasn’t enough to catch my full attention but the caption below it did.

I moved in closer to read it. I’m a sucker for anything in print. The caption said: "Mary Undoer of Knots." And that did have my interest.

The phrase had me immediately. It created a domestic scene in my head. It was so easy to picture Mary patiently undoing the knots that come along, as they will in life.

There she is, head bent over handwork in her lap, perhaps seated in the open doorway where she can both apply her needle and keep an eye on Jesus at play. 

She looks up for a moment – maybe to see where her son is – and goes back to her patching or hemming to find an unexpected knot in the thread as she mends his pants or Joseph’s shirt.

Undoer of Knots is one of many descriptions for Mary. These descriptions, or titles, are ways to make her role as Mother of God more understandable to us. 

They depict her holiness and teach us her generous care, which she shows for each of us.

The title Undoer of Knots has timeless appeal. Mary was a woman of her era and time. We can think of her in that time limited scope if the larger role the Church has for Mary doesn’t fit with our idea of Jesus’ mother.

As a wife and mother she had a job to do and tasks to perform. It was much like it is for us today. 

As marriage partner/ parent / manager of the household needs she undid the knots in front of her, whatever they may have been.

She did this by quietly listening or offering her thoughts to help her family see their way to addressing their doubts or solving their quandaries. 

She did the same for others who might have come to her with small problems that arose from time to time.

Life consistently throws curve balls at us. It has often looking for someone who can help when we’re in over our heads. We’re eased by having someone quietly by who knows our score.

Peaceful attentive companionship redirects our energy positively. It can allow us to find resolution to our problems. Mary, in the title Undoer of Knots, gives comfort. Here is one willing to assist with our knots.

All of us are Undoers of Knots in our relationships, and wherever we spend our time and have our interests. 

We bend to a matter, or listen carefully and respectfully, when someone comes to us with a situation that requires adjustment or a little fixing.

As we untangle and sort out minor problems, whether our own or those of others to whom we give active help, we learn a kind of humility. Through patience and practice we follow Mary’s model for service.

In lending a hand to another we realize the grace that accompanies helping someone. We get a deeper understanding of the beautiful connotation of Undoer of Knots as a title for Mary.  

Mothers formed my first mental images as I thought about the meaning of Undoer of Knots. Mary first, and then my mom.

Many impressions from my childhood are of Mom fixing one problem or another. They weren’t sticky, messy issues but they stand out. Her attention was healing balm on vexing situations or tearful moments.

Sometimes the knot was undone with a Band-aid and a kiss. Other times the fixing was cookies fresh out of the oven.

The fixing was also in something as prosaic as neatly darned socks. Holes in socks were darned then. 

Mending was an endless work loop for a mom with a big family. A drawerful of mended socks told of a mother's love and vigilance toward her family's welfare. 

Mom’s undoing of knots always put back on its feet whatever (even so slightly) was in need of an assist.

Undoer of Knots is a phrase that attaches to my brother as well. His training in fixing knots came early. 

He was Grandpa’s fishing buddy. Grandpa put some magnificent backlashes into his fishing reel when he fished the river. Luckily my brother was along, both to row the boat and to untie Grandpa’s snarled lines. 

Grandpa tried to repay him. The jingle of coins extracted from his pockets was treat money at the store for his pleased grandson.

My brother’s skill with undoing knots bailed me out too. I had jewelry with chains that kinked no matter how carefully they were set back after use. 

This one time a dainty gold chain I took out to wear was a snarled mass. It was a great relief to turn the chain over to him.

I’m sure my brother got me out of other jewelry jams. He worked at anything that was given him until the knot loosened. He had the patience of a saint to untangle any snarl.

I did some looking up about devotion to Mary under the title Undoer of Knots. It appears that Pope Francis is part of the reason for its spread.

The charismatic Pope, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in South America, bought a postcard of the painting "Mary Untier of Knots" in the 1980s. The original hangs in a church in Bavaria and is well known.

The Argentine Jesuit priest brought the postcard home with him. It was his intent to make Mary under this title more widely known on his continent. Marian devotion to Mary, Undoer of Knots continues to grow. 

It can remind us that our small problems, which seem to effortlessly reseed themselves like weeds, are never too big or too little to have someone who cares. 

Ro Giencke- May 7, 2014

Backgrounds

A special interest of mine is the backgrounds of each of us that make us who we are.

Our backgrounds include the many factors that shape us from birth and even before. 

Circumstances in the world or in our family life can have defining influence over us from the moment we draw breath.

The role of backgrounds on personality comes to mind as news of the passing of two old friends from my home area reached me this spring. 

The women lived within a few miles of each other. They probably didn't know each other although my family knew both of them.

The first woman was a member of our church. She was a mother of a family like ours in that it was a big family. Ages of the children were in a range comparable to ours. 

It was a country church. Families know each other when the household count in a church, as it was with us, is small.

This was pre-Facebook and so it was a different social era altogether. Without social media, as used today, there was quite limited knowledge of the other church families.

Much of what we knew about each each other came from the weekly times in the pews and the activities that laced church life together between the Sundays, such as picnics, women’s circle meetings or baseball games.

Summer field season and long isolating winters could reduce chances for socializing. And by habit rural folks kept their lives as private as much as possible.

There were always happenings in families learned through visits and phone visits. News circulates as it will where families are close-knit through a sharing of religion or common livelihood or way of life.

Snippets of gossip made the rounds as well. We're a curious lot, most of us, with an avidity for the juicy morsel. A bit of gossip makes our own life more interesting as the spotlight is shone, for good or for gain, on someone else.

Mom liked the church woman remembered here. She 

probably didn't say it in so many words but in the way she waited to have a word with this woman after church or something in her voice when she said her name. 

This was good enough for me. I adopted as likable those who Mom liked, and she was one who saw likable traits in most people, finding the decent and the admirable in them.

As my discernment grew I began making assessments from my own observations. This was about the time I realized I could read weariness in this woman. 

It wasn’t the weary aspect of languor or boredom but of stamina pushed to the limit. It was as if the urgency of work, whether of the farm life or her large family, taxed her strength. 

Sunday after Sunday there was about her, in her face and in her clasped hands, a demeanor I could never give words to. It struck me she came to church using it as a reservoir from which to draw for the week ahead. 

Along with the tired strain detected in her it was her long red hair I noticed next. 

There were redheads among us so the red hair alone didn’t distinguish her from the rest. It was its length that set her apart. 

The long hair looked old fashioned to my eyes becoming aware of fashions and tends.

Always ready to approve the modern I wondered that she didn't care to update her appearance. With the confidence of youth the opinion I held was strong. A new hairdo was an easy thing she could do.

It could show us she was more than the farm woman who arrived with husband and kids each week to church.

It took her recent obituary to let me see her fully as if for the first time. 

Her mother's maiden name was given in the write-up. It was an Irish-sounding name. It suggested that our old friend from church had an Irish heritage. 

The woman's Irish background was there all along in her bright long hair. It framed her life as it framed her slender form and was part of her. Backgrounds are our stories. Sometimes they wait a lifetime to be shared.

The second woman wasn’t a fellow church member. She was our neighbor. She lived across the road.

As with the first woman, this woman was more or less noted by me when young. 

As you get older you start paying attention to some women and men. You come to admire them for the strengths or other values they show as you yourself get tested as you go through life. 

In particular I’m drawn to those who have depth of authenticity. There’s an absolute lack of pretension about them. They have humility in their nature. 

It makes them very open and real about matters concerning them and others. It keeps them faithful to the core as they live out their life experiences. 

These are the qualities I came to note in our former neighbor. She had courage that bucked her up through her difficulties which, for a period in her life, were many. 

She had a beaming countenance. She never seemed to remove it. It wasn't wiped off when the moment passed or turned into a frown.  

This outward expression of a happy spirit may have hid personal hurts but it also put the misfortunes in their place. It certainly disarmed those of us treated to the warmth of her smile.

She was the family breadwinner. Her job kept her on her feet. She must have come home from her shift tired and aching to sit awhile and rest.

She was never too tired or forgetful, on any occasion, to light up when she saw you. 

She was sunshine to me. This was the effect she had on people. She was the relaxed presence of an unperturbed soul.

She moved away when I was in my teens. She somewhat slipped from my mind. I married and moved away and there were many busy years raising our family.

When my dad died a few years ago she wrote a thoughtful sympathy note. With her address on the envelope to work with I wrote and then visited her. 

Her new home was the farm where she grew up. It was her parents' farm and she had returned to live out her years in this old place. 

I learned this on the first visit. She was so happy to be back home with its fondly remembered times. There were more visits. I enjoyed seeing my old but new-found friend. 

She told about growing up, an only child, surrounded by the love of her parents and aunts, uncles and cousins who farmed adjacent farms.

A secure start to life, through this early showering of love upon her by extended family, was the background against which she grew up and matured. 

She used it as a gift to make others feel secure in the exposure of her expansive response to life.

In the ease of familiar surroundings her retirement years were like a reward for her constancy. The constancy was the childlike simplicity which informed her first years and kept her step light all through life.

These two women may be thought unexceptional. They lived quiet country lives.They didn’t make the news. It didn't trouble them that they weren't at the center of things.

They didn’t win trophies or run for office. They didn’t ask for attention or demand respect or think to be popular at the cost of principle. Their way was the course they hewed from the truth of who they were.

They were good people, enduring friends and exceptional mentors. Their backgrounds colored their lives and invested their personalities with meaning. 

These two, with little in common, had in common the positive effect of their lives on their rural neighborhood. Without emphasis or hubbub they put all that made them up into the building of their community. 

Providing backgrounds to their local scene during their lifetimes they shine as the heroes they are.  

Ro Giencke - April 24, 2014

 

Hot Cross Buns

There are certain foods which are the very essence of childhood.

As adults we associate these foods with first memories of home and home life. 

They often carry with them a sense of great happiness.
I believe this is because they contain some of our earliest understandings of belonging to a group, which is the family unit, and being nurtured through it.

When I was young these special foods were most apt to be prepared by our mothers or grandmothers. 

The kitchen was the hub and heart of family life. In my family we were accustomed to good eating. Home cooked meals, homemade breads and sweet treats always had hungry appetites to do justice to them. 

Cooking and baking filled the house with delicious aromas. 

The good smells brought us hungry to the kitchen to check how soon done, or made us come with alacrity to the table when particularly-favored dishes were served.

I think of this with Easter this weekend. Hot Cross Buns, which Mom made for Easter Sunday dinner through all the years we (and then our children with us) sat together at the Easter table, left as much an imprint on us as the cross she etched on top of each sweet bun.

She took the time to check over the raisins before she added the measured amount to the dough. She looked for stems which she removed when found. 

She never would have thought to skip the step of looking through the raisins in making Hot Cross Buns. It's her care with the food she prepared that makes me sort through the raisins I use when baking too.

The buns were drizzled with icing after they baked. The shiny glaze made the buns as pretty as dessert on their plate as it was passed around with the other sides and the Easter ham.

Hot Cross Buns is a tradition that hasn't continued in our family. The buns will be remembered by my generation and then its part will be forgotten in the family story.

This is why Hot Cross Buns and other special family foods have been gathered into a family heritage cookbook. 

Along with recipes are stories, individually told, of the food of our childhood and growing up years, and the family times at the table down through the generations. 

Traditions evolve as do families. Traditions are meant to be tweaked, undergo change and even be left behind for new traditions. 

Still, there's value in remembering what has been good and what has connected us. 

I have the Easter bun recipe but have never made the buns. The recipe was written down from my mom many years ago. At the top left of the index card is noted: "Made by Mom each year for Easter."  

The original recipe is in The Good Housekeeping Cook Book, a gift from Dad to Mom somewhat early in their marriage. 

The cookbook was well broken in by the time we younger kids came along. 

The cookbook recipes described a previous era as I studied the pages. Even then I was interested in food and the making of food through a well laid-out set of directions. 

Next to the recipe in the cookbook Mom has written: "400 or even 375 and only 20 minutes."  

My cooking isn't exactly that of my mom's but my tendency to add pertinent notes to my recipes obviously comes from her. 

 Hot Cross Buns

1 c. warm milk, 1/4 c. shortening, 1/3 c. granulated sugar, 1/2 tsp. salt} to this add 1 pkg. yeast softened in 1/4 c. warm water. Add 1 tsp. granulated sugar. Add 1 egg (first removing 1 tblsp. egg white for glazing), 1/2 c. raisins, 1 tsp. cinnamon, 1/4 tsp. allspice and 3 1/2 - 4 c. flour.

Place in a greased bowl, cover and let rise in warm place (80-85 degrees) until double in bulk - about 1½ hours. Knead, shape into 2" balls and arrange in greased 9 x 9 x 2" pan. Brush each bun with egg white; cover and let rise until double in bulk - about 45 minutes.

Snip a deep cross in the top of each bun with scissors. Bake in hot oven (400 degrees) for 25 minutes; cool. Fill the cross on top of each with powdered sugar icing. Makes 2 dozen buns. 

Ro Giencke - April 17, 2014

 

 

Learning after the Latin is gone

Two years of high school Latin was helpful for all the roots to English words that the study of Latin taught us.

The time when sum, es, est, sumus, estis and sunt fairly tripped off my tongue is long gone but many other facts of learning remain.

Our studies went far beyond reading about the Roman senators in their togas, seeing pictures of murals found in excavations of the destroyed city of Pompeii, or learning of the sanctity of home life at the height of the Roman empire.

It was more than, but also included, translating the words of Julius Caesar’s famous victory speech, Veni, vidi, vici – “I came, I saw, I conquered.”

Latin made me aware of the ancient world and made it relevant. It invested me with a special regard for the Roman genius.

The Roman empire at its peak, like the Greek civilization before it with its philosophers, scholars, scientists, merchants and playwrights, shaped and changed the world.

If the Greeks were the visionaries of the Western World, the Romans were its pioneers and foot soldiers. 

Brilliant builders, the Romans forged stone by stone, and brick by brick, through such international roads as the Appian Way, the footpaths that made possible the expansion of their empire.

These soldiers, when retirement came, often chose to settle in the lands through which they marched.

In the end the Roman legions, sent out to conquer the world, were conquered by the beauty of the places they passed through. They came back to claim their foothold as pensions of their service to the Emperor.

Studying the ancient world through its language makes those times pertinent. 

A people and their culture can never be dead, or without something to teach, when they can speak to you, in their own language, across the millenniums.

In this way I learned, my first year of Latin, that life is more interesting when you appreciate the longevity of connections.

As you study an ancient language you gain insight into forgotten times. The past is kept alive through the power of the words that steered the lives of these ancient ones.

It was likely in Latin class that I learned our modern calendar is derived from the Roman calendar, and that our months get their names from that same calendar.

My Latin recently proved helpful again. We’d come to April at last. The first day brought a tidy accumulation of snowfall. The calendar had its small laugh on us.

We were taking the snow in stride but with rueful mention of the white landscape all around. Spring is April's promise to us but sometimes it tardily delivers.

"April comes from “aperire,” to open," I said. The thought was a way to balance the presence of new snow with the ardent desire for greening and blooming. 

It's what we learned in Latin," I added, picturing the budding that would have enveloped the Roman countryside by April. Springtime vigor resonates in "aperirie," the word borrowed to name the 4th month. 

From this I was led to recall the origins for the names of the other months. 

         The months and how they got their names

January - from Janus, god of beginnings and endings. Janus is shown with two faces, one looking forward, the other looking back 

February - named for a feast of purification

March - named for Mars, Roman god of war

April - its origin, as learned, is from "aperire," to open, as in the opening of buds and flowers.

A perhaps more widely held theory is that April comes from Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love, beauty and pleasure. 

Gods and goddesses had their stamp on the ancient world. It's highly conceivable that April, a time of beauty in nature, was given its name to honor the fair Aphrodite.

My instinct is to stick with “aperire” as the source for April. The preference is largely because the information has stayed with me so long. 

It's also because it fits as a name the practical Romans would have given the fourth month. In "aperire," meaning "to open," they had a name that reflects nature's order within the calendar year.

Establishing order - with their calendar, as with their empire - was a particular Roman ability. 

The Romans noted the seasonal rotation of the months as it applied to farming, astrology and other areas of impact on them. It would have been clear to them that April is the portal to the season of flowering.

The sweep and swelling of life at this surging time of the year would have influenced them. The full-on opening toward life that is April resonates in the word "aperire." It's pleasant to think it echoes in the name we use today.

May - from Maia, an earth goddess. Maia was patron of blossoming and fruitfulness, of springtime and growth

June - from Juno, Queen of the gods and patron of marriage and weddings

July - for Julius Caesar 

August - for Augustus Caesar 

September - from the Latin, the 7th month, as it was in the Roman calendar

October - from the Latin, the 8th month in the Roman calendar

November - from the Latin, the 9th month in the Roman calendar

December - from the Latin, the 10th month in the Roman calendar

This roster was put together after doing some online research. The web sites verified my calendar name recall except with February. 

I credited February to a Scandinavian goddess. This would have scandalized the Romans.

They considered as barbarians those of the cold northern lands whose shores lay untouched by the gentle wash of the Mediterranean Sea. 

The languages of the northerners registered on Roman ears as grating. Romans also considered their manners lacking, placing them far outside the pale of civilization.

If only the Romans could have used their calendars to foretell time. It might have saved them, or maybe it’d have only staved off the inevitable. 

Progression of time brought those very barbarians to the gates of Rome. It brought the age of classical Rome, already in steep decline, to an end.

Latin, the tongue of vanquished Rome, had its own reversal of fortune. Luckily, the Latin language was never entirely lost.

Modern languages including Italian, French and Spanish draw from Latin. 

It continues to be a studied language in its own right. It maintains its value in the fields of science and medicine. And until the 1960s it was the universal language of Mass in the Catholic Church.

From conjugation to calendar to continuity Latin class taught fundamentals which keep proving rewarding.

If my home could be redesigned to accommodate an atrium this would be laid at the door of Latin class as well.

Atrium, like “aperire,” is remembered from Latin studies. 

The idea of an atrium as a feature in your house, as the Romans had in their homes, appealed to me then. 

It stays with me as a feature that would be nice to have in our home someday.

Ro Giencke – April 13, 2014