“Bucura-te, Tara scumpa, imbracata de parada,
Ca, din alte tari straine, vin prieteni sa te vada! – Vasile Militaru, 1936
Our paths have crossed years ago at the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science, a residential school in Columbus, dedicated to gifted students from around the state who wanted to be challenged by an enhanced curriculum and by the combined expertise of teachers with doctorates in their respective fields. Continue reading
The 40 martyred Saints
Photo: Wikipedia
The celebration of spring in Romania starts on March 9 through April 23. It coincides with the Orthodox tradition honoring the forty martyred Saints (Mucenici) at Lake Sevastia. The forty Saints were Christian soldiers employed by the pagan Roman Emperor Licinius around 320 A.D. The governor of Armenia, Agricola, who found out about their faith, forced them to pray to his pagan gods. Because they refused and did not give up their Christian faith, the forty soldiers were jailed for eight days, stoned, and finally sentenced to death by freezing in Lake Sevastia. Continue reading
I remember our daily food always coming from a long, long line at the end of which was a loaf of bread, a liter of milk, a stick of butter, a bottle of murky cooking oil, or a kilo of bones with traces of meat and fat on them.
The interminable lines looked like this bread line pictured here. We never knew what was sold at the end of a line we happened to come upon, but we knew we needed whatever people lined up to buy, so we joined the line.
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People have asked me over the years to what I attribute my interest and talent in foreign languages. It was hard to explain in a few short sentences that people are born with strengths and weaknesses in the eight types of intelligence that Harvard professor Howard Gardner had identified in 1983 in his book, “Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligencies.” Human beings are a lot more complex in their ability to learn than previously thought.
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