Catherine Price

It was a bad move for someone who hates boats: I spent 2 weeks at sea with a crew of marine biologists and students from Stanford, documenting the journey from the Line Islands to Honolulu and creating this website. (Don’t know where the Line Islands are? Take a map of the Pacific Ocean and stick a pin somewhere directly in the middle.)

Even if you ignore ( from ignorare — to not know, disregard) the Romans’ influence ( influere — to flow in) on our culture ( colere — to foster, cultivate or respect), architecture ( architectus, from the Greek arkhi — chief + tekton — builder, carpenter), literature ( littera — letter), government (gubernare — navigate, pilot, govern), military (miles — soldier), legal ( lex — the law) and judicial (iudex — a judge) systems and medicine ( medicus — physician), there’s still the fact ( factum — something done, a fact) of Latin’s presence ( praesentia — presence) in English itself.

As might be obvious, getting to write a feature about Latin for the Washington Post Magazine was a treat for my inner dork.

For Mother Jones, I created several web videos to accompany my article about Christian magicians. The first one’s about Jilly Bean, followed by this magic trick:

Others on the site feature Kerry Kistler, chalk artist:

and Duane Laflin, revered gospel magician:

In the summer of 2006, I spent a month in Korea reporting on the American military for a Knight Foundation fellowship called News 21. We reported on base closures and community relations, but my personal stories focused on things like working out at 5am with a colonel, learning to shoot a semi-automatic weapon, and spending a night on the town with a 19-year-old soldier (he liked to salsa).