Ed Irwin is cool.

Why is Ed Irwin cool? Because he is generous and helpful to people he barely knows. Like me.

I never took Latin in high school (I was all romantic and thought French would serve me better for some reason. Stupid.). However, I have been able to keep up with Timo's Latin lessons pretty well the last three years - seriously, a book written for 3rd through 6th graders can't be THAT hard to suss out before the lesson starts. It's all been dandy - until we hit the great linking verb vs. helping verb debacle.

Oh help. I understand that a linking verb is an equals sign, and therefore needs a form of the verb to be, which we conjugate as sum es est sumus estis sunt in the present tense. Okey dokey. But when you have a helping verb and you have to figure out which ending to put on the verb? My brain turns to Jell-O (the proof of which is that I just spelled turns as "terns").

So I asked Hazel if I could call Ed for advice - sure! I called Ed and he very kindly suggested I check out what the public library has available and see if anything there would work. I haven't had a chance to do that this week, but intended to tomorrow.

BUT - I won't have to now, because at church this morning, Hazel handed me a book and said, "Ed said he thinks this will help you out." And after just flipping through "English Grammar for Students of Latin" by Norma W. Goldman, I believe he is right.

And THAT is why Ed Irwin is cool.