Homeschooling a Doctorate?

My husband was interested in doing further study at the seminary. However, it costs a lot, and we don't have the money. It would take a lot of time in Indiana, and he doesn't have that either. And it would involve a lot of driving around the south end of Lake Michigan -- enough to drive a person insane. He didn't want the degree for prestige reasons: who's really gonna care whether he has letters behind his name? Another degree certainly wouldn't make any difference in his salary. So the only purpose of the study is LEARNING. (How's that for a homeschooler's viewpoint? Studying only for the sake of learning something?? Who'da thunk it possible?)

So he dove into teaching himself Latin. He and our friend Tim May got together every other Friday for a year, wading into the Wheelocks Latin textbook. (Mommies and kiddoes sure liked the excuse for play-dates twice a month!) Then Gary was ready to dive into translating, essentially teaching himself Latin through his translating efforts. (Reminds me of Nat Bowditch in one of our favorite books, Carry On, Mr Bowditch.)

A few weeks ago, he finished translating his book: Peter Zorn's The History of the Communion of Infants: Illustrated from the Ancient Times of the Church: First from the West then of the East, after a series of ten centuries and [after] manifold variations. It took a huge amount of work, translating not only Latin, but also some Greek, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, and Spanish. There were 1300 bibliographical references, and that was no small job to find the translations of all those personal names and place names. Coral and I each got copies of the book for Christmas. (Pretty thrilling until we found out he was looking for proofreaders. LOL!)

I want to brag on him and do the husband-version of the Genius-Child Dance. But somehow, "Genius-Husband Dance" just doesn't have the same ring to it...