Freeport resident Steve Farrand first got exposed to languages as a young boy living in Fairfield County, Connecticut. “My mother was an intelligent woman who majored in French in college. As a housewife, she needed an intellectual outlet so she’d speak French around the house, even giving commands to our dog in French. She’d talk to the dog in French about the delicious roast beef in the oven, and the dog would sit there drooling.” On another linguistic front, Steve’s godparents often spoke in Swiss German around him, and he always wanted to learn their secret code.

Steve took five years of French and five years of Latin in high school and went on to major in Classics at Amherst. At Amherst, he studied Russian and began learning Greek. “I even acted in two Greek tragedies for which the actors spoke Greek,” he recalls with a laugh. “We performed the plays outside on the lawn in the afternoon, and lots of people showed up, drawn by the bizarreness of it all.”

Over the last 42 years, Steve’s unconventional career path has taken some interesting twists and turns: undertaking graduate work in Latin, Greek and Indo- European Linguistics at Cornell; teaching languages at private independent schools, public high schools and at colleges and universities; conducting Latin workshops for teachers; working at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, USSR; creating a high school Russian program; translating Latin, Middle High German and Old German texts of “Carmina Burana” for use in a concert performed by the Portland Symphony and the Choral Arts Society at Merrill Auditorium; serving as the Program Coordinator for the Maine Speakout Project; and working in retail at wine and cheese outlets in Maine.

Since 2010, Steve has been working as a Latin Tutor at the Maine Coast Semester School in Wiscasset, an innovative program, which attracts outstanding high school juniors from around the country. It’s a perfect fit for a man who loves languages and being around young people. He works on a one-on-one basis with up to eight students each semester, mainly helping students prepare for the Latin Advanced Placement Test.

“Tutoring is a great way to learn,” he says, “because students have a real say in the process. I’ll try anything, and I don’t let my ego get in the way.”

Steve marvels at the creativity demonstrated by his students, especially when conducting their final project. One student surveyed all her peers about the choice addressed in the “Judgement of Paris” myth; that is, which Goddess was most important: Hera, Aphrodite or Athena? Another student had the dining service prepare a Roman meal for the entire school. Steve was on the fence about what grade to give a student, so he brought out his Latin Scrabble set and invited her to play. She won and got an “A” for the course.

Steve Farrand has often been asked why someone should bother taking languages, especially Latin, which is sometimes referred to as a “dead language.” “It takes great discipline to study a challenging language, such as Latin or Greek,” he says, “You have to give up control, and you have to learn how to deal with failure.” He notes that Latin terms are often used in medicine and law.

Studying another language is also good for the brain, according to Steve. “Research suggests that multilingual people have a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s.”

It’s most refreshing to talk to a down-to-earth Renaissance man like Steve Farrand, especially in contrast with our consumerist, branding-is-all, greed-is-good American pop culture. In fact, it’s good for the soul as well as the brain.

David Treadwell, a Brunswick writer, welcomes commentary or suggestions for future “Just a Little

Old” columns at dtreadw575@aol.com.