Plunderers and heretics
Posted on March 10th, 2008
Last Thursday, our parochial school held her annual “Evening of Recitation and Song.” The amount of work–all memorized–these students had done was impressive, and it confirmed in my mind the value of a classical education. Our interim principal, Jacquelyn Veith, has done a wonderful job, and is a true Godsend.
This has been a trying year for me, both personally and ecclesially (is that a word?) – probably the most difficult of my life, and it has been a real struggle for me to remain healthy and cheerful. I am plagued by guilt for not taking care of my parish responsibilities like they deserve. I enjoy working on this blog, too, but that has fallen off as of late.
The love parishioners have shown to me has been wonderful, and our Board of Education gave me a small gift in recognition of the extra time I’ve been spending with our school this year. The gift was the registration of “esgetology” as a domain; once I make some decisions about how I want it hosted, this blog will be moving to esgetology.com or esgetology.org. Eric Phillips, my friend, Latin teacher, and chairman of our Board of Education, wrote up this note in the nice card they gave me:
Accipe haec territoria inter-retis, et tene haec viriliter contra omnes depraedatores et haereticos. Deus tibicum sit. Amen.
(Translation: “Receive these domains of the inter-net, and hold them manfully against all plunderers and heretics. God be with you. Amen.”)
I really don’t know if there’s anything cooler than that.
Categories: Uncategorized
A very thoughtful gift!
Heheh. I’m glad the Latin message tickled you so.
Unfortunately, I should have written _tecum_, not _tibicum_. Don’t know what I was thinking.
I was planning to ask you about that tonight, figuring there was some special dative rule I hadn’t yet grasped…
The rule is… “the intrusive dative.” It’s when a dative gets sick and tired of being the least-used case (well, except for the vocative and locative, but they hardly count), and starts showing up for ablative-calls, saying, “Hey! Put me in! I can do just as good a job as these ablatives! C’mon, Greek doesn’t even HAVE an ablative, and it gets by just FINE.” Some times they paste a “cum” to themselves so they look extra ablativey and sneak past the guards. It happens.
Great, now I’ve broken “sometimes” into two words. I’m not even going to try to come up with a rule for that one.
Eric Phillips wrote: The rule is… “the intrusive dative.” It’s when a dative gets sick and tired of being the least-used case (well, except for the vocative and locative, but they hardly count), and starts showing up for ablative-calls, saying, “Hey! Put me in! I can do just as good a job as these ablatives! C’mon, Greek doesn’t even HAVE an ablative, and it gets by just FINE.” Some times they paste a “cum” to themselves so they look extra ablativey and sneak past the guards. It happens.
Maybe this simply shows that I don’t get out much, but that is one of the funniest things I’ve read in a long time.
Apparently you are highly susceptible to Latin-based humor. A good trait, if you ask me.