Thanksgiving at Jax Beach

Spike's boat didn't sink even though Andrew and Jimmy scored a direct hit with the potato gun.

That's what I was thankful for.

Condere et Tradere

Two very interesting houseguests this weekend: PBY, editor of the Smithsonian series on Indonesian music, and TDR, founding editor of the New Hibernia Review. We spent Saturday morning at the Virginia Historical Society. TDR innocently set off a small staff panic by asking what the Society's motto meant in English. At length PBY found an official who volunteered that the trustees had adopted a resolution forbidding translation. But here's what the Latin-English dictionary says:

condo -dere -didi -ditum (1) [to build , found; form, establish]; of literary work, [to compose, write] a poem, etc., and also [to write of] a subject. (2) [to put up, put away safely, store, to hide, withdraw]; of corpses, [to bury]; of time, [to pass, dispose of].

trado (transdo) -dere -didi -ditum [to hand over, give up, surrender, betray; to hand down to posterity]; esp. [to hand down an account of an event, to report, relate, teach]; with reflex. [to commit, surrender, devote oneself].

Not such a mystery then, after all--The Virginia Historical Society: "To Hide and Betray."

Saturday night we drove over to William and Mary for "Pal Joey," for which JRP was sound designer. Not a bad production, but the most unappetizing chorus line since the Triangle Club's "Planet of the Apes" kickline. "It's hard," said TDR truthfully, "to fit 14 eggs in a 12-egg crate."

Pretty Hokie, If You Ask Me

I spent some time yesterday in Lexington with Jack Ackerly. The Blue Ridge were orange, and it was the most beautiful day of the year. He spotted me sitting on a bench in Hopkins Green reading the New York Times and writing postcards and came over to chat. Jack is no longer rector of the University of Virginia, but he still takes a keen interest in higher education, so he was naturally distressed about the fire Saturday night at Virginia Tech's Newman Library. "It was a catastrophe," he said. "They lost both their books."

Black Shark

First place in the drawing category went to a veterinary assistant at the Fredericksburg Animal Hospital. Andrew McAfee, 25, won in that category for "Black Shark," a likeness of his 11-year-old black Labrador retriever, Addie, standing wet in the water.—Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star, Oct. 25, 2005.