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."