A couple of things have held my attention in the last few weeks. Firstly I have been working on the QuickLatin codebase. The migration to dotNet is complete, and it is now a question of firing stuff at it and finding why it breaks! I’ve also updated the dictionaries to the latest version.
Basically I can now enhance it as I like; which was the purpose behind doing all this in the first place. It might be an idea to merge into it some translation tools that I have created over the years. The main user of this will undoubtedly be me, so I may as well make myself comfortable.
The other piece of work is the ongoing translation of the very ancient Life of St George. This is in 21 chapters. The translator has done a draft of chapters 1-12, which I have revised and made ready for release. I have in turn prepared a draft of chapters 18-21, which I have sent to the translator for comment. I am now working on chapter 17, and using bits from it to test out QuickLatin. The completed translation will of course be released online as public domain once it is done.
Easter is now behind us. I had meant to do an Easter post, but somehow I got distracted. I spent quite a bit of my downtime on Twitter fighting the “Easter is pagan” jeer that is circulated every year by the malicious and their innocent dupes. This year the fight really got some traction behind it, and a number of people were patrolling and posting corrective links. Alas it is probably an unwinnable battle, at least while the false story is agreeable to a certain sort of influential person; but it is something to have tried.
I have enquired about access to the Ipswich Museum files in Suffolk Record Office, in order to locate the survey of the Roman fort by the 1969 sub-aqua expedition. The archivist has now looked at these, and found nothing. It looks very much as if the report has been mislaid in the last 20 years. However I can’t even go and look at the files; I’m told that permission to view the items must be obtained from Ipswich Museum, and their response time is six weeks (!) I have written of course. But it is a forlorn hope.
We must always be grateful for the internet and the ready availability of research materials on the web. I certainly am!
A belated Happy St. George’s Day (in our time zone and at least some calendars)!
I’ve been wondering if the sudden ‘mainstream’ emergence of a locution unfamiliar, e.g., to Christian journalists of 40 years experience, “Easter worshippers”, has any connection (coincidental, subconscious, or otherwise) with the chestnut-like “Easter is pagan” canards… do you happen to recall having encountered it in these contexts?
I hope your request lands under the eyes of a keen Museum staffer, who expedites it, pronto!
Probably not. I did a Google Books search, and it seems to have been an uncommon formation mostly used to refer to people who were not even “Christmas -Easter-only” churchgoers. But yes, it got used on the Notre Dame and Sri Lanka stories.
That said, a lot of the Ishtar crowd did show up on Notre Dame and Sri Lanka stories to gloat in the comments. Apparently one cannot suffer terroristic attacks if one is a proper Christian with no church building.
That worked out poorly for all the mall and banquet hall Christian churches who have been attacked by nogoodniks, of course, as well as any non-liturgical visitors to the Sunday buffets in Colombo hotels. But never mind facts when people can be trolls.
I assumed the phrase indicated a coordinated response cooked up by a spin doctor. But evil intended certainly.
Thanks for the details! It did give me the impression of probably being ‘plausibly-deniably nasty’ in some way or ways, but one cannot totally discount how cluelessly cloth-earred people can be.
If you will indulge another question that occurs to me, do any “Easter is pagan” folk to your knowledge refer to Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels’ “Ostara, Briefbücherei der Blonden und Mannesrechtler”, in their stuff?
I’ve not read into their stuff very deeply – sorry!