Resolutions 2019
WHEREAS, having left the corn maiden of New Mexico behind last year, we made our anabasis, like Xenophon, to the sea (except it was flooded and it was I-29), to the Huskers of Nebraska. In the spirit of the O Pioneers, we circled our wagons to the home of Johnny Carson, General John Pershing, Father Flanagan, Warren Buffett, Fred Astaire, Marlon Brando (that Prairie Adonis), and — optima omnium— Minnie May Freeman Penney, Nebraska’s “Fearless Maid, the eighteen-year-old schoolteacher who saved more than a dozen students five to fifteen years of age in the blizzard of 1888.
WHEREAS, arriving safely in the city of the famed Abraham, we gave thanks to the Native Americans who first preserved this land, and we learned the Indigenous name for Nebraska: Ni Brasge in Archaic Otoe, or the Omaha Ni Bthaska, meaning “Flat Water,” after the Platte River.
WHEREAS the capitol Sower in the Tower on the Plains, home of the only unicameral legislature in the USA, greeted us with cuneiform and Hebrew script, while proclaiming “Equality before the law” and “The salvation of the state is watchfulness in the citizen, or, as we would say, salus civitatis vigilantia in cive est.
WHEREAS we have learned that honestly, Nebraska IS for everyone, and Lincoln is much better than we were thinkin’. We practiced our alphabet from the street names: M is for Mars, N is for Nero, O is for Orestes, and P is for Plutos. After all, we’ve come to UN-L, where they say, Litteris dedicata et omnibus artibus.
WHEREAS, missing a few sessions, we enjoyed First Friday Art Walk, shopping in the Haymarket, and wonderful bookstores and art galleries. We delighted in the Sheldon Museum of Art, the University of Nebraska State Museum (a.k.a., “Elephant Hall”), Nebraska History Museum, the Great Plains Art Collection, the Dinosaur Walk, and the National Museum of Rollerskating. We gazed in awe at the remains of the woolly mammoth, the state fossil, while thinking, like Trygaeus in Aristophanes’ Peace, of the giant dung beetle in the Museum of Natural History. Unfortunately, we weren’t here in the fall to worship the gods of football, i.e., Lil’ Red and Herbie Husker (or even the Nebraska Corn korē Cornelia) with herms sticking out of our heads; but we did hear about the Sea of Red at Memorial Stadium while learning “Through these gates pass the greatest fans in college football.”
WHEREAS, sharing conference space with the Nebraska Optometric Association, we realized that we weren’t seeing things. We also looked in on the cement convention to see if they had come up with a high-tech material to rival the Roman Colosseum. Our late nights gave us the gravitas to contribute to the Institute of Brain Potential.
WHEREAS, much like Odysseus, we arrived too late to join Donde Plowman, Executive Vice-Chancellor and Chief Academic Officer of Academic Affairs, and all the kaloi k’agathoi participating in Homerathon, we did share the cake representing the C for ACL and the 150th anniversary for the SCS, while flaunting our own CAMWS 115.
BE IT RESOLVED that we are grateful to the 4-H-ers and all their peers for their humanitas in their efforts for flood relief.
BE IT RESOLVED that we thank the staff of the Cornhusker Marriott Hotel, including the Miller Lite Bar, Mill Coffee and Tea (open even past midnight), and all of the other capital inns and tabernae. We sang eternal paeans for Bolchazy-Carducci, Eta Sigma Phi, ACL, SCS, the National Latin Exam, Michigan Classical Press, the Vergilian Society, and NCLG for food and yet more coffee in the breaks: they were, as people say, for everyone.
IN ADDITION, we thank our administrative pantheon —Tom Sienkewicz, Jevanie Gillen, and Emma Vanderpool — for keeping our conference upright. We convey our appreciation to the Department of Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska Lincoln and the rest of the superlative local organizing committee: university and high school faculty, and —especially— the phalanxes of cerulean-shirted students who kept us on the Via Certa. Our child care providers gave our children mentes sanas in corporibus sanis: for this we are grateful. We give the laurel for creativity to Stephen Lahey for designing the Classical trading cards and to the denizens of the local scriptorium for providing the texts thereof. We are touched by his generosity in donating the originals to CAMWS.
BE IT RESOLVED that we thank the organizers, chefs, and staff of our Lucullan Friday banquet, which we enjoyed, decked in bow ties for many, including our magistra cenae Jenny Strauss Clay and our orator cantorque David J. White. We announce as far as the wide horizon, our honorees for distinguished service awards: Warren and Barbara Winiarski, Dan and Tamara Sloan, and the aforementioned Donde Plowman. And let the names of our ovationes resound: Linda Montross, Mark Haynes, Andromache Karanika. All are the ne plus ultra in so many ways. On Saturday will inscribe the names of other honorees.
BE IT RESOLVED that we show gratitude for the two Great Plainary sessions, Ovidius a nostris temporibus ad futurum, and the perfect talk of the future tense of Latin, and for Andrew Faulkner’s presidential address on “Plain(s) Truths: Classics, Nebraska, and the Fiction of Willa Cather.”
MOREOVER, BE IT RESOLVED that we, more than 450 registrants in number, will never forget our 97 paper sections in 11 sessions. We will always remember the 12 organized panels, including those on digital initiatives, starting an Eco-Classical Caucus, Indigenization in the Classics classroom, diversity, Learning Disabilities in the Classics Classroom, Ascanius the Youth Classics Institute, and Latin teacher training. And who could forget the presidential panel on Aphrodite, or the glubitores who attended the talk on Lesbia and glubit in Catullus 58?
AND FINALLY, BE IT RESOLVED that, leaving Lincoln and our Andreius Falconarius, we will meet next year at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, the Magic City and workshop of Vulcan, under the tutela of Anne Groton, with a name going back to the Domesday Book.
Kristin O. Lord, Chair
Luke Gorton
McKenzie Lewis
T. Davina McClain
Anatole Mori
Lisa Ellison (editor in absentia)