Laudator Temporis Acti

Garrison Keillor, Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts from the Heart of America (New York: Viking, 2004), pp. 88-89 (on studying Latin at the University of Minnesota):

My Latin teacher, Margaret Forbes, was an auntly lady, cheery and kind, who ran us through daily translations and sniped at us with questions about the anticipatory subjunctive -- subjunctive denotes an act that is expected -- Expectabum dum frater redirect -- I was waiting for my brother to return -- and we responded to her aequo animo -- without anxiety, as she lay open the folded language -- patefacio, patefacere, patefeci, patefactum -- O pace in perpetuum, Margaret, felicitas aeternas!

Either Keillor's Latin is rusty after forty years, or Bill Gates' spelling checker has gone haywire again:

• Expectabum dum frater redirect should be Expectabam dum frater rediret.
  
• O pace in perpetuum should probably be O pax in perpetuum. There is an accusative of exclamation (O pacem) in Latin but no ablative of exclamation.
  
• Felicitas aeternas should be felicitas aeterna.

Also, in English the preterite of the transitive verb lay is laid.

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Some have criticized Keillor's book for its supposedly intemperate attacks on Republicans. But he ridicules the silliness of doctrinaire Democrats as well, e.g. on p. 100:

Once, at a party in St. Paul, I heard a woman talk at some length about diversity and how persons of "noncolor" should not impose their majority culture on others and the phrase persons of noncolor -- the idea of being colorless -- made me reach for my coat and hat. Goodbye, I'm out of here. Call me when you get over it.

I enjoyed the book.