NOT FOR PUBLIC VIEWING

From an interdepartmental memo sent from the Backward Scholar (B.S.), who is in charge of research and footnoting, to the editor of the COUNCIL-OF-CONCERNED-CONSERVATIONIST Newsletter:

B.S.:

“Boss, you’d better sit down. This footnote that sheds a whole new light on your namesake is going to shake you to your foundations and cause you to start wearing your yellow, wool/Kevlar blend turtlenecks even in the summer. (Talk about a hair shirt.)

Along with your mother’s maiden name that means ‘wiseacre’ in Italian, you are set to be un exemple type de Nomen est Omen that we report on in our Naming is Destiny column.

This all started with the portentous birth of your father. You could have — and should have — been named for one of the past kings of Southern Italy, Ferdinand. Fortune provided the circumstance of your father being born on the recognized birthdate of the patron saint of your ancestral town, no less. Jeez, we couldn’t make this stuff up.

But as hard as the future might be for you, you dodged a bullet in a way — although the “Boy Named Sue Effect” could have helped in your development. Think of the extra fighting practice you could have gotten from having a name like Ferd that the Irish bullies in school would have provoked you with. Your father being born on that propitious date was the only exception allowed in the rigid Italian naming tradition.

John the Baptist was even known as the voice crying out in the wilderness. You are known as the ‘pa-wild’ of the PA Wilds, and you have been known to subsist on hot water laced with honey for long stretches when you’re sick. John the Baptist is identified with Hermes as a psychopomp. Need we mention your role in that job in our feature, The Twilight End-Zone? Hermes was also a trickster, hehe.

John was the one who baptized in the river. You’ve had a lifelong fascination with flowing water and springs. For a prophet who did not even drink wine, Leonardo connects him to Bacchus and Dionysus. You’ve always said, ‘drugs and alcohol are for amateurs,’ while still being a proponent of the orgiastic and ecstatic mysticism of those two.

You now carry a walking stick with you in the woods in case you have to beat off coyotes. John is often depicted with a thyrsus-like staff. There are so many other parallels, I’m too superstitious to even mention them. I’m thinking of that half-man/half-goat fertility god.

It is uncanny. But rest easy, boss. We here on the editorial staff are with you, 100%.”

THE EDITOR:

“(gulp)”

I just read it. I had no knowledge of any of this when we set up our book press operation in Fish House, New York. And the list goes on from there. I haven’t consciously affected any of this. I need to lie down and think it through, and marshal my strength.

It’s going to be a Rocky finish.

**************

Reference:

7 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About John the Baptist – Biblica