Pynchon? I'd Like to Ogham and Kissham! (M&D, p. 600)

[Sherwood, Harrison]

>From: 	Charles F. Albert
>
>these 
>Harvard sharpers have an axe in it, having served as consultants to 
>the proprietors.

Why, you hopeless cynic, you!

No...while my Spidey Sense tingles quite dramatically on this whole
matter, there are still some evidentiary matters for which I'm gonna
need more thorough debunkage than that.

>cfa, who will gladly book a tee time at one of the local (and quite 
>affordable) golf courses that abound here

So you're saying ancient duffers divoted Ogham and Punic Iberian
inscriptions on lintel-stones from South Woodstock, VT, to Oklahoma to
Barouallie, St. Vincent Island in the West Indies with their
_seven-irons_? Hmmm. Golf _is_ a Pictish invention...! Fore the love of
Bel!

Heh! As I was rooting around just now in _America B.C._ I found the
following Highly Suggestive photo caption:

Discovery of the Beltane Stone at Mystery Hill, August 31, 1975. In 45
B.C., Julius Caesar instituted throughout the Roman Empire a new
reformed calendar devised by the Greek astronomer Sosigenes. The date of
the spring equinox was now set at March 25, and the new year was set to
start January 1. The Celts, however, retained the old Celto-Greek New
Year that began on the day of the spring equinox; in other respects they
followed the revised Roman Calendar, presumably to in order to
facilitate business arrangements with overseas traders from Spain and
Portugal. May 1, the great Mayday festival of the Celts, now fell on the
thirty-ninth day of the year, a fact recorded in the Romano-Celtic
inscription on the stone at Mystery Hill.... The inscription, reading in
Latin numerals XXXVIIII LA (Day 39) is shown below.

Shit, I don't know. I remain hopefully cynical, or perhaps that should
be cautiously optimistic. I _am_ convinced I detect a faint, lingering
trace of Eau de Ruggles, here, though, wafting through the dusty air and
tantalizing the nostrils. And hush! Was that a Pygmy war-cry I just
heard carrying in on the wind? Or was it just my imagination? 

Harrison