Re: CoL49 group reading - “calavera”

[Michael Bailey]

To run with that a little -

Calavera as skull reminds me of cognate Calvary, ie Golgotha, the place of
the skull, and of Jesus’s crucifixion, where the Roman soldiers acted as
executors for His estate, casting lots for his garments

- Emperor Hadrian had a temple to Aphrodite built there or nearby

- Helena, Queen Mother of Emperor Constantine (“in hoc signo vinces”)
claimed to have discovered the Ture Cross there

- Constantine had the Church of the Holy Sepulchre built there

- there is of course dissent as to the location




Another cognate from great American Literature:

- “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (1865) was Mark Twain’s
first majorly successful story

>From Wikipedia:
“The narrator is sent by a friend to interview an old man, Simon Wheeler,
who might know the location of an old acquaintance named Leonidas W.
Smiley. Finding Simon at an old mining camp, the narrator asks him if he
knows anything about Leonidas; Simon appears not to, and instead tells a
story about *Jim*Smiley, a man who had visited the camp years earlier….

(Tale of two frogs ensues)

“At this point in the story, Simon excuses himself to go outside for a
moment. The narrator realizes that Jim has no connection to Leonidas and
gets up to leave, only to have Simon stop him at the door, offering to tell
him about a yellow, one-eyed, stubby-tailed cow that Jim had owned. Rather
than stay to hear another pointless story, the narrator excuses himself and
leaves. He muses that his friend may have fabricated Leonidas as a pretext
to trick him into listening to Simon's anecdotes.”

- Is The Tristero a shaggy dog story?
- Bortz appears to be willing to add more anecdotes, tying it to the French
Revolution etc



On Sun, Jul 28, 2024 at 3:57 PM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
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> https://www.alexandani.com/blogs/the-wire/history-and-symbolism-of-the-calavera
>
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> Tristero’s surname means skull or skeleton, and can also refer to Day of
> the Dead confections
>
>