Nor Glyphs

I have joined the ranks of Roman emperors and Maya kings, though neither in cuneiform nor glyphs. My Mother has just paid $18.65 to have my name put on the wall at St. Vincent's, the hospital in Santa Fe where I was born, the event now marked almost in stone for all time—or until the building is torn down. What will archaeologists make of me? And what would I like most to leave as monument, record of achievement, paean to my having lived and loved? Like at Phaestos, the traces of the vanished Minoan colors, sooty blacks and blood-oranges; the intriguing mark of a flower in the stone? Like Hadrian, a mausoleum that becomes the stage set for a grand, tragic opera? Like Sappho, a few fragments of poems that will tantalize for the millennia? For now, the name will do—an amusing (and affordable) marker.

image: Trento (Italy): Latin inscription cum aquarum perpetuo cursu on the Fountain of Neptune in Piazza del Duomo. The inscription is probably related to the requirements that Francesco Antonio Giongo (architect of the fountain) had to satisfy for an extra reward: after building the fountain in 1768, he was asked also to build an aqueduct to bring water to it (a "continuous flow of water"), after earlier attempts miserabily failed. Photo by Matteo Ianeselli