On Tue, 26 Mar 2013 18:53:07 -0700, Michael Sylvester wrote:
When I attended Gannon in 1962,it was well known that Frederic De Mara-the Great Imposter taught Psychology there in past years.
It goes without saying but I'll say it anyway: context is everything. So, if I were to say "skeet! skeet! skeet!", divining my intended meaning would depend upon the context in which I would say such a thing, say, a skeet shooting competition (i.e., shooting at clay pigeons; the Oxford Dictionary says skeet is a "pseudoarchaic" word for shoot, see: http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/skeet ), short hand for a skeeter or mosquito, or, as fans of Dave Chappelle and the Urban Dictionary know, an explosive climax (or one form of birth control). So, in order to understand who *Ferdinand* Waldo Demara, Jr., was, one might have to have some background information such as that provided in the Wikipedia entry for him, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Waldo_Demara NOTE: Gannon College is not identified in the entry, instead it is referred to as a "Pennsylvania college". NOTE #2: The newspaper "The Pittsburgh Press" had an article published back on March 25, 1983 by Henry Dauber with the title "Another Great Imposter?". Dauber identifies a new case of a person impersonating a college professor and relates it to Demara. He identifies Demara as having taught at Gannon College as a "Dr. Robert L. French". The new imposter also taught in colleges in PA which prompts Dauber to ask: |Do our colleges not adequately check the credentials of their |applicants? |Or are the real imposters the institutions themselves? http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1144&dat=19830325&id=YOAeAAAAIBAJ&sjid=U2AEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5579,5294625 I'm sure that things regarding the checking of credentials has changed since then . ;-)
Fred was also at Gethsemani where I spent a very short period studying to be a Trappist monk under Thomas Merton. So what conclusions can you make of this?
That you don't know the meaning of the term "catfish". From the urban dictionary: |A catfish is someone who pretends to be someone they're not |using Facebook or other social media to create false identities, |particularly to pursue deceptive online romances. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=catfish So, given that Demara died in 1982, I think it highly unlikely that he used the Facebook (unless he used some sort of Bemian timebending process that we don't know about) and, given the information in the Wikipedia entry, his impersonations don't appear to have to engage others in romantic relationships. Demara may have done a lot of fishing in his life but "catfishing", as we understand it today, was not part of it.
Please be nice.
I'm always nice. It's people who take me the wrong way. ;-) -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=24562 or send a blank email to leave-24562-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
