Chapter 1: 5-11
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Latitudes and Departures
Portmanteau of 'latitudes and longitudes' with 'arrivals and departures'.
Page 5
[capitalization]
No discernible pattern? Caps seem accented to be stressed as in reading poetry?
Uncapitalised nouns in the first paragraph include: shoes, slaps, afternoon, raer, years, table, side-benches, branch, family.
Capitalised abstract nouns include: Arcs, Sides, Descent, Dither, Fly.
mis-matche'd side-benches....Lancaster County"
Lancaster County is one place where wood craftsmen like the Shakers and the Amish settled. Suggests handmade individual pieces?
Wand'ring Heart...end of itp. 6
Thematic? One can not 'get to the end'of the Wand'ring Heart grain? Lovely internal metaphor if it is.
Wand'ring Heart grain [of wood]
evidently a real name for a wood veneer.
veneer which is when you doing a rotating peeling cut around a log and then press or steam so it's flat and you can work with it. Examples
Also called Wild Heart.
...is North America's largest manufacturer of hardwood plywood, veneer, and flooring. ... Wild Heart, etc. here is a link about wandring heart.
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Christmastide of 1786 sometime between 12/25 and 1/6. However since the year is mentioned, it is probably betwen Christmas and New Years Eve.
City today might be an Isle upon an Ocean
Cf. the Earth in ATD: World-Island.
and the Nation bickering itself into fragments
America then was, politically, a "Nation" of states, each with their own laws, agendas and even currency. In the following year, 1787, a "national" convention was called for. That convention was gathered merely to revise the earlier Articles of Confederation but chose instead to abandon the articles in favor of a completely new document. The Constitution, of course. On September 17, 1787, the Constitution was finished in Philadelphia and Benjamin Franklin urged unanimous acceptance by all the states. See wikipedia, various.
"Mischianza"
EB11-Philadelphia history
Nerve-Lines
1. A line or place at which two things are joined. 2. Anatomy- a. A tract of nerve fibers passing from one side to the other of the spinal cord or brain. b. The point or surface where two parts, such as the eyelids, lips, or cardiac valves, join or form a connection. 3. Botany- The surface or place along which two structures, such as carpels, are joined. Also "commissure". American Heritage Dictionary
Northern Liberties
located north of Center City (specifically, Old City) and is bordered by Girard Avenue to the north and the Delaware River to the east.
The district first gained limited autonomy from the township by an Act of Assembly on March 9, 1771. The Act provided for the appointment of persons to regulate streets, direction of buildings, etc. By March 30, 1791 a second Act enabled the inhabitants of a portion of the Northern Liberties to lay taxes for the purpose of lighting, watching and establishing pumps within those bounds. Wikipedia, excerpted.
Spring Garden
Spring Garden District is a defunct district that was located in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania. The district ceased to exist and was incorporated into the City of Philadelphia following the passage of the Act of Consolidation, 1854.
Spring Garden appears in Varie’s map of 1796 as a small settlement between Vine Street and Buttonwood Lane. Wikipedia.
Germantown
Germantown was originally the Borough of Germantown, a town in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania and is today a neighborhood in Philadelphia, about six miles northwest from the center of the city. The neighborhood has been fully built up as a part of an urban city, but is rich in historic sites and buildings that have been preserved. Many of these are open to the public. Germantown stretches for about two miles along Germantown Avenue northwest "though there is no universally recognized exact boundary". ! wikipedia.
Distance to a Star
Not until 1838.
Not true, Lalande got a pretty good figure off of the Transit of Venus data from 1761 and 1769, with a figure of 153 million kilometres(±1 million km) Which is only 2.27% off of the correct value of 149,597,870,691 ± 30 metres
Transit of Venus Astronomical Unit
Page 7
Boppo
Not in OED.
"A very deep love. Enduring and never ending." From the online Urban Dictionary, 2005. Does not seem correct in context.
Winter's Block and Blade
A Winter's Block seems to be a building for storing grain in the winter.
Blade might refer to the front of a plowshare--a coulter.
Implication seems to be the juvenile will have no farming to do if turned out.
Tenebrae
Darkness (Latin).
size and difficulty
Cf "Lot 49"?
Jabot
pix
Darby and Cope
This is the actually name of the Mason and Dixon's "chainmen" on the expedition.
Darby is a character name repeated in Against the Day.
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Secret Relation
His journal? (relation = narrative or account def)
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The crime of "Anonymity"...Gaol...Exile
With this description of the Revs Crime of exposing power with the intention of being anonymous and seeking exile as a way of avoiding prison, there is an implication that Cherrycoke's voice is Pynchon himself.
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my name had never been my own
Bestowed by 'Authorities', there is the implication in the following lines that one is "owned"---like a collar around one's neck---by those authorities.
entire loss of Self, perfect union with All
Satirizing certain Eastern religious beliefs? Or embracing them?
Captain (John) Smith, of The Seahorse
a Captain John Smith wrote An Accidence, or the Path-Way to Experience(1626) and offered elemenatary instruction on seamanship in Sea Grammar (1627) an enlarged version of the first book. Cited in a footnote to The Tempest, Arden edition.
