MDMD(3)--Just a thought

[Ted Samsel]

Steve Maas quotes and says..
> 
> Dixon, or Pynchon, asks the question--". . .how can there be any room for
> excess in this gossip-ridden Town. . . ?"  and answers that it's ". . .as
> if Judgment be near as the towering Seas and nothing matter anymore,
> especially not good behavior, because there's no more time--the bets are
> in, ev'ry individual Fate decided, all cries taken by the great Winds, and
> 'tis done."
> 
> So I was wondering, is, or was, there in fact a strain of Dutch Calvinist
> thought that would lead the Cape Dutch to imagine that once Time was about
> to end it no longer mattered what one did, that one's fate was decided and
> would not change no matter what?  This seems to go well beyond the
> Elect/Preterite dichotomy, where even the Elect are expected to follow
> certain codes of conduct.

Re: The Dutch... I recall reading a seafaring yarn a year or so back
about a U-boot commander in the Austro-Hungarian Navy during the
"Great" War who was marooned at one time in the Dutch East Indies
and was able work his passage back to Europe on a Dutch cargo ship
commanded by a captain who belonged to sect of Dutch Calvinism that
believed that world was flat. The captain navigated with a system
that was developed by this sect, ignoring the spherical nature of
the Earth.... don't know if this was a fiction, but the sea-story
seems quite accurate, otherwise... can't recall the title, but it
was written by a Brit who had come across a sea chest belonging to
a former officer of the Hapsburg Navy who had served in the "pig
boats" in WWI. There are two novels in this series, concerning a
Captain Pohanka..... a ripping yarn as they say.. the blurbs
compared it to Patrick O'Brian.

Ted Samsel....tejas at infi.net 
  "I want the frimfram sauce with the orson-fay
         and chifaffa on the side...."