MDDM Ch. 70 Scalping Lord Lepton

[Terrance]

Bandwraith at aol.com wrote:
> 
> The above selection, if I haven't mis-read you, lends,
> I think, support for my notion of Lepton as a scapegoat,
> for both Wade and Wicks. Even Ethelmer, supposedly
> chastened, is on the payroll. Recruited on campass,
> as it were.
> 
> Guns & Bud.

I can't quite make out what you are saying about the Bud. Dixon likes
Dagga. He smokes it at the Cape. It has the influence on him that we
would expect. In America he smokes it with Washington and with the
Native Americans. I can't quite fit the Giant Hemp plant to an urban or
marginalized youth selling drugs. As I mentioned a while back, I'm
convinced that the climb up the giant  plant is a parody of the great
tree or mountain as describe by Eliade and manifest destiny & Western
expansion. America, or at least the dream, the fable, the pot-head talk
of her, grows and grows because it must be limitless. 

In any event, Ethelmer is recruited. Don't know if it is Bud or Guns,
but rather women and money that turn him. His anti-religious rants, his
mercury mouth, his rebellious loss of head is nothing more than a good
show. 
It's Wicks that has to worry about the gallows. 


Wicks, in my opinion, fights the good fight. Not that he's going to be
sporting the crown of righteousness, but I think he's only hanging
around to die and to discover what it is Mason has to tell him so he can
tell his tale. Given the choice between Bedlam and a Ship, not a good
choice in those days or these, I think I've read enough of Ginsburg,
Keesey, and Faucault to know I would have put on my sailing shoes too.
And there is nothing wrong with an old man taking time the only way he
knows or warming his feet at the hearth of a Sultan. We all got to sing
for our supper sometime. 
Call it Sloth, but I don't think it will land Wicks in any of the rings
on the Devil's great chain of Being. 


The greatest challenge to Lord Lepton, after he freed himself from
Slavery, was a  technological restraint. America at the time had no coal
to run factories.  Oh I know America is not 20th century Japan or even
IG Farben Germany. It's got plenty of stuff to burn, coal, oil, gas, but
Anthracite coal (Eastern PA), in the quantities needed doesn't become
available until the 1830s. Did Lepton have ships on the James River? I
don't think so. The metal-working industry, America's first great
business, didn't get up and running until this coal was coming out of
the ground in Eastern PA. Even by 1830 70% to 90% of this business was
foreign. Then there were the tariffs at that time too. In any event, up
to 1830, the metal-works used charcoal. Big Hemp Plants? Trees. Now what
did Dixon and Mason do with all them trees they cut down?