MDDM 63 Thunder and Stogies

[Samuel Moyer]

618-1 Mason reports a "great Storm of Thunder and Lightning..."

Thunderstorms in Pynchon... GR: Back to Berlin, with a terrific thunderstorm blowing over the city.  (433 in my Penguin)  Also 663 on Thanatz out in the storm to see if he can be struck by lightning.  In V. we have a hard rain developing in the first of Stencils eight impersonations of chapter 3.  

Any significance to thunderstorms in Pynchon?

618-9 "Don't you pray in situations like this?" (Mason)
"Of course. But I didn't imagine Deists did, so much...?" (Dixon)

Some Enlightenment thinkers became Deists. A Deist is one who believes in a God who created a perfect universe and then allowed it to operate according to natural laws. There wasn't much emphasis on a personal God. 
http://www.tcjc.cc.tx.us/campus_ne/faculty/malee/h1301c4.html


618-10 - (Mason) "This is no Pervaiding Influence, this is as personal as it gets..." a huge, apocalyptic Peal strikes directly outside.


Deism, the "doctrine that God is quite other than the cosmos and entirely transcends it.  Having created it as a closed system, he remains aloof from its operations and lets it go its own way" (160).  This is God the creator, the "father."  People who adhere to this theology tend to stress rational thought and science as a way of discovering truth, they tend to also place great emphasis on classic religious texts.  Orthodox Quakerism is more sympathetic to Deism.  For deists "the light was the inherent rational capacity of the mind." (161) 
http://www.sullivan-county.com/nf0/nov_2000/quaker_deists.htm



618-7 Dixon, Chewing upon more than smoking a Conestoga Cigar.

Apparently the first cigar in the colonies was brought from Cuba to Connecticut in 1762. 


Much of the county's tobacco history is either documented or told through nostalgic yarns by the locals at Demuth's in downtown Lancaster, the county seat. Demuth's, founded in 1770, is the oldest continuously operating smoke shop in the United States.

Lancaster maintains a rich history in tobacco and cigars. The term "stogie" originated in Lancaster, home of the legendary Conestoga wagon that carried families West in the 1800s. The wagon masters would often smoke long cigars using coarser leaves that gave off a distinctly strong aroma. The cigars became known as "stogies." 
http://www.cigaraficionado.com/Cigar/Aficionado/Archives/199703/fd397.html


Conestoga Centre was originally laid out in 1805, by John Kendig, and consisted of a part of thirty four acres, late the property of Martin Kendig, which John Reitzel, Sheriff, sold to Henry Brenneman in 1805. The original plan of the village was, however, never followed. The village is about a mile and a fourth in length, stretched along a ridge of considerable elevation; contains about ninety houses, and upwards of five hundred inhabitants. It has one post-office, three stores, two cigar manufactories, one saloon, one hotel, two blacksmith-shops, two cabinet 
http://www.rootsweb.com/~pacahs/conestog.htm

Cigars from this region of Pennsylvania becoming famous not long after Mason and Dixon's days...

Sam


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