AtDTdA (9): 243

[Jasper]

243 The Chums in Venice

The Chums Return
When were the Chums last seen in AtD? As far back as page 142?

A brief reminder of who the Chums are and what we know about them so far:

Randolph St. Cosmo, commander.

Lindsay Noseworth, Master-at-Arms and second in command, hates slackers 
and slang.

Miles Blundell, handyman, awkward, with an "ample waist" (11), also 
ship's Commissary, whose cooking ranges from pure cordon bleu to 
inedible. (110)

Darby Suckling, the baby of the crew, served "as both factotum and 
mascotte". By page 141 or so, has transformed from spirited youth to 
bomb obsessed, (111) sneering, snide cynic. Because of hitting adolescence?

Chick Counterfly, the newest member of the crew, picked up by the Chums 
in the South while on the run from the KKK. At last appearance, had 
become Dr. Counterfly, knowledgeable Science Officer aboard the 
Inconvenience (141). Reliably humorous. (110). Chick's style of speech 
here seems intermediate between the country boy of the early chapters 
and the sophisticated Dr Counterfly who met the Vormance expedition. Are 
we also at an intermediate point on the timeline?
*wiki*

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For an overview of the plot, I direct you to The Chumps of Choice blog:
*http://tinyurl.com/2nrc4o [blogspot.com]*

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Venice!  (James Bond style exterior shot, John Barry score.)  City on 
the cusp between East and West, Earth and Sea, Fact and Fiction!  And so on!

Some info on Venice:
http://tinyurl.com/2janbb [google maps]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venice

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Page 243:
Murano
An archipelago in the Venetian Lagoon a mile north of Venice, famous for 
glass-making, particularly lampworking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murano
http://tinyurl.com/2lab3t [google maps]

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/fumaioli/
Italian: funnels; fumaioli are large wide-topped chimneys, common to the 
rooftops of Venice.
*wiki*

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the local pilot
Just as many harbors require(d) incoming ships to take aboard a local 
official to guide the vessel to dock, avoiding known hazards e.g., or 
enforcing a schedule, apparently air-ships require the same.

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/certo/
sure, certain.
*wiki*

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Piacenza
A city in northern Italy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piacenza

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/Seccatura/
Italian: Inconvenience
*wiki*

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"the island city of Venice below them, looking like some map of itself"
The map vs the territory.  Uh-oh!  People seem to love this stuff.  
Somebody quote Borges, quick!  Consider the discussion of geography on 
the preceding pages -- the map too emerges from geography.  But in this 
scene, the geography of Venice emerges from the map.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map-territory_relation

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sepia
a rich brown pigment derived from the ink sac of the common cuttlefish, 
and it is also the name of a dark brown-grey color.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sepia_(color)

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"closer at hand this would resolve into a million roof-tiles of a 
somewhat more optimistic red"
A redshift.

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Like some great rusted amulet
http://tinyurl.com/3boze6 [google maps]
By zooming in on the above map you can simulate the Chums' arrival: 
sepia map to red roof-tiles.  (It's better in Google Earth.)

Still images:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/Images/venice_iko_2001092_lrg.jpg
http://www.esa.int/images/4A01_Venice-1_2004-11-20_L.jpg

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a sort of torpid rapture
See also rapture on p. 246

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The Italian number that looks like a zero[...]
Miles' chant is a litany of linguistic mirrors not unlike those we've 
been encountering so far in this chapter (Italian words mirroring the 
English ones previously in use).  But also,  numbers are a point of 
universality between the mirrors of two languages, or among all languages.