M&D - Chapter 10, (a few annotations)

[Becky Lindroos]

Continuing in the chapter -  (chapters are approximate because I’m reading on a Kindle app)

Following the sermon the text gives us Cherrycoke reporting on the activities of the family as they retell and play out the story of the 1761 Transit of Venus.   

p. 94: 
“Orrery” 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orrery

Jules Verne’s:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlgyXY3vPd4

At Christies’s for only $37,098 an 18th century orrery/tellurian: 
http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot/a-boxed-american-orrery-and-tellurian-set-5480154-details.aspx

“Tenebrae” - in Latin means shadow or darkness) - reminds Ethelmer of his darkness in the innocent light of her youth.  (Not sure what the illuminated nostril suggests.) 

** Are these two kissing cousins?  Or was there some kind of abuse involved at some past point? 

********
 p. 95 - 
“...having travers'd the Sea"
Traverse is the family name in ATD and Vineland. Metaphor, fer sure. For more, see ch. 3, p. 14

 "Nessel” - is fictional but the discovery of a new planet is real - Uranus - 1781. 
“Georgian”  -   Herschel first reported the discovery of Uranus (“Georgian”)  on April 26, 1781, initially believing it a comet.[12]

**  and from Otto’s page at http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/md/md10.htm
"This reminds me of another “new planet” in another novel by Pynchon, “(…) The new planet Pluto (…).” (GR 415)

Nessel (fictional?) provided Uranus for the Orreries to make sure they were updated.  And for extra realism he pasted map pieces on it - Mappemondes - (a two -hemisphere map),  but that won’t really work because flat maps don’t conform to their three-dimensional realities. 
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mappemonde#mediaviewer/File:Delisle_-_Mappe-Monde.png


Solar Parallax: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax

Any parallax is a triangle - which by definition has 3 sides - a Jesuit, a Corsican and a Chinaman - fwiw and whatever that’s about - etc.  

Bek-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l