M & D Deep Duck: arc of years

[Mark Kohut]

After completing the boundary survey in America, Mason returned to
Greenwich where he continued work on Mayer's Lunar Tables. He also
contributed to the Nautical Almanac, working under Nevil Maskelyne,
Astronomer Royal.

On September 27, 1786, Mason wrote to Benjamin Franklin claiming to
have returned to Philadelphia with his wife, seven sons, and one
daughter. Mason was very ill and confined to his bed. Mason also
shared with Franklin the design for an astronomical project. Mason
provided no explanation for his return to America, and nothing more is
known of Mason's proposed project.[3]

Mason died on October 26, 1786, in Philadelphia.



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Ewers <dsewers at comcast.net>
Date: Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 1:16 PM
Subject: Re: M & D Deep Duck: arc of years
To: Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>


So Mason returned to Greenwich after the line was 'completed', but
returned to Philadelphia just before dying (to do something?).  Are
any explanations out there, or extant "plan of the Design", perchance?

http://www.mdlpp.org/pdf/library/Benjamin%20Franklin%20correspondence%20from%20Mason%20and%20re%20his%20death.pdf

On Jan 8, 2015, at 9:34 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:

> So, I've been led to see it this way now(in my Reading---everyone
> else's milage seems better).  Story starts in 1786
>
> 1) for Laura's reasons mainly. Ending of British colonial rule and
> becoming of these free, independent new country, the
> United States. All the idealism is set to go on paper.
>
> 2) Mason has died. Rev Cherrycoke came to pay his Respects, although
> he missed the Funeral, and cannot
> easily pull away from (the Ghost of) Mason, visiting the grave every day.
>
> Hence, he starts his storytelling.
>
> Enough meaning to begin.
>
> On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 9:50 AM, Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com> wrote:
>> Too many definitional problems.
>>
>> Fwiw,  I think the "real" "America" "started" forming its "patterns"  in about 1619 with the first serious permanent (lasting) colonists, including women and agricultural slaves,  in Jamestown and the next year in Plymouth.  Virginia got women that year, as well as their first slaves and the House of Burgesses. The Plymouth Colony had Indian issues, the "frontier,"  mercantilism, Separatism, the work ethic, etc.  These folks were not necessarily interested in making the bucks and returning "home."   Of course "Englishness" (language, political structures,  customs and holidays, etc.)  still prevailed for quite a long time,  but  "Americanism"  grew in little spurts and great leaps, varying by location,  and with some actual pauses, from that time.  There is no "real" boundary - no yes/no line.  To look for one is to once again try to impose a grid on a holistic essence - a straight line on a globe or on the spheres.
>>
>> Bekah
>>
>>> On Jan 8, 2015, at 2:47 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> David Ewers writes:
>>>
>>> What could Mason help Cherrycoke with?  That passage (with the Rev
>>> feeling like the haunting shade...) suggests the interface
>>> (mirror/line...) between worlds-type-thing, right?  Again, with Mason
>>> having "arriv'd at Death"... it's got me wondering about departures
>>> and arrivals, and what's in between.  An arc?  In the 1760s, could the
>>> Colonies be said to have departed British-ness but not yet arrived at
>>> America-ness?
>>>
>>> Best I've heard on why the story does not start as M & D ended their
>>> work. Off the top, it could have. All of their part could have been
>>> more or less---but w Pynchon I think "less", trying to understand
>>> why--the same on the page.
>>>
>>> So, these twenty years are another boundary (period)? THIS is when the
>>> 'real' America formed its patterns, always undertowing the coming
>>> ideals? Although we learn "nothing' about those years, the omniscient
>>> narrator gives us all the detail of the way the world IS behind 9and
>>> after) M & D, so to speak?
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l