Difference between revisions of "ATD 1000-1017"

Revision as of 10:15, 24 May 2007

Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.

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Page 1000

L.A.H.D.I.D.A
la-di-da: pretentious

Their foolish music is about to stop
Vibe using the same image as Professor Sleepcoat, but from a different angle.

Page 1001

perfect ten-acre mesh
Mutilation of the land by imposition of straight lines on it.

telpherage
Cars suspended from overhead cables, or the system of cables.

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Trinidad
Trinidad is the Spanish word for Trinity.

Page 1004

Toltec Hotel
Now dilapidated but perhaps being renovated.

Ludlow
Wikipedia

Mother Jones
Mary Harris Jones (1830-1930), labor organizer and advocate. A speech she made in Trinidad climaxed with: "Rise up and strike . . . strike until the last one of you drop into your graves. We are going to stand together and never surrender. Boys, always remember you ain't got a damn thing if you ain't got a union!"

the C.F.I. office
Colorado Fuel and Iron; The Colorado Fuel and Iron (CF&I) steel mill on the south side of town was the main industry in Pueblo, Colorado for most of its history. Over the course of its history, the company has had several major labor disputes. The most famous of these culminated in the famous Ludlow Massacre at one of its coal mines in 1914; Wikipedia entry

Page 1005

...a halo or glory out of which anything might emerge...
A glory is an optical phenomenon produced by light backscattered (a combination of diffraction, reflection and refraction) towards its source by a cloud of uniformly-sized water droplets. A glory has multiple colored rings. The angular size is much smaller than a rainbow, about 5° to 20°, depending on the size of the droplets, seen in the direction opposite the sun [1]. The description here recalls the "somehow blazingly illuminated spaces" in Penhallow's paintings (P. 897). (Glories are often seen in association with a Brocken spectre, the apparently enormously magnified shadow of an observer cast, when the Sun is low, upon the upper surfaces of clouds that are below the mountain upon which he stands; In GR Tyrone Slothrop experiences this phenomenon atop Mt. Greylock in Massachusetts).

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Page 1007

Sister Clementia
There is a Sister Clementia in the play "Sancta Susanna" written by August Stramm.

John Chase . . . General
Commanding state militia in the coal war; here is a summary of atrocities committed by his force.

Page 1008

an inestimable edge both tactical and psychological
The military, acting on behalf of the plutocrats, use a less-advanced form of the Interdikt weapon: light.

darkness . . . compassion
Respite from the attack.

Page 1009

vagging
Bogus arrest for vagrancy, a strikebreaking tactic.

the Baldwin-Felts "detective" agency
Run from Bluefield, West Virginia, the company acted outside the law on behalf of industrialists until federal law banned the use of such private armies. Significantly, its records were destroyed when the agency went out of business in 1930.

Page 1010

With a rifle it's too personal
As the 20th century progressed, first the machine gun, as described here, later high-altitude bombing, later nuclear-tipped missiles, provided increasingly impersonal, and therefore easier, means of killing, one factor adduced to explain the increasing toll of violence. Perhaps another paramorphic mirror image of the early 21st century, which has seen the advent of the suicide attacker and purposeful attacks on unengaged noncombatants.

Page 1011

Pueblo
City along the Front Range south of Denver and Colorado Springs, where the Arkansas River exits its canyon, the first large city north of the coalfields and site of the huge CF&I steel plant. Pronounced "Pee-eb-low" by locals.

the 29 Luglio Saloon
Italian: July 29th.

Bresci . . . King Umberto . . .
Cf page 739: Bresci.

. . . fallen somehow off a supply wagon . . .
i.e. stolen.

Page 1012

Balkan folks . . . their Easter or somethin
In 1914, Orthodox Easter fell on April 19 in the western calendar. Chase's final attack began the morning of the 20th. Paramorphically speaking, April 19-20th is a busy day for fire and explosion. The Branch Davidian Compound fire, the Oklahoma City bombing, Adolph Hitler's birthday, the start of the firey sign of Aries, and the Ludlow Massacre all happened on these two days (different years of course).

Page 1013

mercenaries called themselves "the American Legion"
Not that American Legion. These soldiers of fortune enlisted under Pancho Villa. This web site has numerous pictures of them.

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Ku Klux Klan
Colorado was a stronghold of the KKK into the 1920s. As late as the 1980s there was sporadic Klan activity around Colorado Springs, then attributed to groups at nearby Fort Carson. But the area was also a site of the militant right wing Posse Commitatus movement.

Brice
Possibly named after Saint Brice.

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Page 1017

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