Volume 2–3.pdf

16
Mason & Dixon
Charles Mason & Jeremiah Dixon
were neither southerners nor northerners.
In fact they weren't even
Americans. What is more,when they
laid out the famous Mason & Dixon's
Line there wasn't even a United
States of America. Mason & Dixon
were English astronomers brought
in to survey a boundary dispute
between Pennsylvania and Maryland,
a surveying job that took place
sometime from 1763 to 1767, a full
hundred years before the blue-grey
affair came off. Their line later
became the dividing boundary between
slave and free states. The two
astronomers with bigger fish to fry,
after all the universe has it over
Maryland (even before Agnew) for
things to look at, took off for jolly
old Britain. Our research didn't show
how much Mason & Dixon received
for the job. That may have been
grounds for another dispute, but not
very likely. Mason & Dixon were the
sort of Englishmen who had their
eyes on the stars.
Orpheus & Eurydice
Like Adam & Eve this is another of
those Catch-22 romances. Eurydice,
bitten by snake (here come the
serpent) dies and is sent off to the
underworld. Orpheus her husband,
son of the king, one of the muses,
and no mean lyre player took it very
hard. Off goes Orpheus to see Hades
and to ask him if Eurydice is only
down there on loan. Hades (Pluto),a
big rock lyre aficionado,thinks
Orpheus as a lyre player is far out.
"O.K:; he said, "You can have Eurydice
back only (here's the Catch-22)
don't look at her until you get back
to earth:' Impatient Orpheus couldn't
keep passions in check and copped
a look. Voila. Eurydice is back again
in Hades' harem. Orpheus didn't
fare so well either. Completely griefstricken,he
became the local drag.
So much so that the Bacchants, a
rather nasty female bunch,ripped
him apart for purportedly offending
Dionysus. They made their
groupies mean in those days.
The story of Orpheus is a clear
case where it would have been better
for him to have leaped
before he looked.