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November 2011
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17 Comments

twtfltrd • Nov 7, 2011 @3:30 pm

“I have plumbing issues”

Sounds fun, my donation processed through paypal, thanks for all you do.
maha • Nov 7, 2011 @3:40 pm

Thanks for all. Yes, among other things, there’s a growing hole in a pipe under the bathroom sink. I really ought to get that fixed instead of emptying a bucket every time I wash my hands. I’m starting to feel poor. And state auto inspection is due this month, and I know there will be things to be fixed before I can get a new sticker. I don’t even want to think about how much that’s going to cost.
Bill Bush • Nov 7, 2011 @3:51 pm

A cup with Commenting Rule No. 7 would be a lovely item, I think. I could give my sister one. But I shouldn’t.
Anon... • Nov 7, 2011 @4:49 pm

I like “Making the World Safe for Liberalism” or “The Great Outpost of Active Anarchy…” I’d buy, They’d make great gifts to my very favorite Republicans -EVERYWHERE! Start with coffee mugs, then go to tee-shirts and shoot, some crazy conservatives put things on the underwear they sell.

You should copyright it too! Don’t forget that!
goatherd • Nov 7, 2011 @6:26 pm

Thanks to Bill Bush’s comment I went back and read the rules for commenting. When I hit the last one, about Hiram, er Ulysses S. Grant. I read your article on Grant, which I found very interesting, and as usual, it made me realize how little I know. I’ve got his autobiography, so I’ll be reading it and I’ll send you a donation for pointing me toward some very interesting history. (I’m such a cheapskate, I have to work myself up to it. So, it will have to be tomorrow.)
maha • Nov 7, 2011 @6:59 pm

Grant’s writing was admired by Gertude Stein. I doubt Grant would have known what to make of Gertrude Stein.
KMalone • Nov 7, 2011 @7:37 pm

Thank you for both blogs.
Doug Hughes • Nov 7, 2011 @9:03 pm

Barbara- you are undoubtedly one of the finest people I never met.

I will shoot you something Friday. Don’t be shy about shaking the tin cup. You provide a valuable service and we all respect the years of work you put in. We also know you aren’t trying to shakedown those who can’t afford it, but you could use some support from the working freeloaders like me who impose so selfishly on your hospitality and bandwidth.
Swami • Nov 7, 2011 @11:02 pm

I threw something into the plate..Not near what I should have but, some measure of appreciation for what you do,Maha
Doug Hughes • Nov 8, 2011 @8:15 am

Regarding the leak under the sink – have you considered Joe the Plumber?
twtfltrd • Nov 8, 2011 @12:12 pm

what should be on them? Any ideas?

“The Mahablog filtering Twits since 2002″
cristina • Nov 8, 2011 @12:15 pm

Thanks, Maha!
I read you all the time. I dropped some money off. I hope it helps.
Ian • Nov 8, 2011 @1:55 pm

OK, after going back and reading the commenting policy, I like some variation on “I am not your monkey.” But, you know, with something political like I know, not very helpful, best I could do.

I’d buy a mug tho.

-Ian
Michael Colon Rose • Nov 13, 2011 @3:16 am

For the information of those commenting on General Grant and his writing, did you know that his Memoirs (2 Vols) were ghost written by no other than Mark Twain?
No wonder Gertrude Stein and many other eminent writers admired them.
maha • Nov 13, 2011 @8:21 am

For the information of those commenting on General Grant and his writing, did you know that his Memoirs (2 Vols) were ghost written by no other than Mark Twain?

NOT TRUE NOT TRUE NOT TRUE NOT TRUE NOT TRUE.

That’s an old rumor that’s been debunked a million times. The Library of Congress has the original manuscript, in the General’s hand. No serious historian who has looked into this doubts that Grant wrote the book. As many have pointed out, you can read the General’s letters going back to his days as a West Point student, and his orders written on the battlefield, and see the same straightforward prose. Bruce Catton once wrote that you can sit and read the dispatches of all the generals, preserved in the Library of Congress in chronological order, and know which ones are Grant’s without looking at the signature.
c u n d gulag • Nov 13, 2011 @8:53 am

Wow, I was under the same impression my whole life!
I though at the very least, because Grant was at death’s door, Twain was brought in, if not to finish writing the memoir, then to edit it.

It turns out, he didn’t write or edit it – he published it!
http://www.twainquotes.com/interviews/GrantBook.html
Ooops!
Now I wonder where I got that impression from? Some Twain bio I read? Maybe a movie or play about Twain?
maha • Nov 13, 2011 @3:33 pm

It turns out, he didn’t write or edit it – he published it!

Right. Grant and Twain met about 1880 or so and became good friends. They had similar backgrounds — both small town Midwestern boys from working class families who had become famous, and had to struggle a bit to fit into the wealthy upper class. I get the impression they were very comfortable with each other. Twain admired Grant enormously and valued his friendship.

In 1884 Grant was hit with a terrible double whammy. A man in business with his son turned out to be one of the original Ponzi-scheme operators, and he disappeared one day with all of Grant’s money, leaving him close to penniless. Presidents didn’t get pensions in those days. Then, a few weeks later, Grant was found to have throat cancer and was told he had only months to live.

I’m not sure whose idea it was to write memoirs, but Grant settled on publishing his memoirs as a way of leaving his wife Julia a little money to live on. Twain got wind of this and showed up and said publishers are swindlers; they’ll keep most of the profits. I’ll publish your book. I don’t remember what the royalty was off the top of my head, but it was several times more than what Grant would have gotten from a standard publisher, then or now.

So Grant got to work writing his memoirs. The early chapters are full of anecdotes and details. That part of the manuscript is in his hand. I believe some of the middle chapters were dictated to someone else. Then closer to the end he had lost his voice, so he went back to doing his own writing. At that point the handwriting is more erratic and the narrative more just-the-facts, fewer anecdotes. They had him on cocaine, I think, to kill the pain. The final bit of the second volume was edited by one of Grant’s sons, possibly because it wasn’t entirely coherent. Grant died in July 1885, less than a week after he had seen the last of the proof. The book was a major financial success, and the profits kept Julia comfortable to the end of her days.

All of Grant’s and Twain’s major biographers — and there are a mess of them, by now — have checked this out carefully and confirmed that Grant did, indeed, write the memoirs, not Twain.