I think I’m beginning to recover from Daylight Savings Time-Lag. This morning I found myself 5 minutes ahead of schedule getting dressed and breakfasted, and I still don’t know what part of my morning routine I forgot to do (and yes, I had put on my pants, thank you very much).
Today is the day of the Great Snowstorm. Well, it’s great up where Roy Jacobsen lives (or so I understand), but down here it’s a storm without enthusiasm, an ambivalent storm where the snowflakes come down still uncertain whether they want to be snow or rain, and opt for rain once they hit the pavement. It’s cooling down now, so I suppose we’ll get some accumulation, but I’m not counting on a snow day off from work tomorrow.
I meant to do a second post last night, but the idea I’d been working on all day flew out of my mind entirely (blame Daylight Savings Time). Let’s try this again:
Over at The American Spectator, Daniel Oliver posted a column yesterday about a few common political quotations which weren’t (or can’t be proven to have been) said by the people who generally get credit for them. Apparently nobody said them.
Wait. Somebody must have said them.
It would appear that somebody came up with these extremely pithy and pertinent statements, and instead of taking credit for them themselves, attributed them to eminent historical personages.
In a way, you have to admire that kind of modesty. These original authors must have been fairly bright people (pace Oliver, I find the logic of the “A democracy is always temporary” quotation compelling). Yet they apparently thought, “This is so good, I have to give it to somebody greater than me, so it’ll get the respect it deserves.” In a way, they were saying, “I am nothing—the idea is everything.”
Unless, of course, they did take credit, but nobody noticed (because they weren’t famous), so somebody else who did quote them (consciously or through absentmindedness) just changed the attribution to somebody who “should have said it,” in order to score debating points.
In any case, thanks to the internet and Snopes, we may hope to see fewer misattributions in the future. (For your added enlightenment, I shall link to this excellent piece, not actually from Snopes, but from a site I like a lot called List Universe.)
Someday down the line, I expect to read an article about “Things Snopes Never Actually Debunked.”
Informational update: It’s snowing harder now.
You may quote me.
It’s quit snowing here now. But the temp dropped below zero so I haven’t ventured out with the yardstick to see how much we got. We got 4″ yesterday and were supposed to get 6-12 more today. It looks more like 6, if that much. Now the wind comes. Just west of here in Crookston, they’ve had 40 mph gusting to 48 since about noon. With a foot of new snow, that makes it a good night to throw another log on the fire, pop up a big bowl of popcorn and curl up by the fire with a good book.
Great. Yeah, ok, if you want to call it that.
We didn’t go anywhere yesterday. School, canceled. Stores and businesses, closed (except, I’m informed, for at least one liquor store; gotta keep the vital services open, I guess). Hospitals and clinics, closed (except for emergency rooms). I cleaned and organized in my home office, and the wife and kids watched movies and played Wii Sports.
Eldest daughter’s fiance works for his dad, Clyde (not his real name), who runs a towing service. Clyde told callers that they were only sending trucks out for real emergency calls, not for morons who got stuck because they were out joyriding when they had no business being on the streets. I’m told that at least one of the aforementioned morons called him an unpleasant person (using some Anglo-Saxon words); his reply was to laugh and say “I’m not endangering my drivers because you ignored the warnings to stay at home.” (Clyde has been in the towing business for years, and is used to people using Anglo-Saxon words with him.)
It took me 2 1/2 hours to clear the sidewalk and driveway this morning.
Oh, yeah. Great.
It’s great that it was you, not me. 🙂