So I know this blog is not really about property, but I guess it can somehow be related. I was thinking about the question we had in class ask to who made the comment " if you don't like the weather in New England, just wait a minute" and as to actually made the comment. So I guess it was just interesting to me the importance one can often place on who a specific saying belongs to. I made in a case such as this the meaning remains the same whether or not Twain said it or my next door neighbor, however it is that in some cases that although the meaning still remains the significance is altered due to the person it belongs to?
So I found a site that stated that what Mark Twain actually said was: "I reverently believe that the Maker who made us all makes everything in New England but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerk's factory who experiment and learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere if they don't get it.
There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration -- and regret. The weather is always doing something there; always attending strictly to business; always getting up new designs and trying them on the people to see how they will go..."
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Good find. In this case, of course, the only reason it matters who said it is because no-one but Twain could have made the point quite that pithily. Ownership of words and ideas is far too often a mechanical matter, whereas the point should be whether a particular thought or turn of phrase is actually worth owning!
ReplyDeleteit is a fact that our society places much emphasis on where information came from. people who want others to think of them as scholars blindly discredit the internet for information because of, well, more than a few bad apples. they are justified in being skeptical, but should seriously consider what is being said. twain's quote may be discredited if he had never been to new england, though it would not impact the accuracy/ consistency of the quote with the weather of new england. i think the point is to say something so outlandish that you articulate something that brings the receiver of your information out of their experience without missing the point to the point that nobody could confuse the source of the information.
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