Hello everyone,

I'd have responded to professor Bush's excellent comments earlier but my
modem
died and it took a while for me to get an iMac (very elegant—SLC would
approve!).

He is quite right that very little of Twain's important work was actually
done in Hartford; what was at work in that story, which originally appeared
on the front page of the Hartford Courant, was a sort of coat-tailing, if
you
will, on the news the Patriots football team are relocating there in a few
years.

Hartford is a city in difficult straits these days, despite some very worthy
assets--not least among them the splendid job John Boyer has done in getting
the Twain house on the map. When I saw that story, it seemed to me a clear
case of (a) completely misunderstanding how and why Burns does what he does;
(b) a broad jump onto the still rather creaky Hartford boosterism bandwagon;
and (c) yet another attempt to use Twain as a magnet for tourism. The house
is
a truly lovely thing; I regard it, as a writer, as a secular church of
sorts,
even though I too know Clemens led a peripatetic life even into old age--and
did write probably more in Elmira than he ever did in Hartford (Justin
Kaplan's MR. CLEMENS AND MARK TWAIN has some interesting observations on
this).
I have no doubt Burns will be his usual meticulous self on these and other
pertinent matters, and will probably spend more time on those areas of
Clemens' life that aren't as well known--particularly his time out West.

As for the government funding, the vast majority of money Burns gets for his
projects is private rather than public, and what money he does earn for
himself is in no way connected to that. It comes mostly from percentages of
video sales, sales of companion books and speaking engagements.

I hope this throws some more light on the matter.

Kathy O'Connell
Portland, Conn.