Diuerse alarums

[Mattias Hallin]

DON:

    As always: No sweat! I'll try 'n' git aholt offen one them thar
"AFTONBLADET" noospapers fer ya!!! Yassuh! Also - I live quite close to Stefan
Dios (13 minutes by local train, and a 10 minute walk) so - I'll call him right
now (it's 1 pm, so he should just be out of bed by now), and give him your
message... and now it's... DONE! And, no he hadn't just gotten outta bed - he
was still in it...

Anyway, Stefan, too, says "thanks"; for your reply, and for that you didn't get
too mad at him for fault-finding, again. He also asks me to tell you that it's
perfectly OK for him if you wanna keep in touch through me (nor is that any
problem by me...). And of course he did a bit of gleeful (but unmalicious) 
crowing, on account of him being in the right, 'specially 'bout Marco Polo.

About Fanny Coot, well I don't think Byron's argument is valid IN ITSELF, but
only if he can give a good reason why Gus can't belong to the same GENEALOCIGAL
generation as Quackmore - I mean, he doesn't have to be Quackmore's AGE just
because he's his (first) cousin! If THAT is the reason, it's easilly fixed by
juggling a few birthdates: Fanny'd have to be Grandma's baby-sister, perhaps
born some 20 years later than Grandma, and then she marries a bit late, maybe
in her late twenties or early thirties, which ought to make Gus about 10 to 15
years younger than Quackmore, and 5 to 10 years older than Donald, which is how
I percieve him. In this way, all problems are solved much more neatly; and as
you've said yourself: why make things more complex than they have to be? I
don't know, maybe Byron had some better argument than just "I don't think that
feels right"??? And, yes, I know indeed that you've put a lot of thought and
effort into every little detail of this tree; but just as you feel that Matilda
is married to Ludwig van Drake (and I have NO problem with that, but rather the
opposite, actually), I guess MY version in MY personal view of Ducks and
Duckdom will have Fanny as Grandma's sister, unless Byron really has a more
convincing argument for HIS view.

By the by, what happened to... I seem to recall, that in early versions of the
tree, HD&L's FATHER was the brother of Daisy?! Which would, f'rinstance,
explain why HD&L occasionally refer to Daisy as "aunt" (they do that, don't
they? I'm not 100 % sure). I rather liked that'n - it seemed as good a choice
of father for them as anything - or maybe you're planning a story about their
parentage? and that is why there is just a "?" in the spot where their father
should be??? Also, if this was really so, there'd be no real need for that
"Friends of the Family" panel; instead Daisy could be included in the tree with
her siblings (there should be at least one more sibling - the parent, possibly
the mother? of AM&J, who'd then be first cousins of HD&L, but no bloodrelation
to Donald or the other Ducks, Coots and McDucks).

DAVID (and Don and Harry):

                          About Hometown/Mouseville/Mouseton, that article I
wrote in NAFS(k)uriren outlined the same development that you explained, David,
but there are a few more angles to it, as regards whether they're ONE town or
several. My argument in NK was that Hometown without doubt is on the EAST
coast, and for several reasons: it's on the seaboard, and you travel WESTWARDS
from there to get to the western USA, while you travel EASTWARDS to get home
again, and they say about Mickey that "A little feller f'um back east licked"
some Wild West outlaw (the Bat Bandit, or possibly Wolf Barker - I don't
recall). So I think it's pretty clear that Gottfredson in his earlier stories
were pretty clear that he thought of Mickey as living on the East Coast. Now,
there are two major possiblities to develop this. Either we want to think of
Mickey living in the same town his entire life, i.e. the town changes it's name
from Hometown to Homeville to Mouseville (perhaps in honor of it's by then most
famous denizen?) to Mouseton (if not for copyright reasons, perhaps because the
town outgrew "-ville", or wanted to connect it's name to the original "-town"
of Hometown?). If this is so, then Mickey still lives on the East Coast.
Otherwise, we have to accept that Mickey left hometown sometime in the late
thirties, and moved west to what then was Mouseville, which in turn became
Mouseton for some reason. I dunno - maybe there are further explanations yet?

Any ol' how - have a nice weekend and Gut Shabbes and whatever, y'all

Bye f'r know

Mattias