Mia and I go way back to a Usenet board on AOL. Some of her brilliant material can be traced to things she wrote then. In particular, her reference to the "excitable and lying old lady" of history was part of a posting from those days. Then she phrased it, "Someone--I forget who-- once called history "that excitable and lying old lady." Naively believing that she sincerely forgot who said such a thing, and at the time not realizing how deeply literate she is, I researched the question and found it was de Maupassant, something I'm sure Mia knew all along.
Mia now includes de Maupassant's name in that particular piece. I like to think she does it to avoid confusing some of us whose gift for words isn't as abundant as hers. I have a proprietary feeling for the alteration (deserved or not, I really don't know), and I consider it my contribution to her impressive, creative and brilliant body of work.
thanx, beckett. I had forgotten. you are absolutely right...Another fact: The hostility to my posts was palpable -- it was the NYT forum. ;)