The Adventures of Mark Twain

I thought I'd throw this little gem in, it is from a 1985 stop-motion film called The Adventures of Mark Twain. And this is where is goes psycho.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak3z2Pm7Iwg


WTF?

A description of the movie, that you apparently need serious Schedule 1 drugs to watch, can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Mark_Twain_%281985_film%29

(they had the movie for sale in the museum shop. I am soooo buying it.)

If You're Not Careful, You Just Might Learn Something

So today was awesome in a completely historical way. We finally did it - walked a 1/4 of a block and went to see the Samuel Clemens House. I have finally discovered my deep connection to this neighborhood. The house itself is amazing, like Victorian era on crack. What was truly striking was Clemens' deep and abiding love for his children, and his complete devotion to the cause of non-prejudice. One of his quotes is "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness."

Mark Twain, you know who you are.
I also learned a lot about my neighborhood. This area used to be called Nook Farm, and all the famous artists settled here. One thing I did NOT know was that (obviously many years later) Katharine Hepburn grew up in this neighborhood (Hepburn's mother was a co-founder of Planned Parenthood).

http://www.angelfire.com/journal/difleys/nookfarm.htm

But the coolest thing is that Mark Twain's publisher used to live in Nook Farm on the very ground I live on now. My address is his address. His house is long gone but here we are, occupying the same space as the man who published Tom Sawyer and The Gilded Age. Every great person has a cast of people around him, who will never be known, and maybe it's cool in a weird way that here I am sharing the space of a ghost who made Mark Twain possible. I find the thought numinous.

So I bought a book that everyone should buy their girls, How Nancy Jackson Married Kate Wilson and Other Tales of Rebellious Girls and Daring Young Women http://tinyurl.com/33mp5k

Clemens also hated sexism, and taught his girls how to be strong, smart, brave and proud. That is some shit I can get behind.

As a weird coda to this, one of my best friend's grandfather was a critic. He was an original reviewer of The Mark Twain Society's edition (obviously containing a lot of educational material) of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. He said that the "Yankee [is] a jewel. Nobody will be able to read, much less teach it, without this book."


I cannot believe that, today, I stood in the room that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was written in. Awesome.

(Side note: the shop for the house has some kick ass anti-censorship material. Good for them. And us.)

From Huck Finn to the Half Door

Hartford is one of those places people drive through on the way to somewhere else. Specifically, between New York and Boston. I have experience living in a place like this, I grew up in a town on the confluence of Interstates 57 & 64, as well as literally dozens of smaller highways and biways. My hometown had more hotel rooms than residents. It also shares another trait I personally find endearing, and that is a general unassumedness (word?) of the populace.

So, my goal and mission is to point out how cool I think this little city is, so you will think it is cool as well. Since I'm brand new to town, you will be learning along with me.

First, a little about my immediate neighborhood, which we will likely be spending a lot of time in. I'm in an ancient elevator building (the scariest elevator you will likely ever meet) in the Historic West End, or more specifically on the end of the Historic West End. I'm right next door to the Harriet Beecher Stowe house and two doors down from Hartford's Number one Tourist Attraction, The Mark Twain House. Just up the road a bit is Hartford's best pub (the readers have voted), The Half Door. I spend a disproportionate amount of time there and have already met all manner of the wonderful and weird local denizens.

So let's do this thing!