From CoastToCoastam - 19 sept - On this day in 1928, Mickey Mouse debuts as Steamboat Willie at the Colony Theater in New York City.

3 TWAIN HISTORY QUERIES:
 
1: Do any of you Nor-Easterners know if Mickey's show was at all influenced by Twain's Mississippi writings? Is the script/score available - Applause Books or elsewhere?

2: Two Sierra Nevada frog species have made the endangered list -- Red-legged (foothills and flats out to the Pacific), and now Yellow-legged (High Sierras, California and Nevada). Both are down to under 10% of their population at the time of the Gold/Silver Rush days. Which of them was celebrated in the famed tale? Which are still jumping in Angel's Camp?

3: To now, all forms of life have been said to be carbon-based, but NASA's Boston (!) Lab discovered that a brand new life brand of microbes live deep in MONO LAKE, CA, and based on Arsenic and Alkali (reported previously in story from North California Murdoch papers). First news was sent to the Forum ("Arsenic and Old Lake" article from San Jose). Has anyone read anything further? Does NASA-Boston have a newsletter? Would this have been of interest to Twain, as a sequel to the "3,000 Years Among the Microbes" story that I love? The Arsenic v. Carbon Microbe Wars could be good sci-fi, no? Speculation among the SETI folks in California and beyond now includes possible Arsenic-based Intelligent Life!

RR - Dock of SF Bay/ Jack London Square, Oakland