THE TROUBLE BEGINS AT 5:30!
THE MARK TWAIN HOUSE & MUSEUM
THE SECOND WEDNESDAY OF THE MONTH, 5:00 P.M. RECEPTION,
5:30 P.M. TALK
FEBRUARY-JULY, 2014
FREE!
"The Trouble Begins at 5:30" is The Mark Twain House & Museum’s free, popular after-work lecture series on Twainian subjects, held on the second Wednesday of every month other than January and August. A reception at 5:00 p.m. is followed by the talk at 5:30 p.m. The series has offered good food and drink, good conversation and free, intriguing, Twainian after-work lectures since 2010. It takes its name from Twain's own lecture posters, which were headed "The Trouble Begins at Eight."
The series receives generous funding from First Niagara Foundation, Inc. It is also supported by Connecticut Explored magazine, Hot Tomato's restaurant and The Friends of the Mark Twain House & Museum. ASL signing for the lectures is provided courtesy of students of the Interpreting 1 Class in Northwestern Connecticut Community College's Interpreter Preparation Program.
Wednesday, February 12 – “Mark Twain and Scrapbooking” with Ellen Gruber Garvey. Garvey is the author of Writing with Scissors: American Scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance (Oxford University Press). Men and women in Twain’s era grappled with information overload by making scrapbooks, the ancestors of Google and blogging. Garvey, an English professor at the New Jersey City University, tells how the proliferating cheap press touched the lives of activists, mourning parents, and all who yearned for a place in history, and how scrapbooks underlie our present-day ways of thinking about information, news, and what we do with it. Twain, a lifelong creator and keeper of scrapbooks, took them with him everywhere and filled them with souvenirs, pictures, and articles about his books and performances. Tiring of messy glue, he came up with the idea of printing thin strips of the stuff to make the job neat and easy. In 1873 he patented
the “self-pasting” Mark Twain’s Scrap Book, and by 1901, at least 57 different types were available. It was his only invention – other than his literary inventions, of course – that made money. Garvey is the author of the award-winning The Adman in the Parlor: Magazines and the Gendering of Consumer Culture. A book signing will follow the event.
Wednesday, March 12 – “Mark Twain and the Philippine-American War” with Susan K. Harris. Late in life, Twain railed against the American suppression of the Philippine independence movement, as portrayed in The Mark Twain House & Museum’s recent exhibition “An Inglorious Peace or a Dishonorable War: Mark Twain’s Views on Conflict.” Harris, the Joyce and Elizabeth Hall Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture at The University of Kansas and the author of God's Arbiters: Americans and the Philippines, 1898 - 1902 (Oxford University Press), will speak on this little-known conflict and American views of it. War advocates believed that the United States was divinely appointed to bring democracy and white Protestant culture to the rest of the world -- that they were "God's arbiters." Central to the story is Mark Twain, an influential anti-imperialist partisan who was, for many, the embodiment of America. He wrote, “I am
opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.” A book signing will follow the event.
Wednesday, April 9 –"Mrs. Mark Twain" With Martin Naparsteck. Naparstack is the co-author, with Michele Cardulla, of Mrs. Mark Twain: The Life of Olivia Langdon Clemens, 1845-1904, the first biography of Twain’s beloved “Livy.” Olivia Langdon was born into what became the richest family in Elmira, New York, in 1845, and was one of the first females in the country to attend a college. But her life became extraordinary when she married Mark Twain in 1870. She befriended the literary elite of America and Europe, traveled around the globe, and dined with royalty. Tragedy also plagued the family: Her father died six months after her marriage, her son died at 18 months, and a beloved daughter died at 24. She was frail, and spent years at a time bedridden. Her husband's bad investments drove the family into bankruptcy. Through all this, she and Samuel L. Clemens maintained a close, loving relationship. A book signing will follow the event.
Wednesday, May 14 – “Mark Twain and Isabella Beecher Hooker” with Susan Campbell. In her new biography, Tempest-Tossed: The Spirit of Isabella Beecher Hooker (Wesleyan University Press), Campbell provides a fresh and personal view of Hooker, a fighter for women’s rights, a powerful personality, and a spiritualist. She was also a neighbor of Mark Twain, and an important Clemens frenemy (and sometime landlady). Learn why Olivia Clemens forbade this energetic and dedicated woman, sister to Harriet Beecher Stowe, from entering the house – and why years later Samuel Clemens was honored to be one of her pallbearers. Campbell has been a longtime Hartford Courant columnist, an award-winning memoirist (Dating Jesus), a blogger on issues of belief (www.hot-dogma.com) and a popular non-fiction instructor in the Writing at the Mark Twain House program. A book signing will follow the event.
Wednesday, June 11 – “Mark Twain and George Griffin” with Bonnyeclaire Smith-Stewart. Stewart, an independent scholar from Atlanta working on a groundbreaking biography of Griffin, the Clemens family’s butler and friend, in conversation with The Mark Twain House & Museum’s Steve Courtney on her research into this engaging, accomplished and mysterious man. Born into slavery, he lived to be escorted into Clemens’ New York publisher’s office by the author in a then-shocking display of black-white camaraderie. Along the way, he delved into politics, bookmaking and religion in Hartford and provided endless entertainment and companionship for the Clemens daughters. Presented in association with At Your Service, an important new exhibition on the Clemens servants and their lives, opening March 13.
Wednesday, July 9 – “Mark Twain and Katy Leary” with Virginia Wolf. Wolf is an actress, radio show host and founder of Herstory Theater, a troupe devoted to the stage presentation of women’s history (www.herstory.com).She presents the extraordinary personality of Katy Leary, born into an Irish-American family in Elmira, New York, who served as the Clemenses’ maid from 1880 until Samuel Clemens’ death in 1910. Leary dictated a memoir, A Lifetime with Mark Twain, published in 1925. Wolf, long a historical interpreter at The Mark Twain House & Museum, has made a special study of the irrepressible and expressive Leary, and will present her story in character. Clemens called Leary a “potent influence all over the premises” and “a pole star for steadiness” with “a good store of that veiled & shimmering & half-surreptitious humor which is the best feature of the ‘American’ brand – or any other brand, for that matter.” Presented in
association with At Your Service, an important new exhibition on the Clemens servants and their lives, opening March 13.
~~~~~
For additional information please visit:
www.marktwainhouse.org/
<end>
|
