Mark Twain and ‘clothes make the man’ quote, at Mark Twain Birthplace State Historic Site, Florida, Missouri

As I work frantically on organizing my thoughts and assembling my notes for my three final semester papers (all due in a little over a week, gulp!), I can chuckle amid the stress when I think of Mark Twain’s quote ‘I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.’ In fact, he had a rib-tickling, snarky, or sarcastic witticism for just about any occasion.

But there’s so much more to Twain than his one-liners and his incredible body of work. This summer, on my way to Scotland to continue my university education, I crossed (and crisscrossed) the United States between Oakland and Chicago. My journey included following in the footsteps of the young Samuel Clemens, as he was named upon his birth on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri. I have lots of notes and photos but alas, I haven’t been able to write up those parts of my journey in time to commemorate his birthday today. But I’ve found a way to work him into my studies in intellectual history here at the University of Edinburgh (I delivered a presentation on his work on Joan of Arc for one of my classes) and have gotten some additional reading done. I’ll turn the notes for that oral presentation into a written piece for Ordinary Philosophy as well as write up my travel pieces as soon as I can after turning in my papers, please stay tuned!

In this meantime, here’s the link to a bio of Twain by Thomas V. Quirk for Encyclopædia Britannica (my favorite online general encyclopedia) and to the webpage for Ken Burn’s excellent Twain documentary. And a shirtless (or shall I say, birthday suit?) photo of Twain captioned with a quote which I came across on one of my stops following his early life. Enjoy!

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