The Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum has risen from #19 to #15 today on the Pepsi Grant Contest. Please spend a minute to give them your vote today. They are in the running for the $250 Pepsi Grant. You can vote once every day from now till December 31st.
A Nigerian is also in the contest to become the official blogger for Quark Expedition to the North Pole. (It aint me.) Please take a moment to cast your vote for Lola Akinmade.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about my visit to the Mark Twain Boyhood home and Museum in Hannibal, Missouri. What I didn’t say was what I didn’t know then: that the facility is underfunded and is in need of serious renovation to bring it to standard. The management of the museum have for a while been raising money through very many ingenious means (one of which was promising to get the names of donors on the famous white-washed fence in front of the home. I did that, by the way. If you ever find yourself there, try to look for my name and the name of this blog on the white fence). Yet it seemed that it won’t get the job done as fast as needed.
Enter Pepsi.
Since the beginning of this year (or God knows since when far back), Pepsi has been giving money to great ideas worthy of monetary support. All they ask for is that the idea be good, and that people vote for it. They have been funding ideas every month to the tune of $1.3 million: (2 Grants at the $250,000 level; 10 Grants at the $50,000 level; 10 Grants at the $25,000 level; and 10 Grants at the $5,000 level.) The Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum is one of this month’s contestants for the $250,000 level which would be given only to two great ideas. Their standing as I write this post is #19. Voting ends on December 31st. That is 25 days away.
Now this is what I hope you’d do for me, as very loyal blog readers. Go to this page, and vote. It will take only two minutes for you to register and vote. And voting is free – of course. All I ask for is your time. And in return, I promise to drive back there at some point next year to write about what new things are taking place at the Mark Twain Museum. I also promise to visit downtown Hannibal rather than just the museum, and send beautiful KTravula postcards to some random blog readers, signed of course by the blogger. When you finish voting, please tell your friends to do the same. There’s nothing worse than getting so close to the mark and then falling off to the ground. I believe that the $250,000 will go a long way to save the museum (and perhaps reduce entrance tickets for future visitors too.)
Please vote as many times as you can from now till December 31st. Thank you very much. Alright now, off you go, please. Thank you.
Mark Twain, born Samuel Clemens, is the author of many books including The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, all inspired by his life in the Hannibal countryside village by the Mississippi river.
A few more pictures from Hannibal, Missouri where the writer Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) spent much of his childhood.
And so I went to Hannibal, a little town two and a half hours away (131 miles north) from my present location. More than anything, it is famous for being the birthplace of Mark Twain (born Samuel Clemens) and the site of his boyhood home with the famous white-washed fence. There’s so much to say about the journey, from the open land of the highway which reminded me of the trip between Kaduna and Zaria to the coolness of the fresh morning air on the way and back. Then there were the sculptures, the quietness of the town, the beauty of the museum building, and the amazing detail of the house as compared to the descriptions that Twain wrote about them in his books The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. The famous white-washed fence was there all right, now marked with names of visitors from all over the world.
For those not familiar with the story, the young boy Tom had successfully conned his bullying friends into doing his own chore of white-washing his house fence for him. Samuel Clemens grew up in this house in Hannibal, a son of a judge of a father living on a low income. He moved out of it in 1853 to seek his fortune. Twenty years would pass before he started writing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and he drew most of his materials from the events of his own childhood on the streets of Hannibal in a house overlooking the Mississippi river. This makes a lot of sense: living through a very hard but colourful childhood and amassing in the process a very large stash of memories, and waiting at least twenty years to set them down to paper, sometimes after returning to visit the place and reliving the memories. Now that’s an idea.
The museum had many fun sights: a marble sculpture of the man reading stories to kids, a boat deck to simulate the view of ship captains (the original inspiration for the name, Mark Twain), a gallery of famous quotes of the man, and a cave built to the type described in his books about his childhood days. It also has a gift shop filled with postcards, t-shirts, and countless books (including his autobiography. He had written it – The Autobiography – by himself and had instructed that it be published a hundred years after his death. It has now been published, and is the current #1 bestseller on Amazon and the #2 on NY Times bestseller list. One of the famous quotes on the t-shirts being sold there reads: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.” Another one read: “Action speak louder than words but not nearly as often.” And there were many more.
I may not successfully exhaust my report of the visit to a place that holds much significance to me as a consumer of literature and the works of the man as a writer and a chronicler of a certain epoch in American history. His views on slavery, politics, and life in general have been highly documented in many of his books, including this final autobiography. But I can tell you this: that it was a worthwhile visit that I would gladly make again, if only to be able to spend more time in the town and see what else they have besides the very many resources of the Clemens. One more thing before we left (Temie and I) was to sign our names on the white-washed fence. The traveller was here. No, that wasn’t what I wrote. You have to go there to find out for yourself.
Oh, and one more quote now going to remain on my office computer: “To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.” Oh well!
Pictures by Temie Giwa
