I'm into vultures now and Eugene Grasset

A vulture on board; bald, red, queer-shaped head, featherless red places here and there on his body, intense great black eyes set in featherless rims of inflamed flesh; dissipated look; a business-like style, a selfish, conscienceless, murderous aspect-the very look of a professional assassin, and yet a bird which does no murder.  What was the use of getting him up in that tragic style for so innocent a trade as his?  For this one isn’t the sort that wars upon the living, his diet is offal—and the more out of date it is the better he likes it.  Nature should give him a suit of rusty black; then he would be all right, for he would look like an undertaker and would harmonize with his business; whereas the way he is now he is horribly out of true.    ---Following the Equator, Mark Twain

Warm wishes

Happy Birthday Samuel Langhorne Clemens!

“I know the look of an apple that is roasting and sizzling on the hearth on a winter's evening, and I know the comfort that comes of eating it hot, along with some sugar and a drench of cream... I know how the nuts taken in conjunction with winter apples, cider, and doughnuts, make old people's tales and old jokes sound fresh and crisp and enchanting.”  -Mark Twain

The Mark Twain Anniversary

20/10 years together/married is when you celebrate the Mark Twain Anniversary.

Oh look!  See!  This year marks the 150th anniversary of Sam Clemens and his wife, Olivia Langdon, courtship.  http://theconversation.com/mark-twains-adventures-in-love-how-a-rough-edged-aspiring-author-courted-a-beautiful-heiress-90739

Mark Twain is for Lovers

Make the pilgrimage to Hannibal, MO on this special occassion

Happy 176th Birthday!!

Thanks to Google, I realized that today is one of my favorite author's birthday. You still make me laugh, Mr. Clemens.

I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell - you see, I have friends in both places.

--Mark Twain

Sunday Worship

SLC 1835-1910

Mark Twain quote from 1909:

"I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'"

The Green Eye that Never Sleeps

Excerpt from, Letters From The Earth, by Mark Twain:

...[A]mong human beings jealousy ranks distinctly as a weakness; a trade-mark of small minds; a property of all small minds...

Jealousy. Do not forget it, keep it in mind. It is the key. With it you will come to partly understand God as we go along: without it nobody can understand him. As I have said, he has openly held up this treasonous key himself, for all to see. He says, naively, outspokenly, and without suggestion of embarrassment: "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God."

You see, it is only another way of saying, "I the Lord thy God am a small God; a small God, and fretful about small things."

The Most Mysterious Stranger of them All

When the time comes, I want to go to Mark Twain's Heaven where wearing a halo and playing a golden harp on a cloud becomes a bore in one day.