Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born on this date in 1835, and the world is a better place for it having happened.
Casting about for an appropriate passage of his to share, I came across this one from The Innocents Abroad which seems applicable to bloggers everywhere….
At certain periods it becomes the dearest ambition of a man to keep a faithful record of his performances in a book; and he dashes at this work with an enthusiasm that imposes on him the notion that keeping a journal is the veriest pastime in the world, and the pleasantest. But if he only lives twenty-one days, he will find out that only those rare natures that are made up of pluck, endurance, devotion to duty for duty’s sake, and invincible determination, may hope to venture upon so tremendous an enterprise as the keeping of a journal and not sustain a shameful defeat.
This picture, by the way, is of Mark Twain in Nikola Tesla’s lab in 1894, which I came across on Wikipedia.
If you’re casting about for something to read, take a gander at Mark Twain’s works at Project Gutenberg.
A couple of other blogs mentioned the birthday this morning:
Speaking of birthdays, yesterday was the 80th birthday of Vin Scully.
One of my favorite writers, who has influenced my own writing immeasurably over the years. His combination of dark humor, idealism, suspicion of authority, and willingness to deal with the fantastical in everyday life (although he has distanced himself from the SF label in the past) line up with my own inclinations in a lot of ways, not to mention the keen sense of life in the clutches of time (or not, as the case may be). Absolutely among the greatest of American writers. Perhaps the reincarnation of Mark Twain and Edgar Allan Poe in one person.
