Mark Twain's life

2/27/2010

100 hours wellness reflection-Ana Caroline Koza

As all girls I had made Ballet classes when was in the age between 4 and 8. Indeed, Ballet is part of the childhood of the most of the girls but is part of the future of only a few. For me, the interruption of my ballet course happened when I was 8, almost 9. Suddenly, without any reason I decided to stop. After that, I tryed lots of sports and dance. Starting from swmming; voley; soccer, passing to belly dance, street dance, swing dance and finishing in the same place that I came: Classic Ballet. Although I feel good in all phisical activities, I find in the ballet something else, that has some especial and unique magic.
So that, when I was 13 years old, my life was going to ballet 3 to 5 times per week, watching tv and reading with stretch and concerning about my feet, which always insisted on being " en dedans" instead "en dehors". For one year ballet had been my life. But things were going very rapidly, to the point that I was going to a professional training: 90 min lessons everyday and point everyday.
Even though I was learning a lot, I was paying a hight price for this: a extremely tired body everynight. Realizing that, I started to questione myself about the role of dance in my life. To understading this, I started to researh about sucessful ballerinas. Obviously, they all presented the same idea: to be a good classic ballerina you have to submit body and life to dance, otherwise the dance in its professional leval do not happen. Well, I was there, in my limit. I was asking myself:"Would I be abble to submit my body and life to dance ?".
I chose the option "No, classic ballet isn't worthy for me". Thinking sincerely, dance always have been in my aspirations, yes, teaching dance is a dream that keep secretely. But now, I believe that another kind of dance. Dancing respecting the limits of your body, leaving your height in the whole feet and expressing freely. So that, I migrated to contemporary dance.
In the contemporary dance I finally found myself. It connects me to the classic ballet without makes my body in pieces. The movements are big and expressively and I can dance more beated songs.
My dance lessons were the most meaninful part of my 100 hours wellness reflection, and it also marks my conception of well being. That exercise must be gentle with the body, otherwise, the first principle of the phisical activity, that is the joy, is lost.

10/30/2008

Tribute for Twain

Life's photos

Did you know?

* Haley's Comet was visible in the sky on the night that Mark Twain was both born and passed away.
* Mark Twain published more than 30 books throughout his career.
* Hannibal, Mo. served as the inspiration for the fictional town of St. Petersberg in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."
* As a teenager, Twain worked as an apprentice printer.
* As a riverboat pilot, Twain earned from $150 to $250 a month.
* During the Civil War, Twain formed a Confederate militia known as the "Marion Rangers." The militia disbanded after approximately two weeks.
* Twain left Missouri after his militia disbanded and moved to Nevada. There he worked as a miner.
* "Roughing It" describes Twain's journey out West with his brother Orion.
* From 1901 until his death in 1910, Twain was vice president of the American Anti-Imperialist League.
* "Huckleberry Finn" was ranked as the fifth most frequently challenged book in the United States by the American Library Association.
* Prior to adopting Mark Twain as his pen name, Clemens wrote under the pen name Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass for a number of humorous pieces that he contributed to the Keokuk Post.

Family Tree

10/29/2008

Photos

Funny Quotes

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody has read.
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.
Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

MARK TWAIN

Critic about Mark Twain Humor

Examples of the poignancy of expression, with which Mark Twain spurs his readers into a proper appreciation of what he is telling them, are too abundant for further reference, but although he uses them so easily, he does not always find them necessary. Some of the funniest passages in his later works, as well as in those by which he made his reputation, contain not a flash of wit nor any unusual expressions. A combination is presented in the plainest and simplest way, and as the substances are poured together the humour effervesces, not in the author's story, but in the 'reader's mind. The author draws out the wit of his readers as a magnet draws needles from a cushion.Mark Twain somewhere declared that there were only thirty-five varieties of joke known to the human race. He has practised most of these at one time or another—sometimes under dreary circumstances enough.

by: http://www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/reviews/twain.php

Famous Sentences

"A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time."

Mark Twain.

"In certain circumstances, a bad language causes a relief unreachable even by prayer."

Mark Twain

"It is not best that we should all think alike; it is the difference of opinion that makes horseraces."

Mark Twain

"forget your costume, if you like, but keeps clean the soul. "

Mark Twain

A Quiz about the autobiography of Mark Twain

http://quizlet.com/set/238501/ - Tips !

In this home page, you can complete aswers about Mark Twain;
You can find 4 Written Questions and Multiple Choice Questions and 3 True/False Question;
You can Check your grammar;
You can Play a Scatter;
You can play a space racer with his sentences;
Doesn't lose the opportunity to discovery more things about Mark Twain Behavior !

Curiosities about Mark Twain

Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum

The Mark Twain Boyhood Home, now known as the Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum, is located on 206-208 Hill Street, Hannibal, Missouri on the west bank of the Mississippi River in the United States. It was the home of Samuel Langhorne Clemens from 1844 to 1853. Clemens, better known as author Mark Twain, found the inspiration for many of his stories, including the white picket fence, while living here. It has been open to the public as a museum since 1912. It was designated a National Historic Landmark on December 29, 1962.

Mark Twain Middle School (Virginia)

Mark Twain Middle School is a middle school that is attended by children in grades seven and eight, and is located in unincorporated Fairfax County, Virginia, United States, south of the city of Alexandria. It is part of the Fairfax County Public School system. It is located in cluster 5 and feeds into Edison High School. The student body consists of 7th and 8th graders, with a total count of 837. The school is named after the famous writer Mark Twain.

Mark Twain Memorial Bridge

The Mark Twain Memorial Bridge is the name for two bridges over the Mississippi River at Hannibal, Missouri, childhood home of Mark Twain, for whom the bridge is named. The current bridge, north of the original site, was finished in 2000; the original bridge, built in 1936, was demolished. The bridge currently carries traffic for Interstate 72 and U.S. Highway 36. The state of Missouri has put up a stone picture of Twain on the Missouri side of the bridge.

Biography

The Private History of a Campaign that Failed

The Private History of a Campaign that Failed is one of Mark Twain's sketches (1885), a short, highly fictionalized memoir of his two-week stint in the pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard. It takes place in Marion County, Missouri, and is about a group of inexperienced militiamen, the Marion Rangers. The group's jumpiness is expressed when they accidentally kill an innocent horseman.

Roughing It

Roughing It 's prefactory

"This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious history or a philosophical dissertation. It is a record of several years of variegated vagabondizing, and its object is rather to help the resting reader while away an idle hour than afflict him with metaphysics, or goad him with science. Still, there is information in the volume; information concerning an interesting episode in the history of the Far West, about which no books have been written by persons who were on the ground in person, and saw the happenings of the time with their own eyes. I allude to the rise, growth and culmination of the silver-mining fever in Nevada -a curious episode, in some respects; the only one, of its peculiar kind, that has occurred in the land; and the only one, indeed, that is likely to occur in it. Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in the book. I regret this very much; but really it could not be helped: information appears to stew out of me naturally, like the precious ottar of roses out of the otter. Sometimes it has seemed to me that I would give worlds if I could retain my facts; but it cannot be. The more I calk up the sources, and the tighter I get, the more I leak wisdom. Therefore, I can only claim indulgence at the hands of the reader, not justification. THE AUTHOR."

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

1844 - the Mississippi River, North America.

Tom Sawyer lives with his Aunt Polly in St Petersburg, Missouri.

Tom and his friend, Huckleberry Finn, are always in trouble.

One night, Tom and Huckleberry see a fight between Injun Joe, the Doctor and Muff Potter.

There are films of this history.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

1846 – the Mississipi River, North America

Huck Finn is fourteen years old. He lives in the town of St. Petersburg. He lives in Mrs. Dougla’s house. She is a kind woman. But Huck is not happy there. Everything in his life is boring. He does not want to go to school. He does not want to sleep in a soft bed every night. Then, one day, Huck’s father comes back to the town. He wants Huck’s money. He has been drinking whisky. He is very drunk. He hits Huck.

10/28/2008

A little about twain's life...

Mark Twain was the first grand west-American writer, who exerted big influence over all writers that made efforts for “discovering America” through your landscapes, the peculiarities of your people and your folklore. His real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens
He was born in November 30, 1835, Florida, USA. He spent his childhood at the boarders of Mississipi river. He lost his father while he was 12, when he started to work to help the home expenses. He was deliverer, copyist and helper. At 13 he turned into typography apprentice and after, working as a pressman, traveled through many states. He learned navigation at Mississipi River, turning into a boat pilot. At this time, he started to write humor texts and adopted the pseudonym Mark Twain, term used by boatmen, which means “twice” on the river’s depth verification.
Later on he participated at the Civil War, as confederated. After the conflict, went west (Nevada), where he lived with his brother. Started writing for Virginia’s newspaper, became journalist and attracted the public with a short story. Two years later, Twain visited France, Italy and Palestine, collecting material for your book “Innocents Abroad” (1869), which established his humorist reputation. He married with Olívia Langon in 1870 and fixed in Hartforf, Connecticut
Two years later, published “Roughing it”, and in 1873 “The Gilded Age”. In 1876 one of his big works, “Tom Sawyer Abroad”, novel based in the teenager experiences of the author at Mississipi River. In the next book, “A Tramp Abroad” (1880) the author visited Europe, regressing with “Life on the Mississipi” (1883). The masterpiece of Twain’s career, “Adventures of Huckeberry Finn”, was published in 1884.
He died in April 21, 1910, Redding, USA