“…ours is a mongrel language,” Mark Twain said about the world’s most expansive tool kit, “which started with a child’s vocabulary of 300 words and now consists of 225,000; the whole lot, with the exception of the original and legitimate … Read More
Sitting with the Bard
The one-two punch of Santa Fe’s rarified air (7200 ft elevation) and Canyon Road shopping kicked my ass. I spied a bench, only partially occupied by an old friend from back home. Tipped my cap to this bronzed bard. He … Read More
Evading the Body Snatchers, Part 1
Thomas Jefferson’s original grave marker can’t sit still. More than a century ago, it migrated from Monticello to Mizzou. Since then it has moved a couple of times on the campus quadrangle. I suspect Tom wouldn’t mind this movement, … Read More
Rafting the Mississippi
It isn’t a big raft. In terms of cubits, it’s a two-by-four. But it has a big back yard, a mile wide and 1800 miles long. And it became the summer palace for a big thinker who has no … Read More
Mark Twain, Fabius and Troublesome Creek
If you travel at all around Mark Twain’s boyhood stomping grounds, you’ll likely cross the Fabius River. There are three branches, paralleling Troublesome Creek as they all wind their way to the Mississippi. The Fabius rivers are named not for … Read More
Prolificrat
My bookshelf welcomes Hannibal’s favorite son; his complete autobiography serves up riveting entertainment that cements his legend. He reveals as much about himself as Walter Williams could dig up about the rest of Northeast Missouri. Twain wallows in more than … Read More
Souls Along the Road
My newest book–Souls Along the Road–is hot off the press! More “on the road” adventures blending local characters and mom-and-pop food into an archipelago of tasty stories, diving deep into America’s cultural fabric, finding badass good Samaritans and traces of … Read More
Rafting the Mississippi
The days were getting warmer when I got a call from a good friend alerting me that an adventurous soul was about to experience the dream of every American river rat. He’d built a raft, and was looking for crew … Read More
The Genius of Clemson
Samuel Longhorn Clemson said it: “Our long national championship is over.” Well, it was a football fan, mistaking the ghost of Mark Twain, and replacing his real name with a footballized name, lamenting mighty Clemson’s defeat, and misquoting our most … Read More
Bringing the Backroads to the Classroom
Just spoke to 70 fourth graders. Captured their attention with my prairie chicken dance. We talked about finding wild Missouri. Their eyes got even wider when I told them about joining a producer from Saturday Night Live to raft the … Read More