Mark Twain, American Humorist, Born (1835)

November 30 sports a number of events that relate to conservation.  The Welland Canal first opened in 1829, allowing all sorts of environmental chaos to travel past the natural barrier of Niagara Falls.  Australia experienced its hottest November ever in 2014, a tribute to climate change.  The Paris Climate talks began on this date in 2015 (see the results on December 12, the day it ended).

Mark Twain

            But I’ve chosen to highlight Mark Twain’s birthday on November 30, 1835 (died 1910).  Mark Twain needs no introduction.  He was born in Missouri, lived most of his youth in the Mississippi riverbank town of Hannibal, and is most notably associated with the river and its immediate surroundings.  The world loves Twain for his humorous homespun stories, from The Adventures ofTom Sawyer to Huckleberry Finn to The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.  Beyond humor, however, his writing was often satirical and sometimes cynical, about life and human nature.

            Twain was an adventurer as well as a writer.  He spent many years tramping, as he would say, around the U.S. and the world.  He travelled to Hawaii and across the American West, working as a travelling correspondent for various newspapers and magazines.  He wrote a collelction of stories of his western adventures in Roughing It. He spent years as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River, and recounted his experiences in his book, Life on the Mississippi.  He also travelled around Europe and the Middle East.  His time in England was the basis for his magical tale of A Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

Illustration of Huck Finn and Jim from Mark Twain’s novel

            Let’s enjoy a few of the ideas that Mark Twain left us regarding nature and our relationship to it. 

“This is the fairest picture on our planet, the most enchanting to look upon, the most satisfying to the eye and spirit.  To see the sun sink down, drowned in his pink and purple and golden floods, …is a sight to stir the coldest nature, and make a sympathetic one drunk with ecstasy.”

“Architects cannot teach nature anything.”

“The laws of Nature take precedence of all human laws. The purpose of all human laws is one — to defeat the laws of Nature. This is the case among all the nations, both civilized and savage. It is a grotesquerie, but when the human race is not grotesque it is because it is asleep and losing its opportunity.”

“Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.”

“Each season brings a world of enjoyment and interest in the watching of its unfolding, its gradual harmonious development, its culminating graces-and just as one begins to tire of it, it passes away and a radical change comes, with new witcheries and new glories in its train.”

“To one in sympathy with nature, each season, in its turn, seems the loveliest.”

“Change is the handmaiden Nature requires to do her miracles with.”

References:

AZ Quotes.  Mark Twain Quotes About Nature.  Available at:  https://www.azquotes.com/author/14883-Mark_Twain/tag/nature.  Accessed December 3, 2019.

Mark Twain Quotes.  Nature.  Available at:  http://www.twainquotes.com/Nature.html.  Accessed December 3, 2019.

Quirk, Thomas V.  2019.  Mark Twain, American Writer.  Encyclopedia Britannica, Nov 11, 2019.  Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mark-Twain. Accessed December 3, 2019.

This Month in Conservation

September 1
Martha, the last Passenger Pigeon, Died (1914)
September 2
President Roosevelt Dedicated Great Smoky National Park (1940)
September 3
Wilderness Act passed (1964)
September 4
Fort Bragg, Home of Red-cockaded Woodpeckers, Established (1918)
September 5
UNESCO Established First World Heritage Sites (1978)
September 6
Alcide d’Orbigny, French Naturalist, Born (1802)
September 7
Edward Birge, Father of Limnology, born (1851)
September 8
UN Millennium Declaration ratified (2000)
September 9
First “Bug” Found in Computer (1945)
September 10
Henry Hardtner, Father of Southern Forestry, Born (1870)
September 11
World Wildlife Fund Began Operations (1961)
September 12
Canyonlands National Park Established (1964)
September 13
Walter Reed born (1851)
September 14
Marc Reisner, Author of Cadillac Desert (1948)
September 15
Darwin reaches the Galapagos Islands (1835)
September 16
Ed Begley Jr., Environmental Advocate, born (1949)
September 17
Edgar Wayburn, Wilderness Advocate, Born (1906)
September 18
Grey Owl, Pioneering Conservationist in Canada, Born (1888)
September 19
Urmas Tartes, Estonian Nature Photographer, born (1963)
September 20
AAAS Founded (1848)
September 21
Assateague Island National Seashore Created (1965)
September 22
Peace Corps becomes law (1961)
September 23
Rose Selected as U.S. National Flower (1986)
September 24
President Kennedy Dedicated Pinchot Institute (1963)
September 25
Pope Francis Addressed the UN on the Environment (2015)
September 26
Johnny Appleseed Born (1774)
September 27
“Silent Spring” Published (1962)
September 28
National Public Lands Day
September 29
Steinhart Aquarium opens (1923)
September 30
Hoover Dam Dedicated (1935)
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