Category: random

For years, even as a child, I wondered how long or if ever the people of Virginia City, Nev., knew that Sam Clemens and Mark Twain were the same people. The short answer is that Sam Clemens walked into a saloon and came out as Mark Twain.

And like those Genzu knife commercials of late-night television and childhood,”…but wait, there’s more!”

Clemens always claimed his nom de plume of Mark Twain came from his Mississippi riverboat years. Clemens said he “laid violent hands upon” the pen name after the death of riverboat Capt. Isaiah Sellers, who had used it in writing up riverboat news.

The term ‘mark twain’ means two fathoms of water.

It first appeared in a letter written to the editor of the Territorial Enterprise and published on February 3, 1863. However, Sellers was still alive at the time.

Clemens was hired by the Territorial Enterprise officially in August 1863 after reaching Virginia City in September 1862.

The Sellers story was accepted and published in “The Adventures of Mark Twain” by Albert Bigelow Paine in 1912. But in 1938, in “Mark Twain’s Western Years,” historian Ivan Benson questioned the story, saying “…there was ‘no original Mark Twain’ other than Samuel Clemens himself…”

He added, “Neither the name Mark Twain nor any single reference to Samuel Clemens occurs in the Sellers Journal…”

Meanwhile, Ernest Leisy, writing in 1942 for American Literature, added to the case. He searched New Orleans newspapers and found no use of “Mark Twain.”

Both reached the same conclusion; Sellers never used the name while Clemens worked the riverboats.

However, Lesy did find that Clemens had parodied a Sellers letter in the New Orleans Daily Crescent in 1859, signing it “Sergeant Fathom.” Leisy posited that Clemens “choice of the name ‘Fathom’ gave rise in his mind to the term used for the water sounding Mark Twain and that only in this remote, indirect way was he indebted to the redoubtable Isaiah Sellers.”

Five years later, Effie Mona Mack brought attention to an article in the Eureka Daily Sentinel of Eureka, Nevada. In 1877, editor George Cassidy, who had lived in the Virginia City area during the time Clemens wrote for the Territorial Enterprise, characterized Clemens as a bohemian.

Cassidy and other writers of the Sagebrush School gathered at a saloon on B Street owned by John Piper. He recalled Clemen’s habit of ordering two drinks at once and having both marked on a chalkboard behind the bar.

Recalling Clemens habits, Cassidy said he found backstory to the nom de plume to his riverboat days “too thin.” Shortly after the printed recollection, the Daily Alta California published Clemens upbraiding and redoubling his debt to Sellers for the pen name.

Paul Fatout, in his 1964 book, “Mark Twain in Virginia City,” believed the Cassidy version of the story, finding additional support for the saloon origin in another newspaper. An 1866 Transcript article published in Nevada City, Calif., backed his belief up, stating Clemens took his “regular drinks” at Johnny Doyle’s saloon.

“Well, ‘Mark,’ that is Sam, d’ye see, used to run his face, bein’ short of legal tenders…used to take two horns consecutive, one right after the other, and when he comes in there and took them on tick, Johnny used to sing out to the barkeep, who carried a lump of chalk in his pocket and kept the score, ‘mark twain,’ whereupon the barkeep would score two drinks to Sam’s account — and so it was, d’ye see, that he came to be called ‘Mark Twain.’”

The Transcript article confused Johnny Doyle, who owned a saloon in Dayton, with John E. Doyle of Virginia City. In 1865, John E. Doyle killed a man in self-defense at his own Doyle and Goodman’s saloon on C Street, Virginia City, which the Daily Union reported on March 14, 1865.

The article reminded readers that Doyle was the same barkeep for the Magnolia, which Doyle owned in Sacramento in early 1863. The newspaper report of the Doyle saloon shooting may have triggered the memory of Clemens in the 1866 Transcript.

Another story of Clemens’ drink habits came from a friend, Thomas Sawyer of San Francisco. Immortalized in later works by Clemens, Sawyer was a credible source of memories of the author’s time in “the city that Virginia silver built.”

In an 1898 interview, Sawyer recalled visiting Twain in Virginia City, where the pair frequented a saloon owned by Tom Peasley.

One night, barkeep Larry Ryan served them two cocktails, expecting Clemens to pay. Instead, Clemens held up two fingers, pointed to the slate, and said, “Larry, mark twain.”

When Ryan told owner Peasley about it in the morning, Sawyer recalled, “Peasley thought it such a good joke that he told all the boys, and after that Sam wuz dubbed ‘Mark Twain.’”

That Virginia City is the likely birthplace of the pen name is illustrated further in January 1864, in an article referring to Clemens as “Mark Two.”

In her 1990 book, “Mark Twain; The Bachelor Years,” Margaret Sanborn wrote: “Clement T. Rice, the Unreliable, reported the affair for the Daily Union…Last night a large and fashionable audience was called out to hear a message delivered by the Mark Two — otherwise called Twain.”

Clemens left Virginia City on May 29, 1864.

My Cousin Elmo says, “If Congress really cared about ‘We the People,’ they’d resign.”

The following information I culled from the Jerusalem Post:

“A new study from George Washington University noted that an aspirin regimen in more than 400 COVID-19 patients in hospitals across the United States cut the need for ventilation by 44 percent, slashed ICU admission by 43 percent, and reduced overall in-hospital mortality rates by 47 percent.”

This article comes directly from today’s New York Times…

“Doctors should no longer routinely begin prescribing a daily regimen of low-dose aspirin to most people at high risk of a first heart attack or stroke, according to new draft guidelines by a U.S. panel of experts.”

It is interesting how what has worked for years (I have been taking a low dose each night before bed ever since my father had a fatal stroke in 1995) no long is recommended, and it comes only a day after another study states aspirin can treat COVID-19.

I waited till late this evening and after finishing my work for the day to write this…

It is important to tell you that I lost a friend today to death. Doc Durden was a giant of a man both in physique and in the eternal sense.

Pressed to get a COVID vaccine last week, he did. So did his wife, who felt a “little under the weather” the following couple of days, but for Doc, his health took an exceedingly dreadful turn for the worse.

Two days after getting the Pfizer dose, he slipped into a coma, and then his organs began to fail. The hospital sent him home on hospice care, and he passed quietly last night, Sunday, October 10.

My opinion — and I stress that it is only an opinion, is that there are usually underlying health conditions that the vaccine affects, causing death. As for now, I haven’t a clue what that condition, in any, could have been in Doc’s case.

Thanks for your patience and for allowing me to vent. I can do nothing else and therefore feel like I am rendered helpless in this situation.

Why these things happen is not for me to understand.

Maggie finished her General’s Chicken and asked for the bill. When her server came and laid it on the table, she also gave Maggie a single fortune cookie, which Maggie immediately cracked open.

She ate half of the cookie as she read the slip of paper: “You will die by old age.”

Maggie smiled and put the paper in her purse as she withdrew her handbook. After paying, she left the restaurant to return to work.

Maggie would never make it. As she crossed the busy street, a car ran her over and killed her.

The driver was 96 years old.

I thought of titling this “How to Take Me From Being Decent to Becoming a Would-be Murderer.”
I saw a scared gosling trying to cross a busy roadway.
I pulled over and made my way to where I could safely reach the bird.
I motioned for traffic to be aware, and drivers reacted by slowing down and moving over.
I stepped out to pick the bird up, and a truck ran over the gosling, killing it, nearly hitting me.
I went from being a kind and loving person to the wanna-be killer of that truck’s driver.

I fucking give up.

Morning arrival:
Cool, high overcast
A hint of fall snow
Leaves are scattering over the yard
But our lovely pink rose still blooms

My Cousin Elmo says, “I don’t do ‘rise and shine.’ I do ‘caffeinate and cross my fingers.’”

They met by accident on the sidewalk in front of the old folk’s home where they lived. Dark and 3:15 in the morning, neither saw the other till they each came to the walkway.

“You too?” Frank asked.

“Me, too,” Bill answered.

They headed up the walk to the front steps. That’s where Bill stopped.

“What’s wrong?” Frank asked.

“Forgot what I came back for,” Bill answered.

“Didn’t wanna admit it myself, but so have I,” Frank said.

“So, now what?” Bill asked.

“Since we’re spirits now, let’s go scare the shit outta Hal,” Frank suggested.

“Great idea,” Bill laughed menacingly.

As Ying took his final breath, he found himself in darkness no man could describe. Ahead he saw the red glow of Yangs of eyes.

They widened before blinking, “What are you doing here?”

“How soon you forget.”

“But you are a mortal and cannot be here.”

“I was mortal once, but when you took my earthly life, I became spirit like you, and I am here to destroy you.”

The Dark-one looked up from its churning cauldron, “Stupid humans, finding elucidation in symbols without understanding their other meaning. Brothers trying to kill one another, knowing not why they battle.”