EARLY SEPTEMBER EVENTS
For more details on all our events, please visit our website.
Nook Farm Book Talk - Vanished Downtown Hartford with Daniel Sterner
Wednesday, September 3; 5:00 p.m. Reception; 5:30 p.m. Discussion; at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center
Early nineteenth-century illustrations of Hartford show church steeples towering over the Victorian homes and brownstone fa�ades of businesses around them. The modern skyline of the town has lost many of these elegant steeples and their quaint and smaller neighbors. Banks have yielded to newer banks, and organizations like the YMCA are now parking lots. In the 1960s, Constitution Plaza replaced an entire neighborhood on Hartford's east side. The city has evolved in the name of progress, allowing treasured buildings to pass into history. Those buildings that survive have been repurposed--the Old State House, built in 1796, is one of the oldest and has found new life as a museum. Yet the memory of these bygone landmarks and scenes has not been lost. Historian Daniel Sterner recalls the lost face of downtown and preserves the historic landmarks that still remain with this nostalgic exploration of Hartford's structural evolution. Followed by a book sale and signing.
BECK & CALL - The Servants Tour (Directed by HartBeat Ensemble's Steven Raider-Ginsburg)
Friday, September 5; Tours start at
7:00 p.m.
The servants at Mark Twain's house are expecting a full-on assault of overnight guests. With famous faces coming for an elegant dinner, three guest rooms to prepare, and 25 rooms worth of dusting, the hired help may need a helping hand. With
Beck & Call, our fun, interactive nighttime servants tour of The Mark Twain House, we offer a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to get the Clemens home ship-shape for overnight entertaining. You may even be asked to pitch in! With costumed interpreters appearing throughout the house, fans of Upstairs/Downstairs and Downton Abbey will love this look at the organized chaos that it took to cook, clean, and care for the Clemens family.
BECK & CALL - The Servants Tour - The first Friday of every month through December (excluding October). Beck & Call is supported by the City of Hartford Arts & Heritage Jobs Grant Program, Pedro E. Segarra, Mayor.
$22 for adults, with discounts for children and members. Reservations required. For tickets, please call (860) 280-3130 or click
here.
Book/Mark - THE SCARLET SISTERS: Sex, Suffrage and Scandal in the Gilded Age with Myra MacPherson
Tuesday, September 9, 7:00 p.m.
Victoria Woodhull and Tennesee "Tennie" Clafin were two women before their time, supporting women's political and sexual rights. Author Myra MacPherson brings to life these scarlet sisters, including their affairs with Vanderbilts, their candidacy to be female president, and their muck-raking newspaper that caused controversy in Nook Farm and beyond! Presented in collaboration with the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. Followed by a book sale and signing.
This is a free event. Reservations are recommended. Please call (860) 280-3130 or click here.
BOOK/MARK: Abortion in the American Imagination: Before Life and Choice 1880-1940 with Karen Weingarten
Thursday, September 11, 7:00 p.m. at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center
The public debate on abortion stretches back much further than Roe v. Wade, to long before the terms pro-choice and pro-life were ever invented. Yet the ways Americans discussed abortion in the early decades of the twentieth century had little in common with our now-entrenched debates about personal responsibility, religious conviction and individual autonomy. Weingarten traces the discourses on abortion across a wide array of media, putting fiction by canonical writers like William Faulkner, Edith Wharton, and Langston Hughes into conversation with the era's films, newspaper articles, and activist rhetoric. Presented in collaboration with the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. Followed by a book sale and signing.
The MOuTH with Chion Wolf: "It Was An Accident"
Friday, September 12, 7:30 p.m.
The Mark Twain House & Museum continues "The MOuTH," a storytelling series with WNPR personality Chion Wolf -- and invites stories about accidents. The special guest will be Kambri Crews, an American comedic storyteller based in New York City and author of Burn Down the Ground: A Memoir, a book about her chaotic childhood with deaf parents. The event is in no way a competition, just storytelling in front of friends in a museum dedicated to Mark Twain, one of our country's best storytellers. Submissions are now open. Here's how it works: Email [email protected] with your name, approximate story length of LESS THAN 10 MINUTES (note - it usually takes longer to tell your story than you think! Tell it a few times to friends, refine it, and time it!), and a short description of what your story is about. Wolf, along with Julia Pistell and Jacques Lamarre of the Mark Twain House, will look over the submissions and assemble a lineup. "If you don't get on the list, don't take it personally!" says Wolf. "It's our loss, and hopefully we can hear from you at a future 'Mouth' event."
$5 (Storytellers chosen for the lineup get in free.) Call (860) 280-3130 or click here.
BOOK/MARK: Trackrat with Bob Englehart Jr. and Special Guests
Tuesday, September 16, 7:00 p.m.
The Hartford Courant's Bob Englehart will discuss his new book Trackrat in a panel with other racecar celebrities. The panel will consist of: CTRaceDay.com's Shawn Courchesne, and local racing legends Sean Foster, Renee Dupuis, and Ed Flemke Jr. What compels a young man or woman to spend ungodly amounts of money driving a racecar every weekend at the local track, risking life and limb at 150 miles an hour, entertaining friends and total strangers? Trackrat: Memoir of a Fan is about love of family in spite of the complexity and confusion it may involve and the author's working class heroes on the track. This isn't NASCAR; this is your neighbor. Followed by a book sale and signing.
This is a free event. Reservations are recommended. Please call (860) 280-3130 or click
here.
Base Ball in Twain's Time: A Panel Discussion by Five Leading SABR Experts
Wednesday, September 17, 7:00 p.m.
Five leading experts from the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR) will engage in a lively panel discussion of "base ball" during the 19th century. The moderator will be Mark Twain House & Museum's Education Manager, Craig Hotchkiss, who is a former vintage "base ball" player and frequent presenter of the museum's community outreach program Base Ball as Mark Twain Knew It. The SABR panelists are John Thorn (Major League Baseball's official historian), David Arcidiacono, Gary O'Maxfield, Joe Williams, and Bill Ryczek. The program will be followed by a book sale and signing.
This is a free event. Reservations are recommended. Please call (860) 280-3130 or click here.