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Community Projects
Having its Own Way: The Great Flood of 2008 in Pictures “The Mississippi River will always have its own way; no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise...” –Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
The Great Flood of 2008 affected thousands of people in the Midwest. The Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum is now giving the community a chance to tell their story of the flood – in photographs. The Mark Twain Museum is coordinating a community exhibit entitled “Having its Own Way: The Great Flood of 2008 in Pictures”. The exhibit will include photographs from area residents of any and all aspects of the flood - the water, the levees that kept the river at bay, the aftermath of flooding - anything members of the community thought worthy enough to capture on film. All area residents are invited to submit photos for the exhibit. Any size photograph may be submitted, but they must be framed. Photographers may submit up to 5 photographs to display and must provide their name and a caption for the photo so the museum can create labels for the exhibit. The museum must have a minimum of 20 photographs submitted in order to create an exhibit – if less than 20 photos are submitted, the museum will not have an exhibit. Framed photographs are currently being accepted. Anyone wanting to have their framed photographs displayed must drop off their photos at the Museum Gallery, 120 North Main St. no later than Aug. 25th. The exhibit will then be housed in the Museum Gallery from Sept. 5th through November 1st, with an opening reception on the 5th from 4:00 – 6:00 p.m. After the exhibit is closed, photographers will need to come by the museum to pick up their work. For more information, or if you have any questions, please call the museum at 573-221-9010. If you are submitting framed photos, please provide photographer's name and a caption. Please feel free to use the attached form. Flood exhibit form
Virtual Tours
Participants of the Mark Twain Young Authors Workshop have contributed virtual tours to the website. If you are unable to visit the musuem, or are preparing to visit us, these virtual tours provide background information and provide an idea of what you can expect to see during your visit. The 2007 participants created a virtual tour of artifacts on display in the Mark Twain Museum Gallery, and the 2008 participants created tours of the following important landmarks: Mark Twain Museum Interpretive Center Mark Twain Boyhood Home Huck Finn Home Becky Thatcher Home Justice of the Peace Building Grant's Drug Store Mark Twain Museum Gallery Mark Twain Cave Cardiff Hill Mississippi River Jackson's Island Mt. Olivet Cemetery
Other Projects
Recently we collaborated with three Highland Elementary School teachers - Tracy Marold, Traci Mosby, and Chrissy Abell. These teachers attended one of our week-long workshops last summer, and now they sponsor "Twain's Travelers" - a group of 20 third and fourth grade students that meet every Monday after school to study Mark Twain's adventures in Following the Equator. The students each created a passport in which they record countries "visited" through books they have read. They also created a 2008 calendar of Mark Twain quotes (since each chapter in Following the Equator begins with a quote) and a travel brochure illustrating countries visited by Twain during his travels. They are presently working on a picture book about Twain's travels, which they plan to submit to Scholastic Books "Kids Are Authors" program. The students have already visited the museum once to hear a lecture about Twain's travels to Russia. We are proud of these teachers for expanding their students' horizons with Mark Twain.
The students of Dr. Caroline Collins of Quincy University wrote papers for their African-American literature class. The papers focus on providing helpful background to a particular historical period, but they also bring in segments of literature from or about the period. Students' final projects are shared below: Following the Unpaved Path includes local history with mentions of the Lincoln-Douglas debate and the Eels House, a safe house for runaway slaves in Quincy, Illinois.
The Jazz Age addresses some of the aftermath of slavery. If you have an idea for a community project, please contact us at Education@MarkTwainMuseum.org.
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