“Mark Twain: Words and Music” to compete online for spot on Walmart shelves

Posted by mpoletti – March 6, 2012

Would you like to be able to buy the “Mark Twain: Words and Music” album at an ubiquitous national retailer like Walmart? Sure you would.

Starting tomorrow, the double CD released last fall is competing in Walmart’s Get on the Shelf online contest, in which newly developed products vie for a spot in the retailer’s physical and online stores.

The first round of online voting runs from tomorrow through April 3, when the top 10 products will be chosen to advance in the contest. A second round of voting from April 11-24 will determine the winner.

Follow this link to vote for the album or get instructions on Facebook and text voting.

The album, which chronicles the life and legacy of Hannibal’s favorite son in music and spoken word, features the musical stylings of Brad Paisley, Sheryl Crow, Vince Gill, Emmylou Harris and others, along with spoken-word turns by Clint Eastwood, Jimmy Buffett and Garrison Keillor. Proceeds from the album, which was released last September on Buffett’s Mailboat Records label, benefit the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum.

Cindy Lovell said the album is already selling well through distributors like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Cracker Barrel restaurant gift shops and Buffett’s Margaritaville stores, “but it would be great to expand to a wider audience through Walmart.”

Locally, the album is available at the Mark Twain Museum Gift Shop.

Missouri Department of Natural Resources sponsoring mercury drop-off site in Hannibal

Posted by mpoletti – February 28, 2012

Don’t toss that old thermometer or thermostat in the trash. The Missouri Department of Natural Resources is sponsoring mercury drop-off sites throughout the state, including a site in Hannibal.

The DNR is working with fire departments and county health offices to provide drop-off locations where people or agencies can leave mercury-containing instruments like thermometers, thermostats, blood pressure cuffs or switches. It’s part of a statewide DNR roundup to rid homes of mercury.

If you want to drop something off at the site, secure it in two zip-top plastic bags and then place it in a crush-proof container like a coffee can, margarine tub or plastic beverage bottle. Then bring it to the Hannibal Fire Department’s Station 1 at 206 S. 4th.

For our friends further to the northwest, there’s also a drop-off site at the Kirksville Fire Department’s central station, 401 N. Franklin.

If you’ve got a lot of items to drop off at the site, or if you’re at all uncomfortable with transporting mercury instruments, call the DNR’s spill line at (573) 634-2436.

The mercury roundup will run through May 31, at which time DNR staff will collect the dropped-off items and transport them to their Jefferson City headquarters. There, they will recycle what they can and properly dispose of the rest.

The DNR has more information about the mercury round-up and about the health effects of a mercury spill around the house.

Palmyra man admits to keeping exotic animals

Posted by mpoletti – February 28, 2012

How’d you like to live next door to an alligator? Apparently it happens far north of the bayou.

Brandon Boyles of Palmyra pled guilty last week to keeping exotic animals in violation of a city ordinance. He was arrested Jan. 30, and his menagerie of pets removed from his home, after an anonymous call to the Palmyra Police Department tip line, Chief Eddie Bogue said in a release.

During the course of the investigation, in which the Missouri Department of Conservation and the St. Louis Zoo assisted, more than 30 exotic animals were discovered in Boyles’ home, Bogue said. They included several species of poisonous snakes and constrictor snakes (makes you hope the ophidiophobic Indiana Jones wasn’t his neighbor), as well as caimans, alligators, scorpions and spiders.

I suppose it’s a good thing he wasn’t keeping wild cats, which would be much harder-pressed for space, but a private home in town isn’t a safe place to keep our reptile and arachnid friends — for humans’ or animals’ sake. It’s doubly problematic when city law prohibits their being kept in town.

Thankfully, it doesn’t sound like anyone was injured by any of the animals. With any luck, they’re on their way to a new home — perhaps shoring up the St. Louis Zoo’s offerings.

In the meantime, if you really want to channel Dr. Dolittle, don’t do it in Palmyra. Do it in unincorporated Marion County, where you only need to register your exotic animals with the sheriff and you’re in business.

Val Kilmer coming to Mark Twain Museum

Posted by mpoletti – February 26, 2012

So Val Kilmer, Mark Twain, Mary Baker Eddy and Cindy Lovell walk into a bar …

Just kidding, but the four will come together in an unlikely Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum event in early May.

Actor Kilmer will visit the museum May 2 for “An Evening with Val Kilmer,” where he will discuss his film now in development about the relationship between Hannibal’s favorite son and Christian Science founder Eddy.

Tickets are $30 for the 7 p.m. event and can be purchased at marktwainmuseum.org or by calling museum staffer Mai Conrad at (573) 221-9010, ext. 401.

Kilmer has starred in numerous films since the mid-1980s. Here’s a trailer for one of his most memorable roles of that decade.

Hannibal man takes top honors in Phillips 66 video contest

Posted by mpoletti – February 24, 2012

A Hannibal man’s unique billiards skills have won him $1,000 cash and gasoline for life from Phillips 66.

Chris Dryden took first grand prize in the gas station giant’s “Local Legends” video contest, which encouraged patrons in five states — Missouri, Illinois, Kansas, New Mexico and Texas — to submit videos of their special areas of expertise.

Dryden’s expertise? Trick shots in billiards. Watch the video here.

Congratulations, Chris, and start planning that road trip.

Proposed Hannibal bicentennial evokes a little deja vu

Posted by mpoletti – January 20, 2012

The city of Hannibal is beginning the long process of planning a 2019 bicentennial celebration for the city. Click here for the story.

The long list of ideas Third Ward Councilman Lou Barta proposed for the bicentennial — which the City Council sanctioned this week by passing a resolution to form the Bicentennial Commission — evoked, in my mind, everything I’ve read about Hannibal’s Mark Twain sesquicentennial. (Yes, I was alive then. No, I was not old enough to read.) Or, rather, what it was supposed to be.

A belt buckle sold at the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum in 1985, commemorating Twain's 150th birthday.

For some historical perspective, I suggest reading Ron Powers’ “White Town Drowsing.” Powers, a Hannibal native and Pulitzer Prize winner, has his fans and his detractors in Hannibal, and having read “White Town Drowsing” last year, I admit it can be pretty self-aggrandizing. But it’s also quite the account of the controversial planning process that led up to the 1985 celebration of Mark Twain’s 150th birthday.

The sesquicentennial was supposed to be, in outside promoters’ minds, a seven-month extravaganza drawing untold thousands of visitors from around the world. A steamboat regatta and chart-topping concerts were among the ideas they promoted and sold to local residents. As Powers tells it, it was controversial because, among other reasons, the local residents who were to benefit from the festival didn’t have much skin in the planning. However, when many of the elaborate plans fell through, locals stepped in and planned a more modest celebration.

The city’s bicentennial won’t look much like the proposed Mark Twain sesquicentennial. Steamboat regatta? Try a visit from one or two steamboats. But the concept of the event itself may bring back some memories in Hannibal, I said to Barta as I chatted with him about his plans.

Barta knows memories of the Mark Twain sesquicentennial run deep, not all of them pleasant. For one thing, as recently as last year, the City Council had a member, Jeff Lyng, whose father, former Mayor John Lyng, was the local face of the sesquicentennial process. (Several senior Herald-Whig staff members, too, were around Hannibal in those days as members of the media.)

“I do know there are a lot of people who remember those things and are are still working with us and with the city,” Barta said.

But he believes Hannibal has learned from its mistakes. He’s hoping for many chances to solicit public input, which he says will be a hallmark of this process, if he has his druthers.

Still, on the face of it, the idea of a bicentennial celebration made me wonder if Hannibal is in for some deja vu. Depending on how you look at it — and how things take shape over the next seven years — that could be a good thing or a bad thing.

Winter travel? There’s an app for that, MoDOT says

Posted by mpoletti – January 10, 2012

Although we’ve had a mild winter to date, the other shoe can drop at any time. The Missouri Department of Transportation is hoping to provide a handy way to navigate winter weather on the state’s roads: It has launched its online Traveler Information Map as a smartphone app.

The free app, available for the iPhone and Android phones (version 2.2 or later), provides a miniaturized version of the interactive road map, offering a state overview of construction-, incident- and weather-related road conditions, as well as zoomed-in information on a given location. Weather information and traffic cameras are also accessible.

As with the Traveler Information App on MoDOT’s full website, all of it is updated continuously during snow and ice events. (I know that’s when I find myself hitting “refresh” constantly.)

MoDOT cautions that the app should be only one part of a safe travel plan, with weather reports and law enforcement alerts factored in, as well. Also, don’t use the app while driving, the agency says; that’s as bad as texting and driving.

‘Mildred is waiting for me back in Hannibal, Mo.’

Posted by mpoletti – December 7, 2011

"M*A*S*H" commander and Hannibal native Col. Sherman T. Potter, as portrayed by the late Harry Morgan.

If you look hard enough at the news, often you’ll find a Northeast Missouri connection.

Wednesday saw the death of TV actor Harry Morgan, 96, best known for portraying Col. Sherman Tecumseh Potter on the classic Korean War dramedy “M*A*S*H.”

Sharp-eared TV viewers will recall that Potter, commander of the fictional 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, was a Missouri man, but my already-limited knowledge of classic TV has had to compete over the years with stuff like graduate school and “Christmas Vacation” quotes. So I was pleasantly surprised to get a bit of trivia in an email from NECAC public relations officer Brent Engel, who reminds us that Potter always cited Hannibal as his hometown.

If you’ve watched a lot of “M*A*S*H,” or at least have seen its finale — which for almost 20 years ranked as the most-watched TV broadcast in history — you know that when Potter rides off into the sunset on Sophie the horse, he’s looking forward to returning to his wife and a quiet life as a country doctor. “Mildred is waiting for me back in Hannibal, Mo.,” he tells his men.

There are lots of other Midwestern characters on the show, but how’s that for a Hannibal connection?

Google, Christian Science Monitor, Mark Twain Boyhood Home celebrate Twain’s birthday

Posted by mpoletti – November 30, 2011

Hannibal’s favorite son was born 176 years ago today. In his honor, Google’s always-creative “doodle” pays homage today to “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”

A Google "doodle" in honor of Mark Twain's 176th birthday.

Click on the doodle on google.com to see a selection of Twain-related search results, including this interesting piece from the Christian Science Monitor about why Samuel Clemens’ pen name would have gotten him the boot from Facebook.

Hannibal’s Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum celebrated Twain’s 175th birthday with a gala premiere party for the museum’s “Mark Twain: Words and Music” album, so it seems fitting that according to a Facebook post from Executive Director Cindy Lovell, the museum is celebrating today by awaiting word of Grammy Award nominations, which will be announced tonight. The album has been entered in multiple Grammy categories.

VIDEO: Festive flash mob takes Quincy Mall by storm for Salvation Army

Posted by mpoletti – November 26, 2011

How do you raise awareness for your organization’s Christmas fundraising campaign? Well, you could put up a billboard or take out a newspaper ad.

Or you could gather a bunch of people to sing Christmas carols in the mall.

The Salvation Army took the second route Saturday with a flash mob at the Quincy Mall. Several dozen Quincyans converged on the mall’s Fountain Court during a busy morning of holiday shopping to sing “Angels We Have Heard on High” and collect funds for the social service nonprofit’s Christmas campaign.

Below, watch a video of the flash mob unfolding.