Latest news with #TwainHouse
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
New executive director of Mark Twain House & Museum is a familiar face
Jeffrey L. Nichols has been named as the new executive director of the Mark Twain House & Museum following a nationwide search that took over a year. Nichols succeeds Pieter Roos, who served as executive director from 2017 to 2023 and announced his retirement at the end of last year. Nichols, a Naugatuck native, has held the position before. He was the executive director of the Twain House from 2008 to 2012. When he recently returned to Connecticut to visit his mother, he said 'I saw the house again and realized how much I loved the place.' Nichols' first day on the job will be June 9, a day before a major event sponsored by the Twain House — an appearance by Ron Chernow, whose new biography of Twain was published earlier this month. Chernow visited the Twain House photo archive while researching the book. Later in June, the Mark Twain House & Museum will host a book signing by novelist Joyce Carol Oates, the famed author's first visit to the Twain House. Mark Twain House Museum executive director Pieter Roos to retire from historic venue Nichols said Twain figures in many aspects of the other jobs he's held. For the past four years, he was at the National Civil War Museum and before that at George Heritage in Washington D.C., institutions which overlap with some Twain's activities and interests in the 19th century. Nichols also worked at Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest, an historic home in Virginia. He recalls bringing some of his former (and now future) Twain House colleagues to the Civil War Museum for a program about the house. 'Every job I've had, people get tired of me talking about Mark Twain,' NIchols said. He is looking forward to being back so he can share that great impact Mark Twain had and still has. 'We are very fortunate that Jeff Nichols will be leading the Mark Twain House and Museum,' Mark Twain House and Museum board chair Hans Miller said in a statement. 'His extensive experience in historic site and museum management, combined with his deep appreciation for Mark Twain and understanding of this organization, brings us a dynamic leader who can build on our past success.' Last year marked the 150th anniversary of when the house at 351 Farmington Ave. was built for Twain and his family. Twain not only wrote some of his famous works at the house, including 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,' 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' and 'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court,' he was actively involved with local businesses and newspapers. Twain left Hartford following the death of his daughter, toured the world for years as a comic lecturer and eventually returned to Connecticut to build a new home in Redding. Asked if he has favorites among Twain's many works, Nichols praised the author's short stories, mentioning 'To the Person Sitting in Darkness' as one of many examples of where 'Twain is writing about political and social issues of his era that still have great relevance in our world today.' Besides tours of the house, the Mark Twain House & Museum provides an archive of Twain materials, a museum with changing exhibits based on Twain's life and works, frequent lectures and special performances. Nichols noted that one of the enduring events at the institution, its 'Ghost Tours,' began during his previous time as executive director. 'There's a lot that's familiar, but there has also been a great expansion,' he said. 'Rooms have been finished since I was last here. I'm going to go into this now not looking back but seeing how we can move the organization forward. It's going to be great fun. I'm going to slide right back in.'
Yahoo
26-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
How a president's death helped kill Washington's "spoils system"
"To the victor belong the spoils." For decades in the 1800s, that phrase was more than a slogan; it was the official hiring policy of the U.S. government. "You win the election, you're entitled to put all your own people in there," said journalist and historian Scott Greenberger. He says that under that "spoils system," the main job requirement for most federal employees was … loyalty. It was a system inaugurated by Democratic President Andrew Jackson. "When he came in, he was – and this will sound familiar – he was afraid that sort of entrenched bureaucrats would resist his policies. And so, he cleaned everybody out." Were people aghast at this? "I don't think they were aghast when it began," Greenberger said. "But by the time we get to this 1870s and the 1880s, it was the one of the top issues on the national agenda." This was a period of abundant wealth and corruption in American politics. "It's a fascinating period with so many parallels to our own time," said Greenberger. But a fight was underway to replace the spoils system with the hiring of qualified government workers, regardless of their political views, whose job security did not depend on whoever was president. "Civil service reform," as it was known, may not sound sexy, but it was one the hottest political issues of the Gilded Age, even attracting the attention of America's foremost author. In 1876, the same year he published "Tom Sawyer," Mark Twain participated in his first political rally in Hartford, Connecticut, said local historian Jason Scappaticci. It was a big deal: "He had voted, but he had never campaigned for anybody," he said. After marching through downtown in support of Republican presidential nominee Rutherford B. Hayes, the legendary humorist called for an end to the spoils system. "We will not hire a blacksmith who never lifted a sledge," he said on September 30, 1876. "We will not hire a schoolteacher who does not know the alphabet … but when you come to our civil service, we serenely fill great numbers of our minor public offices with ignoramuses." The speech landed on the front page of The New York Times. "That just goes to show how vital he is, how big his name is," said Mallory Howard, assistant curator at the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford. She's not surprised that Twain would have been so horrified by the spoils system: "I think he felt it was embarrassing putting people in office who are not prepared. I think it doesn't make sense to him." Hayes made it to the White House, but little progress was made on civil service reform during his single term. Hayes was succeeded by President James Garfield, who ran on reform. But only months after being sworn in, the spoils system exacted its most horrifying toll. Garfield was assassinated by a disgruntled and delusional office-seeker named Charles Guiteau. Guiteau had campaigned for Garfield, and believed that the president "owed" him. Worse still for reformers, Garfield's vice president, Chester Alan Arthur, suddenly elevated to the top job, had climbed the ranks of dirty machine politics, enjoying the fruits of the spoils system along the way. "This was a nightmare scenario for the reformers," said Greenberger. "And then all of a sudden, here he is, he's President of the United States, and he expresses support for civil service reform, which shocked everybody." Yes, in a surprising about-face, in 1883, President Chester A. Arthur – contrite, by some accounts, over the murder of Garfield – signed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, the first of its kind in U.S. history. The law was strengthened over time, laying the groundwork for a professional bureaucracy responsible for everything from food safety to financial regulation. Greenberger said, "It really paved the way for a more active federal government." Of course, the federal government of the late 1800s, with about 50,000 employees, looked like a lot different than today's workforce of more than two million. And critics, including President Trump, believe the numbers – and the protections afforded those civil service workers – have gone too far. Hence, President Trump's executive order this past week aiming to make it easier to fire some federal workers. "We're getting rid of all of the cancer," he said. Scott Greenberger says maybe the time has come for another debate about the role of the civil service: "Yes, you should be able to fire people who aren't doing their jobs. And the protections shouldn't be such that someone who's incompetent is allowed to stay in a job. At the same time, if you eliminate those protections entirely, then you go back to the sort of system that we had in the 19th century, where only political loyalists are serving these positions." A system undone by an unlikely hero who most people don't even remember was president … one that even Mark Twain put on a pedestal. "It's funny that we hardly remember the guy today," Greenberger said. "But when he died, people, including Mark Twain said, 'Wow, that guy was the greatest president we'd ever had!'" For more info: "The Unexpected President: The Life and Times of Chester A. Arthur" by Scott Greenberger (Da Capo Press), in Hardcover, Trade Paperback, eBook and Audio formats, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Greenberger, executive editor, StatelineMark Twain House & Museum, Hartford, Scappaticci, "Bow Tie Historian" Story produced by Mark Hudspeth. Editor: Joseph Frandino. More presidential history from Mo Rocca: The rise and fall of President Martin Van BurenFranklin Pierce: America's handsomest president?Mo Rocca with lively thoughts about our deceased presidentsTime will tell: Historians on judging presidential leadershipThe Herbert Hoover you didn't knowFirst families: A reunion of presidential relativesPainting the presidentsAndrew Johnson: The unfortunate presidentChester A. Arthur and the original "birther" controversyWorst president ever: The ignominy of James BuchananHow doctors killed President James GarfieldThe long and short of President William Henry HarrisonJames Polk and America's "Forgotten War" south of the borderPresident John Tyler's great genesPresident Warren Harding: Sex, scandal and death in the White HouseUlysses S. Grant's last battleThe passions of Woodrow WilsonEleanor Roosevelt, first lady and humanitarianLady Bird Johnson, first lady and diarist Trump reacts to Republicans who won't vote for Hegseth Extended interview: Idina Menzel Behind the scenes at Sundance
