Visiting Edgar Poe at Castle Island (sort of)

Castle Island, Boston Harbor

In late 1826, Edgar Poe (he never used the name "Allan" on his published works), 17, was having yet another confrontation with his foster father, John Allan, in Richmond, Va., their home. Since Poe had entered his teen years, the tension between him and Allan had boiled and bubbled in a witch's brew that soon overwhelmed all. Poe had recently messed up at the University of Virginia--though he had done well in some courses. Drinking. Gambling debts. Embarrassment for Allan, who was publicly virtuous, though privately? Another matter. He had affairs outside his marriage. Children. He would leave money for them in his will--but nothing for Edgar (or "Eddie," as the family called him). At the time of his death, Allan was one of the richest men in Virginia.

Anyway, Allan was angry now with his foster son--those embarrassing incidents at university--so he refused to allow Edgar to return to school, and the young man, always very emotional (a good thing for literary, if not personal, history), left home early in 1827. His foster mother gave him a little money, which he promptly used to sail to Boston. There, he fooled around for a few months--arranged for the publication of Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827)--and then, on May 26, 1827, enlisted in the U. S. Army as "Edgar A. Perry." Early in June, his first assignment: artillery, Battery H at Fort Independence overlooking Boston Harbor from Castle Island.

On Halloween that year (appropriate for Poe!) he was transferred to Fort Moultrie, Sullivan's Island, Charleston (S. C.) Harbor. This is not the place to expatiate--but Poe loved the military (and had since he was a boy). He would eventually go to West Point, where he was doing well--until another flameout with his foster father. Poe showed him by behaving in such a way as to force West Point to dismiss him. A good thing, again, for literary history.

Okay.

This past Sunday--September 7--my older brother, Richard (who lives in Dorchester, Mass.), escorted Joyce and me to Castle Island, now a historical site/museum. It was a gorgeous sunny day, and crowds swarmed all around the fort--not the fort that Poe knew, but its next incarnation (Civil War era). Still, the views from the fort give the same perspective--if not the same sights--that Poe would have seen. (I'm sure EP, who died in 1849, did not get any glimpses, as we did, of airliners landing at Logan Airport.)

We arrived just moments before the final tour began (at 3), so we were lucky: In the fall, tours are only on Sundays. The tour took about an hour and was conducted by a man who had taught high school English in the Boston Public Schools for more than thirty years--so we immediately established a good connection. We went up onto the ramparts, circling around the fort, then into its bowels where we saw an approximation of the spot where Poe would have bunked during his time there.

The guide--and the guidebook I purchased there (Castle Island and Fort Independence, Boston Public Library, 1995)--offered the claim that at Castle Island, Poe had heard a story about some soldiers who had once walled up an obnoxious fellow--and thus provided the source for Poe's masterful story "The Cask of Amontillado."

Good legend. But just a legend. The scholarly works on Poe point to an 1844 piece in the Columbian Magazine (in the same issue appeared Poe's story "Mesmeric Revelation") called "A Man Built in a Wall," a piece about a skeleton discovered in a church wall in Italy. Some other sources are likely, as well, but the scholarly collection of Poe's stories edited by Thomas Ollive Mabbott mentions nothing about the tale from Castle Island.

But such things happen. When I was in Santa Clara, Calif., some years ago doing research on The Call of the Wild, a city official told me that Buck (the hero of Wild) had pranced around Santa Clara in the control of the Bond brothers, who had met London in the Klondike and whose dog (oddly named "Jack") had been the inspiration for Buck. Just one problem, though: The Bonds had bought Jack in Seattle on the way north and had lost him on the way home. He'd never been to Santa Clara.

Anyway, we had a lovely afternoon at Castle Island--as the photos show--and I was glad to have had the chance--thanks to my bro--to visit one of the few Poe sites I've not seen.

Next ... Sullivan's Island?!

view from ramparts

"Poe's area"

Fort Independence

Dickie & Danny

On the Road Again, 2

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Well, I've been silent for a few days. We were on the road (see photo!), and I thought I could keep up with my regular blogging and FB posts. Turns out I couldn't. Too much else to do. Too tired. And (one day) too sick. So ... the lights went out for a few days while I dealt with the corrosive guilt that's been my principal inheritance from my Puritan forebearers. (Why aren't you getting your work done? What possible excuse could you have? Your grandfather would not have missed a day of his blog--not that he ever had one. But ... if he had had one, well, he would not have used wimpy excuses like "I'm too busy" or "I don't feel well."

And on and on. My maternal grandmother would actually write this in her letters: "If you're too busy to write [letters to me], then you're too busy."

Anyway, Joyce and I had driven to Lenox, Mass., to celebrate my mom's 95th birthday ... and, not feeling well, I'd actually hacked out most of what you'll read below--but did not finish it till we got home yesterday (Tuesday) evening after a long drive home from Boston (more of that in subsequent posts).

**

September 6, 2014

We just got back from a remarkable lunch to celebrate my mother's ninety-fifth birthday. We went to a little tavern that's part of Cranwell (a resort/golf complex) in Lenox, Mass., only minutes away from the assisted living place where Mom now resides. Present were all three sons (Dick, Dan, Dave), all three grandchildren (Steve, Rick, Bella), Joyce, and Phil, my older brother's partner.

There were a few simple gifts, some expressions of gratitude, lots of raucous laughter, and some pretty good food. (I had a turkey burger!). Mom ate salmon--her favorite (not counting chocolate)--resting on a pile of Japanese noodles that gave her a bit of trouble, slipping off her fork. She found it all very amusing but was not managing to eat very much. Since I was beside her, I returned a favor she'd granted me, a favor that began with my birth in November 1944 and did not end  until that day when I no longer needed it: I fed her. I was nervous about doing so (she has always been a very proud woman), but she seemed to enjoy it very much--and ate quite a bit of salmon and noodles that I slowly forked for her.

Then it was time for an amazing double-chocolate cake older brother Richard had picked up near his home in Dorchester--so Mom got her two favorite treats in one sitting. Let me say that she managed the chocolate with no help from me--or from anyone else. (It's dangerous to go near her when she's consuming chocolate!)

Afterwards, brother Dave and son Steve rode with her on the little bus back to her facility. Joyce and I headed for a coffee shop (Haven) in Lenox, where we did a bit of work we'd brought with us. Afterwards, we drove back over to see Mom for a half-hour or so (she was veering near a nap when we arrived). I first rose to leave about 3:25, then heard this from Mom: Don't go.

And so we didn't.

Mom and oldest son, Richard

Mom and her three sons: Dick, Dan, Dave

Mom and the Whole Crew: Joyce, Bella, Dan (front);
Dick, Phil, Ricky, Steve, Dave (back)

On the Road Again, 1

1. We've reached Becket, Mass., where we're staying in the old farmhouse my brothers own in the Berkshires. My mother's 95th birthday is on September 9, but we have to celebrate a little early. Otherwise, we can't all be together. It's a long drive--Hudson, Ohio, to Becket (about 560 miles), and it takes us about ten hours. We've driven it many, many times. This will be one of the great times, I hope. Mom--now in a wheelchair--will be able to go out to a restaurant with us because the assisted living place she now calls home has arranged special transportation. She hasn't been able to get out in months.

2. Joyce ate one of my granola bars today. As readers of these posts know, I'm a Creature of Habit (more than most other creatures), and at one of our regular stops (Buckhorn, PA--about halfway), I always get a couple of oat-n-honey granola bars at the gas station. Joyce opens them while I drive and hands them to me at certain intervals along the way (little rewards for reaching goals--it's childish, and I can't imagine the trip without observing the imperatives that habit issues). Anyway, she buys her own little treats, too, back at the gas station--never really the same thing (we are very different in this regard). And today--not really paying attention  as we were talking--she ate one of my bars, thinking it was one of her treats. She confessed; I behaved in a mature fashion (!!). And she gave me one of her bars (peanut), but, you know, it just wasn't the same. The rest of the way felt a little bit "off," you know?

3. Re: drivers in New York. In this state--today, anyway--I experienced far too many people making this particular maneuver: passing me, moving back into my lane, slowing down. It happened so often that it seemed almost on the level of a conspiracy of some sort (not that I'm one of those--conspiracy nuts). Still ... why did it happen so many times?  In New York only?

4. Oddly, we saw no really unusual wildlife the entire 560 miles. I have seen coyotes, wild turkeys, all sorts of cool things. Not this time. (Conspiracy?)

5. I will post tomorrow about my mom's birthday lunch. She was born on September 9, 1919, in Martinsburg, West Virginia, where her father was preaching at the time.

Annoyed Crow in Kent

Last night we drove over to the Starbucks in the Stow-Kent Plaza (drive-thru), and on our way out, looping around the building to the main driveway, we encountered ... a crow. Right smack in the middle of the driveway.

He/She (let's say It so I don't have to get into gender issues in a crow-post) was very interested in the middle of the driveway. I couldn't see what it was, but--wild guess?--something to eat. Something no longer living, probably.

As we slowly approached the crow, I recited a few lines from "The Raven" (yes, I know they're not the same critter ... but still), and it (!) hopped backwards (in a sideways fashion, if you can picture that, fluttering up few feet, landing a little bit away from us, but only a few feet and still right in front of us). I drove a few feet more. It hopped/flapped backwards (in a sideways fashion ...); I drove a few feet more. It hopped/flapped ...

Are you getting the picture? The crow was not interested in surrendering its territory (or, rather, its snack) to a big black Prius (did we look to it like a really big crow? One that gets awesome mileage--but seems a bit, you know, wussy?). This little Prius-crow choreography continued until we were entirely around the building and were turning onto the main drive. I'm estimating a half-dozen or even ten reluctant, short retreats.

At which point the crow returned to whatever-it-was. And we drove home.

And I've been thinking about that bird ...  It evinced no sign whatsoever of fear--just a grudging acceptance that PriusCrow was quite a bit bigger--though, as I said, wimpier. Perhaps not really a crow after all. Not one worthy of the species, anyhow.

Maybe the crow has been thinking about us,too--about what this world is coming to when a PriusCrow doesn't stop for a snack that's right in front of it. That gently nudges forward--as if it's, you know, afraid. Next time, maybe, I'll stand my ground a little more firmly, he thinks. Will not sound "Retreat." Will show PriusCrow that it is a wuss--and make it back out of the parking lot. While I dine in creature comfort.

Caw! Caw!

Routines

As I've written here before (I'm pretty sure), I'm a very habitual creature. I'm not the only one in the neighborhood, by the way. The neighbors' cats drift over in our yard about the same time every day, looking for little critters to kill and deliver to their owners. I see the squirrels busying around. The birds start singing early, then cease with the sunset, at which point other things start making their noises--including one neighbor who likes to sit out late on his front porch and talk, full-voice, till about 10:30. Not a lullaby for me. (Lights off here about 9:30 each night.)

Anyway, I thought it would be fascinating (!) to share with you my early morning routines (with suitable candor and lack thereof, depending).

I get up between 6:30 and 7 now in these post-retirement years. When I was teaching at Western Reserve Academy (2001-2011), I was up at 5:10 (alarm!) and was usually in my classroom by 6, getting ready for the day, etc. No more of that. By the time I'm up now, Joyce has usually left--headed out the the health club (six days a week). A restless sleeper, Joyce routinely leaves our bed sometime during the night to go back to our guest room (i.e., Joyce's Annex), where she sleeps lightly and thinks about her writing as the night softens into dawn.

When I first get up, I head downstairs, where I unload the dishwasher, remove one of my homemade scones from the freezer, wrap it in a paper towel, and set it aside for some microwavery later. I lay beside it a mega-calcium pill (necessary, twice daily, because of the Lupron coursing through my system). I turn on my computer, make sure the clocks are set (we have three old clocks--including a cuckoo that belonged to my great-grandfather), then head back upstairs, where I make the bed (sometimes, when Joyce is a little later leaving the house--like today--I discover that she has already made it--an early-morning pleasantness).

Then it's shower time ... you get no details, and I'm certain as I can be that you're glad about that.

After I dress, I head downstairs, where I update my bank accounts on Quicken (a program I've been using since it was in its DOS infancy), begin the day's journal entry (I've been keeping a journal, daily, since I retired from Harmon Middle School in January 1997), open Facebook and paste in the Daily Doggerel and other nonsense I've written the day before; I check Writer's Almanac online to see if there's anything I'd like to share on FB. There often is.

Now here's the part that's a little weird, creepy, OCD: I do not read any email or FB posts or messages. I save those for later ... as you'll see.

Computer jobs done, I go to the kitchen, zap my scone, put it in my backpack, and walk over to Open Door Coffee Co., where I find "my" table (usually). Before I go to the counter, I turn on my Kindle Fire so that when I return with my coffee, it has already connected with the Wi-Fi and has downloaded today's New York Times. I read the Times stories, sharing on FB ones that I find particularly interesting; then I read my email (post-retirement, I've discovered that about 99.99999999% of it is commercial or spam), and then I read the FB posts from my friends, the messages, the comments. It's always in this order: Times, email, FB. No exceptions. If I changed, I'm certain the world would implode.

Once those tasks are done, I begin reading my daily Kirkus Reviews quota (self-imposed)--100 pages--taking careful notes. Then heading home.

Oh, one other creepy, nerdy thing. As I'm walking to Open Door, I mumble the following poems I've memorized--always in this precise order--but only on M-T, Th-Fri. (Other days are days off.)

1. Auden: "Musee des Beaux Arts"
2. Bishop: "Breakfast Song"
3. Booth: "Night Song"
4. Collins: "After I Heard You Were Gone"
5. Crane: "A Man Saw a Ball of Gold in the Sky"
6. Cummings: "maggie and millie and molly and may"
7. Dickinson: "I Heard a Fly Buzz"
8. Dickinson: "A Bird Came down the Walk"
9. Dickinson: "The Going from a World We Know"
10. Dickinson: "The Brain Is Wider Than the Sky"
11. Dickinson: "I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed"
12. Donne: "The Flea"
13. Frost: "Fire and Ice"
14. Frost: "Acquainted with the Night"
15. Hardy: "When Dead"
16. Housman: "When I Was One-and-Twenty"
17. Hughes: "Mother to Son"
18. Jonson: "On My First Son"
19. Matthews: "Misgiving"
20. Masefield: "Sea Fever"

By this point, I'm usually in "my" chair doing what I told you above.  After I finish my reading, I mumble the following before heading for home:

1. Millay: "I shall forget you presently"
2. Poe: "To Helen"
3. Ransom: "Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter"
4. Ryan: "Spiderweb"
5. Starbuck: "A Gift"
6. Shakespeare: "Our revels now are ended"
7. Shakespeare: "When in the chronicle of wasted time"
8. Shakespeare: "When to the sessions of sweet silent thought"
9. Shakespeare: "How like a winter hath my absence been"
10. Shakespeare: "O, what a rogue and peasant slave"
11. Shakespeare: "I will tell you why ... so shall my anticipation prevent your discovery"
12. Shakespeare: "Tis now the very witching time of night"
13. Shakespeare: "There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow"

Now it's time to leave. On the way home, I mumble these:

1. Stevenson: "Requiem"
2. Tennyson: "Crossing the Bar"
3. Tennyson: "The Charge of the Light Brigade"
4. Thomas: "In My Craft or Sullen Art"
5. Thomas: "The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower"
6. Whitman: "O Captain! My Captain!"
7. Wilbur: "Ecclesiastes 11:1"
8. Wordsworth: "My Heart Leaps Up"
9. Wordsworth: "The World Is Too Much With Us"
10. Yeats: "Oil and Blood"
11. Yeats: "When You Are Old"
12. Yeats: "The Second Coming"

By the time I hit "The Second Coming," I'm on the front porch, where I pick up the newspapers, head into the house, go upstairs to chat with Joyce a little ... and thus continue my nerdy day ...

Maybe I'll write about the psychopathology of all of this another time?

our cuckoo clock,
once belonging to my
great-grandfather

Daily Doggerel: Vol. VI

I went and did it again. I just uploaded to Kindle Direct (via Amazon) the sixth volume in my silly series of "verse" that I publish each day for my Facebook friends--including vocab poems (based on the word-of-the-day from my tear-off calendar) and Shakespeare couplets (I'm slowly working my way through summaries of all the Bard's plays).

Now, if you've got a Kindle, you're golden (unlike the poems). Just order it on Amazon for $2.99--cheaper than a complicated drink at Starbucks and far less fattening (or nutritious).

If you don't have a Kindle, you can still buy it on Amazon and read it on your computer or smart phone or tablet--as long as you've got the (free) Kindle app.

If you don't believe in doggerel, well, can't say that I blame you.

The title will not be available for a few hours, but here's a little preview--the Introduction:

Foreword

doggerel or dogrel  (daw-ger-uh  l, dog-er-)

adjective

1. a. comic or burlesque, and usually loose or irregular in measure.

    b. rude; crude; poor.

noun

2. doggerel verse.

— from dictionary.com 

And, somehow, I’ve arrived at a sixth volume of doggerel. (When am I going to get a life?) Like its five predecessors, this volume contains verse I wrote over the last three months each day for my Facebook friends—a quotidian task that somehow has never seemed odious to me. Perhaps it should.

As I did with the previous volumes, I read over all these newer pieces, discarding those that fail to reach my low standards. I’ve also arranged the selections thematically (see the table of contents) and have included the little ditty I wrote each day about the vocabulary word-of-the-day on my calendar as well as the couplets I’m doing each day about Shakespeare’s plays. (Most here deal with A Midsummer Night’s Dream.) I also finished my little series of Body Parts Poems—which I’d begun in an earlier volume.

Here’s an oddity. I’m working through the Shakespeare plays in the order that he composed them (an order that’s not particularly certain). The two most recent ones have been King John and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Well, a couple of weeks ago my wife, Joyce, and I spent a week in Stratford, Ontario, gorging on plays (we saw eleven in six days). This is a feast we’ve allowed ourselves every summer for about fifteen years. Anyway, two of the Shakespeare plays on this year’s Stratford list? King John and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (Cue theme music from The Twilight Zone.)

Perhaps the Bard is smiling somewhere? I doubt it. Not if he’s read any of these motley efforts of mine. Which, of course, he hasn’t. And I am relieved. I consider him a friend, and no one wants to disappoint a friend, right?

If so, then what have I been doing posting this stuff every day on Facebook?

Daniel Dyer

August 31, 2014

Back to College

A Facebook friend (a student from long ago) shared this meme today about young people heading off to college. It got me thinking ...

When my older brother (Richard) and I "went off to college," we simply walked up the hill from our home in Hiram, Ohio, and entered our classrooms at Hiram College. Richard probably could have gone anywhere (he was class valedictorian and had won all kinds of awards), but Dad was teaching at Hiram, so we got free tuition. In my own case? I'd sort of cruised through high school, paying less attention to schoolwork than to more important matters like basketball, baseball, school plays, and the like. (Actually, my involvement in those things--not to mention school newspaper, band, choir, and other activities--helped me greatly during my subsequent teaching career: I found it easier to relate to kids with all kinds of interests).

So what I'm saying: Richard could have gone anywhere; not I.

Anyway, I "went off to college" in the summer of 1962, a couple of months before the regular academic term began, and took English 101 (Prof. Charles F. McKinley, a wonderful man who lived into his 90s and who remained a friend), realizing about halfway through that summer school class (as I've noted here before, I think), that about half of my classmates, having failed English 101, were repeating the course. So ... that first day I walked up Hiram's north hill (about a quarter of a mile), walked into Hinsdale Hall (RIP), sat in Dr. McKinley's class, and tried to read Macbeth again--something I'd not quite managed to do my senior year in high school, even though it was assigned. I just didn't get Shakespeare--and was positive I never would.

Our own son left for college in the late summer of 1990. It had been a tough summer for him. His beloved grandfather (Joyce's dad) had died that summer of lung cancer--and his grandmother (Joyce's mom), whom he also loved fiercely, was sliding into the Alzheimer's that would eventually kill her. By the end she knew no one, not even Joyce, who visited her with a profound devotion that puts tears in my eyes even now. By the end, Joyce's mom no longer knew what eating was--what food was.

Steve was heading off to Tufts University, north of Boston, and since my two brothers lived in the area, we were happy about his choice. It also meant we didn't have to drive him to school--which would have been difficult: Both of us were teaching full-time and had already started classes. My brothers would meet him at Logan Airport and handle his move into his dorm.

As the day neared for his departure, Joyce and I became increasingly emotional. Our only child. A great kid. And we'd had the unusual experience--both Joyce and I--of having Steve as a student. I had  taught him in 8th grade English at Harmon Middle School (1985-86 school year), and Joyce had taught him twice at Western Reserve Academy--in English II and in AP English.

We had stayed very close with Steve--there had been no adolescent rage (not that we saw), no slamming doors, no profanity, none of it. Oh, sure, there were some "issues" about the car now and then but mild. And Steve had continued to enjoy our company, often joining us for movies on weekends while he was in high school. (By the time I was midway through high school, I was an ad for Raging Hormones and thought my parents were clueless ... I had that exactly backwards, of course. I socialized with my parents in those dark days only when I had to--and often in a sullen, snotty way).

Steve had always loved movies, by the way--right from the first time we took him (babe in arms). When he was an infant, he would cry when the movie was over. (People sitting near us thought that was cute.) We also liked to watched TV shows together--like The Rockford Files--but he liked ones I never could get hooked on--like Knight Rider (1982-86) and some others.

One of our favorite films was The Professionals (1966), a Western with Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, et al. that we watched, oh, 18,700 times. When I thought Steve had finished his packing for college, I slipped a VHS (remember them?) of the film into his bag. (Only later did I learn that he'd opened the bag to put something else in--and had found the tape. Oh well. Trailer for the film.) We both still watch The Professionals, now and then--now on Blu-ray. (You can probably stream it too--haven't checked.)

The day came. The drive to Cleveland Hopkins Airport. The tears. The hugs. The promises. The tears. The surprises (we gave him some extra $$). The tears. The tears. The tears.

And then he was heading onto the plane. The tears. And we were driving back home. The tears. And waiting for his call. The tears. The call came. The tears. To bed. The tears. The memories of eighteen years. The tears. How could it have possibly gone so fast ... ?