LONGVIEW NEWS JOURNAL:
BALTIMORE--Edgar Allen Poe fans waited long past a midnight dreary,
but it appears annual visits to the writer's grave in Baltimore by a
mysterious figure called "The Poe Toaster" shall occur nevermore.
Poe House & Museum Curator Jeff Jerome said early Thursday that
die-hard fans waited hours past when the tribute bearer normally arrives.
But the "Poe Toaster was a no-show for a third year in a row, leaving
another unanswered question in a mystery worthy of the writer's
legacy. Poe fans said they would hold one last vigil this year before
calling an end to the tradition.
"It's over with," Jerome said wearily.
It is thought that the tributes of an anonymous man wearing black
clothes with a white scarf and a wide brimmed hat, who leaves three
red roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac at Poe's original grave
on the writer's birthday, date to at least the 1940's.
My note: Edgar Allen Poe was born January 19, 1809. On October 3, 1849,
he was found lying by a polling place (some writers say he was found
lying in a gutter) by a friend, and died about four days later. He was, as
are his works, a man surrounded by gloom and despair, his poetry and
prose masked in irrationaal mystery and dark mythology.
No one among his faithful fans who came to the grave site for the last
time was led to volunteer, and carry forth into posterity the baton of
love and devotion to Poe as evidenced by the faithful hooded stranger
with his offering of beauty and sustenance.
Who among us has not chilled at the voice of the Raven's "Never More?"
Who at the slow swing of The Pit and the Pendulum? Or the cunning
planning of death in The Cask of Amontillado? How long since you opened
a volume of Poe's works on some night dark and dreary ?
After Visiting
the New London School Disaster Museum
PEACE
My peace does not depend on circumstances
or possessions. It is that which dwells within me
to help me overcome circumstances.
Peace must be pursued through Grace, and
the knowledge that God is the giver of Grace.
All my efforts at attempting to earn Grace has
come to naught--it is a gift wrapped in the love
of God, mine to accept, that brings with it the
gift of Peace that, once I possessed it, through the
miracle of Promise, I discovered Being and
Purpose, and the significance of the footprints
I will leave behind.