More Poe

So, this week I got some of the new Poe stamps being issued by the Post Office in memory of his bicentennial. They look great, with the portrait being based on the 'Thompson' daguerreotype, one of two photographs taken in Richmond three weeks before Poe's death (the other being the now-destroyed 'Traylor' daguerreotype). It's also nice to see that they got the name right, with his signature ("Edgar A. Poe") across the bottom -- although the accompanying text on the sheet when you buy a block stumbles and gives the familiar "Edgar Allan Poe" instead. But aside from that (understandable) gaff, the actual write-up's not bad, stressing as it does that Poe excelled both as a writer of fiction and a poet (which of course sets him apart from any other major figure of the century, English or American). They might also add that he's one of the few authors taught in literature courses from that era who people still read on their own, outside of classes.

This makes me regret that, while I have the excellent two-volume set of Mabbott's edition of Poe's complete TALES, I don't have the one-volume POEMS that preceded it. And while I know there was a belated fourth volume collecting together Poe's longer fiction (i.e., THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM, THE JOURNAL OF JULIUS RODMAN, and some others -- all the things Mabbott died without getting around to), I haven't been able to find again the reference to who did edit that, or when it appeared.

So, I know one thing I'll be searching for on my next visit to Suzzallo-Allen.

--John R.

current reading: EDGAR A. POE: MOURNFULL AND NEVER-ENDING REMEMBRANCE by Kenneth Silverman [1991]

The Tea Boom Busts

So, thanks to Janice for letting me know about this story. Turns out there's been a huge speculator's market for fine teas in China these last few years, with people paying top dollar for the fanciest of pu'ers (compressed aged teas). Kind of like people paying too much for coffee, or wine, or tulips. Now about a third of the tea-merchants have closed up shop and some of the tea orchards (if that's the right term for them)* are being grubbed up and the land replanted with food crops. I loved the part about the wild tea trees (further investigation shows they do indeed exist, though there's great debate about those who fudge between truly wild trees, which are rare, and those "feral" tea trees from old-abandoned orchards, which are said to be good but not as superlative as the other). I don't particularly like pu'er myself -- give me a good Keemun or Yunnan instead -- but it turns out the Tea Guru from a few weeks ago was quite right: the compressed teas sold as pu'er are indeed better when they're aged, and the older the better. In fact, they're not quite 'black' teas because they're pressed, then age in tea-brick form, rather than being fermented like true black teas; they're really a special in-between category neither green nor black.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/17/world/asia/17tea.html?emc=eta1


*Upton refers to its tea 'plantations', but that's a term I'd prefer to avoid.


today's teas: Clouds of Black (Great Wall Mall), Northwest Breakfast (Market Spice), Yunnan (The Tea Cup).

History Now

So, today we made history.

Too often, we're only aware of history when it touches our lives in traumatic ways. We remember watching the Twin Towers fall or the Challenger disaster, or where we were when Lennon or Reagan or Robert Kennedy or JFK were shot, just as an older generation remember the shock of Pearl Harbor or Hiroshima. We forget sometimes how vastly important things can happen quietly, peacefully,

So, today's a day to feel good about the times we get things right.

--JDR

Edgar Poe's Two Hundredth Birthday

So, two hundred years ago today (January 19th, 1809), Edgar Poe* was born. In commemoration, here are two of his poems that can pretty well represent the precocious start and sudden end of his career. The first poem was written when Poe was about twenty (and when he already had his first two books behind him) but never published in his lifetime; it survives because he wrote it in the guestbook at a friend's house during a visit.

(I) Alone

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were -- I have not seen
As others saw -- I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.

Then -- in my childhood -- in the dawn
Of a most stormy life -- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold --
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by --
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.


The second dates from the last year of Poe's life, when he wrote many of his best poems (including "The Bells", "Annabel Lee", and "El Dorado"):

(II) A Dream Within a Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow --
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream

Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.


I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand

. . . can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?




.........................
*Poe's name is often given (wrongly) as "Edgar Allan Poe"; while he sometimes used the middle initial 'A' (in memory of Frances Allan, his foster-mother), the "Allan" was added after Poe's death by his slanderer/biographer Rufus Griswold, probably to match the custom of the day (cf. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier, &c.).

--JDR

. . . some of the people

So, an Illinois politician once said

"You can fool some of the people all of the time
And you can fool all of the people some of the time
But you can't fool all of the people all of the time."

In the newest issue of THE NEW YORKER (Jan. 19th 2009, page 22), Hendrik Hertzberg adds a little more precision, observing that

"you can fool some people all the time. We now know how many 'some' is: twenty-seven percent."

--JDR

Update, Jan. 19:
Tonight on MSNBC they're reporting the results of a newer poll: the Incumbent's approval rating is now down to 22%.

Forty Years Ago Today

January 17th, 1969.
R. I. P.
John D. Rateliff Sr.

Fordyce Hall (second session)

So, two weeks back we gathered again for the second session of the CTHULHU BY GASLIGHT scenario I'm running, FORDYCE HALL. I think it went v. well: it showed me some things I need to make sure get covered in the write-up, and some others I've drafted that can probably be cut. I got a sense of just how far you can go without having a map for the players, and now think the final piece should have a map for the Keeper but not for the players -- or at least that the player's map, if one is provided, should lack a scale, grid, or compass: anything that helps them put what they see into rational, measurable terms cuts against the thrust of the game. The amount of detail to include in the main map(s) is still problematic, though: there's no way to detail, or even list, all the rooms in the manor (since this is a module-length scenario, not a full-fledged campaign), yet it needs to give the Keeper enough information to run the scenario AND also cover the significant spots on the nearby Estate grounds.

So far as the playtest went, I was struck by how greatly a game session is changed just by who shows up. In this case, Steve W. ("Denholm the butler") couldn't make it, which meant that the PC who should have been nominally in charge of the group of his fellow servants, and whose player had actually taken a leading role in the first session, was suddenly absent. Coming up with a good reason for that Investigator to go off on his own and not find his way back was easy enough, and his unexplained non-return even after several days served as an ominous note.

The butler's absence turned those he left behind more a collection of individuals stuck together in the same place than a co-ordinated group. The much-put-upon senior footman manfully attempted to fill in the gap, and the groundskeeper also did his bit at consensus building, while the gameskeeper, junior footman, and new hired hand did a lot of the necessary work to start making the place habitable (as well as making a few discoveries, the significance of which was not necessarily apparent to them, in the process). Overall they did manage to work pretty well simply from a sense of camaraderie, like a bunch of people sharing a lifeboat after their ship had gone down. They not only made a good start on their characters' assigned task of getting the long-abandoned estate up and running again but made progress exploring some of the mysteries of the place. But despite their valiant effort, this stage of the adventure ended with the survivors abandoning the estate en masse and fleeing in terror back toward the village -- a highly effective conclusion to Phase One, I thought!

Oddly enough, they never encountered the main challenge of the first phase -- the general gathering creepiness of the place having been enough to put them on edge so that a sudden horrific event was enough to drive them over the edge. One of the most effective locales turned out to be the abandoned apple-orchard; others that I'd thought would be important, like the huge library and the wine cellar(s), proved to be less significant -- partly because of the absence of the character with Library Research (the butler), and partly because other things took priority in the short term and they just didn't have long enough to explore as thoroughly as they'd have liked. The two NPCs (Mary the maid and Mrs. Puddley the cook) seemed to work well, both to take care of some of the practical concerns of the job at hand so the PCs could concentrate on more interesting things and, so long as they were there, as a Keeper tool to trigger some of the paranormal events (rather than waiting for a PC to stumble across them). I was glad to see their dark suspicions (paranoia?) re. the NPC cook, Mrs. Puddley, since it seemed to me exactly the sort of reaction people in their stressful situation would begin to feel.

In any case, now that the servants have all handed in their notice and fled the spot, we can bring down the curtain on Phase One, and move on in the next session to Phase Two of this two-part adventure. Here the same players generate a new set of characters, no longer servants but now the gentry arriving at the newly refurbished hall to celebrate the holiday season in Sir Charles' new country manor. Not only will the players' new characters get to benefit from the hard work of their last set, but they get to see the same setting from a whole new (privileged) perspective. I'm looking forward to seeing how they take advantage of their new opportunities, and how they face the new challenges that kick in now that the Family is back in residence after all these years.


More latter.

--JDR


Today's Teas: Keemun (The Tea Cup), Yunnan (Market Spice), Huckleberry (Market Spice), Canton Red (Vital), & Flowery China Black (Upton).