Edgar Allan Poe, and Three Awards

hank you blogger friends!

Thank you to Gina at Diary of a Writer in Progress for the Fabulous Blog Ribbon and the Be Inspired Award!

And Melanie at Feather Pens, Tartan Dreams for the Illuminating Blogger Award!

I always have trouble with the passing on the awards part - everyone's got such colourful, detailed, entertaining, exciting blogs! Pick up an award or ribbon if you happen to have come by - perhaps you'd like to mention my ongoing Show me the Words! contest - there's still time to enter!

It seems all I've got to do is share one random fact about myself. Actually, I've got Ten Things I've Done That No One Else Has! One of the items off that list was: While working as a girl friday at a fashion magazine, I gave myself the authority to pull an ad just days before publication, because they had spelled Hemingway with two Ms! I called the company and suggested it'd be better if they changed it...

Speaking of Hemingway, I've got photos to share from another author's house - Poe's house in Philadelphia, which I visited on Fourth of July weekend:

 

Poe lived for a few years in the house on the left

here's the back garden

and the back door

national historic landmark!

sign outside the house

massive mural outside the house (and me!)

bit of an explanation, about how Poe lived here with his wife Virginia and his aunt/mother-in-law

imagine the street beyond full of horses, carriages, market vendors...

the door from the kitchen to the cellar, which featured in the story The Black Cat

the reading room, designed by the historic site according to his specifications

another view of the reading room

Poe's essay on The Philosophy of Furniture

I learned that Baudelaire translated many of Poe's works into French

King, on Poe

Wilde, on Poe

Poe, with a cat (mural on an inside wall)

printed copy of a poem Virginia wrote to Poe

"And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door!"

one last thing - a sign a few blocks down, about the Barrymores; you learn something new every day!

Which authors' homes have you visited?

P.S.: ROW80 update: I've been getting a bit discouraged again, but still keeping up with my morning pages. Nutschell gave me a great idea though - it's not that I'm ignoring Ayten and her story, it's that I'm gaining distance from the manuscript.