Tag Archives: Poe

Quoth the Raven, “Vote Ever More!”

by Woody

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Quoth the Raven,

“Vote Ever More!”

What writer better to quote on Halloween than Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote in his most-famous poem The Raven: “Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering fearing / Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”

Below are some dark dreams that would make any mortal scream “Nevermore!” loud enough to rattle their chamber door…

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From the moment you fall asleep you find yourself resolutely standing – six feet from the person in front and behind you – in a line stretching more blocks than the eye can see.

Despite dreaming in real time during a full eight hours of sleep, upon awakening you still have not reached the voting booth.

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In another dream, you finally reach the front of the line only to find that you must unlock your high school locker before you can cast your ballot. Taking a wild guess, you spin the dial – clockwise, counterclockwise, clockwise – and give the lock a quick yank.

“Wrong! I’m sorry,” the lock tells you, “your signature does not match the squiggle we have on file from when you signed for a FedEx package using your index finger on a touchscreen, so your ballot will not be counted.”

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You walk to your familiar voting place but it has been shut down; so you drive to the next nearest poll but it, too, has been shuttered; so you drive further still and finally arrive at the only open poll in your county only to be greeted by a 10-hour line – which you find yourself standing in naked.

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Your wise subconscious has decided to skip the long lines by using a vote-by-mail ballot. Alas, this results in a different nightmare as you put your ballot inside a security/privacy envelope before putting that envelope inside a second envelope specified for mailing …

… and then, like Russian nesting dolls, you put that envelope inside another, and another, and another until you wake up screaming in frustration.

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In a similar dream, you have mistakenly used your security/privacy envelope to jot down a grocery list on and thus mail in your naked ballot inside the mailing envelope only. When you learn your ballot was invalidated by this technicality, you wake up screaming in anger.

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Again you dream of using a vote-by-mail ballot, but to avoid nesting doll-like envelopes or having the Postal Service deliver it too late to be counted, you take it directly at an official ballot drop box – but are faced with two identical looking ones.

One box contains a tiger that will bite your hand off when you drop your ballot inside while the other box will count your vote correctly. To determine which box to use, you must solve a Rubik’s Cube in 30 seconds or recall your Netflix password on the first try.

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In your final dark dream, your polling site in an affluent suburban neighborhood and you have flown through the line in 2 minutes and 43 seconds.

However, inside the voting booth you realize you have forgotten your election crib sheet. Looking at the propositions you suddenly find yourself again trying to open your high school locker; while standing naked in the hallway; and running late for class to take a final exam you need to pass in order to graduate.

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You awaken each time thinking “Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore’ ” but then vow, “No, that is wrong. Vote, vote, vote always ever election more!”

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

Part I: Pit Stop and the Pendulum

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE!

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Visiting Poe’s Home Upon a Midday Dreary

This is the first in a four-column series chronicling my recent father-son road trip to the homes of two Founding Fathers and more.

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Monticello, the Virginia estate of Thomas Jefferson, is nearly 350 miles as the crow flies from my son’s shoebox-sized apartment in lower Manhattan.

Make that as “The Raven” flies, because to break up our drive we stopped midway at the Edgar Allen Poe House Museum in Baltimore.

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Edgar Allen Poe

“Once upon a midnight dreary” begins the poem that launched Poe’s fame, and this certainly describes the midday of our visit two Saturdays past. Stepping out of the drizzle and inside the claustrophobic three-story brick home, a docent asked us how we learned about the museum. She seemed almost surprised to have visitors.

As if trying to ensure that we bought tickets, the docent told us we had arrived on an auspicious day because this date – October 8 – was the 167th anniversary of Poe’s funeral. She further explained, her voice dripping with drama, it had been a similarly rainy day.

My initial reaction was that the docent made this eerie claim every day for effect. However, a placard in the museum documented her claim: Poe died at age 40 on October 7, 1849, and his burial took place a day later at the nearby Westminster Burying Ground. Furthermore, so few people showed up because of the rain that the reverend decided not to bother with a sermon.

Poe lived at 203 North Amity Street only briefly, from 1833 to 1835 while in his mid-20s, yet he wrote voluminously during this span. The home was saved from demolition in 1941 and is now a National Historic Landmark that is nearly as hidden in plain sight as “The Purloined Letter.” I am glad we found it.

The narrow winding stairway leading up to Poe’s bedroom had a foreboding “rapping, rapping at my chamber door” feel. Artifacts on display include Poe’s chair and lap desk.

Poe’s legacy as a writer is remarkable; he invented the detective story and advanced the genres of horror and science fiction. And, of course, he penned a poem so great that an NFL team is named in its honor.

1poe-graveSerendipity smiled further on our side trip when the docent informed us that a anniversary ceremony commemorating Poe’s funeral was to be held at the Westminster Burying Ground, little more than a mile a way, starting in about five minutes.

Normally we would have walked, even in the rain, but for time’s sake we decided to drive. Confusing one-way streets and a dearth of parking spaces turned this into a bad decision. We finally made it to the church 10 minutes after the appointed 3 p.m. start.

Poe’s grave was easy to find by the size of its 7-foot tall marble monument, not by the size of the crowd gathered, because there was no one else present.

We hurried inside the beautiful gothic church, thinking the special observance for the great writer must be going on there instead of in the rain, but again we were alone.

Back into the drizzle we ventured to pay respects at the gravesite – the first of a handful of graves my son and I would visit, and be moved by, on our four-day journey.

Leaving the grounds, we finally encountered another person, an employee at the church. I inquired about the Poe ceremony, saying it must have been quite brief and we were sorry to have missed it.

It turns out that because of the dreary weather no one showed up and the planned sermon was cancelled. How eerily fitting.

In truth, the quaint museum had been a tad disappointing. But the mysticism of Poe having lived – and written – inside its walls, and the auspicious date of our visit, had magnified the magic.

Leaving the museum, the church, and a lunch of Maryland crab cakes at Lexington Market that dates back to 1763, we were accosted each time by panhandlers, one unnervingly aggressive. All in all, one visit to Poe’s city had been enough.

“Quoth the Raven, ‘Balti-nevermore.’ ”

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden&Me_cover_PRCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

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