Creative Commentary
Bob Costas Explains Olympic Coverage
BEIJING – Every night during the Olympic Games I’m frequently overcome by sensual gratification and the release of absolute power: this invariably occurs as I tell billions of inconsequential viewers that, in essence, their time matters not, and fragments of headline sports they’ve waited months to watch will be shown in two or three hours,…
Read MorePoe at the Gentleman’s Magazine – Part 11
Edgar Allan Poe, despite working for Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, seemed not to understand the implication of my being William E. Burton: I paid ten dollars a week, more than sufficient compensation starting in June 1839, and expected him to be a dutiful and deferential editorial assistant. I realized many readers considered Poe brilliant, particularly after…
Read MoreJewish Film Festival in the Bay Area
Baghdad Twist Don’t ask my age. It’s none of your business, I told my son, and doesn’t concern people who’ll watch your documentary. No one’s going to see me in this film. They’ll only hear my voice. Better they look at black and white photos of me as a child in reasonably hospitable Iraq where…
Read MoreRoderick Usher Assails Edgar Allen Poe – Part 10
My family and I are profoundly distressed by Edgar Allen Poe’s recent short story “The Fall of the House of Usher”. We, who so often said yes when this forlorn orphan begged to visit, now learn he considers our home “melancholy” and one which pervades his spirit “with a sense of insufferable gloom.” Had Poe…
Read MoreVirginia Clemm and Edgar Allan Poe – Part 9
I hated gossip about Eddy living with his “child cousin.” I wasn’t a child but a young lady only three months short of fourteen. Eddy still made sure our marriage bond said I was twenty-one. That afternoon in May 1836 a smiling minister married us in our boarding house. My mother and our landlord and…
Read MorePoe the Editor and Family Man – Part 8
When Aunt Maria’s mother died her pension was also buried and that night Edgar Allan Poe raged to dig it up. Aunty and Virginia guided him into bed from which he two days later arose dazed but determined to be responsible. Aunty had become his real mother and Virginia, though only age thirteen, was already…
Read MoreFive Youths Attack Old Man
On Father’s Day at a church in Chicago, Barack Obama preached that “of all the rocks upon which we build our lives…family is the most important.” And we must “recognize and honor how critical every father is to that foundation…They are mentors and role models. They are examples of success…But if we are honest…we’ll admit…
Read MoreAunt Maria Clemm Nurtures Poe – Part 7
Eddie was a sweet boy who loved me and my young daughter Virginia. He tried to help but except selling a young slave I’d inherited he couldn’t make any money for us despite writing hours a day. Our best prospect was John Allan, and sometimes I wrote him Eddie deserved to do well and would…
Read MoreElbow Revolt
Late last summer my left elbow all at once began aching when I dressed and undressed or opened and closed a door. It groaned during light exercises, throbbed as I sat with bent arms poised over the computer keyboard, and wailed in the bleak hours of night. You can no longer deny it’s a problem,…
Read MoreHenry Poe – Part 6
Not critically but with pride I suggest that for his third book, Poems, Edgar had copied some of my stanzas. I also concede I might have borrowed some of his. I couldn’t guarantee much in the spring of 1831. Once, I had appeared an impressive big brother, donning the uniform of a merchant marine and…
Read MorePoe the Scholar and Soldier – Part 5
In person I may have addressed my foster father John Allan as Pa but in my heart and with others I called him a tyrant who, despite his wealth, denied sufficient funds for dignified survival at the University of Virginia, sentencing me to dress inelegantly and use my own hands to tidy my room. Fellow…
Read MoreCivil War in Mexico
At press conferences I proudly proclaimed the capture of safe houses and drug cartel hit men in Mexico City, and displayed their powerful weapons, bulletproof vests, and stacks of money. Here’s what they’re doing, I told the Mexican people. I want everyone to know that I, Edgar Millan Gomez, am the national police chief and…
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