Next time you're in Philadelphia, come with me to the Edgar Allan Poe Historical Site. It is past the highway at the edge of downtown. There are a couple of rangers who work there. One of them answers the door enthusiastically. She is six feet tall and her name is Helen. Dick the ranger sits behind the desk and clicks a clicker. Helen ushers you back to a screening room where there is an eight-minute film on the life of Poe in progress, followed by an 18-minute film of "The Black Cat." You walk in the screening room imagining that Helen the ranger will follow you and continue to talk to you because you are the only people she has seen all day. There are actually other people in the screening room. They are four German girls and a man in a Turkish cap. You watch the last three minutes of the film and then tell Helen you won't be watching the 18-minute film. Instead you tour Poe's house using a laminated self-guided-tour sheet. The house is exactly as it was left in 1930. It is in terrible shape and no trace of Poe's residency remains. Still, it is a $279,000 house in this market. It has six rooms on three floors, plus a basement. The basement has a partly walled-up chimney which some say figures in the plot of "The Black Cat." It is known for certain that Poe wrote "The Raven" while living here. When you are done with your tour another ranger has turned up. He is talking with Dick the ranger about the underground Benjamin Franklin Museum. On Monday and Tuesday they will be replacing the carpets at this museum. Having been there you know it is high time. The other ranger says, "So that means on Monday and Tuesday a whole bus full of people is going to come in from who knows where just to see -- " and Dick says, "Yup." You, being me, will think that anyone who comes in from out of town expressly to see the underground Benjamin Franklin Museum is going to be happier at another museum. No one who came to town on a bus to see this museum has ever been there.

Yesterday I bought the CD set of the New Yorker as a present for somebody. Lucky them! Then I sat and read Bookslut for a while so I could think of some other damn thing to read. I don't want to read anything, though. I didn't go to any more meetings of that book club back in the summertime.