The Canadas
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Spring 1997 News Updated August 6, 2002 |
Whew!
Now, Lisa has left her job in Chapel Hill to work at home as a homemaker and freelance publisher. I have no teaching assignments over the summer and go into my office only twice a week to work on research projects. As a result, we're enjoying a lot of free time in our new home. Our large backyard, which contains dozens of pines and other trees, is a miniature nature preserve, and we've been watching the birds who come to visit. The weather has been gorgeous--sunny skies, temperatures in the 70s and 80s--for the past two weeks, and we have taken the opportunity to spend many hours outdoors, walking or riding our bikes through our neighborhood, visiting the park, and lying in our hammock. We miss our friends in Chapel Hill, but we're working on making some new ones here. We already have found a very good friend in Jamey Henderson, a Fort Bragg soldier who took one of my writing classes at Pembroke. Jamey is about our age, and, like many older adults in college, he is an outstanding student. He's also a great person who has helped us move and fix up our lawn. Since the open house, which he attended, we have cooked out with him and look forward to seeing him many times this summer. Finally, we have had the chance
to travel a little, as well. Last weekend, we drove up to Richmond, Virginia,
to see Jefferson's Capitol and the Museum of the Confederacy, and then up to Baltimore,
Maryland, where I chaired a session on Thomas Wolfe at the American
Literature Association's national conference. Baltimore is an ideal city for
us because I can visit some fascinating historical sites, Lisa can enjoy some
extraordinary shops and restaurants, and we both can take in the beauty of
the architecture, parks, and harbor. |
Having
accepted a position as an English professor at the University of North
Carolina at Pembroke, we bought a home in Laurinburg, which is about 25 minutes
west of Pembroke, and moved there in April.Mark’s Graduation
May: I used to think medical students went to school for a long time. Now, after 12 years of elementary and secondary school, four years of college, and five years of graduate school, I realize that even doctors of English have to spend a quarter of their lives behind a desk. Still, even after all that training, the most money I'll ever see belongs to the Great Gatsby, and the only heart anyone's going to trust with me is the "Tell-Tale" one. Nevertheless, I'm delighted to be where I am right now. On May 11, I received my Ph.D. in English from the University of North Carolina, where I have specialized in American literature and the English language. I will never be wealthy, but, as a couple of my own professors have reminded me, I will get to make a living by reading, writing, and talking about literature with bright young people. That's all I could ever want in a career.
On May 10, Lisa and I celebrated this milestone in our lives with an open house at our new home in Laurinburg, North Carolina. We want to thank all of the people who were able to join us--Alan and Mary Canada, Jerry and Marganelle Henry, Andrea and Ray Navarro, Dr. Connie Eble of the University of North Carolina Department of English, UNCP student Jamey Henderson, and our neighbors in Laurinburg--as well as the many friends and family members who passed along their warm wishes by telephone, letters, and e-mail.
The celebration continued on Sunday, May 11, when our parents and the Navarros joined us at the University of North Carolina's commencement at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill. Under a beautiful Carolina blue sky, Lisa and I proceeded down to the lush green football field and sat together with the other 200 or so doctoral candidates.
When it came time
to walk up on stage and shake the chancellor's hand, we probably surprised a
few of the thousands of people there by going up together as the announcer
called out, "Mark Canada, accompanied by his wife, Lisa." However,
for us, for anyone who knows us, and indeed for many couples who have supported
each other through graduate school or a similar endeavor, the gesture was
completely appropriate. For the past five years, Lisa has provided us with
financial support by working, maintained a beautiful and comfortable home,
sustained me with love and encouragement, helped me study for my Ph.D. exams,
and--perhaps hardest of all--put up with my long hours of reading and writing.
As we walked across that stage in front of our family, friends, and about
15,000 strangers, I was moved and delighted that we could share that moment
together, just as we had spent the five years leading up to it together.
Lisa always complains that I don't cry at movies or sad occasions. I'm a stereotypical male in that respect, I suppose. I did get a little choked up at one point in the commencement ceremony, though. I was a rock through "Pomp and Circumstance," the speakers' addresses, even the announcement of Lisa's and my names. About halfway through the National Anthem, however, I let a couple of tears slip as I thought of the dozens of times I had heard that song 15 or 20 years earlier--as a boy standing on or around the baseball diamonds at Franklin Park in Indianapolis. My dad was near the dugout, where he would manage my team. My mom was in the stands, where she would watch, cheer, and keep score. I was standing at attention, cap over my heart, eager to play the game I loved more than anything in the world. In the intervening decade or two, a few other things had joined baseball in my heart--literature, language, students, and the most wonderful woman I have ever known--but the rest had remained constant: the flag, the music, the words, and two people who have supported me in every endeavor I have ever pursued.
After the ceremony, our families joined us at a luncheon that our good friends Sandy and Michael Roberts had for us at their beautiful home in Chapel Hill. While the food was wonderful, the best part of the afternoon was the opportunity to spend some quiet time together, talking and laughing. The event, which Sandy had planned beautifully, provided a perfect ending to a perfect weekend.
Richmond, Virginia
May 22, 1997: On our way to Baltimore for the American Literature Association conference, we stopped in Richmond early in the afternoon. With help from a woman at the Metro Richmond Convention and Visitors Bureau, we found an interesting local restaurant: an English pub called Penny Lane, where we had shepherd's pie and Cornish pasties. The charming and gregarious owner, Terry O'Neill, waited on us and even gave us a tour of the premises, describing in a thick British accent his billiards and darts rooms, his autographed photograph from Paul McCartney, and other features. Now 58, he explained that he had been a famous soccer player in England, where he was on his way down while the Beatles were on their way up.
Our next stop was the Virginia State Capitol a few blocks away. Strolling through the beautifully landscaped grounds around the Capitol, we thought it a shame that this gleaming structure, stately columns, polished marble porch, lush grounds that slope down from the building, and bronze statues had to be surrounded and nearly eclipsed by the tall, gray office buildings of downtown Richmond. I wish someone could lift the entire building and hill out of the city and transplant it in a meadow or an enormous courtyard, where its grandeur could overwhelm and inspire spectators. I can't help but think that Thomas Jefferson, who designed the Capitol in 1785, would have wanted it that way.
The interior, at least, is allowed to dazzle visitors
without intrusions from the more mundane surroundings. The Old Senate Chamber,
for example, contains orderly rows of polished wooden chairs, a stately dais,
and an enormous painting from the 18th or 19th century. Even more impressive is
the Hall of the House of Delegates, which contains more polished chairs, a
bronze statue of Robert E. Lee, a huge silver and gold-washed mace from the
17th century, and two facing balconies. Virginia's delegates, the oldest
law-making body in America, met here from 1788 to 1906. The hall is also the
site where the government tried former Vice-President Aaron Burr for treason in
1807, Lee accepted command of the Virginia forces, and the Confederate Congress
met from 1862 until it ended. The rotunda in the center of the Capitol contains
Jean Antoine Houdon's statue of George Washington, the only one for which he
posed, as well as a bust of the Marquis de Lafayette and busts of the eight
U.S. presidents from Virginia: Washington, Jefferson, James Madison, James
Monroe, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Woodrow Wilson.
The grounds also contain some impressive sculpture, including a statue of Edgar
Allan Poe, who grew up in Richmond and worked there for the Southern
Literary Messenger in the 1830s, and an enormous circular monument topped
by a statue of Washington.
Because we still had some driving to do to reach Falls Church, Virginia, where we planned to spend the night with our friend Pete Amstutz, we returned to the car late in the afternoon. Before we left Richmond, though, we drove by the tiny Confederate White House and then up Monument Avenue, a gorgeous street lined with elegant homes, trees, and statues of Lee, Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart, and other figures. On the outskirts of downtown, we were surprised and delighted to see some impressive, nicely landscaped campuses of seminaries and other schools.
Baltimore, Maryland
May 23-25, 1997: We came to Baltimore for the American Literature Association's national conference, where scholars from the United States and other countries congregate to discuss strategies for interpreting and teaching works by Mark Twain, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and dozens of other American writers. After arriving Friday morning, we went to lunch at Edgar's Billiards Club, one of the many local businesses that capitalize on Edgar Allan Poe's association with Baltimore. Although we went to the restaurant just for fun, we actually found some interesting items on display, including a copy of a drawing of Poe's wife, Virginia, and a poem that she wrote for him a year before her death. I was amused to see that the original drawing of Virginia is stored at the Lilly Library on the Indiana University campus in Bloomington. I studied English at IU for four years, but didn't come across this treasure until I wandered into a billiards club in Baltimore.
After lunch, I went right to work, serving as chairman of a session on Thomas Wolfe at the conference. My professor and friend Joe Flora asked me to run the session on Wolfe, who grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, and attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The four speakers I introduced all provided helpful perspectives on reading Wolfe's work. I particularly enjoyed a presentation by John Griffin, who recently has published Memories of Thomas Wolfe: A Pictorial Companion to Look Homeward, Angel. Using a slide projector, Griffin shared photographs from Wolfe's family and talked about the people in them. Lisa and I had been reading Look Homeward, Angel, which is highly autobiographical, on the way up to Baltimore, and I really enjoyed seeing the family members he describes in the book, as well as learning more about them. In the novel, for example, Wolfe describes the character Eugene Gant's long, curly hair. Griffin showed us a picture of Wolfe when he was about 10 years old, and, surely enough, there are those long, curling tresses framing his small face.
While I was busy with Wolfe, Lisa shopped at some of the numerous stores around the Inner Harbor. We then returned to our hotel room, which offered a great view of Oriole Park at Camden Yards, where the Baltimore Orioles play. The Orioles were not in town that weekend, but we already had seen a game at the stadium, which is a beautiful and fun place to watch baseball. While Lisa rested, I explored downtown Baltimore, which is celebrating the bicentennial of its incorporation as a city this year. Although Maryland was settled by Native Americans thousands of years ago and by Europeans in the 17th century, the city of Baltimore is much younger. In 1752, it had only about 100 settlers. It grew rapidly, however, and by 1800 was the third largest city in the United States. Between 1800 and 1850, it was the site of booming industry, particularly in the areas of cabinetry and silversmithing. Canals and the Baltimore and Ohio railroad allowed merchants in Baltimore to make a living selling goods to the rural residents who lived farther from the sea.
I started my walking tour at the Shot Tower, an unusual structure build in 1829. Before the Civil War, workers made shot here by climbing up to the top, 234 feet above the ground, and pouring molten lead through sieves. Thanks to the laws of physics, the drops became spherical while falling and then cooled and solidified when they hit the water at the bottom of the tower.
While in this area, I also walked by the house where a woman named Mary Pickersgill sewed the flag that later would fly over nearby Fort McHenry and inspire Francis Scott Key to write "The Star-Spangled Banner." Circling back toward the north, I came across the Baltimore City Life Museums and couldn't resist taking a picture of the giant statue of "Nipper," RCA's mascot, which sits in the museums' courtyard. A guard explained that the sculpture used to sit atop the RCA building in Baltimore. The rest of America knows Nipper from RCA's decades-old logo of a dog listening to a Victrola, accompanied by a caption reading "His master's voice"--or perhaps from the more recent television commercials featuring both adult and puppy versions of Nipper watching a big-screen TV. Lisa and I have been in love with Nipper even since we saw one of those commercials.
Walking further, I stumbled upon St. Vincent de Paul Church, an impressive white building with a tall, cylindrical tower. Although the building goes back only to 1841, when it was dedicated, the congregation that meets here is the oldest Catholic parish church in America. Maryland, which England's King Charles I gave to Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore, as a haven for Roman Catholics in 1632, has a rich Catholic history. In fact, a few blocks away I visited the stunning Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, America's first Roman Catholic Cathedral. Finally, I stopped by the striking Baltimore City Hall before returning to the hotel.
For dinner, we took a water taxi across the Inner Harbor to Fells Point, where we had an excellent Italian meal at Piccolo's. In fact, we probably had a little too much. When the waiter asked if he could bring us anything else, Lisa said: "A stretcher." He didn't get the joke. After dinner, we took a walk around the community of Fell's Point, which was settled in 1730. For decades, William Fell and other shipbuilders prospered here, making sloops, frigates, and Baltimore clippers, which became infamous in England for their ability to outmaneuver British vessels. After taking the water taxi back to the Inner Harbor, we explored a few stores in the shopping area and then returned to our hotel for the night.
We awoke early Saturday morning to attend another ALA session, "Writing and Rewriting the Frontier Experience in Early America." This time Lisa, who likes to read diaries and other accounts of women settling the American frontier, joined me. We both enjoyed the first speaker, who discussed the role of eating in Mary Rowlandson's 18th-century account of her captivity by Indians, as well as the second speaker, who analyzed the use of Pocahontas as a domestic icon by 18th-century Americans.
After breakfast, Lisa took a brief siesta at the hotel while I visited the Maryland Historical Society's museum, a fascinating collection of art, crafts, furniture, and other materials relevant to Maryland's history, such as ornate silver tea sets crafted by Baltimore silversmiths in the early 19th century, enormous and beautiful wardrobes attributed to noted cabinet-maker William Camp, a dollhouse that belonged to H.L. Mencken and his brothers, and several paintings by Charles Wilson Peale, Rembrandt Peale, Sarah Miriam Peale, Cornelius De Beet, Thomas Sully, and Joshua Johnson, the first black American to work as a professional portrait artist. One of the museum's highlights is the room devoted to the War of 1812. Here I saw the manuscript of "The Star-Spangled Banner," which Francis Scott Key wrote in Baltimore in 1814 after American forces successfully repelled British forces attacking nearby Fort McHenry. The manuscript shows a revision that Key made in his famous first line, changing "through the dawn's early light" to "by the dawn's early light." The room also contains a large painting of the Battle of Baltimore, along with a note and a video presentation explaining that local militia and volunteers defeated England's navy, the most powerful in the world.
We had lunch in one of the most beautiful parts of Baltimore, Mount Vernon Square. Similar to DuPont Circle in Washington, D.C., Mount Vernon Square is an appealing collection of tasteful sculptures, lawn, park benches, elegant rowhouses, interesting restaurants, and Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, a striking Gothic church constructed in 1874. At the center of the square is a monument topped by a statue of George Washington. I later found the following story behind the monument in a brochure called Walk Mount Vernon Park:: "When Baltimoreans proposed this tall column in 1809, it was extraordinary--no American city had dreamed of anything like it. But the first proposed site, downtown, made residents afraid it might fall on their rowhouses. So it arose here in remote Howard's Woods, land given by one of Gen. Washington's officers, Col. John Eager Howard. Rising 178 feet on a hill 100 feet above sea level, it became a landmark for ships sailing upriver from Chesapeake Bay and a landmark on America's first urban skyline. As the first monument anywhere to honor the great Washington, it put Baltimore on the world map. . . . Laying its cornerstone on July 4, 1815, attracted an enthusiastic 20,000 citizens."
The Peabody Institute, home of the Peabody Library and the world-renowned Peabody Conservatory of Music, sits right on the square. George Peabody, who made millions of dollars selling dry goods in America and England and donated millions to various causes, dedicated the institute in 1866. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Mark Twain all lectured there.
We left Mount Vernon Square and drove to West Baltimore, where we visited a couple of sites associated with Edgar Allan Poe. The first, the Poe House, is located in ghetto more depressed than anything I have seen in New York City, Chicago, or Washington, D.C. We parked across from a pile of garbage and walked up to the house, which sits across the street from a row of abandoned buildings. We knocked and waited to be admitted by the curator, who apparently stands next to the front door all day, unlocking the door to let visitors in or out and then immediately locking it again after they have passed. Because of the neighborhood, which nearly scared us off, I would not recommend a visit to anyone only mildly interested in Poe. Because I do a lot of research on him, however, I felt that I should visit this house, and I am glad that I did.
Although
short on exhibits or artifacts, the house is fascinating because of its size
and shape. From 1832 to 1835, Poe shared remarkably cramped quarters here with
his wife, Virginia, and her mother, Maria Clemm. Retracing Poe's own steps some
165 years ago, Lisa and I proceeded from the front parlor to the
six-foot-by-six-foot kitchen, which was even smaller when Poe lived there. We
then climbed a steep stairway only slightly wider than our shoulders from this
kitchen up to the second floor, where Virginia slept in a room about six feet
by five feet, and Maria shared a slightly larger bedroom with her paralytic
mother, Elizabeth. The house contains no hallways, and, as my professor and
friend Joe Flora has remarked to me, Poe would have had to go through nearly
every room to reach his own, a miniscule garret on the third floor. Because of
its sloping ceiling, this room--barely large enough for a bed and a desk--has
only about four square feet of space in which I could stand. Joe told me that
visiting this house helped him to understand a lot about Poe, and I agree. In
particular, squeezing through the rooms and up the narrow staircases gave me a
new perspective on stories such as "The Cask of Amontillado,"
"The Fall of the House of Usher," The Narrative of Arthur Gordon
Pym, and other stories that feature characters who are buried alive.
After leaving the house, we drove to Westminster Graveyard, where Poe was buried in 1849. The cemetery actually contains two grave sites: one--marked by a tombstone with a raven engraved on it--where Poe originally was buried, and a second, marked by a large pillar and medallion, where his body was moved. Under the pillar, Poe's remains now rest alongside those of Virginia, who died of consumption in 1847, and Maria Clemm, who died in 1871.
Poe lived for much of his life in Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York, but Baltimore seems to have identified itself with him more than any of these other cities. In addition to Edgar's Billiards Room, where we had lunch on Friday, it is the home of the Edgar Allan Poe Townhouses, the Raven Nightclub, and a new professional football team, the Baltimore Ravens. Although many of these associations are artificial--I have read no accounts, for example, of Poe hustling Hawthorne in eight-ball or watching Monday Night Football with Melville--the connection is perhaps appropriate. It was here, after all, that the writer most associated with death met his own. En route to Philadelphia from Richmond in 1849, Poe stopped in Baltimore for reasons nobody knows. He was found unconscious on Lombard Street and taken to a hospital, where he died a few days later. People have speculated that Poe was beaten by strangers and, more recently, that he contracted rabies, yet no one has located conclusive evidence by which we can determine the cause of his death.
The following morning, I was able to indulge my interest in Poe one last time in Baltimore by attending an ALA session called "Second-Guessing the Anthologies: Poe Stories We Should Be Teaching." About a dozen other Poe scholars and I heard two insightful presentations, one on a Poe story called "Some Words with a Mummy" and the other on two Poe sketches, "Shadow" and "The Power of Words." After the presentations, we all discussed other works worthy of teaching, including "Hop-Frog," "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and The Narrative or Arthur Gordon Pym. I left with some new ideas for teaching Poe's works to my own students.
Our New Home
May:
Now that Mark has a permanent job teaching English at the University of North
Carolina at Pembroke, we finally can buy a house. We chose to settle down in
Laurinburg, a charming town of about 33,000 people about a half-hour west of
Pembroke. In an old, well-kept neighborhood there, we found a very reasonably
priced house with many of the features we had hoped to find in our first home:
hardwood floors, fireplace, a large living room, three bedrooms and a den, and
a large yard with three magnolia trees.
Despite all of these charms, the house needed some cosmetic work. Determined to make it as attractive as possible between our closing date on April 10 and our open house on May 10, the day before my graduation, we set to work and managed to finish the projects below, with some generous and marvelous assistance from Jamey Henderson and Lisa's parents, Jerry and Marganelle Henry. Jamey, who took one of my writing courses at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke this spring and has become a great friend to both of us, not only helped us move into the house, but helped me lay the front walk, rake the yard, and clean the house and carport. Lisa's dad, Jerry Henry, helped me install a ceiling fan, install a lamp in the kitchen, and repair an outlet. He also helped Lisa refinish a screen door and ran numerous errands. Lisa's mom, Marganelle Henry, must have set some kind of record when she sewed a gorgeous slip cover and upholstered a chair in just three days.
Living Room
- Marganelle and Lisa sewed a slip cover for one of our couches.
- Marganelle reupholstered a chair.
- Lisa hung pictures and curtains.
- Mark wired speakers from the armoir in the garden room.
- Lisa and Mark organized the bookshelves.
- Jamey and Mark swept and set up the furniture.
Master
Bedroom
- Lisa painted the walls light peach.
- Lisa and Mark repaired the headboard on the bed.
- Lisa refinished an exposed area of the hardwood floor.
- Lisa set up the furniture.
Guest Bedroom
- Lisa set up the furniture.
- Mark organized the closet.
Den
- Mark set up the furniture and computer.
- Mark organized the closet.
Kitchen
- Lisa put away the dishes and food.
- Jerry and Mark installed a lamp in the ceiling.
Utility Room
- Mark put away tools and cleaning supplies.
- Lisa set up the washer.
Garden
Room
- Lisa and Mark painted the dark paneling white, painted the trim yellow, and added a border.
- Lisa and Mark laid carpet.
- Lisa and Mark set up the furniture.
- Jerry and Mark installed a ceiling fan.
- Jerry and Mark repaired an outlet.
Carport and Shed
- Mark cleaned the shed.
- Mark removed damaged shelves from the shed.
- Mark installed hooks for bicycles.
- Jamey and Mark swept and hosed down the carport.
Yard
- Lisa trimmed trees.
- Lisa and Mark tore down an ugly presswood doghouse the previous owner had left.
- Mark mowed and dethatched the grass.
- Lisa and Mark laid landscape timber along the sides of the driveway.
- Jamey, Mark, and Lisa constructed a pine-bark walkway to the front door
- Lisa and Mark planted flowers around the house and trees.
- Mark placed mulch around the trees and flower beds.
Although exhausting, all this painting, cleaning, installing, repairing, organizing, mowing, raking, and planting rewarded us with a home that we were proud to display during our open house. Equally rewarding are the memories we have of family and friends working together for our benefit. In particular, I remember Friday afternoon, the day before the open house, when Marganelle was busy in the living room reupholstering a chair, Lisa was hanging pictures and wallpaper border, Jerry was sanding a screen door and running errands, and Jamey and I were laying the front walk and raking the yard. Even at the time, when I was busy and tired and a little frantic, I realized that I was experiencing something special.