DFW/Jamaica Plain and a new Holiday tradition

[Jack of All Parades]

Could not have spent a better time this Thanksgiving day here in Boston. Weather glorious, the company engaging and the family all together. We spent the afternoon while the Turkey was cooking walking around the sites and sounds of Jamaica Plain and Jamaica Pond and Central Ave playing a new game-spot the buildings and locations from "Infinite Jest". Caught many as we walked the woods, streets and circled the pond. We have a new tradition to look forward to in the coming years for a late November afternoon-recall a literary hero and get some rigorous exercise for the feast to come.

[Otis Westinghouse]

Any family in Newark?

[Jack of All Parades]

No family in Newark but several in Hoboken where Al kept a pied a terre for those late show nights when he did not feel like driving all the way back to the Poconos. I will do the Roth tour one weekend next year with the missus as we visit some friends in New Jersey.

[Otis Westinghouse]

Can I come?

[Jack of All Parades]

The more the merrier- you are most welcome. Would enjoy your company in Boston, as well- the DFW tour could benefit from your insights. Recently also completed one for a favorite poet-Wallace Stevens-[Sir Frank was a great fan] in Hartford-following "13 Views of a Blackbird" complete with a visit to his gravesite and a view of his office in the old Hartford Insurance main office building. He used to take the walk regularly on his way back and forth from his home in Hartford to work. Book your flight. And yes here the Coe is titled "The Winshawe Legacy[or What a Carve Up]"- curious indeed.

[Otis Westinghouse]

The writer Edmund de Vaal chose the collected Wallace Stevens as his desert island book this weekend, and nice call on the espresso machine too (and of course the T Heads song):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/de ... 5#b01p067p

Knew he was in insurance (sounds familiar!) but didn't know it was Boston.

Stevens = insurance
Eliot = banking and publishing
Larkin = librarian

Any others whilst we're at it?

[Jack of All Parades]

A number of others could be added:

William Shakespeare- actor[a most noble calling].

Christopher Marlow- government agent[spy].

William Carlos Williams- a practicing Doctor in Rutherford, NJ all his life and of Cuban heritage.

Herman Melville- customs inspector[patronage job and badly needed by him] for the port of NYC.

Thomas Lynch- mortician[my personal favorite as an occupation for a poet]

Edgar Allen Poe- newspaperman and editor[doomed from the start].

Walt Whitman-newspaperman and editor.

Thomas Hardy- Architect and architectural journeyman.

Philip Levine- automotive worker and laborer.

I am also planning to make the pilgrimage at some point next year to document my known Melville sites and associations in Manhattan.