Hart Island October 25, 2017 In the past, Hart Island has variously been used as a tuberculosis sanatorium, a Union Civil War Camp, a women’s insane asylum, and a boys’ reformatory. It was also used to launch missiles during the Cold War in the sixties from the Nike Missile Site, and it housed a rehab facility called Phoenix House in the sixties and seventies. And it has been and continues to be used as a potter’s field.
The Death of Young Edgar Poe: Some Observations on William Wilson October 1, 2017 Re-reading Poe’s short story William Wilson, I was struck by the significance of the story’s settings and the parallels between the story and events in the author’s real life. The thinly-veiled stand in for his alma mater, the University of Virginia, particularly evokes an important event that changed the course of Poe’s life forever.