Seen in the photo with the author are Dundonald Parish Kirk Archivist, Gordon McDonald, and his wife, Jeanette. Following on with former archivist Bobby Kirk's information of the Holy Communion Service Set gifted by Edgar Allan Poe's great--grand uncle, John Galt, of Craigsland Farm, Mister McDonald researched the Kirk's Session Records to find the documentation of the gift. All of these details are provided in our biography, The Mystery of "Mar'sa Eddie" in the Shire, Edgar Allan Poe's Scottish Connections, now finished, but unpublished.   Closing Comments...   DISCLAIMER: As frequently stated, the author has debilitating dyslexia. The affliction is comparable to "word blindness," and even with the aid of a spell-checker program and Ms. Kenmotsu, considerable errors of grammar, punctuation, and spelling are present.  The Register.comweb-page-word processor service in use here has finally installed an effective word processing program, and Brill has begun to review and edit his pages.  However, the most blatant criticism of these pages came from a Scotsman in Germany who was doing work about Poe, and wrote that there were "glaring and serious errors" in my layout, and presentation.  Hervey Allen was the first, if not only biographer of Poe to point out how critical of human error Scots can be.  We have other examples in our manuscript.  His opinions were tough (difficult) on the ego to read, but as time allows, I shall edit these pages in an ongoing effort to make the information more readable to those who visit. Some visitors have been kind in notifying me of errors, but usually not other scholars of Poe.   I have yet to receive any notice of errors of what we found in Scotland which we know significantly illuminates many mysteries of Poe's life and work.  The reason is simple: no one knew!  There are those who know how to spell, and there are those who know the culture and topography of Scotland, but no one knew how all of that exists in Poe's fiction and poetry.        RUSSIA BOMBS TBILISI, GEORGIA, August 9, 2008....  This announcement will remain until Russia leaves the county.  Let's see who has the courage to do what is right.  The Russian, ongoing presence in Georgia is a badge of cowardice of our government to expel them, and the general malaise of a united character in Europe to defend their neighbors.          After a return from our home in Thailand to my domicile in Kailua-Kona, to use my library and materials kept at that home, I finished the final editing of my manuscript of the biography of Edgar Allan Poe's Scottish Connections.  That was achieved on 16 January 2008 at 7 p.m.!  By "final," I mean what I know about using word processors, the ancient MLA format that I learned and used in university through the M. A. in English, in 1976, and so on.  The manuscript is hardly finished.  I am finished with the details of the "Poe genealogy" that supports the statements that Edgar Allan Poe's family were originally from Fenwick, Ayrshire, long before the connection with Ireland.  Our data show the family relationships amongst The Ayrshire Lads, Allan, Burns, Galt, and Poe.  That is a fascinating story in itself, but is provided in our study as further support of the affects and influence of Scotland upon the mind and literature of Poe.  We attended the 2009 International Conference for the Arts and Humanities in Honolulu, Waikiki Hilton Hotel, sponsored by the University of Louisville-Center for Sustainable Urban Neighborhoods, and the Host, University of Hawaii-Manoa.  The Keynote Speaker was Professor H. R. Stoneback, State University of New York, who shared his own connections with Hawaii's early Sixties' music scene, and read from his current collection of poetry, Amazing Grace-Wheelchair-Jumpshot-Jesus-Love-Poems.  His presentation was hypnotic and poetically exotic to all, who sat in stony homage of this incomparable man of letters.  He is not a fan of Edgar Allan Poe, unfortunately. Nevertheless, what we provide in our website here are a few of the exhibits and photographs of first impressions, acquaintances and friends whom we have made, and very brief remarks of explanation. No attempt is made here to make deep academic or scholarly statements of our subject. Even our book has but a few "serious" passages that explore what I call Poe's "hieroglyphic level" of meaning in each of his works. The pages here should indicate the fun that we had meeting people in Scotland and England as we acquired our information and insights. The serious work and statements of difficulties that we encountered in this project are left for the readers of our book. Finally, there were those, Americans only, who simply discounted the importance of our efforts and findings. Often they did not extend us the courtesy of a smile or a reply to our written inquires and conversations. Others in academia who know of our work have never forwarded information of materials that they have developed from our published findings.  One can understand, therefore, our dedication to such persons as Frank Beattie, Staff Reporter, The Kilmarnock Standard, and every member of the Robert Burns World Federation, Ltd., Presidents of its Clubs, Peter Westwood, Editor of the Burns Chronicle, and so many others. There are others in Scotland who teach literature, and who now have awareness and knowledge of our work. They have gone on to look more closely at the inferences that can be drawn from our work to Poe's fiction and life.  Given that they are in positions of academic and professional support, they have published exciting articles and essays of Poe's Scottish Connections, but without giving us any credit as the source.  Still others on both sides of the Atlantic write from time to time to ask if I know this or that book, conclusion, or idea about Poe. Poe enthusiasts and students are encouraged to perform a web search under Poe in Scotland, or similar Google Search in that regard. Our domain names (poeinscotland.com, edgarallanpoecannon.com, etc.), web pages, and site are being posted, slowly. Note, however, the date of any web posting, publication, or claim of knowing anything of this subject before 2000. Our last research visit to Ayrshire was in 2002, before anything on the subject had been published, except where noted.  Since that time, there are radio broadcasts, movies, published articles, and Internet activity that make this or that comment of Poe's Scottish Connections not known before our project was completed.  Nevertheless, in honor and memory of Edgar Allan Poe one is encouraged to use our findings freely.  This project is a reflection of the author's love of Poe, his life, and his work only.   Only Greenock, in Strathclyde, to the north, does not as yet have a plaque of Poe's visit.  I have, fortunately, been successful with establishing Ms. Lesley Couperwhite, Retired Library Director of the James Watt Museum and Library in Greenock, as our correspondent in Strathclyde to represent this interest. Robert (Bob) Densmore Brill is a former Sacramento, California, Police Department Criminal Investigator (Detective), Burglary, who first read Poe while a Junior at U. C. Davis, in 1971.  He was the very first law enforcement officer in the Sacramento basin who had ever attended the University of California  in the English Major while employed in police work.   By comparison, his acquaintance on the Los Angeles Police Department, Joseph Wambaugh, had earned his B. A. in English, and then became a Police Officer.  Brill went on to earn the M. A. in English at Sacramento State University in 1982, while attending night Law School as well.  Wambaugh went on to write, publish, and produce 25 novels, some made into important movies.  Brill is a two-time scholarship winner to Professor Oakley Hall's Community of Writers in Squaw Valley, 1971 and 1973; however, he has spent his post-graduate employment in aviation and law. Ms. Kenmotsu and Brill met as California Teachers at the San Mateo County Office of Education, while attempting to earn the Language Development Specialist's Credential (LDSC).  This program was reserved for those with B. A.s, who had at least one foreign language skill.  Kenmotsu still tutors children in Japanese.  Please see our page, "Poe at WestPoint," for details of her son's nomination by Congressman Tom Lantos to the United States Military Academy at West Point, from which he graduated in 2006, in the top of his Class. This independent researcher must expressly state his very deep gratitude for first having met Ms. Grace Kimiye Kenmotsu, when a combination Third-Fourth Grade Classroom Teacher, now retired from the San Mateo-Foster City School District, California.  Given this writer's dyslexia, absence of memory for print content, and complete failure of spelling correctly, this project simply would not exist without her constant help and interest. But for our relationship that grew from a meeting in 1993, and her subsequent assistance during interviews, research, and companionship during some dreadful personal experiences, her skill with a camera, not to mention her extraordinary habits of documentation and organization, "our" book would just have been a holiday to Scotland!  Nothing more.

The newly installed plaque about Edgar Allan Poe's connection with Kilmarnock is listed in the companion guide to a walking tour, in the above photo, of that city. Our friend, Frank Beattie, Staff Reporter for the Kilmarnock Standard, and well known local historian, is largely responsible for our efforts of having the plaque included in the Kilmarnock Historical Society's request for funds from the National Government that paid for it. CERTAIN AS THERE IS AN ENDING to everything, including the universe, as Edgar Allan Poe tells us in his 1847 work, Eureka, there is a beginning. Ours began when Ms. Kenmotsu bought Brill a copy of Raymond Foye’s work, The Unknown Poe. We had stopped by the San Francisco bookstore on Broadway, City Lights Books, made famous by the Beat Poets of the Sixties. Many of these literary artists taught at U. C. Davis, or were otherwise known through other friends.  Kenmatsu was Ferlinghetti's daughter's teacher at Patero Hill J. H.  Such are the populations of Los Angeles and San Francisco, in which common people mix with the famous.  City Lights published The Unknown Poe. The owners would never know what an extraordinary effect the book would have on the present Poe in Scotland project. That purchase was for my birthday, April 1996. A few months later Ms. Kenmotsu purchased still another book about Poe: Israfel. This was a used edition of Hervey Allen’s 1934, one volume biography of the poet. From a reintroduction to my favorite author and thinker during the English Major at the University of California-Davis in 1972, our project evolved.  While Hervey Allen has died in 1945, and Raymond Foye has retired to New York City.  He was kind enough to write several words of encouragement and flattery of our project, and they are posted to the pages, "What others are saying."  Regardless of what other academics, Poe scholars, and critics have, or have not said about our material and project, I ignore them, and carry on with the thoughts and words of such as Foye, and so many other scholars of Burns, Galt, and Poe.  I have done too much in my life to be bothered with those who have only rejection of our work to stop and engage them in discussion of their views. As we had made our first trip to Scotland during the fall of 1996, in search of the author's maternal family connection in Perthshire, Hervey Allen’s Chapter Five, "Israfel in Albion," became an idea for traveling to another part of Scotland, Ayrshire, in search of Poe's family. The author wanted to see where Poe had been in Scotland, almost two hundred years earlier. An itinerary to unknown towns and cities in western Scotland became a compulsion. At our first opportunity we made our visit.  It may be important here to tell our readers that we had visited most of the Poe venues in the United States before deciding to visit those in Scotland shown on these pages. For example, we visited the Richmond Poe Museum, The University of Virginia’s Charlottesville campus, and its Room 13, on the West Range, as well as the Poe family burial sites at the church in Baltimore, Maryland. We experienced nothing of a feel of Poe’s poetry and fiction there, but they were a beginning. We did feel, "Eureka-I found it," from our very first visit to Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, Scotland. This site remains, "Under construction...." Thank you for your interest, and visiting! Direct any inquiries or comments to Bob Brill at E-mail address: poeinscotland@aol.com. As of 2007, I live in Thailand.