As I Sit Writing Here

As other people have been posting a lot of pictures of places themselves, I thought it would be interesting to post a few that had our class interacting with and existing in them.  A lot of my thinking about the field trips have been in how much going to the same places Whitman himself occupied and wrote about was fulfilling his vision that everyone is connected through space and time through place.

These are both the lovely Meghan Edwards examing the bullet holes at the Innis House. 

My attempt at artistry: The information sign at the Innis House.  The house was probably owned by Martha Stephens who refused to leave her home (the Stephens’ House marked by the foundation nearby the Innis House) during the battle.  She provided drink to both Union and Confederate soldiers, an act of promoting peace between the two sides during a time of war.

“Leaves of Grass” near the Confederate Cemetery.  Looks like a beard to me… 

Walt Whitman gang sign? (outside Chatham Manor)

Ouside Chatham toward what was originally the front of the house.  The entrance was eventually changed to the garden side, the side we entered before our tour.

Jim Groom examining one of the catawba trees Whitman wrote about in Specimen Days.

Whitman, nestled in the crook of the catawba tree.  The passage in the second picture is from “Down at the Front” in Specimen Days.  It reads, “Out doors, at the foot of a tree, within ten yards of the front of the house, I notice a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, hands, &c., a full load for a one-horse cart.  Several dead bodies lie near, each cover’d with its brown woolen blanket” (736).

Ben Brishcar & Sam Protich: a new kind of frontispiece (near the catawba trees at Chatham) 

The ghost of Whitman? or Erin Longbottom? (looking out from a window at Chatham Manor toward the catawba trees)

Whitman, are you under my Converse-soles too?

Sam Krieg looking out over the Rappahannok a few hundred yards away from the Chatham House.