Another of Whitman and Doyle from 1869 to complement the marriage photo:
Walt + Pete
Whitman in Camden house, 1891 (is he wearing my academic robes?):
Whitman's filing system, Camden
Sunday, November 01st, 2009 | Author: mscanlon
Here is a more focused set of my photos from Digital Whitman’s DC visit, which we made two days before discussing Whitman’s Lincoln writings/lecture in class.
Ford's Theater where Lincoln was shot (in rare non-rainy moment)
When we went into the actual theater (or, in some of my students’ cases, the napping room–shame on you!), I was disappointed at first that the guard ushered me upstairs since the downstairs was full. But in the balcony I realized I was actually at eye level with Lincoln’s box, shown below. Both Lincoln and Booth made their way through the crowded balcony that night; the door Booth entered and jammed shut is just to the right of what I captured on this photo. The theater is very intimate, and the box is really hanging over stage left. I had real chills when the ranger was narrating the events of April 1865.
Presidental box, Ford's Theater (image of Washington in center frame)
Afterward we toured the Peterson House where Lincoln actually died– such a small, nondescript room with a sloped ceiling and bed so short (the real one is in Chicago, but the replica) that Lincoln had to lie diagonally while they waited for his heart to stop; he was brain dead pretty much instantly after being shot.
At the Library of Congress, Barbara Bair had set out three different tickets to Whitman’s Lincoln lecture, an advertising poster for it, and the text Whitman used for the lecture, which was a novel into which he had glued written bits, parts of his published works, annotations, etc.
Tickets to W's Lincoln lectures
Advertisement with our heroes side by side
The pasted-up text of W's Lincoln lecture (wish that was my hand!)
Digital Whitman can attest that I am probably a little–well, over-invested in Lincoln. But these artifacts, though not as personal as some others we saw, were indeed very moving to me.
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Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 | Author: mscanlon
I am indebted to Other Sam for drawing my attention to this very moving detail. One of the best things I saw at the Library of Congress was Whitman’s letter of December 29, 1862 (that is, exactly 106 years before the day I was born), to his mother about finding George in Fredericksburg. We were able to read aloud his words about the suffering of the soldiers putting other suffering into perspective. We have read this letter in a collected of selected letters: “Dear, dear Mother, . . . I succeeded in reaching the 51st New York, and found George alive and well–in order to make sure that you would get the good news, I sent back by messenger to Washington (I dare say you did not get it for some time), a telegraphic dispatch . . .” What is not visible in that version of the letter is the revision Whitman made, no doubt anticipating the anxiety with which his mother would scan the letter if she had not received the “telegraphic dispatch” or was desperate for information about her wounded son. Lovely:
revision ("alive and well"), photo by MNS 10/24/09, LOC
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Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 | Author: mscanlon
Immediacy is something the Reverend talks about as a benefit of the blog, social networking technologies, and the great digital experiment that is Looking for Whitman. Presence. Accessibility. These are words we use a lot. So this week a question has been dogging me while I process Digital Whitman’s Saturday field trip to Washington City. This pair of images sets it up:
WW notebook #94, Library of Congress American Memory site
WW notebook, photo by MNS, Library of Congress
The one on top is from a link to the Library of Congress I gave the class a few weeks ago, urging them to use these digitized images to study what OMW recorded about the soldiers. The bottom was taken on our field trip, and is surprisingly focused given that I, Brady Earnhart, and our students were nearly all literally in tears in that weird institutional room with lockers, blackened windows, and government-issue tables. Unless we were crying with simple gratitude for the incredible time that Barbara Bair had given us (or because we were soaked to the bloody skin and had been standing for 10 hours with two or three to go), why were we? Nothing was much easier to read in person, as those of us who stumbled reading aloud can attest (writing still spidery, bleeding through paper, plastic protection on many items reflected flourescent glare, etc.). We couldn’t touch anything (though, good lord, we certainly breathed all over it), couldn’t feel the paper, the wood, the leather, the hair (the hair!).
Whitman's hair, deathbed edition, photo by MNS 10/24/09
I couldn’t even smell the leather of that haversack or of its decay, and I have one good super-sniffer.
cue to tears: the haversack, photo by MNS 10/24/09
Obviously, what I am suggesting is this: the artifacts of the Library of Congress archive were in some ways no more accessible or immediate (indeed, let’s be honest, a lot LESS accessible or even immediate if we mean time instead of proximity) than the digitized images of those artifacts online. I saw that the inside of the haversack is brown canvas. Brendon found a fingerprint and will NOT entertain suggestions that it belongs to anyone but Walt Whitman. But tears?
Presence. Through the blog we are present to each other online even when we are physically apart during the week (or have never seen each other: hallooo out there, Brooklyn, Camden, and Novi Sad!). Agreed. But finally Saturday we were (good) old-fashioned groupies, we were Whitman lovers, and we were bodies (finer than prayer, but, geez, we were a bit rank by Hour Ten of the marathon). We desired the physical–the textured, the pasted, the water-stained. We may have cried because the broken skins of brittle pages and fragile covers, the light-sensitive [associative digression: Whitman’s Camden eyeglasses: so small, and with one lens protectively glazed over after strokes] and subsequently entombed haversack, and the tickets to a lecture on Lincoln long since delivered were as close to Whitman (brittle, entombed…) as we are going to get, as present as we can be. Unlike the wounded soldiers, we won’t get the healing presence of his 200-pound, hirsute, maroon-coated, deep-pocketed self. But it turns out that the digitized can’t hold a gas lamp to the physically present, and even if it’s paper and not flesh, I’ll take it. Whitmaniacs, pass the tissues.
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Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 | Author: mscanlon
I’ve mentioned this podcast from Nate DiMeo at the memory palace before. I find it pretty poignant. It’s about the Booth brothers, especially John Wilkes’ older brother Edwin. Listen for a shout-out to Our Man Whitman [OMW]:
Here Edwin is looking pensive (or moping about his footwear):
Edwin Booth, thespian
And here is a famous photo we saw at Ford’s, with John Wilkes lurking around at Lincoln’s second inaugural (Lincoln center, JWB top row). Read more at this blog post on The Blind Flaneur.
JWB stalking MLL
This nauseating bit about JWB is something I learned this summer at Harper’s Ferry. Here, from Wikipedia:
Strongly opposed to the abolitionists who sought to end slavery in the U.S., Booth attended the hanging on December 2, 1859, of abolitionist leader John Brown, who was executed for leading a raid on the Federal armory at Harpers Ferry (in present-day West Virginia).[60] Booth had been rehearsing at the Richmond Theatre when he abruptly decided to join the Richmond Grays, a volunteer militia of 1,500 men travelling to Charles Town for Brown’s hanging, to guard against any attempt by abolitionists to rescue Brown from the gallows by force.[60][61] When Brown was hanged without incident, Booth stood in uniform near the scaffold and afterwards expressed great satisfaction with Brown’s fate, although he admired the condemned man’s bravery in facing death stoically.[40][62]
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Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 | Author: mscanlon
An email I received from a former student. The eyes are everywhere, people:
Hey Professor,
Long time no talk. I hope all is going well this semester at UMW. I miss the environment there greatly. I just wanted to let you know that I’ve been following along with the Exploring Whitman blog as much as possible, and I have learned from, enjoyed and been in awe of some of your students’ insight. It must be a fun class!
Anyways, I thought you would like to hear that even though I have a diploma I am still as inspired and eager to learn as ever. I wish I could be there to go along for the ride. Alas, I will just have to look on from afar. So make sure the students know just how valuable and important their work is– on such a variety of levels– because I’ll be reading. Thanks again for what you do, and good luck with the rest of the semester.
Best,
Patrick Whelan
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Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 | Author: mscanlon
Whitmaniacs,
A few notes for Saturday (check for updates!):
1. Carpool rendez-vous: Jefferson Circle behind Combs at 9:00 a.m.
2. Parking in DC: 1201 F St. NW, 20005
- Take 95 North to 395 North (follow signs from 95 for 395/495/Washington/Tysons)
- On 395, take 12th Street exit toward L’Enfant Promenade
- 12th Street (follow slight left at 11th St SW/12th street tunnel)
- Left onto Connecticut NW
- First right onto 14th St NW
- Right at F St NW
- Garage on your left
- If full, proceed straight to next garage, 1155 F Street NW
3. Meeting place for 11:00 a.m. walking tour (1.5-2 hours): Lafayette Square, Andrew Jackson Statue (adjacent to White House, H street NW/16th St NW)
4. Tour ends in Chinatown (H and I streets between 7th and 8th)– lunch on your own
5. Meaningful afternoon activities:
- Ford’s Theater (free tix required–Scanlon): 511 10th St NW, 20004-1402
- Smithsonian Museum of American History, 19th-century and Lincoln exhibits: on National Mall, 14th and Constitution NW
- your choice
6. Library of Congress– meet out front at 5:15 p.m.
- Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave SE, 20540 (corner of Independence and 1st SE), behind Capitol Bldg. complex
- 1.5-2 miles from Ford’s/Mall if you go by foot (can follow Independence along edge of Mall)
7. Back to cars and Fredericksburg
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Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 | Author: mscanlon
I was reading in yesterday’s Washington Post in a piece called “Beyond ‘Great,’ to Exemplary” that Whitman’s “O Captain!” is one of about five works identified by the National Standards Initiative as it tries to give guidance to high school teachers about what students should know– with Austen, Morrison, and a few others, it was given as an exemplar of something requiring complex interpretive skills, and the article implied that the choice was probably not controversial. This got me thinking about a conversation I had with Professor Nina Mikhalevsky, whose Banned and Dangerous Art course I linked to some weeks ago. She was remarking to me that she can’t believe that Whitman, whom she characterized as a radical thinker, had become such a national icon. At the time, I was focused on Whitman’s desire to be recognized as a poet for/of his nation, which makes iconic status more sensible, but lately I’ve been musing more about. . .
Whitman, American Rebel Idol.
A few examples:
Walt Whitman High, Bethesda, MD
Walt Whitman High School, Huntington Station, NY
The Walt Whitman Bridge (PA-NJ)
The Walt Whitman Mall (Huntington Station, NY)
Walt Wit Beer (Philly)
LOC image, Whitman cigar box from 1898
Whitman-Walker AIDS clinic, Washington DC
Walt Whitman Hotel, Camden , NJ
Walt Whitman T from LOLA (one of many)
Walt Whitman Fence Company (NY)
Mad Magazine, 1967
Campers at Camp Walt Whitman, Piermont, NH
Jesse Merandy (CUNY) with WW impersonator (Camden)
Walt Whitman Service Area
What?
Historical marker (NY)
Walt Whitman Golf (Bethesda)
WW Park (Brooklyn)
Obvious College Football connection
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Tuesday, October 06th, 2009 | Author: mscanlon
Here is a clear, color-coded map from wikimedia commons that shows the US as Whitman knew it: seceeding states, Union states with slavery, Union states without slavery, territories. And here is one that shows the same, but in a more traditional cartography:
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Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 | Author: mscanlon
Hi CUNY Whitman scholars,
Here at UMW we’ve been finding poems that mention or respond to Whitman. This poem doesn’t do so directly, but it focuses on a love of Brooklyn that may resonate with your readings now:
“On Leaving Brooklyn”
after Psalm 137
If I forget thee
let my tongue forget the songs
it sang in this strange land
and my heart forget the secrets
only a stranger can learn.
____
Borough of churches, borough of crack,
if I forget how ailanthus trees sprout
on the rooftops, how these streets
end in water and light,
let my eyes grow nearsighted.
____
Let my blood forget
the map of its travels
and my other blood cease
its slow tug toward the sea
if I do not remember,
____
if I do not always consider thee
my Babylon, my Jerusalem.
–Julia Kasdorf, from Eve’s Striptease
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