Whitmaniacs, go HERE NOW for a Library of Congress link for schoolteachers that has digitized images of some of Whitman’s notebooks, including from the Civil War (and a wrenching photo of a dead confederate solider in Spotsylvania). Don’t just look, READ: their names, their mother’s names, their ages, where they worked, where they’re from, which had been at Pfaff’s, their wounds and injuries (including overdosing), what they need from him (a clergyman, something to read), their qualities (somewhat “feminine”; “tall, well-tann’d,” an “oily, labial” way of speaking; “noble, beloved”); their battle stories.
language
Whitman Digital; or, a quotation poem with apologies to Dan Cohen
This afternoon I heard a lecture by Dan Cohen called “The Future of the Digital University,” and as I listened I started this list of words and phrases he said, in the order he said them, that seemed to me to be about WW as much as about the digital world, showing yet again the crazy nexus at which we are working:
openness
do-it-yourself
decentralization
collaboration
thought leadership
connectivity
hastacmoodlematterhorn
the everywhere library
distributed
60 million
aggregate
seamless
simplified interface
accessible, discoverable
unusual, indicative case studies
hamstrung by traditional ways
geolocate
prospecting
public domain
macro- and micro-
server
spider symbolism
priest
galaxy zoo
sky objects
rabid
boundaries are permeable
help from the crowd
physicality
search and retrieval
serendipity
networking