This is actually two short responses combined into one post on the reading we were assigned this week.

 Mother, Father, Water, Earth, Me:

First off, I can’t help commenting on the descriptions of the New York Whitman grew up in. 

Many of the things Whitman lived through, I can’t really relate to. ‘The Red Death’? I can’t imagine living in a world where one disease could kill 100’s of people a day without a cure in sight. The book describes farms and open fields- the last things to come to my mind when thinking about New York City. The only streams I see are torrents of water going down the gutter on rainy days and all the horse stables have either been demolished or converted into modern looking apartment buildings.  Not to say there’s nothing of the New York he grew up in left- the ferry ride from Long Island is more or less the same, and Brooklyn can still easily be seen as the ‘City of Churches’. You can’t go more than 15 blocks in any given direction without seeing one.

The Shadow and the Light of a Young Man’s Soul

My generation is used to keyboards and tiny entry pads, not selecting characters out of boxes to be laid on printers. Reading about typesetting reminds me of the things I take for granted like printing out directions on a map or a last minute homework assignment…They’re  all things I do in under 30 seconds when the job Whitman did had to take at least 10 minutes, probably more.