View allAll Photos Tagged Note
The Flickr Lounge-Accessories
Whilst my daughter was visiting we stopped at the Garden Hilton Hotel and went inside and got a coffee. This area of the counter was accessorized with all these post-it-notes written by the patrons of the shop. Mine is in there also.
Song: www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMjYMStWwG4
I was inspired by the "Happy Days" music video by my KWEEN Brooke Candy! I love ha!
I had this idea in my head for a while now. I'm not sure if I really like it... Those are some actual things I think sometimes^.^
Press 'L'
Note: this photo was published in an undated (May 2010) EveryBlock NYC Zipcodes blog, with the title 10025. It was also published in an undated (May 2010) EveryBlock NYC Neighborhoods blog titled "Upper West Side."
Moving into 2012, the photo was published in an undated (mid-Oct 2012) blog titled "Unusual things to do in New York City for under $100."
Moving into 2014, the photo was published in a Jul 23, 2014 blog titled "How brands make the man, and the woman – literally." It was also published in an Oct 20, 2014 blog titled "New York Is The Snobbiest City In America."
****************
This is a continuation of a Flickr set that I started in the summer of 2009. As I noted in that earlier collection of photos, I still have many parts of New York City left to explore -- but I've also realized that I don't always have to go looking elsewhere for interesting photographs. Some of it is available just outside my front door.
I live on a street corner on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where there's an express stop on the IRT subway line (with a new space-age subway station scheduled to be completed by fall 2010), as well as a crosstown bus stop, an entrance to the West Side Highway, and the usual range of banks, delis, grocery stores, fast-food shops, mobile-phone stores, drug-stores, Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks, Subway, and other commercial enterprises. As a result, there are lots of interesting people moving past my apartment building, all day and all night long.
It's easy to find an unobtrusive spot on the edge of the median strip separating the east side of Broadway from the west side; nobody pays any attention to me as they cross the street from east to west, and nobody even looks in my direction as they cross from north to south (or vice versa). In rainy weather, sometimes I huddle under an awning of the T-Mobile phone store on the corner, so I can take pictures of people under their umbrellas, without getting my camera and myself soaking wet...
So, these are some of the people I thought were photo-worthy during the past few weeks and month; I'll add more to the collection as the year progresses ... unless, of course, other parts of New York City turn out to be more compelling from time to time.
The real Iconic Man Ray Image Has A Record-Breaking Reserve Price of $5 Million this is my fun version...
Note the valley fold on the sign.
Always end up with leftover black kami in my packets. I suppose I should be folding penguins with it, but I don't know where the diagrams went to.
The original mid-13th-century Magdeburger Reiter (Magdeburg Rider, also Horseman of Magdeburg) is the main attraction of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Further exhibits in this small local history and art museum include:
Banknotes from the hyperinflation period of the early 1920s, including a Billion Mark note (i.e. a million million marks) and a thousand mark note changed to a billion mark one through a simple red stamp.
Notes: drawn by Alphonse Pellion, from Freycinet, Louis de. 'Voyage autour du monde : entrepris par ordre du roi ..Paris 1825
The area now known as Springwood was originally occupied by the Aurang-ora band of the inland Dharug people.
Format: stipple engraving, sheet (irregular): 34.0 cm x 49.3 cm, plate-mark: 33.7 cm x 32.0 cm, hand coloured
Date Range: as drawn by August Pellion 1819, published 1825
Location: Springwood, somewhere on the Western Road
Licensing: Attribution, share alike, creative commons
Repository: Blue Mountains Library library.bmcc.nsw.gov.au
Part of Local Studies Collection: PF 3001
Provenance: Local Studies Librarian
Links: bluemlocalstudies.wordpress.com/2018/08/08/walking-throug...
Image: Flying Fish Cove from Territory Day Park, Christmas Island, Indian Ocean. External Territory of Australia.
Below is the first in a series of five monthly reports I sent back to friends in 2007.
Recommend reading them in order to get the best out of them.
Very long.
Notes from Christmas Island (CI)
Chapter 1
JULY 2007
RANDOM OBSERVATIONS AND LIFE EXPERIENCES ON A RAINFOREST COVERED ISLAND, NO WHERE NEAR ANYWHERE AS DESCRIBED IN AN OFTEN
NON-CHRONOLOGICAL, NON-SEQUENTIAL, NON-LINEAR, ALL OVER THE PLACE MANNER!
I imagine the short exchange between Christmas Island International Airport [XCH] Air Traffic Control and our pilot went something like this:
“Inbound National Jet RJ-70 this is XCH.
You are cleared to land, winds 20 knots ESE,
So why don’t you stop messing around and put that sucker on the ground, then we can all go home”
“Groovy XCH, this is inbound RJ-70, copy that, please have a Canadian Club and Dry waiting for me on the tarmac, will have this big bird on the deck in a second.”
Or words like that.
Within ten minutes I became the last person off the plane as the flight attendants smiled nicely whilst, quite possibly, gently cursing my unstressed gait as I alighted the aircraft.
With a nose full of wonderful warm and clean tropical air I glanced towards the smallish aviation terminal building.
The terminal’s primary task was to allow for the lawful and obedient arrival and departure of passengers as listed on the aircraft passenger manifest.
It’s secondary but nevertheless important duty was to hold back a very green swath of rainforest from imminent invasion of the outrageously undulating but clearly useable runway.
This should be the last time I would be requiring that lumpy runway for a little while.
Christmas Island [CI], 10 degrees south of the Equator,
2600 km north, north-west from Perth,
2800 km west from Darwin,
360 km south from Indonesia,
1300 km south from Singapore
900 km north, north-east from Cocos (Keeling) Islands is to be home to Jody and myself for at least the next three months.
This airport is 291 metres above sea level.
For some perspective:
That is higher than the Central Park Building Perth, Australia
Outrageously higher than anything built in Adelaide, Australia
Fractionally lower than Centrepoint Tower in Sydney, Australia
Marginally higher than the Transamerica Building in San Francisco, USA
Almost twice the height of the Washington Monument in Washington DC, USA
A couple of storeys short of Bank of China Building, Hong Kong
Four fifth’s the height of the TV Tower Berlin, Germany
And that's just the height of the airport, some of the island is a third higher again.
As a rock, this island pokes right out of the water.
All the settled areas of CI are either a bit below, quite a bit below or massively far below the airport.
The steepness of the hill is severe in some places, sufficient enough to make a Tour De France rider squirm in his bike shorts and say “Sacré Bleu!”
Cleverly we had booked a 4WD hire car for the first week.
With certain smugness we took this all terrain vehicle out of the airport and down, down, down the hill to our unit.
Our three monthly lease of this unit, signed sight unseen, could now commence.
Let’s see what we have signed up for.
With the six kilometre winding downhill drive completed and the 4WD parked outside our new home, we were ready to collect the key, which was securely sitting on top of the frame of the front door.
Or so we were told!
As expected it was nowhere to be found.
Sleeping in the jungle seemed quite a chance.
This is where old contacts come in handy.
Also where the philosophy of, always make friends not enemies, pays dividends.
The neighbour to our property was a friend of mine in 1991 when I lived on the island.
A quick explanation of our predicament and soon a key was produced.
He had previously owned the unit and only sold it this year.
A spare key to the unit still jangled, if shaken, on his key ring and within moments we were inside.
Who’s a lucky a boy!
We leased this unit, which was to be one of either:
a] furnished
b] partially unfurnished
c] completely unfurnished.
To be frank we were not exactly sure what we were getting, but we knew we had a roof over our head and a front door and potentially a key.
Apart from the water leaking from the shower that drips out in the four cardinal directions and into the crappy carpet and onto the laundry floor, it would be adequate.
It won’t be featured in any of the following magazines:
Homes and Gardens or Design Trends or Architectural Weekly or Architectural Monthly or Architectural Annual.
Can’t see it getting a run in Clean Carpet Weekly but is a very good chance for a major feature in The Bad and Damp Carpet Journal.
On the plus side, the walls were painted, once.
The unit was old, tired, pretty well completely dirty and in summary
‘a bit crap’ however we are really quite happy here.
There was also no mattress on the bed, my friend but also had a spare, so we were soon sorted in that regard.
Because what it does have, is a fairly cool location.
We are unit two, of a set of four.
Where unit one is separated from the ocean by the main arterial road on the lower part of the island.
Not unexpectedly unit two is behind unit one.
Our ability to live in properties adjacent to main roads continues.
However this road is not really busy.
Sometimes fifteen minutes can elapse between cars and after midnight possibly hours between one lot of traffic and the next.
Of a morning there is no good reason, not to sit out on a chair, on the lawn near, but not under, the adjacent coconut tree and have my bowl of cereal and watch the ocean move and the traffic go by.
CI , an Australian external territory has a population of around fifteen hundred with eleven hundred being adults.
Life is unhurried and casual.
In a city all tasks seem to be done quickly or required to be done quickly.
That is not necessarily the case here.
Not everything can be done quickly, as shipping and flying things in and out have their own schedule, such as:
Monday has a flight from Perth to CI.
Thursday has a flight from Singapore to CI.
Friday has a flight from Perth to CI.
Postage leaves here on Mondays and Fridays direct to Perth.
Postage to CI on Thursdays goes from Perth to Singapore then changes airlines to fly from Singapore to CI.
So theoretically if a letter was posted from a person in Singapore to someone here, the letter would travel from Singapore to Perth to Singapore to CI.
A ship arrives around every six weeks or so to restock the non-perishables and larger items.
Crime is virtually unheard of, perhaps the occasional minor issue but any offence is unusual and certainly the talk of the town if it happens.
We think the cops, mainly go fishing.
Cars have the keys left in the ignition all the time.
So much easier to find the car keys when they stay in the car ready for use.
No one locks their car.
More often than not during the day we do not lock our house.
It took a week or so to get comfortable with this.
At night, we do, while we are sleeping but at some point that will probably change.
Jody gave up her handbag on the second day and my wallet has been ditched.
In it’s place is a small tough plastic bag, to hold some cash and now and then my plastic card to get cash out from the bank.
Fresh food comes in three times a week.
On Monday from Perth, Thursday from Singapore and Friday from Perth and occasionally on Saturdays from Perth, if it is school holidays.
Anything that comes via a plane is pretty pricey such as refrigerated items, fruit and vegetables.
We switched immediately to long life milk, which comes up via ship instead of the "short life milk" that comes up on the plane.
Items from the ship seem to be only about 20% more expensive that in Perth.
Not bad considering where we are.
Similar situation for the fuel, here it is AUD$1.41ltr when in Perth it is AUD$1.31. Could be worse.
The ship did arrive end of July, despite being due in the middle of July and is kind of a big event as restocking occurs.
Also on this ship were our mountain bikes which will give us more capacity to get around if vehicles are not handy.
The wildlife here is fantastic.
CI is known for the red crabs and their accompanying migration around December.
Which is a world class natural event.
The red crabs are kinda nice, in a crab type of way.
Not aggressive at all and in general, a peaceful type of creature.
Out in the jungle there is about one crab per square metre or two, which makes about 60 million of them or 480 million legs if you were to count them that particular way. But why would you.
Then there are the other crabs, the blue crabs that hang out in freshwater stream areas and the awesome robber crabs plus another ten or twenty other varieties that scuttle left and right.
The robber crabs are massive, sitting about six inches / 15cm off the ground.
Apparently larger ones can be 70 years old.
They prefer coconuts and can grind away at them with their claws until they get them open.
Allegedly their claws are so strong they can snap a broomstick in half, not that anyone has ever seen it happen, but looking at them it seems a fair call.
To see a crab weighing two or three kilograms suspended from a tree trunk eight feet in the air, is a formidable sight.
There are plenty of other amazing creatures, more on them in the next chapter.
For a small population there is a wide array of outlets for food and drinks.
There is one large supermarket similar to any well stocked shop in a small town on the mainland.
Three small Asian supermarkets whose aisles are so narrow that your shoulders barely fit between.
For meals there are two Chinese restaurants, three coffee shops, three pubs and a Chinese noodle house.
Add or possibly minus from that list a Malay Restaurant that doesn’t seem to open!?
Due to the nature of the geography most places have an ocean view and a cooling breeze.
Other items of note for a small, extremely remote island is the sensational hospital (ocean views standard), an 18 million dollar recreation centre with 25m swimming pool, children’s pool, basketball court, coffee shop and a brilliantly resourced gym.
Half way up the hill is the outdoor cinema, with great ocean views before the sun goes down and a lovely breeze when the movie is on. Unless it is raining.
There is one movie per week at AUD$5 per person, movies get to the island just as they are leaving the cinemas in Perth, so they are reasonably current.
Popcorn is available, but if four people have ordered popcorn before we get there then we have to wait eight minutes before ours is actioned.
Two minutes each packet in the microwave.
Practical solution to a practical problem.
Movies can be sponsored, so if I wanted to make the film
“brought to you by Keith and Jody” then we just have to lay the money down, rumour is, about AUD$300.
A local radio station is transmitting along with a few FM stations from Perth, ABC Local Radio plus Triple J that transmits Australia wide.
TV has ABC, SBS, WIN being a local version of Channel 9 and GWN country TV that takes combination Channel 7 and Channel 10.
Sadly both WIN and GWN suffer from the Western Australian country commercials varying from low quality to really low quality.
We convinced the landlord to supply a new mattress as the old one borrowed was pretty knackered.
We found a suitable one at the supermarket and arranged purchase.
For delivery the supermarket manager, who I knew from 1991 helped me lift it on the back of his ute, gave me his keys and said to drop the ute off in the carpark when I was finished and to leave the keys in the ignition. Fantastic. That’s how business should be done.
Vehicle transport is a necessity to get up the hill.
I do go running up the hill but I am the only one I know who does, my chances of having Jody run up the hill are about one degree.
That is, in every 360 times I ask she would probably agree to run once.
From the beginning of August we have hired a car from an old friend, or to be nice, a friend from a long time ago.
Not everything on the car works but if it did then the deal I got wouldn’t have happened.
The car is for sale and I can hire it until it sells.
Who knows I may have been able to get it for free, maybe, maybe not, but one needs to be fair here so some payment was necessary
Normally a newish car for hire would be about AUD$300 hundred per week.
My weekly hire rate is one carton of Boag’s Lite beer and one bottle of Champagne. Total cost $44 per week.
Those who know me and thought I possessed a minimum level of sophistication then the following will clearly shatter that illusion and those who believe I have no sophistication will be vindicated.
When I enquired what type of champagne was desired, the reply was “Brut”.
Easy then, off to the supermarket I headed to stock up on the grog.
Alcohol and cigarettes do not attract the mainland duties and taxes.
These items are ridiculously cheap.
Bottle of 1 litre spirits that would be $30 - $40 on the mainland are $14 here.
Cigarettes, for those filthy smoking bastards are around $2.50 a packet instead of the advised figure of $12 (so I am told.)
Even if I have my smokes prices a bit wrong, it’s still damn cheap.
I should start being a chain smoker and become an alcoholic, I would save sooooo much money!!
Back to the Champagne, I scoured the Champagne section of a very comprehensive alcohol section, juxtaposed to the dishwashing powder and washing machine liquids.
No brand of Champagne called Brut here!
With a bowed head and dragging of feet I slunk out of the supermarket like an abject failure.
I would be unable to fulfil my end of the “grog for car” regime.
Later Jody in a calm and quiet voice took me gently aside and explained that Brut was not a brand but a variety.
With a spring in my step I located a nicely priced bottle of James Hardy Champagne.
You can see my confusion, the words “Brut De Brut” located under the brand were not obvious and the whole thing just looked like a plain old bottle of wine to me.
Maybe this is not my area of expertise.
Jody was kind by saying it wasn’t my fault given that it is a "chick’s drink" or that it is "women's business" and I had no real right knowing about that type of thing anyway.
Sounds like the perfect disclaimer for me.
If I haven’t said so already, we are loving life here, sure the mosquito’s are impressed with Jody’s fair skin and tasty new blood.
They don’t get fair skin much like that too often, so they are making hay while the sun shines.
The mosquitos are not as bad as I thought, though, going thoroughly through a thoroughfare throughout the jungle like a thoroughbred where it is damp, mozzies can be an issue but in the settled areas, no worse than on the mainland.
We came prepared with a wonderful white mosquito net to cover us while sleeping.
Looks quite romantic really and keeps those buzzing mongrels away.
I once read, never skimp on two things when camping (extend that to remote areas) those being toilet paper and mosquito nets.
Go cheap and you will regret it.
This advice is being taken.
Before I go, please allow me to talk about the weather.
Those who might read this should be in the following listed locations and regions.
As I write this, early August 2007, it is winter in Australia and summer in the northern hemisphere.
On the “mainland”, as continental Australia is succinctly referred, we understand the situation is thus:
Perth, has been raining virtually all month since we left.
Adelaide, varies from miserable to cold and miserable.
Melbourne, is well, Melbourne and enough said there.
Sydney, would be similar to Perth, but with delusions of grandeur.
Hong Kong, let's mark you down as hot and humid with afternoon rain.
South Korea, possible storm clouds on the horizon, not from the weather but from those crazies next door in North Korea.
Germany, should be lovely and if on the autobahn, then fast.
While not being familiar with summer in San Francisco, San Diego & Palo Alto I expect you have your hottest month right now and I would guess pretty nice.
Washington DC now should be as warmish as it gets and trying to rule the world.
Hope I mentioned everyone.
According to official temperature collection data, Christmas Island minimum never drops below 20 (centigrade) and maximum never gets above 30.
Humidity levels can be neatly described as, humid.
When the local’s describe the water temperature as cold, it isn’t.
It’s a great place.
OK it is late and that’s enough for now.
If I send this when I have written everything I want to say, then it will never be sent.
This is Chapter 1, Chapter 2 is for another day...
If you print them all off then you will have a first edition of this virtual book. How about that!
All replies readily accepted, go easy with attachments, anything larger than 200KB or 0.2 MB takes forever to download and at $8 per hour costs me a fortune.
Hope you are all fine and unless we hear otherwise, we are assuming you are.
See ya
Keith (and Jody who is currently sleeping and missing her 2 cats)
This was Gabbi's crib mate, Malia!
We had a fabulous time yesterday. It's so nice to see the kids doing so well!! We also got to see some faces that weren't home yet last year and also their was some waiting parents!
Here are just a few of the lovely children from yesterday! You can see them bigger on my blog
Follow me!!!
facebook leave me a note so I know who you are :-)
The Agilitynut just reminded me that I have this little number just waiting for a moment to debut. Hutchinson, Kansas.
to remember...
Me gusta la fotografía,
pero también me fascina la edición de las imágenes,
cuando veo una foto siempre pienso cómo la hubiera editado yo...
para el grupo La Vuelta al Mundo
Tema de Enero: { Algo acerca de mí }
I always love taking a photo of this old tree and its smaller neighbour although I think this is the first that I have converted to black-and-white!
Black-and-White ~ 365 ....
52 in 2015 Challenge #21 Silhouette ....
Thanks to everyone who views this photo, adds a note, leaves a comment and of course BIG thanks to anyone who chooses to favourite my photo .... thanks to you all.
Birds on wires in Paull, East Yorkshire. I can't read music, but if I could would these music notes formed by these birds be Leonard Cohen's 'Bird on a Wire"?
Description: 3D red cyan anaglyph from NARA 111-B-3880 (528037) - the file was NARA's standard medium-res file, but posted in tif format on Wikimedia Commons. Both sides of the stereograph have been restored, upscaled, and sharpened.
Link to file at Wikimedia Commons: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Walt_Whitman_-_NARA_-_528...
NARA Title: Walt Whitman [1819 - 1892]
Date: Fall 1862
Notes: A stereoscopic portrait of famous American poet Walt Whitman, at age 43, taken by Mathew Brady’s New York studio in the fall of 1862. Best known before the war for his collection of poems “Leaves of Grass,” Whitman’s compassion and first-hand observations of the pain and suffering endured by Civil War casualties, led him on a three year crusade to daily go among the wounded and dying, and provide whatever relief and comfort that he could offer.
Below, Whitman describes his note-taking during this period, and after that, several excerpts from his writings of just the Dec. 1862 and Jan. 1863 visits, which illustrate what sort of routine he followed and what he would do for the men. At the very end, is Whitman’s summary of his three year’s work. These excerpts are from his 1875 book, “Memoranda During the War,” and his 200-page autobiographical work “Specimen Days,” taken largely from the former, and published in 1882.
*****************************
“MEMORANDA, &c.
DURING the Union War I commenced at the close of 1862, and continued steadily through '63, '64 and '65, to visit the sick and wounded of the Army, both on the field and in the Hospitals in and around Washington city. From the first I kept little note-books for impromptu jottings in pencil to refresh my memory of names and circumstances, and what was specially wanted, &c. In these I brief'd cases, persons, sights, occurrences in camp, by the bedside, and not seldom by the corpses of the dead. Of the present Volume most of its pages are verbatim renderings from such pencillings on the spot. Some were scratch'd down from narratives I heard and itemized while watching, or waiting, or tending somebody amid those scenes. I have perhaps forty such little note-books left, forming a special history of those years, for myself alone, full of associations never to be possibly said or sung. I wish I could convey to the reader the associations that attach to these soil'd and creas'd little livraisons, each composed of a sheet or two of paper, folded small to carry in the pocket, and fasten'd with a pin. I leave them just as I threw them by during the War, blotch'd here and there with more than one blood-stain, hurriedly written, sometimes at the clinique, not seldom amid the excitement of uncertainty, or defeat, or of action, or getting ready for it, or a march. Even these days, at the lapse of many years, I can never turn their tiny leaves, or even take one in my hand, without the actual army sights and hot emotions of the time rushing like a river in full tide through me. Each line, each scrawl, each memorandum, has its history. Some pang of anguish—some tragedy, profounder than ever poet wrote. Out of them arise active and breathing forms. They summon up, even in this silent and vacant room as I write, not only the sinewy regiments and brigades, marching or in camp, but the countless phantoms of those who fell and were hastily buried by wholesale in the battle-pits, or whose dust and bones have been since removed to the National Cemeteries of the land….”
[Walt Whitman. Memoranda During the War. 1875–1876. The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, and Kenneth M. Price: whitmanarchive.org/published/other/memoranda.html ]
**************************
“….In 1862, startled by news that my brother George, an officer in the 51st New York volunteers, had been seriously wounded (first Fredericksburg battle, December 13th,) I hurriedly went down to the field of war in Virginia….
DOWN AT THE FRONT Falmouth, VA., opposite Fredericksburg, December 21, 1862.-Begin my visits among the camp hospitals in the army of the Potomac. Spend a good part of the day in a large brick mansion on the banks of the Rappahannock, used as a hospital since the battle -- seems to have receiv’d only the worst cases. Out doors, at the foot of a tree, within 10 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. In the door-yard, towards the river, are fresh graves, mostly of officers, their names on pieces of barrel staves or broken boards, stuck in the dirt. (Most of these bodies were subsequently taken up and transported north to their friends.) The large mansion is quite crowded upstairs and down, everything impromptu, no system, all bad enough, but I have no doubt the best that can be done; all the wounds pretty bad, some frightful, the men in their old clothes, unclean and bloody. Some of the wounded are rebel soldiers and officers, prisoners. One, a Mississippian, a captain, hit badly in leg, I talk’d with sometime, he asked me for papers, which I gave him. (I saw him three months afterward in Washington, with his leg amputated, doing well.) I went through the rooms, downstairs and up. Some of the men were dying, I had nothing to give at that visit, but wrote a few letters to folks home, mothers, &c. Also talk’d to three or four, who seem’d most susceptible to it, and needing it.
AFTER FIRST FREDERICKSBURG. December 23 to 31. The results of the late battle are exhibited everywhere about here in thousands of cases, (hundreds die every day,) in the camp, brigade, and division hospitals. These are merely tents, and sometimes very poor ones, the wounded lying on the ground, lucky if their blankets are spread on layers of pine or hemlock twigs, or small leaves. No cots; seldom even a mattress. It is pretty cold. The ground is frozen hard, and there is occasional snow. I go around from one case to another. I do not see that I do much good to these wounded and dying, but I cannot leave them. Once in a while some youngster holds onto me convulsively, and I do what I can for him, at any rate, stop with him and sit near him for hours, if he wishes it. Besides the hospital's, I also go occasionally on Long tours through the camps, talking with the men, &c. Sometimes at night among the groups around the fires, in their shebang enclosures of bushes. These are curious shows, full of characters in groups. I soon get acquainted anywhere in camp, with officers or men, and am always well used. Sometimes I go down on pickett with the regiments I know best…
BACK TO WASHINGTON January 63 ……I am now remaining in and around Washington, daily visiting the hospitals. Am much in Patent-office, Eighth street, H street, Armory-square, and others. Am now able to do a little good, having money, (as almoner of others home,) and getting experience. To-day, Sunday afternoon until nine in the evening, visited Campbell hospital; attended specially to one case in ward 1, very sick with pleurisy and typhoid fever, young man, farmer's son, D. F. Russell, company E, 60th New York, downhearted and feeble; a long time before he would take any interest; wrote a letter home to his mother, in Malone, Franklin county N.Y., at his request; gave him some fruit and one or two other gifts; envelop’d and directed his letter, &c. Then went thoroughly through ward 6, observ’d every case in the ward, without, I think, missing one; gave perhaps from twenty to thirty persons, each one some little gift, such as oranges, apples, sweet crackers, figs, &c.
Thursday, Jan 21. Devoted the main part of the day to Armory-square hospital; went pretty thoroughly through wards F, G, H, and I; some fifty cases in each ward. In ward F supplied the men throughout with writing paper and stamp’d envelope each; distributed in small portions, to proper subjects, a large jar of first-rate preserv’d berries, which had been donated to me by a lady - her own cooking. Found several cases I thought good subject for small sums of money, which I furnish’d. (The wounded men often come up broke, and it helps their spirits to have even the small sum I give them.) My paper and envelopes all gone, but distributed a good lot of amusing reading matter; also, as I thought judicious, tobacco, oranges, apples, &c. Interesting cases in ward I; Charles Miller, bed 19, company D, 53d Pennsylvania, is only sixteen years of age, very bright, courageous boy, left leg amputated below the knee; next bed to him, another young lad very sick; gave each appropriate gifts. In the bed above, also, amputation of the left leg; gave him a little jar of raspberries; bed 1, this ward, gave a small sum; also to a soldier on crutches, sitting on his bed near…. (I am more and more surprised at the very great proportion of youngsters from fifteen to twenty-one in the army. I afterwards found a still greater proportion among the southerners.)
Evening, same day, went to see D. F. R., before alluded to; found him remarkably changed for the better; up and dress’d - quite a triumph; he afterwards got well, and went back to his regiment. Distributed in the wards a quantity of note-paper, and forty or fifty stamp’d envelopes, of which I had recruited my stock, and the men were much in need…..”
******************************
“THREE YEARS SUMM’D UP. During those three years in hospital, camp or field, I made over six hundred visits or tours, and went, as I estimate, counting all, among from eighty thousand to a hundred thousand of the wounded and sick, as sustainer of spirit and body in some degree, in time of need. These visits varied from an hour or two, to all day or night, for with dear or critical cases I generally watch’d all night. Sometimes I took up my quarters in the hospital, and slept or watch’d there several nights in succession. Those three years I consider the greatest privilege and satisfaction, (with all their feverish excitements and physical deprivations and lamentable sites,) and, of course, the most profound lesson of my life. I can say that in my ministerings I comprehend all, whoever came in my way, northern or southern, and slighted none. It arous’d and brought out and decided undream’d-of depth of emotion. It has given me my most fervent views of the true ensemble and extent of the states. While I was with wounded and sick in thousands of cases from the New England States, and from New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and from Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and all the Western States, I was with more or less from all the states, North and South, without exception. I was with many from the border States, especially from Maryland and Virginia, and found, during those lurid years 1862 - 63, far more Union southerners, especially Tennesseans, then is supposed. I was with many rebel officers and men among our wounded, and gave them always what I had, and tried to cheer them the same as any. I was among the army teamsters considerably, and, indeed, always found myself drawn to them. Among the black soldiers, wounded or sick, and in the contraband camps, I also took my way whenever in their neighborhood, and did what I could for them.”
Link to free download of Specimen Days: archive.org/details/dayscollspecimen00whitrich/page/n5/mo...
Findagrave Link: www.findagrave.com/memorial/1098/walt-whitman
------------
Red/Cyan (not red/blue) glasses of the proper density must be used to view 3D effect without ghosting. Anaglyph prepared using red cyan glasses from The Center For Civil War Photography / American Battlefield Trust. CCWP Link: www.civilwarphotography.org/