Tag Archives: Roger Smith

Broadway

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Broadway

 

A friend of mine from Europe said in a message that he hoped to visit New York sometime and would love to see “Broadway Avenue.” I wrote him back with some facts.

I am attaching an explanatory Word document (above) and photos I have taken in my walks.

My photos show Broadway near Wall Street and Broadway way uptown; it goes from the southernmost to the northernmost point (218th Street) of Manhattan.

— Roger W. Smith

  January 2023

 

photos by Roger W. Smith

Broadway and Rector Street, Financial District

Times Square

Broadway and 156th Street, Upper Manhattan

Washington Heights

Inwood

Broadway and 218th Street

new vocabulary

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new vocabulary – January 2023

Posted here as a word document are words I have looked up during the past year in my reading

 

— Roger W. Smith

   January 2023

… that individuals matter

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Why did individual soldiers matter so much to Walt Whitman? The young men whom he provided care and comfort to as a volunteer in army hospitals during the Civil War.

As persons — not just “cases”; patients needing care and. above all, attention.

They certainly did. Witness the accounts — Whitman’s own — of his regular visits to hospitals in Washington during the Civil War.

For example:

Walt Whitman to Mr. and Mrs. S. B. Haskell, Breseport, County New York, August 10, 1863

Whitman 1

 

And here is an excerpt from another letter showing how much people he encountered and got to know mattered to Whitman:

Walt Whitman to Hugo Fritsch, 1863

Whitman 2

 

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Allow me to talk about myself.

I am at a point in my life where I don’t need compliments — although, naturally, I appreciate and welcome them, store them up in my “bank” of pleasant remembrances.

But I don’t worry much about what people think of me.

I am introspective, often find fault with myself. I also have some knowledge of good points of my own that I might have once overlooked.

For instance: I think I appreciate this about Whitman — what I spoke of above — because I can see it in myself and my own behavior. Individuals I encounter in all sorts of situations in daily life are rarely negligible to me. They are almost all unique — all, a priori, interesting and valuable to me for having met them. This includes people met in what might be thought of as perfunctory encounters.

Whitman regarded it as a privilege to meet young soldiers from various places and backgrounds. The same with me with the people I encounter.

A couple of examples — trivial, except that they make my point.

Fiona, the clerk from Queens whom I engaged in conversation at a FedEx center on Madison Avenue a few months ago. (I was sending something.) She said she loved talking with me. I haven’t forgotten her. We compared notes about living in New York.

An HP help desk technician from India who answered a call recently. I found him very interesting and congenial and learned much from him about India and especially a particular interest of his: languages, including Sanskrit. As the talk progressed (during which he was working on my computer remotely), it got more and more friendly and interesting. He sent me an email after the online session:

November 4, 2022

Hello Roger,

Greetings of the day!!

This e-mail is with reference to your case ID : _____. If you have any issues please call us directly.

It was really really nice talking to you.

Have a great day!

Regards,

Vivek

The workers at my favorite pub: Philomena, Amy, Jemina, Yasmin, Alexa, Anniika, Bianca, Noureen, Fiona (my first waitress friend; just left).

I owe these traits and proclivities of mine to my parents. I would say that it is a matter of showing an appreciation for and a keen interest in people.

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

   January 2023

Vivaldi, “Qui sedes ad dexteram Patrtis”

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Vivaldi, “Qui sedes ad dexteram Patrtis”

 

https://rogersgleanings.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/01-11-Gloria-RV-588-Qui-sedes-ad-dexteram-Patris.mp3?_=1

 

from his Gloria, RV 588

Sometimes I think that Vivaldi does not get as much credit as he deserves.

Which is to say that everyone knows The Four Seasons — one hears it in advertising — but many of the choral works, such as this one (the lesser known of three Glorias known to have been composed by Vivaldi in his lifetime), are not preformed or heard that often.

This performance is by the Budapest Madrigal Choir under the direction of Ferenc Szekeres.

— posted by Roger W. Smith

   January 2023

Walt Whitman, “The Great Army of the Sick”

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Walt Whitman, ‘The Great Army of the Sick’ – NY Times 2-26-1863

 

Posted here:

Walt Whitman

“The Great Army of the Sick; Military Hospitals in Washington”

The New York Times

February 26, 1863

 

— Roger W. Smith

   January 2023

 

new post – Theodore Dreiser and Eugene Field

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Please see my post re Eugene Field (a favorite author of mine from childhood) and Theodore Dreiser at the following URL

Eugene Field

 

— Roger W. Smith

my first few days in the City

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I was hired by the New York Friends Group at a salary of eighty dollars a week. My job title was Workroom Supervisor. I sorted mail, ran the mimeograph machine, kept office supplies intact, was messenger and delivery boy.

I had stayed overnight in Westchester with a college roommate and his girlfriend. They were visiting her family there. They drove me to Manhattan on my first day of work. It was April 1969.

My roommate said, while we on the FDR Drive, do you have any cash? Not much, I answered. He was a rich kid with a fancy sports car and was generous. He pulled $150 out of his wallet – it seemed like a large sum to me – and handed it to me.

I had almost no money and had made no arrangements for an apartment or room. I wouldn’t be paid for a couple of weeks.

Someone – an older woman, a longtime New Yorker — at the office kindly suggested a YMCA – I think on 34th Street – to me. I don’t know why I didn’t check it out. I believe it was because it kind of sounded “institutional” and the thought of staying there did not appeal to me.

The office manager at 218 East 18th Street, who was living with his girlfriend – she worked at the same place – and his girlfriend Betsy put me up overnight on my first night at their apartment in Greenwich Village. Where his wife was or the state of his marriage I didn’t know. In the morning, his two sons – the typical precocious city kids – were at the breakfast table.

Betsy, the girlfriend, and I took a cab to the office, which was on East 18th Street. I guess the office manager reported to work either earlier or later. Betsy was in her late twenties. She wore sunglasses in New York fashion and kept saying to the taxi driver, “DRIVER, turn here. DRIVER …” Imperiously. I was sort of put off by it.

For several days, I slept on the office floor. As office boy, I had been given a key to the building. (I think I had the responsibility of opening up in the morning.) I would pretend to go home at 5 p.m., would do a reversal and come back; unlock the door, go to one of the upper floors (my “office” was in the basement), and sleep on a rug. It was relatively comfortable.

The only thing I knew how, practically, to cook was rice. Boiled. I bought a box of rice at Bohack supermarket on Third Avenue. I would cook it in a kitchen that was on one of the upper floors. I had probably bought soy sauce too.

Over the weekend, probably, I would go out and explore the neighborhood, feeling pretty lonely.

This went on a for a week or less; and then I had a series of improvised living arrangements which were mostly unsatisfactory and of short duration. I finally found a studio apartment in Queens.

 

— Roger W. Smith

  January 2023

Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field one Night

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Walt Whitman

Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field one Night

VIGIL strange I kept on the field one night;
When you my son and my comrade dropt at my side that day,
One look I but gave which your dear eyes return’d with a look I shall never forget,
One touch of your hand to mine O boy, reach’d up as you lay on the ground,
Then onward I sped in the battle, the even-contested battle,
Till late in the night reliev’d to the place at last again I made my way,
Found you in death so cold dear comrade, found your body son of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding,)
Bared your face in the starlight, curious the scene, cool blew the moderate night-wind,
Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the battle-field spreading,
Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet there in the fragrant silent night,
But not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh, long, long I gazed,
Then on the earth partially reclining sat by your side leaning my chin in my hands,
Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours with you dearest comrade—not a tear, not a word,
Vigil of silence, love and death, vigil for you my son and my soldier,
As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole,
Vigil final for you brave boy, (I could not save you, swift was your death,
I faithfully loved you and cared for you living, I think we shall surely meet again,)
Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the dawn appear’d,
My comrade I wrapt in his blanket, envelop’d well his form,
Folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head and carefully under feet,
And there and then and bathed by the rising sun, my son in his grave, in his rude-dug grave I deposited,
Ending my vigil strange with that, vigil of night and battle-field dim,
Vigil for boy of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding,)
Vigil for comrade swiftly slain, vigil I never forget, how as day brighten’d,
I rose from the chill ground and folded my soldier well in his blanket,
And buried him where he fell.

— from Walt Whitman, Drum-Taps (1865)

 

*****************************************************

The absolute simplicity and avoidance of anything “literary,” giving the poem great expressive power.

The Biblical parallelism: “Folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head and carefully under feet,”

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

  January 2023

‘You used to be very good to them, playing ” ‘tag’, and marbles with them.”

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Some personal reminiscences from those who knew Walt Whitman personally and had ongoing contact with him informally.

 

ELLEN M. CALDER

Calder

“O’Connor,” Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), pp. 475-477

O’Connor – Walt Whitman Encyclopedia

 

MARY JORDAN

Jordan

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Snow-Storm

snow-storm

 

Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) was an English poet and essayist born in the City of London late in 1618. He was one of the leading English poets of the 17th century.

Stephen Pearl Andrews (1812-1886) was an American libertarian socialist, individualist anarchist, linguist, political philosopher, outspoken abolitionist and author of several books on the labor movement and individualist anarchism.

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

  January 2023

new post

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Please see new post on my Roger’s rhetoric site:

This is writing!

 

— Roger W. Smith

  December 2022