Tuesday, October 7, 2008

walt whitman in canada


wandering across the nether regions of the net this evening i found out for myself that walt whitman spent time in canada. who knew! here’s one little taste of what he wrote . . . and i hope that my choice of it is a prescient foretelling of what is to come - weatherwise . . . .

“it is only here in large portions of canada that wonderous second wind, the indian summer, attains its amplitude and heavenly perfection, -- the temperatures; the sunny haze; the mellow, rich delicate, almost flavoured air: enough to live -- enough to merely be.”
 walt whitman, diary in canada

if you’d like to read more of walt’s words describing his time in canada then you can read a flip book here. never read an online flip book? it’s the coolest! when you open the link you are looking at a copy of the original book. click on the bottom right hand corner of the page when you’ve finished reading it and the page turns. yummy!!!

3 comments:

Goldenrod said...

Are you aware, Steven, that when one clicks onto your blog music starts up (in this case it's from the film about David Copperfield). It's quite disconcerting.

Earlier, the cartoon film automatically started up (cute -- but, again, disconcerting).

Is there anything you can do about this?

steven said...

hi goldenrod, i am very aware of that "disconcerting" and might i add invasive musical interlude. i don't like it and i don't want it but i don't know what to do. so for now what i can do is chop the blog down to two or three entries left on the main page until the offending (and offensive) racket disappears into blog ether!!!
thanks for the heads up about david byrne!!!
steven

Goldenrod said...

Ah, that is SO much better! I couldn't concentrate at all on Walt Whitman (or even your previous post, which I have yet to read). I didn't want to use the word 'invasive' -- didn't want to be rude, but I'm glad YOU did, Steven. Fits, along with 'intrusive' and 'very irritating'.

The cartoon one wasn't quite so bad. I could leave the room for four or five minutes and then come back to read your more recent posts without being distracted.


ANYhoo, back to Walt Whitman.

Indian summer ... boy, I've been down in the South for so long that I had almost completely forgotten about Indian summer!

Fall up north, altho beautiful, was never my favorite season. It just reminded me of how cold I was going to be shortly. (I live in the right place, don't I?)


You're welcome. When that segment first came on, I thought, "Steven would LOVE this!" The concept, for sure ... don't know about the 'music'.