Have you guess’d you yourself would not continue?

Watching Gettysburg and I realize that it's already 27th, so I missed blogging something important yesterday. 

A year ago I was in DC teaching for the FDIC, weeping whilst talking on the phone with Ericka as I learned that my friend Darryl had died the week before.  He was a Civil War re-enactor, amongst other things, and played one of the Green Mountain Boys (Samuel LD Goodale from Tunbridge)--we were going to finally meet up last summer when he'd planned on being in Vermont for a battle.

And that brings to mind Whitman:

To think the thought of Death, merged in the thought of materials!
To think that the rivers will flow, and the snow fall, and fruits ripen, and act upon others as upon us now—yet not act upon us!     
To think of all these wonders of city and country, and others taking great interest in them—and we taking no interest in them!     
 
To think how eager we are in building our houses!     
To think others shall be just as eager, and we quite indifferent!     
 
(I see one building the house that serves him a few years, or seventy or eighty years at most,
I see one building the house that serves him longer than that.)     
 
Slow-moving and black lines creep over the whole earth—they never cease—they are the burial lines,     
He that was President was buried, and he that is now President shall surely be buried.

Fortunately, I find that life carries on...

ntodd