Memorializing Whitman

Feature | vanbertozzi, September 1st, 2005

Whitman look-alike [Michael Thorn/flickr]

Flora MacDonald Denison was a strong woman with a habit of engraving indelible messages in the most unexpected places. In the early 1900s, she was running an inn up at Mazinaw Lake in Ontario, Canada, while fighting for women’s right to vote and starting a Walt Whitman reading club. The club—which she called the Whitmanites—had meetings at the inn during lonely winter months and had a small but loyal following. The couple that ran the inn before her were strict Mennonites and Flora tried to encourage poets and artists to frequent the inn. Mandy Bidwell, who works for the natural heritage division of the park that now includes the inn, told me that Flora’s favorite saying was: “Early to bed and early to rise…means you miss a lot of interesting people.”

Mazinaw Rock with Whitman etching [Andrew Belding/flickr]

As a suffragette, Flora admired Whitman in part for his humanist respect for all people and his love of freedom. Legend has it that when inn diners neared the end of the food on their plates, a message—engraved on the plate—would start to appear: “Vote for Women!”

She and Whitman never did meet, but on the 100th anniversary of his birth in 1919, Flora decided to hire two Scottish artists. She wanted a bust of Whitman carved into the massive Mazinaw Rock, a local landmark. The granite formation juts 100 meters out of Mazinaw Lake and was known for its Algonquin pictographs, estimated at 300-1000 years old. But when the estimate for the bust proved too expensive, Flora decided on her three favorite lines from of “Song of Myself.”

My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite,
I laugh at what you call dissolution,
And I know the amplitude of time.

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

I asked Mandy, why this rock, what’s the connection between the pictographs and the Whitman engraving? Mandy said Flora “just loved this area and held a spiritual connection to it.” Then she went on to tell me that locals say you can see a face in the rock. “Some say you can see an image of Whitman’s face. I’ve seen the Native face. It depends on what your heritage is.” Another tale passed down over the years relates to the unveiling of the engraving commissioned by Flora. Just after the unveiling, Horace Traubel, one of the Whitmanites, passed away. Some people said they saw the face of Whitman in the clouds.

The rock itself was very spiritual spot on the Native Americans’ vision quest. They would pass by the lake rock in canoes along their trade routes.

We see this as the evolution of life, as people come along. The ancient cedar there, we call “The Silent Witness.” The Mazinaw Rock has changed many lives and Flora is just one example of that.

Mandy Bidwell, Bon Echo Park historian

And now for something completely different…

How most living Americans know of Leaves of Grass Pt. II

“Here lies… Walt Whitman. Aaargh! Damn you Walt Whitman! I… hate… you… Walt…freakin… Whitman, leaves of grass my ass!”

- Homer Simpson (from the episode where Homer finds his long last mother after mistaking Walt Whitman’s grave stone for hers…)

Fairmettle at 7:17 AM PST on July 4, Metafilter

Christine’s flickr photo of her husband:

“Doug imitates Homer Simpson at the Paumanok monument, Huntington NY.” [Christine/flickr]

Ready for a long story?

My family is obsessed with “The Simpsons.” The running joke is that between my husband, my kids and me we can’t go five minutes without a Simpsons reference. All life deconstructs into the Simpsons.

We were hiking, doing our other obsession, Geocaching (http://www.geocaching.com) in Huntington NY… in a park called West Hills, and this spot is on Jayne’s Hill. Walt Whitman’s ancestral homestead is located about 1/2 mile from this spot, and as a child in NY I was schlepped there on a regular basis to learn about our town poet.

But I’d never been to the top of Jayne’s Hill… until we went hiking there that day. At the top of the hill is the poem rock and some other Walt Whitman iconographic stones… celebrating his love of Long Island, the ocean, his hometown, etc.

Well…. enter the Simpsons Reference. In one episode, Homer thinks that the stone at the top of the cemetery is the gravesite of his mother. Someone tells him he’d better go up and take a closer look. Upon arrival, he discovers that it is not the grave of Mona Simpson, but that of Walt Whitman. And he freaks out yelling “I hate you Walt Freakin’ Whitman! Leaves of Grass My ASS!!!” as he kicks the tombstone repeatedly.

Thus, my husband there — doing Homer justice.

My husband greatly dislikes the poetry of Walt Whitman (he’s from Pittsburgh) and I often roll my eyes because of my childhood experiences with field trips and huge cardboard presentations and yadda yadda. So this was a small moment in time where we were able to embrace many pop culture references all at once.

Did you see the one of my kids sitting on top of the rock? It’s a much nice picture and no one is kicking it.

Christine, (a)musings