In last week’s post, I began a two-part explanation of Walt Whitman’s title “Leaves of Grass.” The “Leaves” refers simply to pages, as in pages of poetry, of which Whitman’s book is of course composed.  Now it’s on to the “Grass” part. I base my understanding of what Whitman meant on the accompanying image, which reads: A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full      hands; How could I answer the child? I do […]

Categories: ZiR

What do Pausanias, vade mecum (Latin, “go with me”), Murray and Baedeker have in common with Seth Kugel’s weekly column/blog in the New York Times, the “Frugal Traveler”? In a lively and informative discussion about which is the better tool, Kugel’s Dec 24, 2013 piece, “Planning a Trip: Guidebook Versus the Web,” pits the worldwide web against old-fashioned guidebooks. Travelers have relied on them for millennia. Pausanias authored his great guide to ancient Greece in the 2nd century, CE. During the Renaissance […]

Categories: ZiR