Crunch Time Approaches

Last week was Spring Break in CUNY-land and for the most part, our team agreed to honor it as an actual break. I think of this last week as the proverbial calm before the storm that is often the reality of birthing any kind of creative product. For myself, the timing was fortuitous as I received my first shot of the Pfizer vaccine against Covid-19 and it hit me pretty hard: for three days following the shot I was not in any shape to do research or concentrate on anything technical. But I’m doing fine now and have picked up my research and am moving forward.

I’ve decided to break my research on our war memorial into six sections:

An introduction to the project, as it relates to the Worth Memorial location.
Biographical information about General Worth’s life.
Information about the Worth Memorial itself, including its unveiling and how the city has changed around it since it was created.
Some thoughts on the memorial within the context of the project.
Conclusions from the research.
The Clio walking tour [tentative]

Allen and Ginter. “William Jenkins Worth Cigarettes Card.” Circa 1888. From the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s public domain collection.

Sadly, the NYPL was unable to send me the two books I requested. No reason was given for the denial, though I suspect it is because they only have one copy of either on file. They are able to send photocopies of up to 50 pages from each. Without being able to see the books, it’s hard to direct them as to what pages to copy. Luckily, I was able to find Edward Wallace’s original 1948 dissertation (which later became the published biography) on the Boston University website. A digital PDF has been created from the document, including some notes from the professors who reviewed it … fascinating for this digital humanist to see. I have now read enough about Worth that I feel I can move from his life and on to why the memorial was created in New York City, and what it meant in the context of that time.

The research continues…

Worth Memorial — Worth Square, as seen from Madison Park. Photo was taken by Lisa Kofod in March 2021.

[Originally posted to DHUM 70002 Digital Humanities: Methods and Practices (Spring 2021) in Personal Blogs and tagged mapping cemeteries, Personal Blog on April 7, 2021 by A Virtual Lisa.]