On a recent bike ride I happened upon Remembrance Rock on the upper Manhattan campus of City College, commemorating students who died in American wars. A lugubrious history respectfully memorialized in public space. A sadly fitting homage, to bring soil from the places where service members died to this spot on the island New Yorkers call home, and mingle it with soil from historic places in the city. A kind of time capsule committed to the ground in 1959, , among the things I’d never known about my own city.

The full text of the Whitmanesque message can be read easily by clicking here:

#RemembranceRock