MY WIFE
Day 770
ЯƎHTOM YM
February 7th, 2014
I'm walking every street in New York City.
This is the counterpoint to my walk across the US. Instead of seeing a million places for just a minute each, I'm going to spend a million minutes exploring just one place. By the time I finish walking every block of every street in all five boroughs, I'll have traveled more than 8,000 miles on foot — all within a single city. Details!
Email me at matt@imjustwalkin.com
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Maps: Progress | Photos
~9,954 miles walked
Your donations allow me to keep walking full-time. If you think what I'm doing is valuable and you'd like to offer some support, I would be very grateful. On the other hand, if you think I'm a worthless bum, feel free to email me and tell me to get a job, bozo. Both are excellent options!
OK, how do you make the letters go in reverse–you’re talking to a tyro here…
Well, I was lucky that most of the letters are symmetrical. The backwards R is a Cyrillic letter, and the backwards E is apparently part of the Pan-Nigerian alphabet. I used this site to find these characters.
thank you, Matt! And thank your for your scholarship as well–the geological history of the cemetery area was amazing.
Is MY WIFE reversed on the other side of the stone?
That’s a great question. I didn’t even think to look!
This headstone troubles me and not for the reversed writing. It seems weird that someone would put his own name but not the name of the wife/mother on the headstone. Secondly, there’s the ambiguity of who’s actually buried in the plot: are his wife and his mother both buried there or is he suggesting that his wife was also like a mother to him? Also, why are there no dates? Is this a headstone-in-waiting?
There are what looks to me like hands with fingers pointing to either side of the stone. Following the direction of where they are pointing “My Mother” is on left looking at the stone and “My Wife” is on the right. William would be in the middle.
Matt you seem to have a knack for finding the odd, quirky things in your adventures. Always fun to see what you’ve come across.
Thanks for spotting the pointing fingers, Dorinda. I think you’re probably right; perhaps the other two graves don’t have elaborate headstones but flatter ones that are covered by snow at the moment. However, the lack of dates on Wm (William) Harigan Snr’s headstone still intrigues me.
Agree with you that Matt has an eye for quirky and unusual subjects. I particularly like his portals. They always fire my imagination.
The pointing hands are also strange in that they point downward (towards the locations of the graves?) – typically pointing hands on old gravestones are pointing UP (towards heaven), unless maybe Mr. Harrigan knew something…