Song of Myself

The AIDS Memorial in Greenwich Village. NYC lost over 100,000 souls to AIDS. The memorial commemorates this loss and celebrates "the helpers." I put these words in quotes as the phrase echoes in my head sometimes as part of the advice below. It's from a story I once heard Mister Rogers tell. When, as a young child he was troubled by pictures of tragedy or catastrophe he saw on the television, his mother told him, "Always look for the helpers." 

"When you see the helpers," he explains, "you know there's hope."

The poem Song of Myself, written by the father of American poetry Walt Whitman (I proudly propagate the honorific), is etched into the bricks. The poem begins thus:

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.