I See Dead People

If you thought the gift shops at Disneyland were bad

2011-12-10T05:14:00.000-08:00

An elderly relative died this past Monday; the funeral was yesterday. In most ways, it was a pretty typical event. The decedent was quite old, she'd been in declining health for a number of years, and her demise was not unexpected. People were understandably sad, tears were shed, and life goes on. The funeral itself was what one would expect -- the minister talked about the wonderful characteristics of the decedent (a woman he had met one time, and then only briefly) while those of us in the pews did our own mental editing/reality check. (If the dearly departed were even half as wonderful as eulogies always make the deceased sound, it would be a lot harder to let go.) The only surprising thing was that the church was not as full as I had thought it would be given how active the woman had been in the community in her younger days, but then I realized that the decedent had simply managed to outlive most of her contemporaries.

Visitation at the funeral home the night before held a few surprises, though. I've always been intrigued about customs and practices surrounding death, the various attitudes and rituals and their evolution over time. Americans have always struck me as being a tad squeamish about the subject. After all, the culture has abdicated personal responsibility by allowing professional funeral directors to take over what were once intimate family tasks: preparing the body for burial, for example, and digging the grave. For centuries, too, western culture has isolated the dead from the living: unlike some cultures where the bones of revered ancestors become part of the household (e.g., skulls up on the ceiling beams or bones buried in the floor), western European societies planted the dead in graveyards. That's changed a little with the advent of cremation -- during the 20th century it became acceptable, if not widely common, to have the cremains of a loved one residing in a tasteful urn on the credenza in the living room.

I've got to admire the funeral industry for managing to take that tasteful urn and move it to a whole new level. While sitting around sipping coffee at the funeral home, I realized I'd inadvertently wandered into the world's creepiest gift shop. The built-in bookcases and various other surfaces were full of display models of different items grieving families can purchase. You can now get individual urns:

Instead of the deceased's ashes residing in one large urn for all eternity, you can divide him or her among the family members. Personally, I find this a little creepy, but I know not everyone feels that way -- my older grandson was the recipient of such an urn after his other grandmother died a few years ago, and he seems quite happy to have it.

Individual urns not quite your thing? Or there are so many family members (and the decedent was a frail little thing who's not going to provide much ash to work with) that even the small urns are too large? How about some cremation jewelry? You can have ashes compressed into fake diamonds, or you can go for something a little less intense, like a heart you can wear as a necklace or on a charm bracelet:

What about the men, you ask? After all, guys aren't likely to want to wear a heart-shaped pendant no matter how much they loved their mother. Got them covered. Keychains, with a wide variety of designs to pick from:

I can see it now -- "I'll take the one with the gecko on it. Mom always loved those GEICO ads."

The options for stuff you can do with cremains don't stop with urns and jewelry, of course. You can take those ashes and have them made into stained glass. You can buy various pieces of innocuous looking household items that have compartments for cremains: desk lamps, for example. You can get urns that look like bookends (and can be used the same way) if you want to be subtle, or you can get urns that look like miniature caskets or sarcophagi if you want the urn to be a blatant piece of memento mori.

But what about families who don't opt for cremation? Aren't they kind of S.O.L. when it comes to death memorabilia? Not really. There are now these nifty little pieces of jewelry, which get sold by companies such as Thumbies:

You can have your loved one's fingerprints permanently embedded in a piece of (not cheap) jewelry that you can treasure forever. Holy crap. First they guilt you into the Cadillac casket, and then they swing into full up-sell mode by peddling tchotchkes to help guarantee that whatever estate the decedent had is thoroughly eviscerated. I'd love to hear the sales pitch for this stuff. What can they possibly say? Your mother's last wish was to be fingerprinted? She never had a chance to do one of those plaster-of-paris wall plaques in kindergarten; here's your opportunity to make it up to her?

Bottom line: prearrangements are looking better and better. Signing up with a burial society, making damn sure everyone knows the one and only thing I want is the absolute cheapest cremation done as quickly as possible, ashes in a milk carton or coffee can because they're going to get scattered, and no money whatsoever being spent in the world's creepiest gift shop.

[cross posted at All the Good Names Were Taken]

So tempting

2011-04-09T15:54:00.000-07:00

Would the ghostwriter question the client's veracity? Or simply go along with some individual revisionist history? It might kind of nice to have the grandkids thinking I won a Pulitzer or climbed Everest. . . Considering the service costs $100 an hour, with a typical fee of $250 to $500, you'd hope a little creative license would be fine.

Barnes Hecker

2011-01-23T13:23:00.000-08:00

I came across this photo of the rather odd Ely Township Centennial/Barnes Hecker mine disaster memorial while scanning my dad's slide collection. He took the photo shortly after the marker was erected. The marker has since been moved to the grounds of the Michigan Mining Industry Museum in Negaunee Township -- I'm not sure why. The marker was not at the actual mine site to begin with, so it wouldn't seem to make much sense to move it from one township to another. The marker used to be next to US-41 a few miles west of Ishpeming.

It always struck me as an odd memorial -- the combination of commemorating the township centennial with remembering what is still considered one of the worst mining disasters in US history is a bit strange.

Four Sabine County, Texas, cemeteries

2011-01-03T16:31:00.000-08:00

The Mt. Sinai Cemetery is a relatively old cemetery, with its first interment dating back to 1894, and is located in the community of Fairmount close to the Beechwood subdivision on the Toledo Bend reservoir. The cemetery does include graves with older markers; these are reinterments necessitated when three local cemeteries located closer to the Sabine River were inundated following construction of the Toledo Bend dam in the mid-1960s. The cemetery includes a number of interesting markers, as well as this poignant tableau:

The swing faces this marker:

One can only assume that Gerald's parents spent quite a few hours in the swing while visiting with their deceased son.

Mt. Sinai also includes this amazing stainless steel marker:

The photos don't do it justice.

The Fairmount Cemetery is located on Texas Highway 87.

Like the Mt. Sinai Cemetery, it is relatively old and has a Texas Historical Commission book on a stick providing a brief history:

I was actually more intrigued by the sign instructing people not to bury pets in the cemetery (enlarge the first photo to see; it's the smaller sign on the fence) -- is that a common problem? Most markers in the cemetery were standard, 20th century commercial stones, although there were a few graves marked only with fieldstones:

There was also one vernacular marker that was a little unusual in having a replacement gravestone placed adjacent to it. Usually the vernacular stones are discarded when a commercial stone replaces them.

The Ener Cemetery near Yellowpine is a traditional pioneer family cemetery.

A few of the older stones have weathered to the point of being difficult to read, but most are still quite legible, and are standard commercial markers.

The Yellowpine Cemetery is a relatively new community cemetery. Like the other three, it is well maintained.

I'm always intrigued when cemeteries located close to each other geographically exhibit different customs or practices, and Yellowpine does have a few characteristics not seen at Mt. Sinai or Fairmount. Putting an edging around the family plot and keeping it neat with sand or crushed white rock is a popular practice:

This plot with its carefully raked sand is reminiscent of a Zen garden:

I was also quite frankly stunned by this:

I'm hoping this has some meaning for the family that isn't obvious to an outsider, because "Ho! Ho! Ho!" feels like a rather odd sentiment to place on a grave.

Warren G. Harding Tomb, Marion, Ohio

2010-07-22T14:39:00.000-07:00

Two photos taken in August 1988. The Harding tomb was designed to have one column for every state in the Union, but by the time construction began the Teapot Dome scandal and others had hit the newspapers and donations dried up, resulting in it falling two short, 46 instead of 48. Given Warren G. Harding's current reputation historically, it can be a little hard to believe the country was devastated when he died in office.

Some historians believe that Harding, who was personally honest (his weakness was women, not lining his pockets) was beginning to realize just how corrupt some of his friends and cronies were and that the stress of worrying about impending scandal contributed to his untimely death. There's also been speculation that his jealous wife had him poisoned, but it's most likely he died from complications of a food-borne infection. No one knows for sure because the doctors who had been treating him just prior to his death all gave different descriptions of his illness, and his wife had him embalmed in record time.

Words fail me

2010-06-07T15:59:00.000-07:00

Located in Galloway, Wisconsin, at the intersection of County Highway C and Wisconsin state Highway 49. It's more colorful in person, if such a thing is possible.

It does pay to get off the Interstate occasionally.

Photo taken May 26, 2010, enroute to Antigo from Stevens Point.

Paint Rock, Alabama

2010-05-02T15:50:00.000-07:00

The northwest corner of the intersection of state highway 65 and US highway 72. No identifying information and, given the weeds starting to block them, no recent maintenance.

Emmet Cemetery, Dodge County, Wisconsin

2010-02-12T06:44:00.000-08:00

I found this nifty example of a modern personalized vault while on vacation last summer. I was taking Wisconsin highway 26 north from Janesville to Oshkosh and was feeling the need for a break from driving when I spotted the Emmet Cemetery. I decided to stop, stretch my legs, and see if there were any markers of note, e.g., zinc or vernacular concrete.

It's a typical rural community cemetery, and at first didn't appear to contain anything out of the ordinary. The markers were a mix of popular styles dating back to the late 19th century, the usual tablets and obelisks with the exception of one tree marker.

The tree was meant to designate a family plot. There is one individual grave marker close to it, a small stump. I'm always a little intrigued when I see that, a family plot that someone obviously intended to be the final resting place of multiple family members but only one or two persons end up interred there. What happened to the rest of them? Moved away? Decided the idea of spending eternity next to one's parents or siblings had no appeal?

The Sterwald vault shown is at the extreme rear of the cemetery, more or less at the center of the back row. It is undoubtedly one of the niftiest modern personalized markers I've seen recently. The use of color, the aerial view of the farm, the inclusion of the family pets (2 dogs, 2 cats) and the tractors . . . it's amazing.

Photos were taken in late June 2009. Apologies for the mediocre quality; I was using a new camera and still figuring out how it worked.

National Foxhound Hall of Fame Cemetery

2009-12-03T16:20:00.000-08:00

I'd heard about the "dog cemetery" on the Sabine National Forest in east Texas, so was really curious to see it last week. It definitely was not what I expected.

Most markers are simple pillow stones engraved with the name of the dog, his or her regisration number, date whelped and date died, and the owners. Most also include the dog's home state; one marker even includes a metal photocopy of the dog's registration papers (complete with photo). Still, most are simple pillow stones. The marker below is an exception.

One thing that surprised me was the geographic range of the dogs -- everywhere from Arkansas to Florida. I knew there were fox hunting enthusiasts in Texas; I didn't realize this particular dog cemetery was a national one.

Another thing that surprised me was the location. When someone says a cemetery is in a national forest, I immediately picture a site similar to the Clark-Dickey-Smith cemeteries described in a previous post: a cemetery located basically in the middle of nowhere, tucked away in the woods at the end of a rather rough dirt road, and looking rather neglected and forlorn. Not this dog cemetery. It's on the northern end of the Sabine National Forest not far from the town of Shelbyville and is extremely easy to find: it's at Boles Field, a popular campground. The cemetery, in fact, sits between a line of camp sites that are set up for RVs (the sites have electrical hookups) and a paved two-lane road.

It is also obviously still an open cemetery -- only half the area enclosed by the posts is occupied; there's plenty of room for future champions to rest beneath the Texas pines.

Above photo is the back of the tablet marker at the top of this post. Below is a stock photo lifted from the internet of an American foxhound, just in case someone reads this who has no idea what the breed looks like. With the exception of the foxhound, photos were all taken November 27, 2009.

Clark-Dickey-Smith cemeteries, Sabine County, Texas

2009-12-01T15:37:00.000-08:00

This is an odd site in Sabine County, Texas: two cemeteries located literally spitting distance from each other. In urban terms, they're less than half a standard city block apart. No other traces of a community remain so it's difficult to say how they were located historically, e.g., were they once separated by a road? As the book-on-a-stick notes, at one time a settlement existed that included several families. I'm told there was also a cane mill, but no evidence of that settlement other than the cemeteries exists today.

The Clark-Dickey cemetery is larger and, at a guess, appears to have been used for a longer time. There are a number of fieldstone markers in addition to the commercial stones. The cast concrete markers with hand lettering appear to be fairly recent, and may have been added at about the same time the historical marker was planted.

The Clark-Dickey cemetery includes half a dozen or so of the vernacular cast concrete tablet style markers like the one shown below; none were made using lettering kits.

Both cemeteries are surrounded by chain-link fence that's fairly new and in generally good condition, although a tree had fallen recently (within the past year) on the fencing for the Smith cemetery.

The photo above is from the Smith Cemetery; it's the most noticeable grave there. No inscription was visible on the tablet.

The book-on-a-stick erected by the Texas Historical Commission suggests that both cemeteries began as family cemeteries, but notes a connection between the two, making it even odder that they're physically separate. Local sources suggested that the fencing is wrong, the two cemeteries were connected, and more graves exist than are currently known or marked. Whether or not that's true would require a thorough archeological survey, including the use of ground penetrating radar, a highly unlikely scenario given that both cemeteries appear to fall within the Sandy Creek riparian zone and are thus unlikely to be impacted by any future logging operations on that portion of the Forest.

Both cemeteries are located on the Sabine National Forest.

Roadside Memorial, M-38, Upper Michigan

2009-11-02T03:58:00.000-08:00

Roadside memorials have intrigued me for years with their odd mix of paganism and Christianity. With the exception of the descanos erected in regions with sizable Hispanic populations, like New Mexico, the typical roadside memorial tended to be both spontaneous and ephemeral: a flimsy cross that quickly breaks down, a few flowers, occasionally some empty beer cans or a piece of the car the person died in. That's been changing, as this memorial to Edward Disney evidences.

Mr. Disney died in a traffic accident in 2002, 7 years before I took these photos. The memorial remains well-maintained, with a large area along the right-of-way kept mowed so the cross continues to be highly visible. One thing that surprises me, though, given the amount of time and effort that went into creating the memorial and its maintenance, is that the lettering has been allowed to fade. It's no longer legible from more than a foot or two away.

The memorial is located on the northside right-of-way for M-38 in Baraga County, Michigan, east of Alston, west of Baraga, and close to the Pine Creek Road.

Along the Natchez Trace

2009-09-14T15:12:00.001-07:00

This sad little family cemetery is located about 12 miles from Natchez along the Natchez Trace. Every marked grave inside the iron fence is for a child. Most are bed graves.

The dates span about a 20 year period just prior to the Civil War, all from the same family, the Brandons. In at least one case, two children died within a week of each other, suggesting they succumbed to an infectious disease such as a diptheria or measles (it was too early in the year for it to have been yellow fever).

The large table grave is for a son who made it to the age of 18.

The markers are in remarkably good shape in terms of weathering, but have experienced vandalism.

[The cemetery is not normally a pond -- I just happened to stop immediately after a really heavy rainfall.]

A grave house in Tennessee

2009-07-24T09:18:00.000-07:00

When I first saw this structure from a distance, I thought it was the roof for a maintenance shed or pump house. The Pettit Cemetery is on a hillside, and from the road all that's visible is the roof. It wasn't until I walked into the cemetery that it became clear it was a grave house, and a fairly recent one. There appear to be two traditional in-ground graves in the house, complete with markers, but I didn't feel comfortable flopping on to the ground* to shoot a photo through the gap between the foundation and the roof. The cemetery itself, the Pettit Cemetery is located in the Land Between the Lakes in Tennessee with Dover, Tennessee, being the nearest town (perhaps 15 miles away) of any size. It is a fairly typical rural family cemetery, with the usual mix of commercial stones. I'm always intrigued by grave goods, and there were a few examples. It's becoming increasingly clear that the dead collect angels, as I see them in a lot of cemeteries. Lady Lenz (black headstone) is kind of an exception in having raccoons.
[ *An aversion to chiggers and woodticks stopped me from even dropping to my knees.]

Do it yourself funerals

2009-07-22T09:46:00.000-07:00

Interesting article in the New York Times about the growing trend of families going back to burying their dead themselves. It includes a mention of a coffin-maker who builds lovely dual purpose wood furniture -- book shelves while you're alive; biodegadable box to plant you in once you're dead.

Fort Donelson National Cemetery, Dover, Tennessee

2009-07-18T09:45:00.000-07:00

The superintendent's house at Fort Donelson National Cemetery. It now houses administrative offices. (Sorry about the shortened chimneys; I was using a new camera and am still figuring out just how to frame shots before hitting the shutter release.) Wayside giving an overview of the cemetery.

Fort Donelson is now an inactive cemetery, which means all the grave sites are either occupied or spoken for.

Another view of the superintendent's house. The markers in the foreground mark the graves of unknown soldiers and are laid out in a pattern that resembles a heart.

Photos were taken June 27, 2007.

Anniversary For A Neighbor

2009-06-10T15:53:00.001-07:00

An evening stroll in the cemetery last week brought this timely acquaintance:

Robert L. MacDonald
Cpl. 502 Parachute Infantry
April 11, 1915
June 10, 1944

Twenty-four-hour access to hot and cold running information enabled me to find out what Cpl. MacDonald' s unit was doing on the day of his death.

Four days after D-Day, the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, a unit of the 101st Airborne Division, was ordered to capture the crossroads town of Carentan, essential to provide a link between the Omaha and Utah landing beaches.

The approach to Carentan traversed an exposed causeway, with marshes on either side. At the head of the causeway, German troops had entrenched themselves in a farmhouse. Snipers hid in the marshes and orchards flanking the approach, and at least one of the Wehrmacht's feared 88mm guns was poised to devastate the approaching Americans.

According to The 101st Airborne During WWII:

The 3d Battalion, 502d PIR, led the... drive along the causeway. Progress, however, was extremely slow. The men of the 502d advanced along the causeway with no cover, facing steady fire as they moved forward. The battalion inched along until it reached the bridge on the Madeleine River and ran into a strong enemy position concentrated in an old farmhouse and the adjoining hedgerows.

Lt. Col. Robert G. Cole, the battalion commander, called for artillery fire on the position, but it did no good. Pinned down, he ordered a charge with fixed bayonets. Colonel Cole leapt up to lead the charge, but not all his men had gotten the word. The executive officer prodded the men along, and Cole continued with the soldiers that had followed. The Germans withdrew from the farmhouse, and the charging soldiers cleared the hedgerow positions. Cole was awarded the Medal of Honor for his efforts that day. Unfortunately, he was killed in a later division operation before receiving his medal.

Further, from Wikipedia:

Nightfall ended the advance but not the casualties, when an attack at 23:30 by two low-flying German Ju 87 Stukas strafing the causeway knocked "Item" Company completely out of the battle.

The severe casualties suffered by the 3rd/502d PIR, estimated at 67% of the original force, resulted in the nickname "Purple Heart Lane" applied to that portion of the Carentan-Sainte-Mère-Église highway.

And somewhere in all this, 65 years ago today, a young man from Washburn, Wisconsin, gave his life.

Gone Home: a brief review

2009-05-26T03:42:00.000-07:00

Gone Home: Southern Folk Gravestone Art is a good book, but a deceptively titled one. The word "southern" suggests it's going to provide examples from across the southern United States; in reality it focuses exclusively on cemeteries in the state of Alabama.

Similarly, the phrase "gravestone art" implies the authors are going to focus on the decorative elements of funerary art: statuary, carvings, headstone shapes and styles, and so on. Instead, the authors' passion lies in epitaphs. The authors do discuss carving, but the focus seems to be more on the development of the lettering used in epitaphs rather than on the decorative elements of a marker such as floral motifs and Christian symbolism. There is also an interesting discussion of folklore and memorialization, and the evolution of markers and inscriptions over time.

Nonetheless, while the book is a useful one for anyone interested in gravestones and the history of memorialization, a reader looking for a book that focuses on gravestone art overall rather than the content of the inscriptions would be doomed to disappointment. Similarly, anyone hoping for a book that provides a regional context should look elsewhere. This is a good book on a specific subject area, and as such as fairly limited in its content.

A Slight But Relevant Digression

2009-04-19T06:17:00.000-07:00

An article in yesterday's New York Times provides one more illustration of a shift in American culture:

The Funeral: Your Last Chance to Be a Big Spender

Mr. Firnstein also says he is fielding more calls from families interested in natural burials. Adherents of the movement wrap bodies in simple shrouds or in biodegradable coffins and bury them in woodland cemeteries.

Such simple burials are traditional in many faiths, and were long the standard practice in the United States until the Civil War, when the development of modern embalming and the expansion of the train system altered the landscape of death and gave rise to the modern mortuary practice.

Read that last sentence again: "...the expansion of the train system altered the landscape..."

A generation ago, the reporter almost certainly would have written, "the expansion of the railroad network."

This is not a matter of enthusiast nit-picking; rather I submit that it is further evidence of the retreat of the railroads from their once-central position in American life. People just don't think much about railroads anymore; consequently, standardized terms of discourse that were once familiar to all have been forgotten and reporters grab for new ones on the fly.

Back to topic: my head exploded when I read this part about the trend to simpler and cheaper funerals:

“Back in the day, families might spend $10,000, $12,000 on a solid African mahogany casket, have an all-out wake and such,” (funeral director Jerry Sullivan) says. “Those days are over.”

Today, many funeral directors offer hardwood or metal rental coffins for a short period before cremation, Mr. Sullivan says. He charges roughly $1,000 to rent a hardwood casket for a daylong viewing; a body is placed in a combustible container of cardboard or soft wood, and inserted into the rental coffin lined with fabric.

A thousand bucks to rent a wooden box for one day? You could rent a house for a month for less than that around here.

Durability?

2009-04-03T14:10:00.001-07:00

This is a wonderful marker, but I'm wondering what it's going to look like in 100 years. The marker is in the Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia.

Union Church Cemetery, Pleasant Hill, Mississippi

2009-03-29T14:43:00.000-07:00

The Union Church Cemetery near Pleasant Hill, Mississippi, has a nice assortment of metal markers.

Photos were taken March 23 by Ray Mannikko. Ray estimates the obelisk below was at least 8 feet tall.

The lamb below is the first I've seen in zinc. The grave also includes a metal footstone.

Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Part II: Statuary

2009-03-03T16:25:00.000-08:00

Bonaventure Cemetery has some lovely examples of funerary art, including these statues.

A slightly damaged angel:

One of the better known monuments in the cemetery:

Two examples of bas relief:

The cemetery also has an impressive number of bronzes. I'll include a few in a future post.

Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Part I: Gothics

2009-02-18T03:39:00.001-08:00

Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia, is the first cemetery I've ever wandered into that was actually crawling with tourists. The ripple effect of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil apparently lingers on because there were a lot of people wandering around with cameras and guidebooks, all apparently focused on finding Johnny Mercer's grave while oblivious to the wonderful funerary art elsewhere in the cemetery.

I did not, however, go looking for anything mentioned in the book, and have no clue just where Mr. Mercer got planted. I just kind of wandered around, admiring the Gothic markers and other statuary. I'm not normally a big fan of Gothic, but Bonaventure has some truly nice pieces.

The bed grave above is unfortunately damaged. You can tell that at one time there was a piece of ornamentation inside the three-sided headstone, probably a cross, but it's gone now. There's also damage to the back of the marker.

The majority of the grave markers at Bonaventure, however, are in remarkably good condition. I was expecting to see a fair amount of sugaring, but maybe the wind isn't from the right direction for the acid rain from the pulp mills and other Savannah industries to hit the marble. The damage that was visible tended to be pieces broken off, e.g., angels' fingers, rather than weathering.

Bonaventure Cemetery was originally a private cemetery located on a plantation near Savannah operated under the name of Evergreen Cemetery. The City of Savannah purchased the cemetery in 1907, and changed the name to Bonaventure.

Photos were taken with a 35 mm camera on actual film.

2009-02-09T12:11:00.001-08:00

Maple Hill Cemetery, Huntsville, Alabama

2009-01-07T08:20:00.000-08:00

The Maple Hill Cemetery in Huntsville, Alabama, is the oldest cemetery in the city. Located on the edge of a historic district, the cemetery is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It includes a number of notable grave markers, including these three cast zinc headstones (front above, back below).
I looked for a company name, but could not find one. The one thing that stood out was they seemed to be cast from heavier gauge metal than most of the cast zinc (aka white bronze) markers I've seen elsewhere.

The cemetery also includes more angels in various poses than I'm used to seeing, ranging from the relatively small and cherubic, as shown below, to monumental in every sense of the word.

Adult varieties come kneeling or standing, looking humbly down

or beseechingly (expectantly?) up:

I've never really understood why the kneeling on only one knee.

Maple Hill does include some elements that definitely had me wondering what people were thinking. As we were driving through the cemetery we spotted this monument with the book on a stick (interpretive plaque) standing next to it.

Knowing that Maple Hill is a National Register property, and also knowing that various Alabama notables are interred in the cemetery, a visitor's natural reaction is, oh, good, they've put up a wayside that gives more information about either the cemetery or that particular monument. The visitor is doomed to disappointment.

The marker commemorates the 1807 establishment of the Huntsville meridian, "which is the reference point for all property surveyed in North Alabama." How the marker commemorating the meridian wound up sitting in the middle of the cemetery is a mystery -- a meridian is a line, so there's no logical reason why the marker has to be in what is without a doubt the one place in Huntsville where it is likely to be seen by the smallest number of potential viewers.

Something I'd never seen before

2008-12-06T03:58:00.000-08:00

Over the past few years I've been noticing the tendency in cemeteries for grave sites to become much more personalized and rather pagan compared to what had been the American norm: a relatively simple grave marker and flowers, either real or plastic. Headstones are becoming more idiosyncratic, the portrait medallion and epitaphs have made a comeback, and carvings on the stones increasingly reflect the deceased's life rather than being abstract symbolism.

The various offerings and memorabilia being heaped on graves these days can be rather baffling. Some items left make perfect sense from a pagan perspective: stuffed toys for a dead child, for example, or the ubiquitous "guardian" angels in various types and sizes. This mailbox for sending notes to the deceased is, however, a first. What's a person supposed to write? "Hope it's not too hot where you are?"

It was also rather intriguing that this grave was the only one in the cemetery (Oak Grove in Nacogdoches, Texas) that had any visible grave goods at all. One or two had flowers, but nothing else. The cemetery is old, with interments dating back to the 1830s, so it is possible the reason for the lack of flowers and other embellishments in most of the cemetery is there are no other recent interments. The Clarks are one of the oldest families in Nacogdoches -- William S. Clark signed the Texas Declaration of Independence and settled in the Sabine River basin in 1829 -- and maybe it was just luck that there was space in the corner of the family plot for Leon and Edna.

This angel, incidentally, is the William S. Clark marker that stands in the center of the family plot.

The Saddest Place

2008-11-11T15:45:00.000-08:00

Posted elsewhere previously, but reposted here on the ninetieth anniversary of the end of the Great War.

The battle of Verdun was among the most horrifying of all the many terrible battles of the First World War. This happened by design: the German commander, General Erich von Falkenhayn, had concluded that the only way to win the war was to "bleed France white." He had more soldaten than the French had poilus, so if the armies settled down to serious tit-for-tat killing, the last man standing would be wearing feldgrau.

Falkenhayn chose the stage for his devilish scheme well. The ancient city of Verdun held great importance to French national honor: a mere thirty miles from the German border, the site had been a citadel since Roman times. In 878, Charlemagne's sons met here to sign a treaty that would divide his empire into the lands that would eventually become France and Germany. To lose the historic city was unthinkable to the French, Falkenhayn knew; they would indeed defend Verdun to the last drop of their blood.

There is a cemetery at a place called Douaumont where a small fraction of the men killed in this battle are buried. Just a small fraction… maybe only a hundred thousand or so. It is a tremendously impressive place- row upon row upon row of crosses marking the graves of the victims.

The day I visited Douaumont was foggy, and the fog was so dense that one could not see to the far side of the cemetery. The result was that it seemed as if the rows of crosses continued into infinity. It was eerie.

As this bleak mood settled over me, I turned and noticed a large memorial at one corner of the cemetery. It was shaped in the form of Biblical tablets, and it was covered with Hebrew letters. I realized what it was- a memorial to the soldiers who could not be buried under crosses- a memorial to the Jewish soldiers who died for France.

And then I was overwhelmed with grief and came as close to tears as I did on that trip. I thought of those young men who fought and died, never knowing that in 30 years their widows and perhaps their children would be herded into boxcars and exterminated like vermin. The futility of the sacrifice of these Jewish soldiers was too much to contemplate. It made me clearly understand the greatest tragedy of World War One that after so many men had given their lives, it was not enough.

The politicians would let it all happen again, and the sons of these dead soldiers would be at war once more.

"Died For France: 1914-1918"

Grave goods and the holidays

2008-11-07T12:35:00.001-08:00

I can understand grave goods when it's the angels and fake flowers, but a tchotke saying "wishing you peace and happiness this holiday season"? That's a little strange.

Silver Hill Cemetery, Arkansas

2008-11-01T15:49:00.000-07:00

The Younger Daughter and I had a conversation earlier today about job opportunties at Buffalo National River. There's an opening at the park posted on USAJobs with the duty station described as "Silver Hill/St. Joe," so I gave her a real pep talk about applying for the job even though she's weak in one of the four KSAs listed. I've been to Silver Hill, and Buffalo is one of my favorite parks. . . so I told her to apply so I could live vicariously through her. And, to clinch the argument, I told her I'd put up photos from the Silver Hill Cemetery. The cemetery is located right outside the park off U.S. 65.

Silver Hill is a fairly typical rural Arkansas cemetery. It's been in use for over 100 years, has an interesting mix of vernacular and commercial grave markers, and is still an active cemetery. There are a few table graves, some cast concrete head and footstones, and, of course, a Woodsmen of the World or two.

The older part of the cemetery has quite a few graves marked with uninscribed fieldstones, another typical feature of southern graveyards, especially rural ones. The table graves are also uninscribed.

I am intrigued by the gate -- the ironwork supporting it is very nice, but there's no fence on either side of it.

Something I didn't know

2008-10-26T12:13:00.001-07:00

The original Rin Tin Tin was French and is buried in a Paris pet cemetery.

One Of My Neighbors

2008-10-23T06:42:00.000-07:00

Nothing like living across the street from the city boneyard for one who enjoys exploring cemeteries. It's a great place to walk the dog on an autumn afternoon, with a spectacular view of Chequamegon Bay, and plenty of stimulus for thought.

Among my more interesting neighbors is a man who died too young:

Poor guy; probably thought he lucked out when the Army sent him to Alaska instead of France. The newspapers I've checked say nothing about the death of this local soldier, but I think it's a safe guess he was a victim of the great flu epidemic.

Fort Liscum, it turns out, stood on the site of modern Valdez, and closed in 1923. The University of Alaska has some great photos of the fort available online.

Jewish Cemetery- Hurley, Wisconsin

2008-09-05T06:20:00.000-07:00

Thanks for the invitation to post here, Nan. For my maiden contribution, I'll offer a site that you will surely know more about than I ever will.

Coming from New York, the ultimate melting pot, the demography of Upper Cheeseland seemed pretty bland when I moved here 16 years ago. It wasn't until I settled in and started looking more closely that I began to notice the ethnic diversity that I'd initially missed: the Poles in Washburn, Bohemians in Moquah, Italians in Hurley, and the rest.

Not surprising, then, that this Jewish cemetery in Hurley caught my eye pretty quickly, though it was only recently that I finally got around to stopping. (One of these days I need to go back when the light is better.) I'm always especially fascinated when I encounter Jews in out-of-the-way places: though the mining country along Lake Superior may be a long way from Cornwall or the Piedmont, it seems farther yet from the shtetls of Eastern Europe. What was life like for a Jew in this land?

(Click the images for a closer view.)

Very personal memorials

2008-08-31T07:27:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post has interesting feature article today on tatoos as memorials. It's been common for generations for some people to do a tatoo with a loved one's name and perhaps significant dates (birth, death, marriage), but body art has moved on to doing actual portraits.

Congressional Cemetery, Washington, DC

2008-08-24T16:32:00.001-07:00

Photo is are from November 2004. The Congressional Cemetery is located in southeast Washington, DC, and, of course, contains a fair number of notables. J. Edgar Hoover is planted right up the road from this fellow.

Like many older cemeteries, the Congressional Cemetery has a number of maintenance issues, including family mausoleums that are suffering sadly from neglect.

"Gentleman Jim" Reeves Memorial

2008-07-17T16:52:00.001-07:00

This memorial to Gentleman Jim Reeves, a country music star, is located on US 79 near Panola, Texas, and not far from the Louisiana line. It's a nice memorial, although the pedestal strikes me as a little odd. It seems to bear a strong resemblance to an electric razor.

The two songs I always associate with Jim Reeves are "Four Walls" and "He'll Have to Go."

The photos were taken in early March 2008.

Who needs an afterlife?

2008-07-10T07:33:00.000-07:00

How Many of You Expect to Die?

2008-07-08T09:32:00.000-07:00

The New York Times has an interesting article and discussion on this topic today. I'm guessing that all of us know we will, but none of us expect to.

Final destination

2008-07-07T07:50:00.001-07:00

In response to the question I'm occasionally asked as to what I want done when time comes:

1. Cremation, as quickly as possible following death. The ideal is straight from the deathbed to the crematorium with no meddling by a funeral director in-between. No embalming, nothing, just a shroud (an old sheet would work just fine) and a cardboard tray for sliding the remains into the oven. Under Michigan law embalming is only required if there's going to be more than 48 hours from time of death to disposal of body. (Laws vary from state to state, but usually if it's straight to the crematorium there's absolutely no rationale or legal reason for embalming to take place.)

2. No urn for the ashes -- a cardboard carton will do just fine because it's not going to be used very long.

3. No holes dug in cemeteries -- I want to be scattered on the hillside above the orchard at the farm in Herman. Or in the orchard. Use your own judgement on how far up the hill you feel like walking. (Note: be sure to let the crematorium know the plan is to scatter -- they'll blend the cremains finer when they know that's the plan instead of a columbarium or someone's mantel.)

4. If this seems too minimalist, I'm okay with a cenotaph at the Herman Cemetery. There is a way to get one at basically no cost (see instructions for the S.O. below)

5. And if it feels like there should be some ritual involved, track down someone pagan or Wiccan to do it. No bible thumpers.

As for the S.O., similar instructions, and ditto on the cenotaph. The S.O. and I both qualify for a military headstone. Go with the traditional upright marble tablet-style and set them up in either the Mannikko or Farm family lots. I'll try to remember to fill the application forms out in advance and will keep them stashed with the other necessary paperwork, like the copies of the DD214s that prove we're veterans. Both family lots have plenty of room for a cenotaph or two when there's not going to be anything else (like a full-size casket) going with it.

The upright headstones do allow for a brief epitaph, and I may or may not have one composed in advance. I may joke about using "all we are is dust in the wind" but I'm not such a huge Kansas fan that I actually want to be linked to that lyric into perpetuity. (Then again, it is a nice counterpoint to all the "gone home" religious inanities.)

If survivors really insist on spending money, I've always been fond of memorial benches in cemeteries. Not cheap, though, and maybe not a good idea in a part of the country known for heavy snow fall.

Who are these people?

2008-07-06T12:07:00.000-07:00

I wish I knew. I found these photos in a stack of loose photos that have been sitting in an envelope for years. I think they both came from photos that belonged to an aunt, but neither one is labelled. They each have a rubber stamp on the back from a film processing company (Arrow Photo Services) located in Minneapolis, but no names for the decedents or hints exactly where the pictures may have been taken.Is this girl a relative? I don't know. What did she die from? When the photo is enlarged her face looks swollen, so either diphtheria or mumps is a strong possibility. The flag-draped casket below does contain one clue -- the phrase "Died Feb 5, 1939" is written on the back of the photograph. The flag suggests the man was a veteran, but again, who knows? None of the older relatives I've shown the photos to recognize either person; the people who would have known are probably now long dead themselves.

Mother Jones

2008-06-28T13:46:00.000-07:00

Had a conversation the other day with a "conservative" acquaintance about unions and how (in his opinion) unnecessary they are. Got me to thinking about Mother Jones and other activists. People need to learn some history. Maybe if they had some grasp of just how many people died so they could have an 8-hour work day, 5 day work week instead of a 14-hour, 7 day week they'd do a little less cheerleading for unfettered capitalism.
Photos are from the Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive, Illinois, of course.

Going in style

2008-06-21T10:22:00.000-07:00

Blatz family mausoleum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The photo is from a rainy day in June 2006 using a cheap camera with actual film, hence the distressing fuzzines when the photo is viewed larger. Architectural details do include Victorian favorites as the upside-down torch to symbolize life extinguished.

A moving memorial

2008-06-19T12:16:00.000-07:00

Spotted this vehicle at a BP gas station in Meridian, Mississippi, on May 24, 2008. The car had Texas plates.

Cast metal grave markers

2008-06-16T17:45:00.000-07:00

Spotted some cast metal markers in the cemetery in Houghton, Michigan, last week. Two were definitely zinc (aka "white bronze"), but the third, which is about 30 years older than the two zinc markers, is much heavier metal. No visible rust, but I think it's iron.

The Houghton cemetery is an interesting one. It's right on the edge of the Michigan Tech campus -- students cut through there constantly, shortcutting from Daniel Heights (aka married students housing) to the Student Development Complex, which houses the Athletic Department (PE classes and sports events) and health clinic. I can remember walking through myself on the way to PE classes in the 1980s and pausing to read headstones dating back to the 1840s. Several professors at Tech use the cemetery as a resource for teaching human ecology, sociology, and history. The cemetery is quite well maintained and is still active. I don't know about the National Register status of the entire cemetery, but it does contain at least one family mausoleum that's listed. There's Michigan SHPO plaque next to the door noting that the structure is historically significant.

Cedar Hill Cemetery

2008-05-12T07:32:00.000-07:00

Found this intriguing example of a vernacular concrete marker in the Cedar Hill Cemetery in Scottsboro, Alabama, on Saturday. The Cedar Hill Cemetery is located directly behind the Unclaimed Luggage Center so both it and the marker were purely serendipitous -- wasn't looking for either, but spotted the entrance sign to the cemetery when we pulled into the parking lot for the Unclaimed Luggage store. I wasn't really sure if it was concrete or not until I got a good look at the top and could see the overlap between the front and back sides. The duplication of two motifs often in late 19th, early 20th century markers -- the clasped hands and the open book -- had me initially wondering if it was actually a commercial limestone marker. There are times when it can be hard to tell the difference between a vernacular limestone and a vernacular concrete. A close examination, though, revealed the maker of the stone sculpted it from concrete. Definitely a more ambitious effort than the typical simple tablets or slabs one usually finds when cement is the chosen medium.

Cedar Hill Cemetery is a large community cemetery with sections dating back to the 19th century. It is an active cemetery, and includes a number of nice examples of contemporary markers with the personalizations that are once again becoming fairly commonplace, e.g., portraits of the deceased.

Rhetorical question

2008-05-05T06:53:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder why Non Sequitur seems to include cemetery humor on a fairly regular basis? Didn't think so, but here's the latest:

Getting personal

2008-04-30T07:06:00.001-07:00

Two words you don't want to read in a radiologist's report: aortic ectasia. I feel the need creeping up to write a long, intensely personal piece on death and dying, but not today.

Intriguing marker

2008-04-22T12:05:00.000-07:00

I found this in a Springfield, Illinois, cemetery. It's not far from Abraham Lincoln's tomb.

At first blush, it's a pretty ordinary 1920's commercial marker, although it does appear that Mr. Ervin was a joiner -- I count three different organizations' symbols, with the last one being the one and only example of its type I've ever stumbled across:

Tornado damage at Oakland Cemetery

2008-03-31T11:44:00.000-07:00

The Georgia State Historic Preservation Office has descriptions with accompanying photos of tornado damage to National Register listed properties in Atlanta, including the Oakland Cemetery.

The local ABC affiliate keeps promising to air a program about Oakland Cemetery, it's been listed in the tv guide several weeks in a row now, but each time I think it's going to be on the station shows something else instead. The latest disappointment came Friday night when they decided to run Gray's Anatomy instead. I'm thinking that maybe they're still doing editing and updates to the program because it was originally slotted to air right about the same time the tornado hit.

Ferndale, California

2008-03-30T16:00:00.000-07:00

I bought a slide scanner a few days ago and decided to pratice with a box of slides labeled "Ferndale 1983." Ferndale is (or was) a lovely little town south of Eureka with wonderful Victorian buildings as well as this cemetery. Various television and movie productions have filmed in Ferndale because it looks so much like a New England coastal village, including the original television mini-series version of Stephen King's vampire classic, "Salem's Lot."

Vernacular concrete markers

2008-03-15T15:46:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned this is a special interest so thought I'd put up a few examples. Both are from the Buffalo River area in northern Arkansas. The first one is from the Canaan Cemetery near Marshall. It was designed to hold a photo.
Unfortunately, as is true of almost all grave markers that incorporated a frame meant to hold anything printed on paper, the photograph has suffered so much water damage that it's now almost completely obliterated.

The second marker is from the Silver Hill Cemetery located just outside the boundary for Buffalo National River off US-65. It, too, was designed to hold a photo or plaque, which was either never mounted in place or has since been removed.

The Canaan Cemetery is also notable for its amazing two-tier table graves. Unlike the table graves common farther south in Louisiana, these are strictly false vaults. Actual interments were in-ground, not above.

Valentine, Nebraska

2008-03-08T13:15:00.000-08:00

It's snowing in Atlanta today, and for some reason that got me to thinking about the last time I saw real snow -- Valentine, Nebraska, in January 2007. The cemetery there had the first grave markers I'd ever noticed that included brands.

Quite a few markers also included a typical Sand Hills ranch scene, too, like this one:

Death

2008-02-28T11:28:00.000-08:00

Greta Christina has another good post on death and dying. http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2008/02/the-meaning-of.html#comments (And one of these days I need to learn how to do hypertext links instead of just copying the URLs)

Rationale

2008-02-28T06:51:00.000-08:00

Back in high school or shortly after I read a book called A Fine and Private Place written by Peter Beagle, an author best known for another work of fantasy, The Last Unicorn. If you've never read the book but appreciate good fantasy, seek it out. It's set in a cemetery. Whether or not the book alone is responsible for my interest in gravestones, memorials, and rituals surrounding death and dying is unlikely, but it no doubt contributed to it. I plan to use this blog as a space for random thoughts related to funerary art, roadside memorials, grave goods, and whatever else catches my attention that's connected in some way to the ways Americans deal with death.

I plan to set up an occasional slide show from favorite cemeteries, speculate on the increasing paganism I see evidenced in the proliferation of roadside memorials and the truly bizarre (and almost always sad) offerings of grave goods, and to highlight interesting historical and curiousities. I have a strong interest in vernacular grave markers -- concrete, fieldstone, wood, and found materials -- so will probably do a lot of thinking out loud about them, too.

2008-02-26T15:18:00.000-08:00

St. Augustine Cemetery, Cane River Creole National Heritage Area, Louisiana. Photo taken December 24, 2007.