Mother Jones

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

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

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

Cast metal grave markers

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

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

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

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.