October 31, 2010

Artist's Study Of Island Brings The Dead To Life.
posted by homunculus 13 years ago
  • When I was a kid, I suppose I just assumed a potters' field must be one where all great ceramicists ended up. Had no idea until I looked it up in the OED just now that the phrase stems from the Bible.
  • It seems child actor Bobby Driscoll is buried on Hart Island.
  • Homunculus, absolutely fascinating post. A wonderful read. These photos are amazing. I'm wondering why the chapel can't be restored and memorial services be held there. The infant coffins are just heartwrenching. I believe that dead is dead, and what happens to the body afterward is not important, except insofar as the living are concerned. People with relatives there should be allowed to say goodbye, and know with a certainty that their loved one is there. (And the whole issue of mothers of stillborn infants not being notified of what would be happening to their babies is just so inhumane)
  • Crap! Try again. Who put the Q%$@^ preview button so close to the post button? Homunculus, absolutely fascinating post. A wonderful read. These photos are amazing. I'm wondering why the chapel can't be restored and memorial services be held there. The infant coffins are just heartwrenching. I believe that dead is dead, and what happens to the body afterward is not important, except insofar as the living are concerned. People with relatives there should be allowed to say goodbye, and know with a certainty that their loved one is there. (And the whole issue of mothers of stillborn infants not being notified of what would be happening to their babies is just so inhumane)
  • Whoa! I just finished reading this and went to the OtherFilter, and this had been posted by carter: Crossbones Graveyard (YT) is a disused graveyard in Southwark, London. Lying outside the old city walls, it became the last resting place for 15,000 paupers and prostitutes (the latter known as the 'Winchester Geese' because they were licensed by the Bishop of Winchester). The history of Crossbones is being rediscovered by local playwright John Constable, and is becoming a place of pilgrimage to remember the outcasts in London society (audio/slide). A ritual is held there every Halloween. The forgotten dead are remembered.
  • Thanks for the tip, I just posted these links in carter's thread.
  • Rain Toward evening, as the light failed and the pear tree at my window darkened, I put down my book and stood at the open door, the first raindrops gusting in the eaves, a smell of wet clay in the wind. Sixty years ago, lying beside my father, half asleep, on a bed of pine boughs as rain drummed against our tent, I heard for the first time a loon’s sudden wail drifting across that remote lake— a loneliness like no other, though what I heard as inconsolable may have been only the sound of something untamed and nameless singing itself to the wilderness around it and to us until we slept. And thinking of my father and of good companions gone into oblivion, I heard the steady sound of rain and the soft lapping of water, and did not know whether it was grief or joy or something other that surged against my heart and held me listening there so long and late. --Peter Everwine