October 15, 2007
Graveyards of Illinois
is where we start our small tour of cemeteries and funerary art. To our left is Bohemian National Cemetery with its beautiful domed chapel, Odd Fellows Monument, and larger-than-life statuary. Another impressive Illinois graveyard is Acacia Park Cemetery and Mausoleum, known for its obelisks and its Masonic connections.
As we move on, please watch your step as we enterImmortelle, a pictorial tour of New Orlean's cities of the dead. St. Louis #1 or Cypress Grove, Metairie or Lafayette, New Orleans cemeteries reflect the mix of Spanish, French, African, and American that give the city itself is character. The last stop on our brief tour is Afterlife: the 4 seasons of Streatham Cemetery, a flash presentation featuring photos of the cemetery with animation and sound.
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Bookmarked for much later viewing. Makes me wasnt to pay a visit to the lovely old terraced city cemetary here in town; it's been years since I've been there.
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A quick look at the New Orleans Oddfellows Cemetery turns up this. I hope someone can get in and repair some of this stuff before vandals make it worse.
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I wonder why it is that we have such a fascination with elegant and spooky old graveyards with fantastic stones and crypts as opposed to the modern, easy to mow, flat-slab-on-grass Forest Lawn type. I'm sure part of it is the atmosphere, and part is that the markers and other grave furniture is a type of artwork, but there is something about old cemeteries still in use that makes us more aware of our mortality in a way that the modern cemeteries don't. Evanescent, but evocative, are old cemeteries in the West. Here's a great website for Nevada If you like poking and pottering in old cemeteries, something fun to do is take stone rubbings Here's a how-to and a list of many of the forgotten meanings to the symbols found on headstones. It's been a while since I've done any. Thanks, Christophine, for reminding me how much fun you can have in the graveyard.
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Maybe not that interesting to everyone, but here is a video I took of the old Gash Cemetary in my hometown,North Kansas City. They tore up everything around it and built a shopping mall, but left it in the parking lot. And here is the history behind it I have a vested interest in it, but it's too complicated to explain.