Blogging a Dead Horse

Okay, Who Hid the Cemetery?

2012-01-08T13:38:00.000-08:00

Dutch urn garden: from Transformational Cemetery Design

I’m going to let you in on cemeteries’ dark little secret. It’s shocking and it’s despicable and if you’re the slightest bit squeamish, you may want to skip the next sentence. Cemeteries don’t have addresses. For the most part. A farm, a missile silo, a cement factory, a shooting range, a what-have-you out there in the countryside has an address. Not a cemetery.

“Cemetery? Well, let’s see. You drive out this away until you get to Cherry Hill Rd. You take that leftwise and after the road crosses a creek—Hawthorn Creek’s the name, but it don’t say that—you…”

What’s wrong with 50268 Cherry Hill Rd., I ask you?

I don’t know what it means that cemeteries, as a rule, don’t sport an address. For one thing, it probably means they don’t get much mail. But what if you want to be buried there? What if you want information about someone buried there? What if you want to visit Aunt Millie’s grave? Who ya gonna call? Gravebusters?

Find-a-Grave, genealogy sites, etc. can provide one with a lot of cemetery names, but locations can be sketchy, if at all. Slowly pouring over Google Maps is one of the best resources I know for finding cemeteries, but it’s far from complete. Recently, I accidentally downloaded a PDF listing of forty-two cemeteries in Jackson County, Oregon. Each had a photograph of the entrance and a detailed description of how to find the place. Three to a page. An example (sans photo) follows:

“ANTIOCH CEMETERY: From Medford take Table Rock Road and go 7.5 miles to Modoc Road. Turn right on Modoc Road and go 1.8 miles to Antioch Road. Turn left on Antioch Road and go for 3.7 miles. Antioch Cemetery will be on the right after you cross Hwy. 234. Antioch Cemetery was established in 1867. Location: N42º 30.274´ W122º 54.088´”

There was absolutely no information as to who compiled the list; whoever it was, they did an extraordinary job. Exemplary, even. If every county in the country had such a listing, we’d be home free. Better yet, I now have a good excuse to head back down there and I know where I’m going.

Locating cemeteries is a local task. We still need a national database where each cemetery is geo-located. Think national; act local. Seems simple enough.

Yarauvi: from Transformational Cemetery Design

Two blogs that I ran across today:

The DailyUndertaker
(http://www.dailyundertaker.com/) Covers topics such as “Swedish Town Considers Recycling the Heat of Cremation,” “Dressing the Dead: An Interview with Designer Pia Interlandi,” and “Vulture Club: The Tower of Silence.” This is not your local mortuary. This appears to be a quite active site with a number of interviews over a wide variety of approaches to death, as well as articles of equal horizon, each more fascinating that the last. It takes the gloom and doom right out of the picture. I’ve been trying to convince people this dying business is fun; this site should be called the Daily Fundertaker.

Transformational Cemetery Design
(http://transformationalcemeterydesign.wordpress.com/) Comes with a more sober tone than the DU, and isn’t as prolific, which it makes up for in elegance. The author’s goal is to “transform the way cemeteries are experienced and used in the 21st century.” It’s a tall order, but he puts a good foot forward.

Gadsden Purchase

2011-12-20T16:43:00.000-08:00

Arivaca Cemetery

Out there is a forest of cacti. There are lots of smaller cacti, just large enough to rip you to shreds, but the towering saguaro dominate the landscape, looking like so many Beefeater Guards or hitchhikers out in the middle of the desert. I wasn’t prepared for the extent of the cacti forest nor the amount of growth in general. Interspersed with the cacti are rangy, miserly mesquites with small silver-shaded leaves scrunching niggardly at the sun. It’s not a forgiving landscape, but it teams with life; and that’s not including the people sneaking through from Mexico. If I wasn’t honest, I would tell you about the blistering heat and the rattlesnakes slithering through the sand, but the temperature was in the high-40s when I visited, and the snakes were too stiff to leave their holes. The cacti were out, though, so it was advisable to stay on the path.

This was my first visit to the Southwest, much less the Gadsden Purchase. They play at being Mexican down here and they give their streets and developments Spanish names, like Rancho del Cerro or Paseo de Chino, and they like to deck out in turquoise and silver; but it’s the same people who pretend they’re Hawaiian or Montanan or whereveran. To be fair, I was south of Tucson strung out in a blossoming oasis of old people, tens of thousand of people fifty-five or older. Their favorite sport is bocci where they roll the balls along artificial turf instead of tossing them down the alley. You can play it until you’re almost dead. I’ve never seen such a congregation of white hair in my life. If your spouse dies and you’re fifty-two, you’ve got to pack up and leave. I told you it wasn’t forgiving down here. They have small craft shops in the community centers, and if you’re not a resident, they won’t sell to you. Really. I guess there’s not enough craft to go around. If you want tourist ware, try the Indian lady across the street; she can use the money.

Relationships are complex in the West, no less in Arizona than Oregon. We all have Indians and we all have retirees and we all have Mexicans and we all have aging hippies and we all have ranchers and we all have tourists and we all have miners and we all have meth heads and we all have survivalists. And Mormons; we have Mormons. Blacks and Asians on the Coast. Not all equally distributed, to be sure. Nonetheless, wherever you are, exactly who you are is hard to say. We all want to have a voice.

Elton Waack

A big argument is authenticity: who has a right to what? How long do you have to be here to take part in the discussion? Whose water rights are we talking about? I asked my brother-in-law, where do they get the water for all these subdivisions? As water went, it was warm and slightly sulfurous.

“Oh,” he replied, “they have their own artesian wells; they get it from the aquifer.”

“How long are those wells going to last?” I asked.

“Not as long as they hope.”

And then he talked about how the saguaro are all going to be gone in eighty-years, thanks to global warming. It takes eighty-years for the first arm to begin to appear on a saguaro. Those arms in the air? They’re not hitchhiking; they’re waving goodbye.

Mexicans or Indians, I can’t tell which. They both say they were here before the rest of us. Except the Apache. The Apache came down here in modern times. They let loose after the horse came up from the latifundistas and the gun came down from the couriers de bois. But the question of whose land it is will always resonate. The Mexicans think the whole West Coast is theirs. For them, the border is an inconvenience making it difficult to travel between ancestral lands. Their identity is not tied to a specific spot of land. The Indians, on the other hand, are tied to their reservations whether they live on them or not. Their identity is place-specific. Excepting that now all Indians are Métis, like it or not, and their identity as an Indian is always tenuous and self-defining. Perhaps it’s a matter of language; the Mexicans maintain a national language which unites them all, regardless of their differences at home. At home, regional differences are paramount in self-identity. In America, you’re all Mexican and regional difference are lost on us. Their pan-national language, though, separates them from the mainstream population, which has only a limited window into it. It assumes a form of identity protection in the face of cultural onslaught. The Indian, unfortunately, has nowhere to hide. Even if he or she could remember their native tongue, it would not have been a national tongue; there was none.

Aside from those groups, there are numerous others of many races who have been here for a long time and surely consider themselves as native to the place as anyone else. Their identity comes from where they were born, not where their ancestors were born. And that’s an international human question: what is the relationship between self and place? How many generations do chickens have to lay eggs in the oven before they become buns? Whatever the answer, there’s a lot of crusty folks who are willing to lay their life down to call themselves Westerners.

McGee Ranch Cemetery

The Canadian Métis deal with identity in a reasonable way; the only way any of us can determine identity, really. The Métis are one of three recognized native populations in Canada: the Inuit, the Indians, and the Métis. By definition, the Métis are a mixed breed grouping. In the beginning it was largely East Coast Indians marrying (or whatever) largely French voyageurs; the offspring were Métis. Because they weren’t totally accepted by either the indigenous peoples or the invaders and yet were so numerous, they ended up forming a people unto themselves. They have formal associations and branches all over the country. They like to point out that being a half-breed Canadian is no different from being a half-breed American. It’s their considered opinion that both halves breed. The tricky question is how big does ones Indian half have to be before one qualifies as an Indian? You’d think in this day and age that DNA analysis could pinpoint markers for any tribe in the US, but…

The number is: whatever you want it to be. The import thing, the Métis say, is whether or not you think yourself a Métis. Well, you say, you wouldn’t be asking the question if you didn’t already think you were a Métis; so, is that enough?

No, say the Métis. Other Métis have to say you’re a Métis, too. If all the guys down at the bar say, “Sure, you’re a Métis with the best of us,” you can pick up your feathers at the union hall. Otherwise you might just be a half-breed. Or an octaroon.

The story of the West is the story of waves of immigrants. And I don’t mean since the wagon trains; I mean since forever. The tribes didn’t pick up and start to move only when the Europeans arrived. From language distribution to genotypes to haplo groups to oral and written histories, we know that the Americas, like the rest of the world, have always been in flux. To a certain extent the questions become ones of from where do the invaders come and how long were they there? Conquering and being conquered is the history of the world. From how far away does an invader have to come before they’re considered foreign and not just neighborhood infighters?

Back to me, again. I’m an aging hippie. I permanently moved to the West Coast in 1969 after visiting a couple times in the earlier 60s. Two of my children and all of my five grandchildren have been born in the Pacific Northwest. Where I grew up now exists as a storybook memory. It’s no longer a real place. Oregon is the only place I know. I think I belong here. I think it’s my place. There are a lot of people like me. We all want our voice. We all think we’re native. Who’s to say?

Tumacacori Mission Cemetery

Which made me wonder about the dynamics of Arizona. We were on a back road, returning from the tiny village of Arivaca, when we were stopped by the Border Patrol. No, they didn’t drive up behind us and flip on their lights; they had a regular check-point set up on the road and they were stopping everyone coming through. There were four or five guys, a couple trucks, a shade tent, a huge fan—they say it gets hot—and a barbeque grill set up in the middle of the desert.

“Hi, where you folks coming from?”

Good looking young guys in crisp uniforms. Nobody wore a hat and nobody wore sunglasses. There was no failure to communicate.

“Arivaca.”

“Uh-huh.”

Where else? The road doesn’t go anyplace after Arivaca, and Arivaca is hardly a place in itself. There’s nothing out that road but Arivaca.

“Actually, officer, we’re smuggling Mexicans.”

One has to assume it’s working, because illegal immigration has dropped eighty percent in the past half-dozen years. Most experts think a different dynamic is at work and that the Border Patrol is no more effective than ever, but that the number of people trying to cross has dropped. Which, frankly, is more realistic.

Nonetheless, when you count all these random checkpoints, the big permanent checkpoints, the squads of police patrol trucks cruising the highways, and the helicopters lumbering across the Sonoran desert, one has to think one is looking at a growth industry gone mad. Do we really need to arm the border at what cost? Must we try and control the ebb and flow of humanity with guns? Why is violence always our solution?

What worries me more: illegal Mexicans or Goldman-Sachs? How come there are no guns holding off Bank of America? From whom do we need protection?

Arivaca Cemetery

Arivaca is a good place to see one approach. The cemetery has that raucous Mexican vitality but is equally comfortable welcoming the hippie and the cowboy. Anybody with a hammer and a saw can put up a mausoleum as fancy as the next person’s. I can imagine there’s been any number of parties here. I’d come help decorate the place, if there was a keg of beer. Maybe some tacos. They wouldn’t care if you were an Indian, either. Really, I think you could be a pasty white guy from New Jersey and still be buried here.

McGee Ranch Cemetery

Which is more than one can say for the Tohono O’Odham. Not only do they not want you walking in their cemetery, they don’t want you taking pictures of their cemetery. Even from the road. When I crouched down to take a picture of the “keep out” sign, two pickup trucks did U-turns and admonished me for ignoring the “no photographs” signs. That I hadn’t stepped onto the property didn’t faze them; the signs say “no photographs,” period. It didn’t seem I should argue niceties of the law with them, so I slunk back to the car and took a couple shots from the window as we were leaving. Take that! Now I have a camera full of Indian spirits that I don’t know what to do with.

Tohono O'Odham Cemetery

I made a quick visit to a large cemetery complex of some three or four cemeteries in Tucson, but didn’t begin to have time to do it justice—it demands several days; though my sister and brother-in-law did lead me to a darling ranch cemetery they knew of from having hiked past it with their hiking club, that I had ample time to enjoy: the McGee Ranch Cemetery. The ranch and the larger community of McGee Ranch are where the Sierrita Mountains begin thrusting their bare elbows out of the desert. It gets no lusher as one rises in these mountains. The ranch—the size of which I’ve been unable to pinpoint—has an unusual policy: any blood descendant (of age) of the original McGees is welcome to come to the ranch, carve out their couple acres, and build a home. They don’t care if you’ve been living in Mongolia for two generations, a desert plot awaits you in Arizona. Let me warn you, though. If you bring your wife (or other way around, if it applies) with you and you should happen to die, she’s out of there unless you had kids of age. They’re strict about that sort of stuff down here. At least that’s why I was told. Honest.

The cemetery’s up a draw leading into the mountains and is blocked by a gate. They’re happy to let you visit the cemetery (or they were happy to let us visit the cemetery), but they’d like the courtesy of being asked. Fair enough. Do stop and do ask and do walk the few hundred yards up the dusty road to the cemetery. The road got traffic on it while we were there, but nonetheless was pocked with numerous animal prints: deer, dog, and large cat. Larger than house cat. It’s a busy desert.

Each grave is delineated by a ring on stones, and they march in regular order underneath a canopy of trees. There more than a bit of whimsy and humor here and it’s devoid of excess sobriety. Just the place to visit on a sunny afternoon; provided it’s not too hot. They tell me…

Evergreen Cemetery - Tucson

If you ask me—which you didn’t, but I’m going to tell you anyway—it’s an uneasy truce, this border. I don’t know how long it can last; not forever, that’s for sure. Someone’s going to have to tell these people they’d better pray for cheap desalinization or else they’re going to have to pack up and move home. They should take hints from those ancient dwellings they find down here: civilizations come and go. Mostly go. They dry up and blow away. And if you’re thinking of getting water from the Pacific Northwest? Forget about it; we have fools enough of our own. And don’t think about moving here, either. I just said we have fools enough of our own.

My advice: if you’re going to die in Arizona, head for Arivaca. You’ll find good company there.

Mission San Xavier del Bac

Imagine

2011-10-27T08:22:00.000-07:00

Bay City IOOF Cemetery

Empires are quixotic. In and of themselves they are not particularly peaceful. A combination of the tendencies which propels a people to establish an empire, along with the many fronts an empire necessarily has to maintain, ensures that the bigger the empire, the more wars it will engage in. Consider Rome and consider America as two prime examples.

On the other hand, think of America again. Before the advent of America, the country, America the place was a ruthless and dangerous world, a place of a thousand wars. Everyone was more or less permanently at war with everyone else; at least until one got down to the Aztecs. After Western governments appeared, the internal wars all but disappeared. What was left of the Indians after disease ripped through them fought a passionate but hopeless rear-guard action against the government, then it was all over.

I say this, not to promote the U.S. as a harbinger of peace, far from it; but to point out, that, even while empires grow and often engage in violent, inexcusable behavior, their overall effect is to increase the amount of peace in the world and to decrease the chances one has of being the victim of violence. Any kind of violence.

Would I go so far as to say large countries are the cause of increasing peace in the world? Well, they’re one part. America may be fighting on innumerable foreign fronts, but at home she’s been quite for nearly a hundred-and-fifty years. And you can tag on seventy-five years of peace prior to that conflict. Care to compare that nearly two-hundred-and-fifty years with Europe? There’s something to be said for being one country.

But the peace descending on the world is more complex than just that. It may be impossible to find the progenitor of peace, but it’s not so hard to find parallel paths. It’s hard to say that increasing country size causes increasing peace/safety, which may rather be the result of detribalization. Or is there a difference between the two? Would a difference make a difference? One can find many parallels. Violence decreases with education, urbanization, rise in standard of living, automobile use, enhanced communication, birth control, abortion, and additions to the periodic table of elements. Do any of these things have to do with decreasing violence? Yes, to one degree or another, they all do; they are a part of the march of civilization, and it’s the march of civilization which, news media, fundamentalists, and Republicans to the contrary, has made this world an infinitely safer place than the one we inherited. And it’s getting safer every day. Let’s hear it for civilization!

An important concomitant is the rise of secularism and the demise of religion. I know that’s hard to believe in this era of religious fanaticism, but, overall, religion has been steadily losing ground to reason for hundreds of years. And as religions are, by design, separators, not uniters, of people, as the influence of religion wanes, international cooperation gains.

Alrighty then, what, you may ask, does this have to do with cemeteries?

Thought you’d never ask.

A news blip reported in the ICCFA Magazine (June, 2011), a trade magazine for the funeral business: they reported that celebration was taking over from mourning in English funerals. I don’t know that the percentages would be the same, but I’m confident you’d find the same trends in the U.S. (England tends to be more cutting-edge than us when it comes to the art of dying.) It’s not easy to know quite what the British mean by the terms they use, but the general drift is clear: people are lightening up.

The report breaks down funeral styles into “traditional,” 67%; “contemporary,” 21%; and “humanist,” 12%. You’ll have to shove your own definitions into those categories. I’m presuming “humanist” is code for “atheist,” although how that fits with “contemporary” is a little fuzzy. And “traditional” doesn’t necessarily mean “mourning,” as the same article claimed 49% of all funerals as having a “tone [of] celebration rather than mourning.” One can be a dour Christian or a happy one, apparently.

The report went on to mention a few other curious data, such as 31% of funerals “involved personal input from mourners,” and that 35% “involved personalized flowers.” I’m not privy to the difference between personalized and impersonal flowers, but they, evidently, know. If those classifications aren’t slippery enough, they left us with saying 36% of funerals “had purely religious music,” whereas 64% had “contemporary, classical, or a mixture of both.” Again, I’m in the dark as to whether they classified the Beatles as “contemporary” or “classical.”

All I know is that, when you visit a cemetery in Oregon these days, you find surging personalization in tombstone design. Armageddon may be upon us, but it’s not being accompanied by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The spirit of departure these days is less likely to be “Trust in Jesus,” than it is to be as Claude and Frances Friend wrote on their Scottsburg Cemetery stone:

“Tried to leave the woodpile a little higher than we found it.”

Amen.

Scottsburg Cemetery

Damn Straight

2011-10-07T13:00:00.000-07:00

Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati, OH (Photo: Davis Paul Ohm)

I should recuse myself right from the beginning. I’m not a neutral observer. I’ve got a lot of reservations about lawn cemeteries and John Llewellyn, author of A Cemetery Should Be Forever: The Challenge to Managers and Directors (Glendale, CA 1998), manages the cemetery that started that trend: Forest Lawn in California. I’ll extend a further disclaimer that I’ve never been to Southern California and have never set foot inside Forest Lawn. Who knows, I might love the place.

I was handed a copy of this book by Rachel Fox, manager of fourteen pioneer cemeteries for Metro, the local multi-agency operation that handles much civic responsibility here. I was inquiring as to the beginnings of commercial cemeteries: which was first? She thought Llewellyn might have an answer.

But first another story:

A few years back I happened to have a meeting with the manager of River View Cemetery, Portland’s premier “garden” or “rural” cemetery. While modest compared with other cities, our rural cemetery suits us fine. As I was leaving the meeting, I asked the director about the history of River View. I asked specifically about its design: who did it and how did it come about? The director opined that he thought there hadn’t been much planning at all, that they’d simply laid the roads out following the natural contours of the hill. Then he gave me a brochure detailing the history of the cemetery. Sure enough, the brochure commented on the many months of careful planning with landscapers and designers that were spent before any earth was moved. The director had neglected to read his own brochure.

Likewise, despite being seeped in the industry for three generations (his great uncle was Hubert Eaton, the messiah of Forest Lawn), Llewellyn apparently forgot to study his history. As far as Llewellyn is concerned, “the Burial Act of 1855 marked the beginning of cemetery development in Great Britain, although several cemeteries had been established earlier in London by private enterprise”; leaving one with the impression that this is what started it all in America, as well. Even the very invention of cemeteries didn’t impress Llewellyn. In his view, “when Hubert Eaton conceived his ‘memorial-park plan’ in 1917, he transformed the way cemeteries were operated and viewed by society. Up to that point, changes in cemeteries had been slow—evolutionary.” Llewellyn dismisses The roles of Père Lachaise and Mt. Auburn as being “influenced by [the] design” of rural cemeteries. He never mentions Albert Strauch and the creation of the cemetery superintendent position at Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, even though a president of Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum wrote the foreword.

Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati, OH (Photo: David Paul Ohm)

The reality is that Mt. Auburn in Cambridge, MA, a scion of Père Lachaise in Paris, was, in 1831, the first “rural” cemetery in America. Those cemeteries began the rural cemetery movement and could not have been influenced by it. Spring Grove and Albert Strauch made the first restructuring of the rural cemetery with the creation of the superintendent’s position, which he accompanied with design innovations presaging Eaton’s lawn cemetery. The real transformation of American cemeteries was ushered in with the invention of the commercial cemetery, which Llewellyn guesses to be around 1860, a date which seems reasonable. Still, it would be nice to know which cemetery that was, for that was a truly transformative move. That’s when death entered the market place.

A point Llewellyn doesn’t like to dwell on. He could have entitled his book, A Cemetery Is Forever. Instead he chose Should Be. Yeah, they should be; but are they, if they’re a commercial enterprise?

Llewellyn follows David Charles Sloan’s The Last Great Necessity: Cemeteries in American History in his classifications of American cemeteries: frontier, domestic, churchyard, potters’ field, municipal, lawn-park, and memorial park. “Frontier” in his definition means roadside grave left by pioneers on their way west. Technically, that’s a “grave site” and not a cemetery. “Lawn-park” and “memorial park” don’t appear significantly different and should probably be lumped together. Potters’ fields are historical appendages and don’t exist anymore outside institutional graveyards, such as asylums or prisons. By “domestic” he means family graveyards; they exist but are not an option for most people. That leaves us with churchyards, municipals, and memorial parks.

Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA (Photo: friendsofmountauburn)

I’m not sure that’s a helpful enough distinction. I’d argue that the most significant line should be drawn between civic and commercial cemeteries, with churchyards put in a category of their own. I would define “civic” as those cemeteries supported by a tax base, and “commercial” as those supported by corporations. A civic cemetery might generate enough income to not require tax support, but the ultimate responsibility for the maintenance of a civic cemetery is a governing body, be it city, county, state, federal, or otherwise. The responsibility for a commercial cemetery, whether for-profit or not, rests with the owner or, most often, owners.

Within those broad divisions, of course, there are many variations. Llewellyn manages to write an entire book about cemeteries and never mentions the Masons or the Odd Fellows; yet their cemeteries occupy a gray area straddling the line between civic and non-profit commercial. In spirit they’re closer to churchyards, as fraternal organizations are closer to churches than to governments or corporations. Perhaps we can lump church and fraternal cemeteries together as “community” cemeteries.

Any cemetery is open to abandonment, but we can rank the three cemetery types—civic, commercial, and community—by their likelihood of abandonment. With absolutely no statistics to back me up, I’d guess that it’s a toss-up between commercial and community, but that civic cemeteries, by the nature of the duration of governments, have the best chance at long term survival. Llewellyn only skirts the issue of whether or not corporations should be involved in the death business at all, whether it’s a proper subject to leave to the whims of the market place? He neglects to compare the life cycles of corporations versus the life cycle of governments. He never asks what happens when you give your eternity over to Pan Am or Bell Telephone? He never confronts the problem of when your cemetery starts to look like Detroit.

No indeed, most of his book is devoted to questions of cemetery management, which is its proper subject: how to make wise investments, make plans for the future, etc. His concern is how to keep the cemetery going, not what to do after it fails. He often talks about pricing, largely as an apologist for the industry, shaking his finger at the independent monument and casket sellers, not to mention at the cremation business. (He tells a story of someone being dusted with cremation ashes once, but never talks about stacks of bodies like cordwood outside mortuaries; and I assure you he would never mention necrophilia.) He stresses that one has to give quality service at a fair price in order to remain in business over the long haul, although he does admit that occasional price gouging does exist. He offers an interesting defense: “Although mortuaries’ prices have been criticized as being too high, consumers have not encouraged price competition.”

Ah ha! We knew it! Consumers are responsible for setting prices, not the seller. If only we’d grump more, prices would be lower. If we don’t grump, they’ll rise until we do. Why, that’s only fair, no? That’s what capitalism is all about: squeezing the last dollar out of you, even if you’re dead. So, if you want a better price on your funeral, write your funeral home now and tell them so. That ought to do the trick.

Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA (Photo: friendsofmountauburn)

There is a suggestion that Hubert should have been named Hubris. If there was one thing Eaton had faith in, besides his god, it was himself. The comment has been made, “someone along the line convinced him he had taste.” In a display of sweeping arrogance, Eaton proclaimed his “Builder’s Creed,” where he laid out his vision of a cemetery, one to which you’d better conform if you want to be buried in Forest Lawn: “I therefore know the cemeteries of today are wrong because they depict an end, not a beginning. They have consequently become unsightly stoneyards, full of inartistic symbols and depressing customs….” In one fell swoop he condemned everything that went before him. Your style of mourning depresses him or offend him. Individual expression, personal displays of remembrance are inadequate. We need the sage from Liberty to bring us the proper respect for the dead in a uni-grave system “where memorialization of loved ones in sculptured marble and pictorial glass shall be encouraged but controlled by acknowledged artists….” One can only presume that it was an acknowledged artist who suggested bringing in fake copies of famous Italian statuary. And surely it was an acknowledged artist who suggested putting a fig leaf on David. The last thing we need is a prick hanging out in the cemetery.

What Eaton was—and is—selling was a Christian view of life and death. As much as possible, he wanted to drive death from the cemetery. Starting with the name. No more cemeteries; from now on they shall be memorial parks. We don’t honor the fallen here, only the resurrection. “I believe, most of all, in a Christ that smiles and loves you and me.” Feel safe now?

An initial impulse that drove the creators of Père Lachaise was that their new cemetery should be an attractant for the populace. It was hoped people would come and stroll the grounds and be edified and uplifted by the sculpture and mausoleums doting the landscape. This theme was carried over to the rural cemeteries of America. Eaton did nothing new in attracting people to his cemetery; he simply broadened the base of offerings and made the whole design his design, rather than yours. In a way he was the Walt Disney of cemeterians. It’s no coincidence that both Disney World and Forest Lawn were born in Southern California; they share a similar gestalt.

Hollywood Forever Cemetery (Photo: Jennifer Gaillard)

A Cemetery Should Be Forever was published in 1998, the same year Tyler Cassity bought the moribund Hollywood Memorial Park. Llewellyn’s book was au courant in noting the newcomer. He was discussing endowment issues when he mentions Cassity. He warned “the buyer is taking on a huge challenge, and it isn’t clear how enough funds will be found to bring the cemetery up to even a minimal level of maintenance.” Cassity went on to steal Llewellyn’s title and rename his cemetery, Hollywood Forever. Welcome to the new Eaton. And from Missouri, nonetheless. He gets all the new star burials. He found the funds.

But will Hollywood Forever last forever? Probably no more so than Forest Lawn. You can put any shade of lipstick on them you’d like, but they’re still commercial cemeteries. One of these days they’ll disappear, go bankrupt, kaput. Welcome to Detroit.

Hollywood Forever (Photo: Jeremy Weatherly)

Post Card

2011-10-04T19:49:00.000-07:00

Pettys Cemetery, Ione, OR

First, the banjo.

Second, skip the bluegrass.

Rhythm banjo. I don’t like that barrage of notes that banjo players insist on throwing at the listener. I’m too old to get that fast. And they tend to loose the rhythm in that machine gun fire. It’s as if they don’t want you to hear the individual notes: “If I play incredibly fast, everyone will be so wowed that they won’t notice it’s a banjo.” When I first began to coax individual notes out of the banjo, I thought it sounded Japanese. Now I think of it as swamp rock banjo. Just what you’d expect there in the Northwest.

But I digress.

I’ll admit that I go through ten minutes of guilt everyday because I haven’t written anything lately for this blog. Then I get over it and go on with my day.

Denio Cemetery, Denio, NV

If I were to write a post, Id tell you that a bit back my son and I took a 1300 mile trip around the outback of Oregon. Aside from visiting twenty cemeteries or so, the highlight and ostensible reason for the trip was to drive the White Horse Ranch Road, a seventy five-mile gravel ride from just south of nowhere to its nearest neighbor. That would be Denio, a gas station surrounded by about thirty people who never make their presence known. Outside Denio, where other towns sport deer crossing signs, Denio provides donkey crossings. Wild donkeys, they have them there. They do. A hundred miles from Denio to Lakeview and we had it to ourselves except for the donkeys. Paved yet. The road, not the donkeys.

Unity Cemetery, Unity, OR

The countryside we traversed is the same country where Meek’s Cutoff is and where the movie of the same name was filmed. The original wagon train had something like 200 wagons in it. In the movie there are three. It stars Michelle Williams, who specializes in movies with enigmatic endings, often in Oregon. The Kings, Nahum (1783-1856) and his wife, Serepta, after whom Kings Valley Cemetery was named, were in that train. It is harsh country.

As I’ve noted elsewhere, one goes east to go to the West, if one lives on the wet (no, there should be no “s” in that word) side of the Cascades, which most of us do; but the West of Oregon is a far cry from the West of Colorado or Montana. That West got taken over by Hollywood, Las Vegas, and Texas. Less show and more grit up here. I don’t come here to get away from it all; I come here to come here. The photos are all up on Flickr.

Sunset Cemetery, Ontario, OR

I’ve been doing a survey of Lone Fir Cemetery Cemetery, our local crown jewell pioneer cemetery, for the past year. I wasn’t aiming to record every headstone, because genealogy is not my interest, but rather those in certain classes. The broadest and most subjective class are those stones of an “interesting” design. It’s hard to imagine a more subjective classification than “interesting.” It includes most all of the handmade markers plus those of highly unusual design, such as a spherical polished ball engraved with dragons or a scrabble board in full color.

Lone Fir Cemetery, Portland, OR

The first person to have been buried at Lone Fir was Emmor Stephens, grandfather to a fellow named J. B. Stephens (after whom a Liberty ship was named). When J. B. and his wife died some years later, he had a monument which carries three-quarter life-size carvings of them both. That’s impressive enough, but on the reverse it has an equally notable epitaph.

“Here we lie by consent, after 57 years 2 months and 2 days sojourning through life awaiting nature’s immutable laws to return us back to the elements of the universe, of which we were first composed.”

This is a mighty strong faith being expressed here, a faith in Mother Nature. It set a tone for the cemetery which rings to this day. Conventional religion creeps in here and there—it’s a cemetery, for Christ’s sake—but the overall ambiance is a full appreciation of this world and its universe. Carl Sagan could have written that epitaph. It’s why my wife and I chose to be buried here. And we were lucky; shortly after we purchased our plots, they closed sales on new ones.

But I digress again. Enough about me.

Another category is as subjective as design: interesting epitaphs. No “Gone but not forgottens,” okay? A third grouping is more defined: cameos, either photoceramics or portrait engravings; while the final sets have hard-and-fast edges: all Woodmen of the World and all white bronze markers. I did this survey with an eye towards A) giving tours of Lone Fir; and B) publishing a small guide to the cemetery. You’ll notice, none of my classifications have anything to do with who is buried there; that’s for the local historians and genealogists, whom I wish well.

But I couldn’t compile a guide to the cemetery without some knowledge of how it came together, so that’s taken me into a little research; which is all a round about way of explaining why I have ignored my guilt feelings and marched on with what I’m doing.

Then there’s the book effect. Having a book published is a little like getting a doctorate: instant credibility (unless you publish it yourself, then it’s an Internet diploma). Instant credibility is handy and a large part of the reason why the book came out as it did. When Ashland Creek sent an email inquiring if I was interest in putting a book together, I instantly knew that the important feature here was to get it published. And the sooner the better. Ashland Creek thought sooner was better for marketing purposes, and I thought sooner would be better for marketing myself. My presumption was the second book would be easier to publish than the first; hence I made almost no fuss with whatever Ashland Creek wanted to do. My mantra was, “If you guys like it, I like it.”

That worked.

My focus, though, is on the future. The next time I’ll have a little more freedom to say, “No, the monkey in the gray flannel suit stays.”

Sunset Cemetery, Ontario, OR

Mad As the Mist and Snow

2011-09-03T12:29:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Mad As the Mist and Snow: Exploring Oregon Through Its Cemeteries. The title, a poem by W. B. Yeats, appears as an epitaph in Jones Pioneer Cemetery in Portland, OR, the first stanza of which goes:

   Bolt and bar the shutter,
   For the foul winds blow:
   Our minds are at their best this night,
   And I seem to know
   That everything outside us is
   Mad as the mist and snow.

Think of it as a tickler for the Oregon cemetery experience, designed to be taken to bed with you at night when you’re ensconced in a motel in Burns and are wondering what to do the next day. “Look, here’s something we could do tomorrow: visit the Fort Harney Cemetery.”

And Drewsey. Don’t forget Drewsey. Drewsey is a doozy.

The contents will be familiar to studious readers of Blogging a Dead Horse and followers of DeadManTalking as most everything is taken from blog posts or set introductions on Flickr. They’re easy to find, if tedious. On the other hand, a chunk of the book is given over to selected epitaphs arranged into categories; and while they all exist among the photos on Flickr, finding them is a major challenge. I drew them from a separate database of epitaphs not available on the Web, that’s easier to search than Flickr.

This is a case where the publisher contacted me; a rarity in the business, and for that I am eternally grateful. But it also means that I agreed to pretty much whatever the publisher wanted and the result is a heavily edited version of what you’ll find in the blog or Flickr. That being said, it’s a text-driven book, not a coffee-table book. That will come later and will cost a bunch more. At $22.50, this one is a steal. Okay, if not a steal, then a long-term borrowing.

What I’d really like is to drag you out to the cemeteries with me so we could both exclaim, “Wow, look at this!” Alas, you live in Massachusetts and I live in Oregon.

But if you can’t get out to see Oregon cemeteries, don’t worry, you have equally wonderful cemeteries in your backyard. Everyone does. If reading this book makes cemeteries pop out and seem fun to you, hop on your bike or slide into your car and head for the hills. Or the hollows or the flats. Or the northeast part of town, wherever dead people congregate. It’s free and its visceral. Parks with art and reading material. Pathos and tenderness. Stone-cold history and angels; what more could you want?

The book is available at Ashland Creek Press and should show up on Amazon is a week to ten days. Or what the heck, send me $22.50 and I’ll send you a copy, shipping free. Is this too good to pass up, or what?

The Cascade Massacre

2011-08-13T15:54:00.000-07:00

Margaret Iman’s (1834-1924) story is writ in stone is a small, eponymous cemetery on the backside of Stevenson, a river town on the Washington side of the Columbia as she rips a gorge through the Cascades:

Born at Tippecanoe Co., Ind.
1852 Missouri to The Dalles on horse back
Carried motherless babe 500 miles
Took raft downriver to Cascades
1853 met and married Felix G. Iman
Survived Indian War of Mar. 26, 1856
Indians burned home
Had 16 children, 9 boys, 7 girls

Her husband, Felix Iman’s (1828-1902), slab is next to hers. Together they sketch a compelling pioneer story.1

Born DeKalb Co., Mo.
Arrived at Cascades by ox team in 1852
Married Margaret Windsor 1853
1854 built & owned steamer “Wasco”
1855 donation land claim of 323 acres
1858 worked on upper Cascades block house
Built & owned 2 sawmills
Built 1st school. For short time saloon owner.

Aside from a minor error, it hints at the enormous effort the Iman’s put into wresting a home from the forest. Frank, it happens, “was born 24 November 1828 in Monroe, Illinois,” according to “Iman Family Notes: ‘Margaret’ (A Windsor Perspective).”2 It wasn’t Frank who came from DeKalb Co., but rather Margaret, who left for Oregon from there.

It wasn’t an easy departure. Margaret, it turns out, was a runaway. She was born a Windsor, whose mother died when she was about ten years old and was subsequently raised by an archetypically cruel stepmother. By the time she was seventeen, her family was living in DeKalb Co., and by the time she was seventeen she’d decided she’d had it and ran away from home, joining a wagon train headed for Oregon. Her father went after her, dragged her back, and lost her again when he went looking for a river crossing. The second time he let her go. She was subsequently lost to the Windsor family until a descendant in Kansas put an add in the Ladies Home Companion in the 1920s asking if anyone knew what happened to her? One of Margaret’s children, Louis, chanced upon the magazine in a Vancouver, WA barber shop and his wife contacted the folks in Kansas.

The Indian War mentioned on her tombstone actually lasted longer than March 26, although not much. It’s frequently called the Cascade or Fort Rains Massacre and was part of a general Indian war of resistance to the white invaders known as the Cayuse War, of which, probably, the most famous incident was the euphonious Battle Of Seattle. The Imans played a not insignificant role in the events, and their interpretation of what happened differs considerably from the official record. According to James Windsor,3 who refers to the incident as the Yakima attack, the wrong Indians were punished. Sheridan claims4 that the Yakimas forced or coerced the local Cascade Indians into joining the attack, but the Iman’s claim otherwise. Sheridan left us a list of the settlers and soldiers killed in the uprising:

" I append a list of killed and wounded: Killed — George Griswold, shot in leg; B. W. Brown and wife, killed at the sawmill, bodies found stripped naked in Mill creek ; Jimmy Watkius, driving team at mill ; Henry Hagar, shot in Watkins' house, body burned ; Jake Kyle, German boy ; Jacob White, sawyer at mill ; Bonrbon, half-breed, died on the Maty going to The Dalles ; James Sinclair, of the H. B. Company, Walla Walla ; Dick Turpin, colored cook on steamer Alary; Norman Palmer, driving team at mill ; Calderwood, working at mill ; three United States soldiers, names unknown ; George Watkins, lived four days ; Jacob Roush, carpenter, lived six days. Wounded — Fletcher Murphy, arm; P. Snooks, boy, leg; J. Lindsay, shoulder; Jesse Kempton, shoulder; Tommy Price, thigh ; two .soldiers, U. S. Army ; H. Kyle, German ; Moffat, railroad hand; johnny Chance, leg; ]\I. Bailey, leg and arm; J. Algin, slightly'."5

Sheridan doesn’t supply us with a list of Indians hanged, but a loose sheet of paper in the Oregon Historical Society’s files offers these names: “Chief Chenoweth, Capt. Jo, Tecomcoc or Tecomeoc, Tsy, Sim-sasselas or Sim-Lasselas, Tumalth or Tunwalth (other spellings), Old Skien, Kenwake (sentenced but reprieved on scaffold), and 4 Finger Johnny.”6 In Margaret Iman’s oral memoirs she describes the hanging of the Indians: She recalled they were “hanged on a tree about one mile from where we lived. Some of them, when asked to talk, shook their heads and put the noose around their own necks. Others laughed at those who were hanging.”7

Felix Iman’s schooner, Wasco, also particpated in the repulse. Assigned the task of hauling troops from Portland to The Dalles, the Wasco came under fire from Indians collected where White Salmon is now, across the river from Hood River; but the river is sizable and their balls had no effect. The third steamer to ply the waters between Cascade Locks and The Dalles, she subsequently returned to her trade, albeit for a short period of time. By 1857 she was out of business on the river. A newspaper advertisement from, probably, the 1860s offered passage between Bellingham, WA and Seattle on the “fast and commodious” steamer Wasco for $1; although I can’t be sure it’s the same steamer Wasco.

We can’t reasonably expect Sheridan, who was responsible for the protection of the whites along the river, to admit to hanging the wrong people. Nonetheless, this long quote from James Windsor describes the Iman experience:

Windsor points to this quote to help clarify the situation [of the Indian attack of March 26, 1856]: “I read the settlers in Skamania Co. at the Cascades had been expecting an indian attack for some time. Some of the friendly local indians had been warning the settlers that unfriendly tribes were planning an imminent attack, and for this reason Felix decided to build a new house closer to the river in case the family had to escape by boat. The original Iman house had been farther back from the river by about a mile. Of course no one knew when the attack would come and all were suprised by it. The local indians who were hung had been on friendly terms to the white locals. Indian Jim was one of the ones hung, and he was a good friend of Felix. They were of the Cascade tribe. The motive behind the hangings was anger and racism. Quite a few of the white settlers had lost relatives besides homes in the attack and there was some kind of revenge wanted, and as the Yakimas had all returned back to their land, the Cascades were the only Indians to take revenge one, even though they were innocent. Of course most white people at that time did not like Indians and did not trust them, so of course most of the locals were none too squeamish to get rid of them. Margaret claimed she witnessed the hanging, or at least at some point she claimed to have seen them hanging. Felix was away at the time and when he returned a day or two later he was sorry to hear about the hangings and told the locals that those Indians were all innocent and it was wrong to hang them. At least that is how history has left the story for us. There were also some sordid details a few days after the Yakima attack. There was a friendly indian and his wife and children and they were travelling by boat on the Columbia River near Shepherd's Point. It is said that Samuel Hamilton with some other local men, but not Felix, captured these Indians and their children and raped the woman and then killed them all, children included, in a very cruel way, by strangling them and chopping off their heads. Lt. Philip Sheridan (he later to be famous in the Civil War) was there serving as the commander of the force that had chased off the Yakimas, and Sheridan claimed it was Hamilton and some others whom he named go after the two indians who were then found murdered shortly thereafter. But of course this was hushed up and Sheridan declined to press charges and consequently never spoken of again, so no one prosecuted Hamilton and the others, but it is a sordid story and a sad comment on the history of the area.”8

The sorry story in my research of similar graveyard histories is that it is always the same: the perpetrators rarely see punishment which instead is meted out to the handiest person. Blame is always collective.

1 I’ve covered most of this story in previous blogs, so it may seem familiar. To an extent, I’ve plagiarized myself. The new material primarily concerns the “massacre.”
2 James Windsor, Draft, Iman Family Notes (with footnotes and editing by Steve Iman)[http://www.imanfamily.net/skamania/windsor.html].
3 Ibid.
4 Mea culpa for not having noted the references for this information. A case of casually reading through the Net for other information, reading this, and filing it away in my memory bank only to not be able to find the source when I went looking again. You’d think I’d learn.
5 Philip Sheridan as recorded in History of the Pacific Northwest: Oregon and Washington.
6 OHS 929.379272; R 179 cem. Ramsey, D. G., Skamania Co. WA Burial Lists.7 Another lost reference. I searched and searched but have yet to refind this memoir online, but I know it’s there. Trust me.
8 James Windsor; Op Cit.

The Celestials

2011-08-07T07:03:00.000-07:00

Lone Fir Cemetery
In Oregon’s formative years when she was learning to fly with her own wings, some surprising groups of people helped shape the future. In their day they were significantly important and often times made up a considerable portion of the population. Take the fur trappers, for instance. Instead of being rough and tumble mountain men from Appalachia, or wherever, they were more likely to have been mixed Indian/Euroamerican people known as Métis; and if not them, then East Coast Indians. Even more unlikely is that a third of the trappers were Hawaiian. Trapping crews were most often shipped west around the Horn, which required (in sailing days) a swing past Hawaii if one wanted to reach North America. It was closer and cheaper to fill up ones crew with Hawaiians than to drag people from the East Coast. Exactly how those Hawaiians accommodated themselves to snow-bound Cascade winters is unknown. There are still Métis around who remember their role in settling the territory, but I’ve never met a Hawaiian who knows anything about the trappers. They simply disappeared.

The Chinese, on the other hand, played an enormous role in civilizing the West, and they haven’t disappeared. Even though many of the early arrivals have. They disappeared, not because they were forgotten or laid in unmarked graves, but rather because the Chinese government paid to have their bodies exhumed and returned to China—men only, thank you. Apparently this process was repeated several times at twenty-year intervals.

The Chinese were particularly active in mining camps, not merely as cooks and launderers, as the movies imply, but as the miners themselves. At times, for example, a third of the miners in Canyon City were Chinese; while in Golden, Oregon, when the entire town packed up for a new strike, their places were filled with Chinese who only had to give the claims back when the whites later returned because the new strike didn’t pan out. At times, Chinese were eliminated with “extreme prejudice,” as it were.

Yet nobody else wanted their people back. The Finns never sent to bring their children home from Astoria. Missouri never called for the return of her sons and daughters gone on the Oregon Trail. The English never brought their ex-pats back to Camelot. Only the Chinese.

Chinese Cemetery - Baker City, OR
That this happened in Portland has been news for some time, and there are plans afoot to memorialize those Chinese, as well as the women and children who were left behind. And that it happened in Baker City is well known because the historic Chinese cemetery in that city is bolted next to the freeway and marked by a sign board; a small pagoda; and a tiny, stone one-room prayer house with a tin roof. Aside from those amenities, what’s most noticeable are the holes pockmarking the surrounding. Whoever did the exhumation forgot to fill them in.

What’s surprising is how extensive the exhumation practice was. Besides Baker City and Portland, it happened in Astoria, Coos Bay, Albany, Ontario, Ashland, Corvallis, Roseburg, Pendleton, and The Dalles. Whatever else, that can’t have been cheap; even if you used Chinese labor.

It Coulda Been

2011-07-13T06:31:00.000-07:00

Forest Lawn
Photo: LuisAHHH!
In 1917 a thirty-six year old man from Liberty, Missouri, Hubert Eaton, took control of Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California, and rechristened it Forest Lawn Memorial Park. The American cemetery would never be the same. Mr. Eaton’s singular achievement was to remove death from the cemetery. It was not without precedent. The very word “cemetery” was promulgated in preference to “graveyard” for the same reason a hundred years earlier; so, to replace “cemetery” with “memorial park” was continuing a time-honored, euphemistic tradition. Only sex provides as many linguistic deflections as does death.

Forest Lawn
Photo: Striderv
Eaton went further, though, than merely changing the name; he went on to ban the most potent symbol of the cemetery, the tombstone. Eaton insisted that all markers in his cemeteries (he eventually took over/created others) be flush with the ground. When Hubert said “lawn,” he meant “lawn.” That it is much cheaper to mow a flush lawn than to squirrel around a forest of headstones didn’t hurt, but it may have been more important to Eaton to eliminate the perception of death in his cemeteries than it was to save money.

If Hubert Eaton would have confined himself to eliminating the presence of death in his boneyards, this story might have ended a lot differently, but like many people, he had a vision he felt the rest of the world deserved to share. A devout Christian, he populated the edges of his lawns with oversize reproductions of statuary from around the world. Findadeath.com assesses the situation succinctly: “Somewhere along the line, someone convinced this guy that he had good taste.” He even went so far as to build a wedding chapel on the Glendale grounds and began offering weddings in a form of cradle-to-grave service. It worked, just ask Reagan, the Acting President.

Forest Lawn
Photo: davewetsprocket
No cemetery since Mt. Auburn in Cambridge, Massachusetts, changed the landscape of American cemeteries the way Forest Lawn did. Almost overnight, virtually every cemetery in the country became a lawn cemetery. Thousands of little stone forests became surrounded by low, lumpy fields. New cemeteries were inevitably named “memorial parks” and were lined with Christian gods and demigods. Landscaping was rarely unified or thoughtful. The tradition of elegance begun with Père Lachaise was abandoned for the streamlined hucksterism of Southern California. Only the Veterans Administration with their necklace of National Cemeteries has invested heavily in dignified landscaping. There is no American standard of good cemetery design, and furthermore, it’s not a topic of public discussion. How could one possibly influence cemetery design? Isn’t that like asking how could one influence car design? Or bridge design? Or rocket design?

Park design?

Woodland
Photo: danielvirella
Three years before Hubert Eaton showed up in Glendale, Sweden announced a competition for the design of a new cemetery for the City of Stockholm. Two young Swedish architects, Gunnar Apslund and Sigurd Lewerentz proffered the proposal for what became in 1994 a World Heritage Site: the Woodland Cemetery, Skogskyrkogården. Unlike the disjointed American lawn cemetery divided into discrete, unrelated “gardens” designed to pull ones thoughts away from death, Woodland Cemetery was conceived of as an aesthetic unity whose scale, elements, and plantings are constructed to guide the mourner through the reflective stages of the circle of life. Trees lining the path to a chapel change from birch to fir as the passage darkens and ones thoughts condense. Woodland celebrates death with a Nordic sobriety, but it doesn’t shy away from it. It does not deny death.

Woodland
Photo: Johan Rubbestad Lilja
It is, perhaps, unfair to compare Forest Lawn with Woodland which has more in common with the VA cemeteries, as they are both public entities, they don’t have to make a profit. Even a non-profit has to turn a profit, unless it has a tax base. Woodland makes use of its largesse by incorporating expansive lawns that really are lawns, they don’t contain graves. Those are mainly confined to the woods proper where uprights are welcome. Headstones here are not uniform, but they are all of a modest height and design; the theory being that there is equality in death. And while the private expression of religion is acceptable, despite Lutheranism being the state religion of Sweden and despite the open entry sward being dominated by a massive granite cross, Woodland is officially non-religious. Its pocket guide says the cross “is not intended to represent a symbol of faith, but rather a symbol of the circle of life and death.” Works for me.

Woodland
Photo: Roy van der Zwaan
One of the more dramatic and photogenic features of the cemetery is a “meditation grove” atop a gentle rise in the center of the entry sward. A stairway ascending to the grove is slowly rendered into lower and lower steps to ease the climb. In typical Scandinavian thoroughness and with a refined sense of line and proportion, literally no step is left unplanned. As much as any cemetery in the world, Woodland is the leading example of what can be done to a cemetery. Woodland proves there can be death with dignity.

Woodland
Photo: j.meunier
Fast forward to 1994, the year Woodland Cemetery joined UNESCO’s World Heritage List. Far to the south of Stockholm in the countryside of Catalonia, a cemetery by another pair of architects, Enric Miralles and Carmen Pinós, also winners of a competition, opened after ten years of construction: Igualada Cemetery. It hasn’t been named a World Heritage Site, yet, but it’s young. Its day will come.

Igualada
Photo: jgeis
Named for a nearby village, Igualada exposes Catalonian sensibilities and reflects the Catalonian landscape. This is definitely not Sweden; the harsh aridity of the climate is not mitigated by moistening fogs and persistent drizzles. The deep pile and verdant vistas of receding greenscapes and somber forests are replaced by walls of loculi and gabion. Instead of ascending hills, one descend into valleys. Instead of trees, the entrance is guarded by cor-ten beams rusting askew. Interiors have the sense of having been carved out of the mountain rather than enfolded in the forest. It is a more strident nature than Woodland, yet it’s in the Woodland mold of using nature to express its purpose.

Igualada
Photo: marcteer
Burial customs differ from Catalonia to Sweden; the Mediterranean speaks a different language than does the Baltic. The dead are not interred permanently in the ground, but are instead stored in walls of loculi five tiers high, which are leased in renewable, usually, leases; but which, again usually, are, eventually, allowed to expire, after which the bones are removed to an ossuary and the loculi are reopened for leasing.

Igualada
Photo: Velcro
The dominant materials of Igualada are stone and concrete. Sometimes, as in the slanting loculi walls, the concrete is amazingly ephemeral; whereas interior spaces have the cool depth of massive blocks and shafts of light. Using gabion walls to define landscaped space was an interesting choice. Gabions are walls made of wire mesh enclosing rock, broken concrete, etc. Their life span is dependent on the integrity of their wire mesh. One is tempted to imagine a Mayanesque future of crumbled gabions sliding through ruptures in the wiring like rock rivers pouring from the mountainside. The cemetery is designed to pull the visitors through the natural environment and cause them to contemplate the circle of life. In that it repeats the goals of Woodland.

Igualada
Photo: marcteer
How different from Forest Lawn whose very purpose is disguised as a theme park. How appropriate that Forest Lawn should be brought to us by the land that brought us Disneyland. Most likely Igualada, like Woodland, is a municipal cemetery. One can hardly imagine a commercial cemetery lavishing that much attention and cost on landscaping. Cemeteries used to be a civic prerogative in this country, but it’s been a long time since any town I know sponsored one. We can’t even count on the Mason or the Odd Fellows, anymore. Ah well, we still have the VA.

But what if next time the city decided to put together a new park, it doubled as a cemetery. Might even help pay for it, no? Just a thought…

Igualada
Photo: Velcro
Coda
My thanks to my fellow Flickrdicks for providing the evocative photos of Forest Lawn, Woodland, and Igualada. Feel free to use my photos of, oh, say, Milo Gard. Or what the heck, Logtown.

Fried Egger

2011-06-21T06:43:00.000-07:00

I’m perhaps two-thirds through doing an inventory of interesting markers at Lone Fir Cemetery, the major pioneer cemetery here in Portland. Yesterday unearthed these two gems. The carving of the drowning man is easily the second most famous carving in the cemetery after the relief carvings of the Stephens. It’s pretty well known.

Fried Egger, on the other hand, was new to me. Hear tell his brother was a poacher.

Markers

2011-06-15T06:22:00.000-07:00

Mount Calvary Cemetery (Portland, OR)

Mountain View Cemetery (Oregon City)
The only serious bunch of cemetery aficionados I’ve run across is the Association of Gravestone Studies, (AGS) out of Greenfield, Massachusetts. If the truth be known, they’re a touch academic, but they’re harmless for all that. They put out an electronic newsletter, a quarterly bulletin, and an annual journal with articles such as “The Tombstones of the English East India Company Cemetery in Macao: A Linguistic Analysis” (Markers XXVI, John P. O’Regan). Given the nature of the beast, their annual meetings are in the East, but their long-time editor, inspiration, and mentor has been a fellow from the Willamette Valley, Richard Meyer, so the West has had at least some presence in the organization. The current Markers editor, June Hobbs, hails from Oklahoma, so the West still maintains a tenuous toehold in the group. I have only been a member for a couple years and have yet to meet another. For me joining was A) a way to support what the group was doing, and B) subscribing to the bulletin and journal. My money has been well spent.

Given the locus and academic composition of of the association, it’s not surprising that its focus is on antiquity and esoterica. It’s not that the modern world doesn’t exist; it’s that is has, for some reason, less draw than the past. Part of that reason, aside from the composition of its membership, is understood in the name of the organization: The Association for Gravestone Studies. It, pointedly, is not an association for the study of cemeteries, even though the study of the one is inseparable from the other. (There doesn’t seem to be an equivalent academic association devoted to cemeteries. If there is and I’ve missed it, please inform me.) It is, necessarily, a question of emphasis.

IOOF #110 Cemetery (Fossil, OR)
What that means, practically, is that their publications don’t have the range that I’d wish; nor do they cover, as thoroughly, modern practices and the sociology and geography of cemeteries. Mind you, this is not a fault but a result of their focus of interest. Fair enough. Other people do write about cemeteries, and each issue of Markers ends with “The Year’s Work in Cemetery and Gravestone Studies: An International Biography,” a thorough scouring of the available literature. Still, Markers itself remains, arguably, the best current (American) writing on cemeteries.

You don’t have to take my word for it, nor do you have to join the Association, to see for yourself. All back issues of Markers (2008 and before) are available online at the Internet Archive through the University of Massachusetts’ website.

That’s where I found Annette Stott’s informative article, “The Woodmen of the World Monument Program”, in Markers XX. It is, to date, the only detailed study of WoW monuments I’ve encountered (which certainly doesn’t mean that there aren’t others). Stott examined the files of the Pacific Jurisdiction, which is what the western branch of WoW is known as, in Denver, and pried from them a wealth of interesting information, including copies of the sample pictures send to the plethora of stone carvers who actually executed the works. That plus financial information on the amount, kind, and method of distribution of monetary contributions WoW made towards members’ markers clarifies why virtually no two of them are identical.

Laurel Grove Cemetery
Stott also brings to the table significant data on the early history and function of the Woodmen of the World (including its outgrowth from the Modern Woodmen of America). In their first iteration they were a much more complete fraternal organization in the Masonic/Odd Fellows tradition, hosting, among other things, annual cemetery clean-ups and unveilings of new monuments, complete with parades and marching bands.

WoW monuments were not without controversy, Stott points out. Some people saw them as blatant advertising, particularly since the WoW symbol was, generally, so prominently displayed on their tombstones; and some cemeteries attempted to ban the symbols outright, with little success. Although, since both the Masons and the Odd Fellows decorate their tombstones with their symbols, not to mention religions with their symbols—every bit as much advertising as the WoW symbol—why the Woodmen should have been singled out is unexamined. Were the Woodmen, for example, the only organization, other than the U.S. military, that contributed towards a member’s marker?

Ilwaco Cemetery
From inception, apparently, two types of tombstones were authorized: the iconic faux stump, or a more formal pedestal surmounted by a cloth-draped urn. I have nearly 400 WoW photos on Flickr and have yet to find a WoW cloth-draped urn, but the collection contains photos of a large diversity of other styles beside faux stumps. It needs to be ordered by type of monument and date. (It’s online; feel free.) Even though I try to be diligent in capturing images of all WoW monuments I encounter, because many of them are not as distinct as the stumps, many, inevitably, get missed. Unfortunately, other than the draped urns, Stott ignores the history of other designs. It’s tempting to ask what old files still exist at WoW offices?

Annette Stott opened the door to a prominent room in our cemeteries. She’s showed us where some of the treasures are hidden. Someone should come by and turn on a couple lights. There’s more there; I know there is.

Sparlin Cemetery

Up and Running

2011-06-10T11:33:00.000-07:00

Photo: David L. Minick

It makes me nervous. I don’t like reporting on could bes, wanna bes, maybes, and mights. I don’t like to toot a horn that hasn’t been made yet.

That would be Mad As the Mist and Snow , my lighthearted romp through the fields of the dead. In an unusual turnaround, the publisher, Ashland Creek Press, contacted me, not vice versa, and asked if I was still interested in publishing a book. I was still interested.

Initially we’d hoped to have it on the shelves by this coming Halloween, but that proved unnecessarily ambitious. Sometime this winter seems more likely, though we’re fairly well along. The publisher discovered me through this blog; hence the book is text driven, though there will be some photos. The bulk of the book are profiles and stories connected with some 235 Oregon cemeteries, perhaps a third of the population, divided into eighteen geographical regions. Most of the stories are hidden away on Flickr somewhere, but this will make them much more accessible.

The opening chunk of the tome, “Deep Thoughts,” are fifteen or sixteen modified essays from this blog. Again, while they’re all currently available in some form at this site, they’ll be much more convenient to find in the book and, hopefully, make a more coherent read.

The center of the book, “A Word Before You Go,” is an extensive selection of epitaphs from the DeadManTalking database of better than 1700 epitaphs. Most of those epitaphs are posted with their associated photo on Flickr, but finding them and making any order out of them would be a gargantuan task, without access to the database. The selection is arranged into a dozen separate (if overlapping) categories and is a broader than customary look at a region’s parting words.

So, does that qualify as an excuse for not having written anything here in forever?

We certainly hope so.

If you’ve been watching me on Flickr, you’ll have noticed a slowdown there, as well. There are many factors involved in that from weather, to proximity to cemeteries that I haven’t been to yet, to being in the middle of shooting all the interesting stuff in Lone Fir here in Portland. God only knows how long that will take me to finish. Not to mention “the book.” That’s taken up time.

The good news is that I’m getting a lot better on the banjo, though it’s still unlike any banjo you’ve ever heard. Think of it as rock an’ roll rhythm banjo. You know, Beattles, Rolling Stones, Leonard Cohen. Leonard Cohen?

Last Writes

2011-03-26T14:04:00.000-07:00

The following is draft 1, section 1 of an extended piece I'm doing on epitaphs. We've had a publisher sniffing around about publishing Mad as the Mist and Snow, which has prodded this effort. Keep watching. Hopefully, we'll test out more sections in the future.

Getting in the Last Word
It’s your last chance. Your absolutely last chance to say anything to the world. Amazingly, many—perhaps most—chose to ignore it; they say nothing. Not just the people who cremate themselves and get stuck on mantles or dumped into rivers, but many people who opt for cemetery burials are happy enough to settle for names and dates only, please. To be sure, lawn cemeteries and columbaria limit the opportunity for expression, but even folks purchasing uprights are often as not satisfied with “Never forgotten.” Oh yeah? Then how come there are no flowers on your grave, huh? So, thank God for all those folks who take one last chance to get in a piece of advice, a bon mot, or a simple little flippancy.

Epitaphs come in all shapes and sizes dependent upon whim and financial wherewithal. They cover the gamut of human expression. They have changed through time. As in all phases of cemetery adornment, the epitaph has undergone a great expansion in its role as a reflection of the deceased. I haven’t in this initial parsing selected for historical distribution of epitaph styles—I’ll leave that for another time—but even so I ended up with eleven categories; and that’s with leaving the vast majority of the collection undistributed. I have mostly ignored, for example, home-grown poetry and poetic allusions. No “professional” category. No tributes. None, in other words, of the categories which hold the largest number of exhibits.

Of the resulting categories, some I fairly well ignored, but of what was left—the easy pickings, as it were—there were plenty of nuggets. The Bible, needless-to-say, provided a good number of epitaphs. Certainly no other book is in the running. Shakespeare as a lump comes in a measly second place; although, all in all, more people choose non-Biblical quotes than Biblical for their tombstones (42 to 30, in this case), not including six for the Bard.

A few categories should be wiped out or merged, but the big ones stick out like ill-packed suitcases with all manner of wardrobe trailing from their seams. If one surfs the Net in search of epitaph collections, one finds there are, essentially, only two categories out there: celebrities and humor (if humor can contain the bizarre). Rodney Dangerfield’s “There goes the neighborhood” is a classic example of a tombstone covering both. What differentiates people who write amusements on their headstone versus those who offer uplifting advice or tout their glories is well beyond this humble researcher and appears to present some research difficulties. In this glance at the last writes, we’ll cast a broad net.

Indeed, one of the first difficulties is in determining who wrote an epitaph: the deceased or the survivors? In some cases, such as where the erection of the tombstone precedes the death of the future occupants, it’s usually evident that the epitaph is the choice of the pre-deceased (can I say that?). Likewise, monuments erected long after a person’s death are usually inscribed with words of the monument erectors, not the person being glorified. In between are a lot of gray areas. For the most part, though, I think people choose their own epitaphs. At least the ones in this collection; and I suspect this collection would be mimicked across most of the country. I think people like to feel they have at least a little bit of their death under control; that it’s their death and not that of an unknown undertaker or priest. All of us, I think, feel a touch like William Hurt’s mother, Claire Luce (1923-1971, Fort Harney Cemetery) , whose sarcophagus reads: “Don’t coddle me into the grave. I’m/ Going to march into it. I’m a man,/ After all.” We want the memory of dignity.

Whoever writes an epitaph, it remains a way for the deceased to speak from beyond the grave, to maintain contact with the living. Once a sentiment is chiseled into stone, one can have reasonable hopes of it surviving for a couple hundred years, whether it makes sense or not. If you have something to say, this is the time to say it.

A small word of warning:
The epitaph database doesn’t stop at the Oregon border. For that matter, neither does the photographic database, but we won’t get into that. But when I sifted the database for epitaphs fitting the categories of interest, I just took them as they came sans regard for origins, provided they came from the Oregon Territory; I’ve eschewed Texas and Wisconsin. I didn’t think you’d want to miss a side-slapper just because it came from Weiser. Think of it as a nod to the cultural unity of the Territory.

Die Laughing
The line between humor and inexplicability is thin. It’s hard sometimes to tell if one is laughing because an epitaph is funny or because one is wondering, “What the hell?” (Which is precisely what Glen Meyers [1980-1999] of the aforementioned Weiser, Fairview Cemetery, ID, said: “What the hell…?,” which he preceded with “Where the sidewalk ends…/ True life begins.” Mr. Meyers was fond of ellispses.) Humor can be intentional—“Gone for the bait” (Mildred Long, 1931-1993, Cliffside Cemetery); inadvertent—“Stan Shattuck was/ hung by mistake” (IOOF Cemetery, Coburg); or ambiguous—“They said she was too different/ and she wrote too many tunes” (Alice Spear, 1923-1989, Coos River Cemetery). It can be gentle—“Raised four beautiful daughters/ with only one bathroom and/ still there was love” (Theodore, 1931-2008, & Nedine, 1932-1997, Barnhouse, Mitchell Cemetery); or irreverent—“I’m going to miss me” (Porter Payne, 1921-2005, Union Cemetery, Union).

In some cases it takes two to make a joke. Couples coordinate their epitaphs. Herman (d. 1986) and Agnes (d. 1992) Baxter, buried in Mt. Calvary Catholic Cemetery, joined their thoughts in death:

His: “On the Highway to heaven”
Hers: “Drive like hell and you’ll get there.”

The Lehmans of Havurah Shalom, Seymour (d. 1990) and Edith (d. 1994) supplied their own couplet:

His: “You’re on your own”
Hers: “Not any more”

Sometimes funny borders on patronizing. What are we to make of Mary Ogden (1920-2000, Odd Fellows Cemetery, Dayton) who leaves us with “It’s your mother”? Don’t we feel she’s still standing over us watching our every move? Is our curfew still in force? Surely she’s friends with the anonymous person in Coles Valley Cemetery, who pontificates, “Blessed are those who clean up.” Avoid their coffee klatches on Monday mornings. In such cases, the epitaph slumps towards the kvetch. Consider the lament of Edith Porter (d. 2000, Kesser Israel Cemetery): “I have three wonderful sons, It’s too bad you couldn’t keep me a little longer.” Guilt from the beyond. Or the more general observation from Gertie Bunnel (1912-1983, Estacada IOOF Cemetery): “Who should live so long”? Or the anonymous grumble from Lone Fir, Portland, “This wasn’t in my schedule book,” which isn’t dissimilar from Jan Peckam’s (1946-1999, Union Cemetery, Cedar Mills) irritation: “It’s always something.” How about the light-weight puffery of Patricia (1928-2003, Lone Oak Cemetery, Stayton): “I’d rather be shopping at Nordstoms”? There are two other “I’d rather be shopping[s],”—no Nordstoms—in the database. Tombstones mentioning corporations are uncommon but not unheard of. Robin Boon (1913-2004, Aumsville Cemetery) brings us another example: “With the Lord, enjoying a good cup of Yuban.” Does Yuban know they have this free advertising? And is Robin so sure she’s drinking it with the Lord? There may be more hot water elsewhere.

One of the more entertaining and quizzical “corporate” epitaphs doesn’t even mention the company or product. All it gives us is the first line of its advertising jingle, one that has already disappeared from the media world long ago. Eino Kangas (1932-1994, Union Cemetery, Union) keeps Alka-Seltzer alive with:

Plop plop
fizz fizz
Oh what a relief it is

Advice doesn’t necessarily come in the form of a kvetch. The Dohrns of Ocean View Cemetery Richard (1940-205) and Colleen (b. 1941) urge us that “Life is uncertain, eat dessert first”; and Mathew Beecher (1952-2001, Tualatin Plains Presbyterian Church Cemetery) quotes Yogi Berra, who opined, “Always go to other people’s funerals. Otherwise they/ won’t go to yours.”

Epitaphs are, of course, as much a reflection of popular culture as anything else. Just because one is going to be dead forever doesn’t mean their sentiments can’t be topical. Arguably, the currently most popular epitaph flippancy, “I told you I was sick,” can be found in our locale on Gloria Martin’s (1926-2002) grave in Robert Bird Cemetery. Indeed, the catch phrase is a popular resource for epitaphs. Charlo (love that name) Dick (1953-2006, Brainard Cemetery) uses a line I’ve seen attributed to an atheist, although I wouldn’t go that far: “All dressed up and no place to go.” Dawn Vocé (1954-2004, Stearns Cemetery) leaves us with the amusing but ambiguous “You put your right foot in”; while Kristie Pergin (1976-1992, Woodville Cemetery) assures us that “The phone must be for you.” What do all these people mean? If you want ambiguous, ponder Barbara Lockwood (1944-2007, Joseph Cemetery): “Barbara stopped here.” Timothy Wilke (1973-2004, Finley-Sunset Hills Cemetery) summed it up best: “Don’t cry Mom/ I’m fine/ It’s only money.” And in case you think you escaped, Arthur Conrad (1947-198, Mountain View Cemetery, View, WA) leaves us with a cheery, “See you soon, maybe tomorrow…”

Patriotism is rarely amusing, but loyalties can put a smile on ones face and they certainly speak to regionalism. David Williams (b. 1922, Phillips Cemetery) may be buried in Portland exurbia, but his heart remains “For God, Country, and Old Wazzu”; Wazzu being the affectionate handle for Washington State University. Other epitaphs evoke the spirit of place indirectly. The epitaph for Claude (b. 1922) and Frances (1923-1998) Friend in Scottsburg Cemetery could have come from anywhere, but its sentiment is surely rural and even forested: “Tried to leave the woodpile a little higher than we found it.” Trees come into play in the epitaph for Jim Everts (1940-1999, Aumsville Cemetery), whose epitaph, “Tree hugger/ ‘left town’ 1999,” implies a conservationist bent. And this anonymous epitaph from Long Creek Cemetery which covers place, profession, and family

Here lies a town girl who became
a ranchers [sic] wife and right hand
A passionate mother. A lover of
family
A promoter of womens [sic] education
and a shopper
Knew I would be asked
Yes Honey I will get the gate

I’d be remiss if I finished this section without mentioning another anonymous soul, this time from Condon Cemetery who moved right into the denial stage: “Do not disturb/ Taking a nap”; unlike the realist Fred Barnes (1913-1993, Ridgefield [WA] Cemetery) who admitted:

I have made many trades in my life,
But I think I went in the hole on this one.

Yet if one wanted regionalism, ambiguity, poetic allusions, and humor all in one package, one could do worse than visit Edward Nielsen (1961-1997, Bay Center Cemetery, WA) whose epitaph reads, “On the edge of passing days”; yet continues on the back of the stone to read:

I rather thought Paradise would be like a library

Times Arrow
Decendant [sic] of Chief Huckswelt
Weelapa Tribe of the Chinook’s [sic]

Death will always come out of season

Movies You're Dying to See

2011-03-17T19:51:00.000-07:00

This is a quick in-and-out.

Ha! You thought I was dead. Unless, of course, you follow me on Flickr. I'm still putting up pictures. I haven't been doing much writing of late, but that may change as a publisher has come sniffing. In the meantime, a resumption of a couple columns I did in the past listing movies containing cemetery scenes. This edition of the list starts a little over two years ago and is in the order of seeing them, oldest at the top. The most recent movie on the list, The Sicilian Girl, has an extensive night scene in a cemetery beautifully lit by candles.

Transsiberian
The Woodsman
The Edge of Heaven
Moving Midway
Twilight Samurai
Genghis Blues
Tailor of Panama
Walt with Bashur
Sin Nombre
The Last Enemy
Cherry Blossoms
Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Unstrung Heroes
Bus 174
The Bad Lieutenant: New Orleans
Eyes without a Face
Young and the Dead
Never Forever
Cloud Nine
Lilian's Story
Paris
Shutter Island
Amores Perros
On a Clear Day
Common Ground
Lars and the Real Girl
Winter's Bones
Metal: A Headbanger's Journey
As In Heaven
Thin Red Line
Welcome
Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia
The Parking Lot Movie
The Girl Who Played with Fire
Lomax: The Song Hunter
Jar City
Welcome to the Rileys
The Tillman Story
Which Way Home
The Sicilian Girl

Break out the popcorn!

The Lord Is My Cowboy

2010-09-08T11:54:00.000-07:00

There is, arguably, no American image (Uncle Sam notwithstanding) more iconic than that of the cowboy. Along with the equality myth, the myth of the West has done as much to shape our self-image as any other vision. Clint Eastwood and John Wayne, for good or ill, have shaped the world’s image of American as much or more than anybody. And jeans, don’t forget, say “cowboy” anywhere in the world, and are proud of it. You can’t unconsciously wear a Stetson in Maine, much less in Kuala Lumpur, without drawing snickers (as in, “all hat and no horse”); but you can wear Levis in Lithuania without drawing a glance. Everybody can wear a pair of jeans and feel a tad more “with it,” not to mention comfortable.

I’ve previously put together a gallery of tombstones with a Western motif. This time I’ve focused on the singular image of the cowboy. I suspect one might find a cowboy image engraved on a tombstone anywhere in the United States, but the legitimacy of the image doesn’t manifest itself until the Great Plains and the West. Out here the cowboy still exists and still looks pretty much like he (usually a he) always did, excepting that you’re as apt to find him on an ATV or a pickup as on a horse. Without flogging a dead horse (gee, that phrase sounds familiar) too much, it has to be pointed out that these monuments are all recent. We’ve had cowboys here for 150 years, but you’d never know it by gravestone markers; as far as they’re concerned, cowboys just arrived.

With only a cursory glance, you’ll notice a number of trends and/or common themes/motifs. Most noticeable is the large number of handmade monuments. Several of Oregon’s most distinctive grave markers have a cowboy theme. If one is going to go to all the trouble of cutting out a marker from sheet-metal, it is reasoned, it might as well say something.

Inevitably, any tombstone image conveys more information than simply the person’s visage, if only information about hair styles and a cultural reluctance to display more; but cowboy images offer the viewer an entire world of extraneous data.

For ease of identification, fortunately, the cowboy is universally recognized by his hat and his horse. There is an entire accompaniment of clothing, gear, and tack which go along with the hat and horse image, but those are the two elements that are iconic and are almost always present.

The image of the cowboy is often paired with an image of his work-place, the vast Western landscape. To the extent that all people are molded by their surroundings, the dramatic landforms of the West are constantly part of its peoples’ self images. It’s why for so many of us we had no choice but to follow the allure and climb aboard the Oregon Trail. The reproduction of the landscape on tombstones is faithful enough to local conditions that one can often get a good idea of location from the simple sketches available.

Working details of a cowboy’s life are often found among the etchings, including the kind of stock being tended. I have one etching of a horse leading a pack train, and several of bucking broncs. One image I throw in with the cowboy images is of a homemade cutout of a galloping rider beneath crossed Winchesters. We know they’re Winchesters, because that’s what’s written beneath the rider. (That rider, I’ll confess, is most likely a Pony Express rider, but the image is indistinguishable from that of the cowboy.) Dogs are often depicted, as well, showing not only their companionship but are included among the working images. I’m not aware of dogs being a part of the Plains/Texas tradition, but they’re integral to stock management in the Oregon Territory.

The cowboy is often accompanied by a cowgirl, most assuredly his wife. I also have in my collection a photo-ceramic of one saucy/defiant cowgirl, sans cowboy but avec hat. A lot of women do work cattle these days, but they tend to dress with less panache than the men or than the images imply; more like contemporary Indian women, synthetic quilted jackets from REI. Everyone looking a little like the Michelin Man.

You’ll note one photo-ceramic of an Indian cowboy. I’ve probably gotten into as much trouble in Oregon over what to call cowboys as I have over anything else. The first was around a communal dinner table in French Glen where it was explained to me by a ranch hand that they were “buckaroos in these here parts,” thank you, not cowboys. Later I had an equally impassioned Native-American explain to me that her people were Indian cowboys, by God, not common buckaroos. Ignorance, they will tell you, is no excuse.

Religion isn’t strongly represented in combination with cowboys, although it does crop up sporadically; one of my favorites being of a cowboy riding herd on a mixed bunch of cows and calves, and carries the epitaph, “The Lord is my shepherd.” There’s a certain irony in a cowboy surrendering himself to a sheep-herder. I’m not sure I’d want to put that on my tombstone.

Some of the most poignant and touching markers are ones with no human image at all. How can you not love the Cowboy Pastor, knowing that he’s “Loved By God & Family”? Or how can you not be moved by the single spur imbedded in cement or the ubiquitous coil of rope. Many an old cowboy boot has found its final resting place in a graveyard, as well.

For poignancy, though, it’s hard to top the simple concrete marker in quintessential Camp Polk Cemetery, one with plastic lettering pressed into cement and an outlined sketch of a hat. No name, just the declaration: “Cowboy/ 19 yrs/Horse Kicked.”

It happened just like that. Snap!

Random Shots: Lone Fir

2010-08-20T07:20:00.000-07:00

While waiting for someone to burst through the door exclaiming, “Hey, we gotta publish this stuff,”—meaning, of course, my 15,000 cemetery photos—and having run out of near-by cemeteries to add to my list, I’ve begun inventorying the art and epitaphs on the monuments at Lone Fir Cemetery, Portland’s premier pioneer graveyard. To no ones surprise, it’s going to take a while; there’s a lot of good stuff in Lone Fir. It’s one thing to slowly read all the markers, it’s a whole other matter to locate them on the plot map, much less write them up, enter them in the database, match the photos to location & text, etc.

In the process of shooting this new series of marker-specific pictures, the hidden photographer within me can’t resist the occasional “mood” shot, just because it’s there. Here are three from yesterday, August 19.

The praying hands and the address book were found objects as I read down the rows, but I was drawn to the Miller Beer can by the actions of another visitor as I went on my rounds. I don’t know that I’ve ever been to Lone Fir when I wasn’t accompanied by a few, if not a bunch, of people, and cars routinely drive down its alleyways; but everything’s always pretty low-key. The most constant activity are the Russian ladies hand-watering their gardens, so it was noticeable when a vintage blue pickup piled high with plastic garbage bags came roaring down the main drag of the cemetery, did a T-turn at the end of the roadway and roared back to park on the edge of the grass. The driver got out leaving someone in the passenger seat and went over to an open spot under the trees. I could see he has something in his hand and he was doing a lot of talking, to whom I had no idea. He bent over and brushed clean whatever he was looking at. He didn’t take too much time; in a bit he headed back to his truck and roared off.

Needless-to-say, as soon as he was gone, I headed that way and took the shot you see here. No, it hadn’t been raining; that’s beer on Mr. McCleoud’s marker. Although, considering it’s Miller, it brings to mind Monty Python’s observation that American beer is like making love in a canoe: it’s fucking close to water.

Visions of Lone Fir

2010-07-28T20:45:00.000-07:00

Kay and I were among the last people to secure plots in Lone Fir Cemetery. If we’ve discombobulated our lives, at least we got death right.

Thanks to an intersection of forces and interests, Lone Fir is returning to what cemeteries were supposed to be about in the first place: edification and entertainment. When cemeteries were first proposed in the early 19th century, the idea was that glorious monuments in a park-like setting would induce people to high-minded civic behavior. And for a time, cemeteries did just that: they enticed people out of the cities to stroll through the trees and monuments to, if not always civic leaders, at least rich people. They were known as “garden cemeteries” or “rural cemeteries,” on account of their being plotted far into the countryside (long since engulfed by urban growth everywhere). They were so popular that towns like Portland and Eugene built streetcar lines specifically for them. They were so popular, in fact, that towns eventually began building cemeteries without any bodies in them, at all. They called them “parks.”

What an idea! And as the park movement spread, people forgot that they were supposed to go out to the cemetery for a good time. Indeed, in early New England, cemeteries were often the only place in town big enough to hold all the living people, forget about the dead ones. Cemeteries tried to recoup by making their new cemeteries look like the new parks: big expanses of flat lawn, only they didn’t encourage picnicking or frisbee. They succeeded in making them look like parks, but they killed off the reason for visiting them: what’s to see?

In the meantime, many traditional, now urban cemeteries languished from neglect and vandalism. Lone Fir was lucky: it didn’t languish. It held on as neighborhoods grew around it and the city pushed miles beyond. The lone fir was joined by a veritable arboretum, which now sports its own guide. It was lucky in that it held enough quirks and oddities, beginning with the almost life-size relief carvings of the founding couple, to keep up a continual flow of traffic. True, the war memorial lost its statue, half the heritage roses in the rose garden had disappeared, the mausoleums were crumbling, but still it hung on in the hearts of Portlanders. Maybe it languished a little.

It was the hearts of Portland, though, that spurred the revival. Lone Fir is back and it’s better than ever, thanks to the citizens of this town who have an inordinate love of the burg going beyond all reason. They admit that there are other nice cities in the world, ones dripping with sophistication—Paris, say—but, ah, they sigh, they aren’t Portland. Which, no matter how you look at it, is true. I can guarantee you, Paris is not Portland. Nor the other way around. But the first force to resurrect Lone Fir was the general citizenry of the community. Portlanders simply like the place and are willing to put their wallets where their hearts are.

One way that manifested itself was by the formation of an advocacy group, the Friends of Lone Fir, which has taken a vigorous lead in preserving and promoting the civic space. They are the people who have put on the shows, lead the tours, and personally gotten out there and spruced up the place. Without their active and watchful eye, perhaps none of this might have been accomplished. What’s truly amazing is that they aren’t a group of octogenarians keeping watch over their future home; they’re young people (okay, okay, there are some elder statespeople there) who have already caught the Lone Fir fever. There are seriously delirious people in that group. Portland is blessed by being a magnet, not only for young people, but a magnet for a particular class of young people: the I-can-do-that creative kind. Not only have they crept into the Friends of Lone Fir, but they’ve tapped community creativity to, among other things, produce a CD of songs written specifically for the cemetery by a bevy of local musicians (not to mention a comic book). And we have seriously delirious local musicians here, as well, as you might imagine. Lone Fir was lucky in being born in what was to become at the turn of the 21st century the locus of Portland’s youth infestation, the Eastside.

A Lone Fir quirk that particularly delights Eastside denizens and which has provided a impetus for the cemetery’s reemergence is the popularity of an historical vignette, concerning one Dr. Hawthorne, who is buried there, along with many of his patients. It’s helpful to know that Hawthorne Ave., not too far from Lone Fir, was the epicenter for the gentrification of the entire Eastside and which has now engulfed the entire city. This was where the hip, young kids moved to after the Alphabet Blocks got priced out from underneath them. Hawthorne was, and still emotionally is, their street.

But that’s just the half of it. The other half is that Hawthorne Ave. used to be named Asylum Ave. after an insane asylum at its eastern terminus. The good doctor was the head of that asylum and his patients were buried in unmarked graves along with him. It’s just the sort of story that young goths would like. How could they not love Lone Fir?

Not all the unknowns were asylum inmates, though. They were joined by transfers from earlier, more centrally located cemeteries and by scores of Chinese. The local Chinese community has provided the second big push to renovate the cemetery, even though most of the Chinese remains have long since been returned to China, at their behest. What China didn’t behest were the bones of the women and children; they weren’t important and could be left bereft in foreign soil. It is the modern, local Chinese community (in the form of the Chinese Benevolent Association), whose sensibilities have grown with the times, that has pushed for greater recognition of the Chinese contribution to our culture and to Lone Fir, and wants to honor those women and children who are still here. And is, perhaps, a touch sad that the men aren’t here still, too.

For a long time the denizens of Block 14, where the Chinese and asylum patients are buried, was under the footprint of a three-story office building housing the agency, Metro, which oversees the local pioneer cemeteries, as well as a host of other responsibilities of, arguably, greater importance. Fortunately, the spawning of Friends of Lone Fir and the awakening interest of the local Chinese community coincided with a need for Metro to find more space and vacate the building. Once they were out and the building gone, planning could begin in earnest for a memorial at Block 14 for those once-forgotten communities. We’re in the middle of that process right now.

Part of the process was to have Block 14 blessed by the priests of a local Buddhist temple, which occurred on a recent July Sunday, along with the dedication of three “heritage trees,” and the showing of two documentary films, one of them about the Chinese workers and their families. That plus a little music. Wouldn’t be Portland without a little music.

It was a beautiful late afternoon. The temperature was kissing 90, but it was cool under the tall timber (the lone fir still stand, if no longer alone). I’d guess there were better than two-hundred people there at its busiest and it was comforting to see them wandering among the gravestones and laying their blankets out on a gentle slope down to a temporary stage in the Firemen’s section. It felt like home.

I had to get up early the next day, so I skipped out before the twilight showing of the films. As I was leaving, people were still trickling into the cemetery. Coming to the last crossroad before the exit, I happened to glance at a stone in one corner. It was from 1918, so I’d walked past it uncounted times. Delicately carved in a rustic tradition of rough-hewed stone, peeling signage, and ivy leaves, it’s small and unobtrusive. Not a stone that commands attention. One would hardly notice that it carries an epitaph, which isn’t carved into the face of the stone, as is common, but into the face of the pedestal upon which the small stone stands. Furthermore, the epitaph is hard to read without paying close attention and probably just says, “Too well loved to be forgotten,” anyway. The sort of stone you can pass by forever without really seeing it.

Nonetheless, once I noticed there was an epitaph, I was compelled to decipher it. Mind you, I’m having cataract surgery next month and everything is somewhat of a blur right now, so simple things like reading weathered epitaphs have become a bit of a chore. I had to crouch down and get close, which in itself is a chore, for a good look. The deceased was young Jess Nudsen (which Kay points out was probably “Knudsen”) who died in 1918 at the age of nineteen. I’ll probably never know how Jess died, which is just as well, knowing might remove some of the mystery; and part of the deep attraction of cemeteries is the wide sense of wonder one is so often left with upon viewing a particularly poignant marker. As it is, I was left with one of the most haunting epitaphs in my entire collection:

Some where, some time,
We’ll understand.

The Cemetery Dog Barks

2010-07-24T14:36:00.000-07:00

Drewsey Cemetery
Ah, the speed at which things come and go.

My wife brought home from a trip a guide book to Colorado cemeteries published by the august house, Caxton Press of Caldwell, Idaho. Before I got a chance to thoroughly study the book or write down its particulars (like the author’s name or the title of the book), she shipped it back to the friend from whom she’d borrowed it. But that’s not essential to what I have to say.

Some years back when I first had visions of writing a guide to the cemeteries of Oregon, Caxton was the first publisher to which I turned. I got a brief letter back from them saying, thanks, but I didn’t have any stories about who was buried in the cemeteries; that’s what they wanted.

Oh.
Juntura Pioneer Cemetery 1888

The book Kay brought home bore that out. Their guide to Colorado cemeteries was in reality a collection of stories about some of the people buried in some of Colorado’s cemeteries. Other cemeteries were lumped together in lists, sans addresses. There were driving instructions to the highlighted cemeteries and usually a short description before plunging into the stories. They certainly accomplished what they set out to do, if their letter to me was any indication. They got their collection of stories. But it’s as if someone set out to write a guide to the famous buildings of New York and ended up talking about the tenants. It’s a fine collection of little vignettes, but it tells one hardly anything about the cemeteries. A guide to them it definitely is not.

And it was practically without photos. Which, I suppose makes sense, if you’re really interested in local biographies, but is less than helpful in a purported guide to particular landscapes. I can accept that a publisher isn’t interested in cemetery guides, but it’s more disturbing when they sell a product whose contents don’t jibe with its title. Simply because one has arranged a batch of local histories by cemetery location, does not make the stories a guide to those cemeteries. I don’t think Caxton Press is being disingenuous by falsely titling their book; I sincerely think they don’t understand the difference.

It’s a slippery point. Not many people appreciate the difference between the cemetery and who’s buried in it. One is not the other. History is no substitute for place.

The point gets blurred, though to a lesser extent, in the pages of the AGS Quarterly, “The Bulletin of the Association For Gravestone Studies,” and their annual journal Markers, as well. As their name implies, they concentrate on the stones themselves, though they’re not above dipping into the local history vat. They, too, rarely give much consideration to the cemeteries themselves and overweight their entries with discussion of stone design, history, etc. The geography and societal place of cemeteries is seldom broached.

Except here, of course, where we plod along building up the database so one day someone can come along and say, “Holy Cow! Where did this mountain come from?”

From the cow.
Riverside Cemetery (Payette, ID)

Hurt by Time

2010-06-05T18:12:00.000-07:00

Fort Harney was a U.S. Army fort operated in Central Oregon for a few years in the late 19th century to protect the invading Americans from reprisals by the former inhabitants. If you look it up on the Internet, you’ll invariably find the sentence: “Today, nothing remains of Fort Harney except a small cemetery.” The cemetery does exist, but aside from the name, there’s nothing left of the original residents. If anyone rests here from the days of the fort, they’ve long since been lost to the high desert winds.

The people who lived here prior to the invasion were the Paiutes. Waging a campaign against them was akin to waging war on the beggars of Aumsville. The inhabitants of this vast basin and range country were as poor as their surroundings and they never stood a chance against the well equipped U.S. Army They are a tribe that may well have materially benefitted by the arrival of the Americans; although, granted, that’s no excuse. The place is still pretty much uninhabited. Nearby Burns, the largest community in the southeast quadrant, has slightly over 2500 people (and that’s after losing 13% of its inhabitants since 2000). Southeastern Oregon still technically qualifies as “the frontier,” as so few people live there; it never filled up like the rest of the West did.

All that being said and despite the fact that the fort disappeared well over a hundred years ago, the cemetery, small and minimally tended as it is, still attracts new interments. Not often, mind you, but now and again. In that it’s not unlike hundreds of other pioneer cemeteries in the Territory. Being an ex-Army fort cemetery, of course, gives it a certain cachet, but not enough, apparently, to draw many visitors. What makes it not just unusual but unique are a pair of new, above ground, granite sarcophagi side by each on matching granite slabs. These were not cheap!

The one was primarily unadorned with only a name, Catherine Rogers, inscribed on the top and her dates on the side. The other, though, had writing on the top and three sides. The top gave her name, “Claire Isabel McGill Luce/ Born Andrews, Ore., Oct. 19, 1923/ Died Fishers Island, N.Y., June 22, 1971”; and on one side it said, “Wife of Henry Luce III/ Mother of Kenneth D. O‘Sullivan/ William M. Hurt and James H. Hurt”; while one end held the epitaph “The truth shall/ make you free.” Fair enough. The other side held a somewhat longer epitaph: “Don’t coddle me into the grave. I’m/ going to march into it. I’m a man,/ after all.”

Without getting into why Ms McGill/Luce should refer to herself as a “man,” anyone with a little knowledge can see some intriguing questions pop up. Forget William Hurt for a moment and concentrate on Ms Luce. Indeed, Henry Luce ran the Time magazine empire and, indeed, he married a woman named Claire. But, and this is a big BUT, there was something wrong here. For one thing, I thought her name was spelled “Clare,” and that her middle name was “Booth,” right? Clare Booth Luce; she was famous, was ambassador to Italy, ate LSD early. So, where did these other names come from, “Claire Isabel McGill”?

And how does William Hurt fit into all of this? William Hurt, the actor?

I had to wait until I got home to ferret around on the Net and I found myself shaking my head for a couple days. Clearly I was missing some crucial elements.

Turns out I was right but uninformed; I didn’t know the half of it. Turns out the Henry Luce I was thinking of, the one who founded Time and married Clare Booth, was Henry II. Being as unimaginative as his dad when it came to naming kids, he named his boy Henry III, and it was this Henry, chip off the old block, who went on to also steer Time and marry a Claire—almost, eh? This Claire, though, had a few—ahem—relationships prior to Henry, one of which produced the well-known actor.

As for Andrews, Ore., it doesn’t exist. At least not any longer. The last building burned in 1996.

Now, aren’t you glad you asked?

The Big Empty

2010-04-29T17:44:00.000-07:00

In the trade (whichever trade that is) this is known as a teaser. Coming attractions, as it were.

In any event, I just got back from a road trip through far eastern Oregon and the southwestern edge of Idaho. Some thirty cemeteries. It will take me months to up-load them, much less comment on them.

In the meantime, I give you a few road shots from same. Southeastern Oregon is still technically "the frontier" as less than three person per square mile live there. A lot less. As an Idaho friend commented, she lived next to one of the darkest parts of the continental U.S. At night, of course. You get close to feeling you can breath out there.

I like to say I'm a Road Scholar (say it fast) and go to Two-Lane University. These are shots of my classrooms.

This final shot is of the Oregon Trail. The ruts you see are several feet deep, each large enough to accommodate a wagon. There are two ruts, side-by-each. You wanted to be in one of the lead wagons.

Styx and Stones

2010-03-13T08:51:00.000-08:00

Antelope Cemetery (Wasco County)
I call them the Guardians of the River Styx, but really, they just guard the cemeteries. None of the interred speaks Egyptian; nor can they read hieroglyphics; and frankly, people with dogs’ heads scare them a little (not to mention lions with people’s heads). For the most part, they’re content to stay where they’re buried; and, though nothing bothers them much, they do like the companionship the “protectors” provide. Furthermore, because the guardians are awake during the day (naps excepted), they can transfer gossip and tidbits to the departed as they pass in the gloaming.

The guardians are also content to stay where they are, though they’ve been known to change locales now and again. Shannon Applegate in Among the Headstones mentions a doll that shifted from one grave to that of a newer arrival and implied that the living were responsible for the migration, but I’m not convinced. I’m not privy to what the doll saw, but I don’t think it’s beyond believing that it noticed that the new person might need some company. Dolls can be sensitive that way, and the guardians in general take it as their responsibility to provide orientation services to the newcomers. (If people were more aware of the stresses interment can have on the departed, perhaps they’d be more inclined to avoid lawn cemeteries that don’t allow for guardians to mitigate ones arrival; but that’s another subject.)

Pioneer Masonic Cemetery (Grants Pass)
The stalwart troop of guardians offered here all come from recently visited cemeteries, but could be increased by hundreds with diligent research through the Dead Man Talking database. All in all, they are a typical, if sprightly, bunch. Guardians are by nature a friendly cohort and this group is no exception, save for the cat who maintains a feline aloofness and a certain prickliness. When any real defense of the graveyard is called for, she’s the one who’s called upon.

Milo Gard Cemetery
The blue cherub on the rock thinks she would have made a much better guardian had she been born a mermaid instead, but she’s come to accept being a flower child.

Bonanza Cemetery
The critter in the cage has no idea why he’s imprisoned there—he swears he did nothing—and thinks it’s for the birds.

Pioneer Masonic Cemetery (Grants Pass)
The bear in the bag thinks he should be so lucky as the critter. At least the critter can see.

Eastwood/IOOF Cemetery (Medford)
The sleeping cherub dreams it’s sleeping.

Odd Fellows Cemetery (Grants Pass)
And so the stories go. Each guardian has one. Or two. (Don’t think about asking the deer about his eye.)

Pioneer Masonic Cemetery (Grants Pass)
I have no doubt that the spirits that inhabit a graveyard are ones that I put there. But spirits only exist in the mind of the believer, anyway, which is another way of saying that belief keeps them alive. If you or I think that Uncle Charlie’s spirit still hangs around the cemetery, and if we believe that’s the best place for us to get Uncle Charlie’s perspective on whatever, then Uncle Charlie is still there. Even if only you and I have any idea what that means. That’s enough for us. We can go home quieted and instructed; Uncle Charlie gives good advice.

The guardians, bless their hearts, watch over Charlie.

And you.

Deer Creek Cemetery
Notabene:
Not all of the cemeteries from which these images were taken have been uploaded to Flickr yet, though it shouldn't be too long. A couple of them, Logtown and Laurel in particular, are outstanding rural graveyards. You could easily blow a weekend on them.

Logtown Cemetery

From Filler to Post

2010-02-20T18:52:00.000-08:00

A quick note to reassure readers that I still exist and have not taken my work too seriously and disappeared neath the ground.

Unfortunately, as far as cemeteries are concerned, not only has playing the banjo eaten considerably into my camera time, but it's been joined by a spurt of "product development." I realize that at my age product development seems as reasonable as playing the banjo, but seeing as how that hasn't stopped me, yet…

Regardless, the result is that I'm only half-way through production of a test line, and it will take me some months more to finish. And of course, if by any miracle the product is a success, I would hope to be busy for the foreseeable future.

The good news is that I just got back from a three-day swing though southern Oregon, having taken some 600 photos. I got lucky when I hit the Applegate wine route, which leads to some of the best pioneer cemeteries in the state. The scenery is remote; comfortably gorgeous; and populated by a curious mixture of vintners, aging hippies cum organic gardeners, and conspiracy-guided survivalists. A man could live down here!

And, for that matter, so could a woman!

There's more than a little California in the Siskiyous, the mountains which dominate the southwestern quadrant of our state: climate, if nothing else.

But when you combine the banjo/product/family/work demands with the time it takes to clean up and comment on 600 pictures, you'll appreciate that it will be a while yet before there's a real posting to this blog.

In the words of the mystical queen of the corporate phone message: "Please don't hang up; you're call is important to us. A blog-writer will be with you shortly."

We appreciate your patience.

Brave New World

2010-01-02T20:16:00.000-08:00

Old Agency Cemetery
The suddenly-he’s-everywhere Spokane writer Sherman Alexie observed recently on Terri Gross’s NPR radio show, Fresh Air, that he didn’t come to terms with being a Native-American in America until he understood himself to be, like everyone else, an immigrant here. It was the only answer to his/the Indians’ angst.

Hot Springs Cemetery
The truth is, of course, that we are all immigrants wherever we are. Even if we live in the Oldevai Gorge, we can be sure that our ancestors used to live elsewhere. We can also be sure that at one time our ancestors were run over and enslaved by their enemies and had their land and women stolen away. (We can take comfort, though, in knowing that all of our direct ancestors survived long enough to have children.) Fortunately, for most of us, it happened so long ago that we don’t remember it. The Indians, on the other hand, have vivid memories. If not always accurate. What happened to the Indians at the hands of the white people was no worse than what they afflicted upon each other. The Indians were just as willing to enslave or annihilate their neighbors as the next people, and were just as willing to forget they’d ever done so.

Agency Mission Cemetery

Agency Mission Cemetery
And they moved around, too, just like everyone else. They were not fixed entities when the Europeans arrived on the scene. The Sioux, the Lakota and Dakota warriors of the plains, the great Sioux Nation? They come from the North Woods, from Wisconsin, which is rife with places names bearing the word “Sioux”: Sioux Creek, Sioux Prairie. Names next door to places named “Chippewa,” from the tribe that displaced them, also known as the Ojibwa. I know this because I grew up there and the displacement of the Sioux by the Chippewa occurred after the arrival of the whites, who had displaced the Ojibwa from the East Coast, starting the chain reaction; but it was a chain reaction that had occurred time and time again in the Americas, just as it had in the Old World, only with home grown provocateurs.

Friendship Cemetery
As we know, what obliterated the Indians, more than numbers or technology with the invasion of the whites, was disease. From the very beginning, Cortés conquered the Aztecs with epidemics, and for the most part Indian “battles” were mopping up actions. There were hardly enough warriors left to put up a fight. The whites killed so many women and children because there were no men left to do battle and a soldier has to shoot someone; it’s his job. If it weren’t for disease, the composition of modern day America would be very different.

Chief Schonchin Cemetery

Brown Cemetery (Beatty)
The bottom line is that modern Native Americans can either remain bitter over what happened to their ancestors, or they can be happy they passed the immigration bar. I understand that that is much easier said than done. (Not passing the bar; being happy.) I also understand that it’s easy for me to talk. Yet that doesn’t invalidate the essential reality. Each person must walk their own path.

Granted, though, the history of Native American burial grounds within Indian memory is different from most of our experiences. While all cemeteries are in danger of grave robbers, robbing non-Christian graves has been a profitable industry for hundreds of years. Not only have unscrupulous private collectors raided the graveyards of the non-Christian world, but many esteemed academic institutions and museums have been major financial backers of the enterprise. It’s only recently that repatriation of purloined bones and artifacts has begun.

I wrote about grave robbing in the introduction to the Wish-Ham Cemetery set (q.v), part of which I’ll reproduce here. Jesse Applegate is buried in the Applegate (Family) Cemetery near Yoncalla, Oregon (not to be confused with the larger Applegate Pioneer Cemetery, which is located in Yoncalla proper). The Applegates play the role of Moses in the Oregon foundation myth.

Wish-Ham Cemetery
Wish-Ham
The oldest residents of Wish-Ham were disinterred from their traditional resting place, Memaloose Island in the Columbia River when it was largely submerged by the waters rising behind the Bonneville Dam. It could as well have been placed in Oregon, but the flats next to Hwy. 197 in Washington seemed particularly and appropriately brutal for the resting place of the memory of the pre-Euroamerican inhabitants. The Native Americans—and I’m speaking here strictly through a hole in my hat—don’t have a tradition of cemeteries like “we” do (the quotes because Native Americans are “we” too). I have to say this because the Native American resting places I’ve visited sometimes have disturbing elements to them; elements which indicate neglect, a rupture, a disconnect with their elders. But perhaps I’m seeing it through white man’s eyes. Maybe the meaning and the memory lie elsewhere, and the cemeteries are only indications of what our culture has done to the Indians, not what has happened to them, which are two different things.

Whatever the meaning of cemeteries, it’s hard to imagine that what happened at Memaloose Island would be wished on anyone. One of the earliest descriptions of Memaloose Is. we have comes from the recollections of a man who walked over the island as a seven year old child in 1843, Jesse Applegate. Jesse's folks, two of his uncles and their families, were members of the first organized wagon train of pioneers into the Willamette Valley.

"Farther on, the path led across the island known as 'Mimaluse,' which connected with the main land on the north shore when the river is low. We passed a pond or small lake on which were floating many rafts made of logs on which were dozens of dead bodies rolled in blankets or Klisques mats. While I stood looking at the ghastly spectacle, my companions pressed into the woods. Seeing I was alone with the dead, I hurried after them. I came to a pen built of logs and in this were bodies rolled up like those on the rafts. This did not frighten me, but near the pen was an object which did. A little old black man stood there. I took a long breath to see if the thing were alive. It seemed to move, and I ran for my life. Others who passed that way across the island said they saw dead bodies everywhere, on rocks, on rafts, in old broken canoes, and these little wooden devils were legion. Some said they were put there to protect the dead, a sort of scarecrow. No beast or bird would face that that diabolical array for the sake of a feast. Mimaluse (Dead in Chinook language) Island was the Golgatha of the Waskopum tribe."

Agency Cemetery

Agency Cemetery
An historical marker at a rest area near Memaloose Is. says: “Before water rising above Bonneville dam reduced the original four-acre island to about half an acre, Indian remains were removed for reburial elsewhere”; which is true but only half the story. Many of the remains weren’t removed to preserve them from the rising waters of the Columbia. Many of the remains were removed much earlier, beginning in the nineteenth century. Mary McKay, herself of mixed American and Indian parentage, would recall how in 1841 when nine years old, “On the trip north we passed Indian burial grounds. Canoes and other sarcophagi hung from the tops of tall fir trees. I remember how my uncle Nicholas Bird climbed one of the trees and found a wooden image of a dead chief. It was about the size of a rag doll. My, how I appreciated that new edition to my toy world.” As early as 1870 one Dr. Joseph Simms was “removing”—as a recent government investigation termed it; we’d otherwise call it grave robbing—remains and funerary objects from Memaloose Is., later donating them to the American Museum of Natural History. In 1882 the same museum was buying Indian remains from Memaloose from James Terry of Wasco County. All in all the museum went on to buy some 140 purloined remains from Memaloose Island; a nifty industry for a few industrious guys, eh?

***********
Agency Cemetery
Whatever can be said about Indian burial grounds, it should be remembered that the Indians were not “The Indians.” They were not a monolithic unit all with feathered headdresses and pinto ponies. They were a great variety of peoples, each with its own language, history, and traditions. There wasn’t a one-size-fits-all burial practice that everyone used. I’m no expert on the varieties of practices, but I do know the tribes differed considerably in many respects, and treatment of the dead was only one such area. I also know that sometimes dire enemies were crammed together on the same reservation and forced to “bury the hatchet” and recreate their traditions in common.

I also know, from the likes of Jesse and Mary’s descriptions, that Indian burial practices were never like the Euroamerican practice of six-foot deep burials with headstones, though that’s certainly the standard model in Native Oregonian cemeteries today. And today the preponderance of headstones in Native American cemeteries, at least in this neck of the woods, reflect Christian motifs; the better to protect one against grave robbers, I presume.

To no surprise, my lack of knowledge landed me in a heap of trouble with one reservation; although how that trouble came about was surprising. What got me in trouble was trying to correct my lack of knowledge. In particular I was interested in how the transition from traditional to modern practices came about. In my naivety, I wrote the cultural director of a local reservation, which, like the other reservations in Oregon, is an amalgam of several different tribes, asking precisely that question. What I received in reply was a scathing attack on my person, my moral character, and my avocation of cemetery photography. I was accused of being one more white man ripping off the Indians and that I had no right to say anything about them until I was an expert in their culture(s), and I, certainly, shouldn’t go around shooting pictures of their cemeteries. What they, equally certainly, weren’t going to do was answer my questions and help enlighten me. This confederation threatened me with legal action and wrote to all the other confederations to enlist their aid in blackballing me. Interestingly enough, only one person from outside their reservation ever responded to their call. One lady from Arizona wrote that she followed their advice and looked at my photos, but didn’t find anything objectionable. In fact, she liked to photograph cemeteries, too.

While the campaign against my photographs has long since waned, once bitten twice shy, and it makes me nervous to post any Native American cemetery shots. I have restricted the viewing of that particular set to “friends” only and included none here. If you want to see it and are not a Flickr friend, let me know and we’ll arrange a “friendship.”

Paul Washington Cemetery

Paul Washington Cemetery

Paul Washington Cemetery

Paul Washington Cemetery
There are a number of “issues” relating to Native American cemeteries that could be addressed, of which permission to photograph is only one. While one of the best maintained and most beautiful cemeteries in Oregon is the Paul Washington Indian Cemetery at the Siletz Reservation near Newport, Oregon, most of the other NA cemeteries in the region fall into the wild and woolly category, and one can understand a reluctance to have that fact advertised. But to be honest, the initial chaos presented by many Indian cemeteries can be overwhelming. At first glance it can be difficult to distinguish between graves and rubbish piles. Not a whole lot of cemeteries are strewn with rubbish, but NA cemeteries frequently are. And I’m not talking about grave decorations, which can be elaborate and sometimes poorly maintained. The first NA cemetery we visited was a tiny unmarked graveyard by the side of a highway in Washington, which caught the corner of our eye in passing. It took us some time in looking at it before we decided it was a cemetery, as it had no headstones of any sort. But it did have the detritus of memorabilia.

Indian Cemetery (Husum, WA)

Indian Cemetery (Husum, WA)
In any event, it’s difficult to even describe such places without thinking that I’m offending some people by pointing it out. Couldn’t I just keep quiet? I could, were it not such a distinguishing feature of several cemeteries, and my job is describing cemeteries. I just bring you the facts; it’s up to the reader to decide how it came to be and what it means. I can only note that there’s an endemic relationship between poverty and dilapidation. Casino money has saved a number of cemeteries.

Chief Schonchin Cemetery

Old Agency Cemetery
The differences between Paul Washington on the coast and the Agency Cemetery in the high desert in the lee of the Cascades certainly reflect ancient cultural differences predating Euroamerican involvement. The languages spoken on the coast prior to Americanization , Salish, Siulslaw, etc., were unrelated to the Penutian tongues spoken in the Gorge and Columbia Plateau. The two had entirely different cultures, so it’s expected there would be differences yet today.

Agency Cemetery

Agency Cemetery

Agency Cemetery
The themes represented in NA cemeteries differ depending on geography as well as history. Even today in modern Northwest culture, there is a distinctive split between the east and west sides of the Cascades: high, dry, and open to the east; forested, wet, and dense to the west. Horses and salmon are common motifs in the eastern cemeteries. Salmon might show up west of the Cascades, as well, but will probably show up in high Coastal style, exemplified by totem poles and never horses. There wasn’t, and still isn’t, much use for a horse in a boat and not much more in dense, steep, mountainous terrain. Salmon as a motif are likely to occur on the east side as images of fishing from platforms precariously perched above roiling rapids or in chain-saw carvings. Toy horses are everywhere. Sometimes whole corrals of them. In fact, in range country the image of the Indian as cowboy has come to dominate. When the Indians adopted the conquering culture, they did so lock, stock, and barrel; they turned Christian, starting eating off chinaware, and became cowboys. All three themes are heavily represented in Native American cemeteries.

Hot Springs Cemetery

Hot Springs Cemetery
Friendship Cemetery
Traditional themes, both in decorative patterns and in specific references still exist. The image of the woman by the canoe gathering water lilies (I believe), harks back to pre-American times. That image, by the way, is from the southern desert lake country. The lakes are often alkali or saline, but the locals made good use of them, nonetheless (one way was by capturing vast masses of may flies during their annual lakeside hatchings; there’s a lot of protein in insects). The propensity for massive decoration of grave sites with countless personal memorabilia might well be an extension of pre-Euroamerican customs, writ large by our material culture.

Of the 680 cemeteries in my regional database, perhaps a dozen of them, less than 2%, are Native American. Numerically, they don’t hold a candle to the Catholics or the Odd Fellows, but spiritually they eat up vast territories. Their presence is far greater than the 2% would suggest. After all, they set the stage for the rest of us. Now it’s time for us to join hands with Mr. Alexie and walk into the brave new world.

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Tutuilla Presbyterian Indian Mission Cemetery

Joy of Planting

2009-12-12T11:23:00.000-08:00

Rainier Cemetery
A trio of Washington State cemeteries I recently visited on a trip to see Jimmy illustrates the principle of “random acts of beauty.” The three cemeteries—Rainier, Orting, and the Washington Soldiers Home—count among them two pioneer and one military cemetery, which range from almost military precision to largely free-for-all.

Washington Soldiers Home Cemetery
The Washington Soldiers Home Cemetery occupies the southern flanks of a small knoll, a good defensive position, that guards the neighboring valley. The graves are laid out in concentric rings surrounding an obelisk and flag pole, which occupy the summit. The nearly identical stones are only occasionally interrupted by irregulars the likes of which one finds in any graveyard. There is a dignity to the uniformity and tidy order of military cemeteries, and this is no exception. One would be honored to be buried here (and only pray for a bigger maintenance budget); knowing that, in the evening when the ghosts come out to chat, the line stretches from today to the Civil War. They may have differing accents and differing garb, but the stories will ring the same bell over and over again.

Orting Cemetery
Orting Cemetery is not far from Washington Soldiers Home—at the other end of a horseshoe bend—in either distance or sentiment. It, too, is orderly though by no means uniform; and while there are uprights here and there, I notice in the photos that all the recent stuff is flat, suggesting a modern regulation. A number of the flat markers, though they may be intermittent in age, are of the “pillow” variety, meaning that they rise above the ground surface and are a consequent impediment to mowing. A new sign at the entrance demonstrates that someone is minding the store.

Orting Cemetery
Despite the lawn stone requirement, many of the headstones display individualized carvings, that while not detracting from the dignity of the interred, refrain from excess sobriety. Warren Burris’s stone, emblazoned with, not only his, “Papa’s Boy,” photo on the surface, but also a deep carving of Warren jumping a motorcycle in the mountains, is a good example of giving dignity to an untimely death, while leaving reminders of who the deceased was beyond a name and dates. A tombstone of this sort goes beyond reminding us that someone is gone but helps us remember who they were, even if we never knew them. It celebrates the person versus mourning them.

Orting Cemetery
In the same way, the bench honoring Ken Montgomery, while rife with the symbols of death—bellowing bull elk, fallen tree, setting sun—is anything but somber and depressing. It certainly has its own joie de vivre.

Rainier Cemetery
Overall, Orting displays a mid-point between the strict regulation of Washington Soldiers Home and the liaise faire rambunctiousness of Rainier Cemetery, an unquestionably delightful graveyard. It was walking up the sun-dappled slope of this small wooded cemetery (Rainier), after recording some 680 cemeteries, that the sentence grew in my mind: a good cemetery is a joyful place.

Rainier Cemetery
It was a sharply cold day when I visited and the wind was finding any smidgin of unprotected skin, but the sky was bright with a thin layer of gauze where a cloud might have been. Even at midday the sun streamed in low on the horizon, and oblong patches of light stretched away from it. The wind was knocking down a rain of small branches and here and there lay a widow-maker. It paid to stay alert. But the slope it was on, facing west and south, helped, perhaps, by a canopy of small to large trees, gave an illusion of warmth and protection. There was no sign at the entrance telling people what they could and could not do. No one cared how long your plastic flowers brightened a gravesite.

For the most part, despite the geography and presence of sizable trees, the graves in Rainier are arranged in an orderly fashion, although the order quickly disintegrates if the situation demands it. Corners of the cemetery, half forgotten, are being swallowed by bushes and St. John’s wort; and when one gets to the “rockery” at the top of the hill, all pretense at precision is put aside. Up there is a scene worthy of Camp Polk, with someone or some bodies having hauled in uncounted pickup loads of rocks and erected a considerable complex of nooks and crannies festooned with fields of plastic flowers and storms of driftwood. There are benches and fences, crosses and a wishing well (in case the one didn’t work). Where there aren’t rocks, there are pebbles. An organic flowing together of several graves uniting them in a friendly family. One can only imagine the scene at night when the ghosts here come out to sit on the benches and trade stories.

Orting Cemetery
Of course there’s more; you’ll have to come see it yourself.

But it’s a joyful place. It’s an inviting space. It’s a place that says: sit down a spell, have a bowl, relax. It’s just the way a good cemetery should be.

Look around. Neighborhood’s OK.

Think you could stay?

Rainier Cemetery

A Thousand Words Woodmen of the World: III

2009-12-01T16:50:00.001-08:00

Alford Cemetery (Harrisburg, OR)
Hello to all my old and new friends;

I went digital in the summer of 2004. Going digital forced me to buy a new computer. When I updated my camera this year, I had to update my computer as well. This has not been a cheap avocation. I went digital when I embarked on an exploration of Oregon cemeteries.

Lone Fir Cemetery (Portland, OR)
I began with the goal of finding and recording the essence of all functioning cemeteries in the state. I was by no means a photographer. In fact, it had been a number of years since I’d had a reasonably good 35 millimeter and was strictly a vacation tourist snap-shooter. What I was hoping to accomplish from the project was a guide to said cemeteries, accompanied by a few pictures from each. Or perhaps just a single photograph for minor cemeteries. I’d had by this point a fair amount of experience writing and had, probably, an unwarranted confidence in that; but I knew I was no shakes as a photographer, so that would take second fiddle in the guide to the written word.

North Powder Cemetery
Consequently, when I went to upload my photos to Flickr, I only uploaded a few representative photos from each cemetery rather than everything I shot. But strange things happen over time. People said they liked some of my photos. People said they liked some photos that I hadn’t thought much about at all. I slowly began to realize that I shouldn’t edit out what I thought were uninteresting or repetitive photos, as other people often felt entirely differently about the same shot. Likewise I began to understand that, since there was no financial restriction on the number of photos I could post online versus publishing in a book, there was no real reason to restrict the uploaded photos to only those I thought worthy and that by doing so I was restricting the amount of information available about the cemeteries. Slowly I began to see I could do a guide online, and I could do so with all (or almost all; there is some editing) the photos I take.

Likewise and even more slowly I began paying attention to what makes a good photograph and what doesn’t. I began to cut down on cropping and tried to capture the proper composition at the camera rather than the computer.

Tacoma Cemetery
More than anything, I learned by looking at your photographs. It’s no secret that I’m the bumbling idiot of photographers, so I’ve had nowhere to go but up; but all of my contacts have great vision, and a few of you are incredibly accomplished and I’m humbled every time I look at your stuff. I know I’m in the company of masters and I only hope some will rub off on me.

And, frankly, I think it has. I know that I’m no where near the master you folks are, but I feel that at least I can play the game now. I can warm your bench any time. So to speak. Or at least I think I can. I’ve never been accused of humility.

Although I’ve cut down on cropping and look towards better initial composition, I have increase editing time. I’m not so good with settings on the camera, but I’m getting to know my way around the editing tables, and they help, too, in making a crisp copy.

IOOF Cemetery (Coburg, OR)
And to the degree to which I’m no photographer, I’m no artist. I’ve had absolutely no training in either and I’m as creative as a blind lamp post, so I don’t try for “art” in my work. My goal is not to make you think, “My, what a gorgeous photograph,” but rather “My, what a gorgeous tombstone.” I’m successful if what I show you is stunning, but that you don’t notice the photography at all.

I think I do that better now than I did before. I believe practice, while not making perfect, does improve ones game. As a result, I take and post more pictures per cemetery than I did five years ago. Better pictures, too, I hope. But I’m aware that what this means is that I have to go back to those early visitations and shoot them again. Give them their full due.

Central Point IOOF Cemetery
In the end, it was the photographs that shined through, and the writing ended up being supporting dribble. Not that I don’t feel I have something to say—you’re reading this blog, for God’s sake—but rather that the photos say so much more. And more succinctly. And the blog gives me a place to highlight particular ones.

My apologies; I dribble (I just said that).

Ah well, until it’s used up, I’ve got nothing but time.

Pioneer Cemetery (Centralia, WA)
Photo Notes:
This is the last of three displays of Woodmen of the World photos, giving a feeling for, I hope, the wide diversity of what they produced. In the scheme of things, the Woodmen didn’t last long as a tombstone dispensary, but they left an indelible mark on the cemeteries of America.

There is a Flickr group devoted to Woodmen of the World, which you might enjoy visiting.

Dum tacet clamat

Idldewild Cemetery (Hood River, OR)

Woodmen of the World: II Plus Green Burials

2009-11-25T21:17:00.000-08:00

George Cemetery
The local remnant rag, The Big Oh? (aka The Oregonian), had an article recently about the growing interest in green burials. It concentrated on the George Cemetery in the Estacada Cemetery District one of the best collection of small pioneer cemeteries in the state. The people who live in the district have faithfully assessed themselves taxes to maintain them. I owe them a revisit.

In any event, I’ve thrown this notice in with my second installment of Woodman of the World tombstones. I’m hoping you won’t mind.

Woodmen Part Two
Tillamook IOOF Cemetery

Olney Cemetery

Oakwood Hill Cemetery (Tacoma)

North Powder Cemetery

Cornelius United Methodist Cemetery

Lake View Cemetery (Seattle)

Lake View Cemetery (Seattle)

IOOF Cemetery (Lakeview, OR)

Woodmen of the World Unite: A Photo Gallery: I

2009-11-20T11:29:00.000-08:00

IOOF/GAR (The Dalles)

Granite Hill Cemetery
No one forgets their first Woodman of the World faux stump headstone. Cemetery novices tell you in an excited voice of this incredible find they made in a small cemetery near their home. Yep, WoW, as they’re known. The stump—fallen tree and all that—is a traditional symbol of death and has been used informally both here and in Europe for a long time, but the Woodmen of the World, in its program of providing tombstones for its members, kicked the image into high gear (can I say that?).

Union Cemetery

Riverside Cemetery (Albany, OR)
Hard information on WoW headstones is hard to come by; I don’t think there’s been a book about them, yet (authors take note). As this gallery attests, faux stumps were not the only motif the WoW used, but they were definitely the most notable. What’s particularly notable is that, despite their popularity and ubiquity, as far as I can tell, each one is unique. My understanding is that orders and drawings were sent to local craftsmen to execute the monuments, who in turn interpreted the drawings as they saw fit. Whatever the cause, the result has been a windfall of unique monuments across the entire country. In lieu of the book yet to come (I’m open to offers), I’m going to present here a selection of WoW headstones in a series of posts; there are too many for a single run.

Lone Fir Cemetery (Portland)
Testimony that at one time, at least, the WoW folk were more than a simple insurance agency is via a fabled performance venue in Eugene, OR, the WoW Hall, which was my introduction to the Woodmen of the World. Their active involvement in the WoW Hall has long since passed, but their name remains stuck with the theater they put together, which was—and still is—a showcase for some amazing performers. My most memorable nights there were watching Reverend Chumleigh and the Flying Karamazoff Brothers, along with Artis the Spoon Man, doing amazing feats of derring-do never equally anywhere, except, perhaps, at the Country Fair (little children, be warned). I’ll forever have a picture burned into my memory of Robert, the Juggler, backing offstage, his hands afire with lighter fluid, eyes as wide as pancakes, trying to keep the flaming tennis balls in the air before screaming. Ah yes, the good old days. The WoW Hall.

Brownsville Pioneer Cemetery
The Woodmen of the World still exist—they’d be happy to sell you some insurance—but their policies, alas, no longer come with a tombstone. It’s a pity, but we’ll just have to suffer through. Carve your own.

Mount Calvary Cemetery (Portland)
Technical Note:
The framing for these pictures was done in Picnik, as a part of Flikr. It's slow, but I found opening two windows at a time (thank God for Firefox) kept me going full time. The hint to use it came thanks to fellow Flickrdick doubledcop. If anyone else wants to use the basic program (there's a "premium" package one can pay for), I have a couple hints. A) You can put multiple frames around one picture by simply repeating the process. B) When choosing frame colors, the little eye-dropper will pick up the color from wherever it's pointed, not just the color chart provided. I like to get my frame colors from within the photo itself; that way I'm sure the colors are complimentary.

Calvary Catholic Cemetery (Galveston, TX)

Weekend Water A Gallery of Pleasure Craft Tombstones

2009-11-14T20:57:00.000-08:00

Havurah Shalom Cemetery

Wisner Cemetery

Oswego Pioneer Cemetery
I promised long ago to complete my trio of boat monument posts; the first two, you’ll recall, covered fishing and working boats. That I have less pleasure craft than working boats in my collection might be due to my preferences as well as luck in what I find. In the archetypes I chose to accompany this post I notice, just for example, no kayaks (not to mention surf boards) or pontoon boats. Lack of pontoons might be a regionalism, but we have a lot of kayaking in the mountains.

La Center Cemetery

Crescent Grove Cemetery (Tigard, OR)

Pioneer Cemetery (Pioneer, WA)
Regionalism pops up in other ways. The small lakes of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, for example, don’t lend themselves to large sailboats; whereas the high-prowed McKenzie River boat is designed to ride over rocks in steep mountain streams. The small outboard fishing boats are universal as are canoes, speedboats pulling water skiers, and small cabin cruisers. There are no propeller propelled punts here.

Bilyeu Den Cemetery

Mt. Calvary (Eugene, OR)
I’ve thrown in two examples of the same stock design, a single fisherman in a small row boat, being used on two different stones conveniently rendered in complimentary colors. As far as I can tell, they’re essentially identical (slightly different water rendering) except that in the red version the fisherman has a pipe in his mouth. Ah, the personal touch.

Hayes Cemetery

Park Hill Cemetery (Vancouver, WA)

Campos Santos of New Mexico

2009-11-05T18:24:00.000-08:00

A quick note here to alert you to an incredible selection of photos from New Mexican Campos Santos graveyards at a site called Crossroad. Their essential purpose "preserving the Unendowed cemeteries or 'Campos Santos' of New Mexico, as the saced and endangered places they are." I have put a link to them over on the side bar under "Dead on connections," so it'll be easy to find.m It's hard to look at them and not think of the cemeteries of their distant cousins, the Native Americans, who live up here. Certainly there is a form of continuity between them.

What the society does, beside taking evocative photos, is unexplained further. Whatever it is, I support it and strongly urge you to look at the pictures.

Dairy Lunches & Other Lost Worlds

2009-10-24T11:35:00.000-07:00

Grass Valley IOOF
You’ve never heard of “dairy lunches”; I can pretty much guarantee that. I know that because several years back I was researching dairy lunches and no one had ever heard of them, not even people in the trade. Well, eventually I ran across someone who did know about them, but it was a long haul.

I only knew about them because I’d been researching the history of ethnic restaurants in my town (Portland, OR) by digging through old phone books, looking for restaurants with ethnic names, and ran across a period of time—1920s-1940s—when nearly a quarter of the restaurants in town had the words “dairy lunch” in their name.

—Really?

—Really.

Naturally, I started asking around.

—Anybody know what a dairy lunch was?

—Nope.

Turns out they were the food fad of their day. Eat clean, eat dairy and you’ll avoid, if not cure, all ills. Being a Wisconsin boy, I can attest to the efficacy of that advice. Too bad we don’t still follow it; I can’t think of anything that a slice of lemon meringue pie doesn’t help.

I mention all this, not because there’s any connection between dairy lunches and cemeteries—the advice to eat clean and eat dairy was not deadly—but rather to demonstrate how quickly major institutions in American life can fade away leaving only wisps of memory like swirls of fog at the end of the pier. I wrote my little piece on the role of dairy lunches in American life, it was read by a handful of people, and promptly forgotten again. Dairy lunches are still lost.

It’s not quite that bad for fraternal organizations, the Odd Fellows and the Masons are still out there, but none of us remembers what they used to mean to American life, how they dominated American society. We don’t remember it because we never knew it. We only know they have halls here and there in some towns, halls as often falling to the wrecking ball as not. If it wasn’t for the Shriners’ circus most American would know nothing of the Masons.

Yet there are telltale traces of the pervasive influence these fraternal organization (known in England as “friendly societies”), the Odd Fellows and the Masons in particular, had in American life scattered throughout the landscape: the cemeteries. As always, cemeteries are the archaeologist’s treasure trove, and in this case it’s the very names of the cemeteries that leave a memory of a time when fraternal organizations played a central role in our culture. Indeed, it was a time when people were trusting their eternity to their chosen fraternity, something previously reserved for the church. How and why this transformation occurred and why it as quickly disappeared are enduring mysteries. I’m sure there are volumes written about fraternal organizations, but they rarely get covered in high school civics. Their place in our history is largely forgotten and were it not for the halls and cemeteries, the knowledge of their very existence would soon vanish.

Nestucca Valley Cemetery
Both Masons and Odd Fellows are, as their names would suggest, evolutions of ancient trade guilds that spread from Europe to America with the European invasion and were going particularly strong at the time of the American Revolution. Free Masons were, arguably, of higher status than Odd Fellows, but in their prime the Odd Fellows easily outstripped the Masons, which is reflected in the number of cemeteries they provided. In my Oregon Territory database, Odd Fellow cemeteries outnumber Masonic cemeteries almost two to one (51/26).

(In days of yore, trades were divided up by rank, with masters being at the top. Independent tradesmen [they were invariably male] not under the direct tutelage of a master, i.e. neither apprentice nor journeyman, were referred to as “fellows.” Often in smaller towns there weren’t enough members of a given trade to form its own local guild, so these independent fellows would sometimes join together and form their own guild of mish-mash professions; hence Odd Fellows.)

Needless-to-say, trade unions of any stripe have often been looked on with a jaundiced eye by the powers that be, as, indeed, all associations of the populace evoke political suspicion. Guilds were formed to provide protection of their craft in the marketplace, both by setting standards and providing economic safeguards for its members. It’s in the latter duty that the Odd Fellows have shined in American life. By the nature of the Odd Fellows being a collection of people from diverse crafts, it could never have the role of setting professional standards, so that aspect of guild fellowship was never a burden to them and they could concentrate on fiscal protection for its members, which is reflected in their mission statement: “To visit the sick, relieve the distressed, bury the dead and educate the orphan.” It was their boast that “no Odd Fellow or Odd Fellow’s dependent ever becomes a public charge” (emphasis theirs).1

Harrisburg Masonic/IOOF Cemetery
For a while, at least, they took those responsibilities very seriously. By 1927 they were operating sixty-two “homes” across America and ten elsewhere. The homes were an inspired combination of caring for old, indigent members under the same roof with an orphanage, while using the accumulated wisdom and energy to operate a farm. It’s a model to which we could well return.

They did not, though, surround their homes with cemeteries. For that they selected other locations. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to find a history of their cemetery involvement. Their Web site doesn’t mention them. But their Web site doesn’t mention the old homes, either. Advancing social legislation, especially that of the New Deal, put the kibosh on the Odd Fellows communal philanthropy. It may have been better for the country, but not necessarily for the Odd Fellows.

A note of caution, if you’re thinking that the Odd Fellows seem eminently reasonable and that you might like to hitch your wagon to their train, that, though they pride themselves on being “non-sectarian,” it doesn’t mean you can believe whatever you’d like to believe. They believe their mission to be “founded on the inspired word of God as revealed to man in the Holy Bible,” and would like you to believe the same.

For the most part the IOOF (Independent Order of Odd Fellows) has given up the cemetery business. I have no idea when the last Odd Fellow cemetery was founded, but I’d vote for prior to mid-20th century. Some are still maintained by IOOF chapters, but the majority have long since been handed over to other authorities, often with a name change that disguises their origins. Likewise with the Masons.

(For the record, the aforementioned database of 670 or so cemeteries has 55 with Catholic connections and 72 with ties to other Christian religions. The Jews have nine. Probably the bulk of the remaining were Donation Land Claim cemeteries created by the holder of the claim and subsequently taken over by a civic authority. A few were started by municipal authorities themselves, something that would be unheard of today.)

But the remnant memory in name or history of a cemetery with IOOF affiliation isn’t just a record of the importance of those institutions in American life, their locations mark, just as Jewish cemeteries do, places of previous prosperity. Many a disappearing community in Oregon that can no longer muster a gas station, much less a lodge hall, is marked with the existence of a whilom Odd Fellows cemetery. If the town was really important, it might have a Masonic cemetery, as well. In Fossil, for example—population 470—the Odd Fellow and Masonic cemeteries are themselves fossils as much as the bones that pop out of the ground. Their very presence testifies to the former glory of this rural wayside, a theme repeated over the entire state.

How this compares with the rest of the country, I have no idea. I know that IOOF and Masonic cemeteries blanket the nation, but what percentage of cemeteries were founded by fraternal orders is unknown. In the Oregon Territory it’s roughly 7.6%. The Masons come in at 3.9%. Nobody’s counting the rest of the country. In the end, the Odd Fellows weren’t so odd, after all. They simply disappeared.

Lorane IOOF Cemetery_______________
1. This quote and most of the information about the Odd Fellows’ homes that follows are from the “Album of Odd Fellows Homes,” edited by Ira Wolfe, 1927; 12th edition; Minneapolis, MN.

Flicker Files

2009-10-12T18:59:00.000-07:00

Antioch Cemetery
I feel it’s a form of cheating to use my Flickr set introductions as fodder for this blog, but what can I say? I’m lazy.

Yet sometimes a cemetery is worth noting, and I’m not inclined to write the same stuff over and over again. At least not until I forget that I’ve written it in the first place. Antioch Cemetery has an unusual, if not unique history. One worth noting in passing by. What follows is what you’ll find on Flickr, minus most of the photos. Come visit do.

Antioch Cemetery
Antioch Cemetery: Unearthed
The story of Antioch Cemetery is a window unto the psyche of Jackson County. What happened at Antioch and in the surrounding neighborhood (i.e. White City) put its stamp on the region forever.

With 5500 people, White City is one of the largest urban concentrations in the state remaining unincorporated. It’s also been a center for poverty, domestic violence, drug abuse, and related social problems, all because of its curious history, which has left it a community in limbo for decades.

White City is a new city dating from 1941 when the Army commandeered 43,000 acres of the Medford Valley for a World War II training facility and built Camp White overnight. Besides training upwards of 100,000 soldiers, the town also housed a major hospital and, for a while, a German P.O.W. camp. Pretty much as soon as the war ended the Army packed up and disappeared, leaving this sprawling, unincorporated town of thrown-together buildings ripe for people who couldn’t be or weren’t too choosy about aesthetics. White City was born.

The Antioch Cemetery grounds were part of the lands commandeered by the Army; which in itself would be justification for telling the White City story, but what happened to the cemetery is pretty amazing. The cemetery was located smack-dab in the middle of the gunnery range and was constantly being bombarded by live shells; which, as you can imagine, is not good for tombstones. Or much else, for that matter. But, to the Army’s credit, they mitigated the damage by laying all the tombstones flat and burying them under six feet of sand, where they remained for the duration of the camp; and when they picked up and skeedadled, they took the sand with them and returned the uprights to their proper locations. What a sweet bunch of guys, no?

Antioch Cemetery
The lingering effects of Camp White are not restricted to White City, though. Jackson Country remains a bulwark of patriotism to this day, not only because the residents are grateful that the Army once dispensed largess upon them—a form of modern American cargo cult—but, I suspect, because when the Army left, it left behind a certain number of personnel who thought the valley would make a good place to settle down; a thought that may equally have occurred to tens of thousands of other people passing through the camp; some of whom may have come back here to retire. There are great flocks of ex-military birds in the area.

And Camp White is surely the reason Eagle Point National Cemetery is close by.

Antioch Cemetery
I was told the story of the Army and the sand by a very pleasant grandmother of four who volunteers as a groundskeeper for the cemetery. She jested that she was “a little concerned that [she] might yet run across an unexploded shell.” She did grant, though, there would be economies of efficiency by being blown up in ones own graveyard.

Whatever it was that spurred the volunteers to recover this fairly sizable cemetery, it’s been working. It’s not immaculate, by any means, and no one’s watering the place, but the grasses are kept at bay and it’s dotted with oaks and laurels and rhodys, et al. It actively being used and is quite lively for a cemetery of its kind. A fair amount to read and a good excuse to while away some time.

After which you can drive Hwy. 234 to Rock Point; that’s a pastoral trip.

Antioch Cemetery

This Just In

2009-10-06T19:32:00.000-07:00

River View Cemetery
In a sign of the Portland times, this fresh in from the Portland Tribune, a local twice-weekly newspaper.

Portland, as you may be aware, is America’s poster child for bicycle transportation. Our guy in congress is the guy with the bow-tie and the two-wheeled agenda. We are so proud.

River View Cemetery
But not everything runs smoothy between bikes and the rest of the world here in Shangri-La-La, largely because we’re not really a bike culture yet, on the scale of, say, Copenhagen or Amsterdam; and bikes here are still a noticeable exception to other forms of transportation and their users ride bikes, not only as a matter of practicality, but as a moral stand. The general biking consensus is that the rest of us—flex cars, public transportation, old-fashioned feet be damned—are a lesser breed than they are. Ergo, bikers here tend to think laws, both of the state and of civility, are meant for other people, not them. As a result, there are occasional conflicts.

River View Cemetery
This tiff arises from bikers using the local “garden” or “rural” cemetery, River View as a private shortcut downtown. Its beauty is its downfall. It’s laced with curving allées that encourage reckless downhill speeding, which creates hazardous conditions for other cemetery users. I can personally attest to that fact, having raised my eyebrows on more than one occasion, while watching bikes carom round the corners. It can get dicey at times.

River View Cemetery
The article finishes by noting that “Lone Fir Cemetery, near Morrison Street and 20th Avenue in Southeast Portland, recently opened its grounds to bicyclists,” under the theory that “more benign uses of Lone Fir will improve its security.” What it fails to note is that Lone Fir is—if I may use the expression—dead flat. There are no opportunities for blinding speed.

Lone Fir Cemetery
Dearth of Dead Spaces
In other grave matters, the New York Times is reporting that 70 of Moscow’s (not Idaho) 71 cemeteries are closed. Needless-to-say, if it involves Russia, it involves bureaucracy and corruption. It seems best that you should die elsewhere than in Moscow.

Like Miami, perhaps.

The Great Jacksonville Cemetery Raid

2009-10-02T12:02:00.000-07:00

Jacksonville Cemetery
Despite the fact that some regional Indians lived in settled villages and had done so for millennia, all current Oregon towns date from the pioneer period of our history when we were invaded by waves of Americans, Europeans, and Asians. This was a relatively short period of time, roughly from, say, 1840-1890. The towns that were prominent in that era are not necessarily the same that are of importance today. This, of course, could change again in the future, though I suspect Portland’s preeminence will continue for the foreseeable future.

Our first “official” town was Astoria, named for John Jacob Astor, the fur baron; whereas The Dalles is located at the site of a forever trading rendezvous location at the high desert entrance to the Columbia River Gorge. The Dalles will rise again, simply because of its location. Google, for example, has recently moved a plant there.

Jacksonville Cemetery
During the early years, the major community in southern Oregon was Jacksonville. Once eclipsed, Jacksonville fell into a Rip Van Winkle slumber where nothing changed for a hundred years only to reawaken a couple decades ago to discover itself a stunningly preserved gem on the edge of a burgeoning agricultural/arts-cultural valley. The cemetery is a high point, literally and figuratively, for the town. It’s one of the reasons to go there. They know it and they display it prominently.

What follows is the introduction to the Jacksonville Cemetery set on Flickr, which includes some 120 photos. They’ve added a lot to the cemetery since I first visited, some 35 years or so ago; and the place is still in active use.

There’s one photo in this post from Keno, a Rock Hudson-Doris Day kind of spot on the Klamath River. It has just been announced that six damns on the Klamath will be removed to restore salmon runs to the upper Klamath Basin.

Praise God.

Jacksonville Cemetery
There are, I would contend, three iconic, non-Native American cemeteries in the state of Oregon: Lone Fir (Portland), Camp Polk (Sisters), and Jacksonville. There are numerous other delightful, rustic graveyards scattered throughout the state—we are blessed—many of which excel in one manner or another, but those three are unmatched for size and variety of monuments. These three say “Oregon” loud and clear. Not big. Not showy. Not elaborate. Just ours, thank you, ours. A little off-center. A little left foot. The box has yet to show up that we’re suppose to think outside of. We don’t march to our own drummer. We have no drum.  

Jacksonville Cemetery
But enough about me.  

Jacksonville goes out of its way to get you to visit their cemetery, beginning with a spiffy, black and white sign out on the main drag, and a wrought iron entrance arch visible from the drag, as well. Their cemetery is the town’s crown jewell, and other than the Britt Festival, it’s arguably the best reason to visit this preserved town. Certainly, the community thinks highly of it and a stroll around the grounds offers ample testimony to their involvement, not the least of which being an “interpretive center” established there in 1991, amplified by several other interpretive signs located throughout the cemetery. There’s a lot of story here to tell and a lot of it is told through the cemetery. Its unusual size and complexity for what became a forgotten by-place, alert one right off the bat that this community had its greater glory days. Notably, the cemetery is an amalgam of six separate cemeteries: city; Catholic; Masonic; Odd Fellows; and Red Men, both Improved and Independent Orders; and Jewish. Combining cemeteries is common, but to have so many sections for such a tiny town attests to its erstwhile luster. The Masons and Odd Fellows and Catholics sprinkled cemeteries all through the state; their appearance here along with a municipal plot would attest to a certain stature Jacksonville had in the past; while the rare appearance of the Orders of Red Men boosts that claim considerably; but the clincher is the Jewish section. You don’t find Jewish cemeteries unless there’s money. I’m sorry if saying that offends anyone and I don’t mean it in a crass or derogatory way; I’m only pointing out that Jews only show up where there is significant commerce, and the existence of a Jewish cemetery is a guarantee that, at one time at least, wherever place you’re at once had clout. Albany, Oregon, once had clout. So did Jacksonville. (Portland has seven Jewish cemeteries; Portland still has clout.)  

But the Jacksonville Cemetery, it’s important to note, is not a cemetery frozen in time as, say, is that of Myrtle Creek; and while the proliferation of relatively old stones (for the West Coast) is the advertised draw here, in my mind it’s largely the active new stuff that merits attention. Admittedly, this place doesn’t have quite the exuberant insouciance of Camp Polk, but it’s a close second; and don’t come here without expecting to spend a lot of time. I advise sandwiches, something to drink. The six sections must cover at least fifteen acres crawling up a madrone covered ridge. The newer stuff tends to be lower on the hill, but not necessarily. The Jewish section has considerably more activity than either than fraternal orders or the Catholics.  

Jacksonville Cemetery
The 1972 movie The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, which stared, among others, Robert Duvall as Jessie James, was filmed in Jacksonville, thanks to its period architecture. I must say that the mountains of Northfield never looked better. Or bigger.  

For some inexplicable reason, the USGS, and hence ePodunk, don’t list this cemetery. They do list a Jacksonville Cemetery in Jackson County, but it’s considerably north of here and I haven’t tracked it down yet.  

There are a lot of reasons to detour to Jacksonville, should you ever find yourself drifting up this way, even were there no cemetery; but this is a must-see. You’re gonna love it.

Keno Cemetery

Funeria Going out in style

2009-09-29T20:17:00.000-07:00

That’s the way it goes. I was sitting down to compose a post about the Jacksonville Cemetery, beginning with a selection of photos, when I got caught up in the latest AGS newsletter. Inter alia, was a posting about an urn-shop, Funeria, which has an absolutely stunning (and sometimes amusing) collection of modern funerary urns. They also sponsor a biennial art show devoted to funerary arts.

If you can’t afford one of the Frank Lloyd Wright vaults, this is the next best thing.

The following is a quote from their homepage:

“Funeria is a unique international arts agency that has been leading the emerging genre for original, contemporary, thoughtfully conceived and superbly crafted funerary urns and vessels for people and our beloved animals since 2001.

“Each original artist-made and artist-designed personal memorial artwork we offer, through retail channels worldwide, stands on its beauty alone and is as unique as the individual it will serve. Each embodies the creative spirit that produced it, and holds the promise of reminding us of a life we’ve loved. All are intended to contain the shell-like particles and dust of cremated individuals, at least for a time. Whether kept at home, buried, placed in a glass-fronted columbarium niche or private mausoleum, or used to scatter their contents in a place of special significance, Funeria® artist-made and artist-designed urns, vessels and personal memorial objects honor the life of their recipient and they honor the gifts of the artist.”

The Farber Gravestone Collection AGS Quarterly

2009-09-15T10:06:00.000-07:00

The Farber Gravestone Collection, some 13,500 black and white photographs of approximately 9000 New England gravestones, primarily from before 1800, is an enormous and stunning congregation of absolutely wonderful early examples of the stone carver’s art. We have nothing comparable here on the Left Coast, but it’s easy to see why East Coast cemeterians are enamored with them. The site doesn’t say when the photos were taken. Mr. Farber (né 1906) is apparently still alive and photographing. He’s a self-taught photographer especially known for his 35mm color work, but I suspect that in the long run it will be this cemetery work which will earn him lasting recognition. For those of us living elsewhere in the world, the beauty and liveliness of this collection of carvings makes it understandable why cemeterians of that region get spellbound by the resource.

The presentation of the collection, unfortunately, renders it relatively useless for anyone wanting to peruse the entire collection. Even at 250 photos per page, there are 55 pages to wade through to find anything, and there’s no way to quickly get anywhere in the collection save by clicking on page after page until you get where you want to go. Effectively, it means that images from the front or rear of the catalog (you can go either direction) get often viewed, while those in the center are buried. One can only hope that some day this organizational glitch will be repaired. Until then it’s not much use as a resource, but it’s a marvel for casual visitation, a link to which I’ve added in my “Dead-on Connections” column.

Not all the photos are of individual gravestones. Approached from the rear of the catalog, many of the photos are landscape scenes of the cemeteries. These, too, are, unfortunately, in black and white. There is some justification for b&w photos of the stones themselves, where the carving elements are emphasized, but extracting the information that color provides in the landscape shots seems to be falling under the clichèed charms of b&w cemetery shots. Yeah, yeah, it brings out the somber nature of a cemetery; but, really, it’s a cultural perception. B&w in a Mexican cemetery would be foolish, and it’s not much better in New England. Leave the b&w to art.

AGS Quarterly
The Association of Gravestone Studies is, as far as I can tell, the only quasi-academic outfit out there paying attention to cemeteries. There could well be a more obscure academic journal out there from a school of folklore studies, but I haven’t found it yet. I resisted joining the AGS for years, but finally did, as they’re the only people worth supporting in their endeavors. Heck, they’re the only people one can support; there are no others.

The association publishes three regular publications, including an annual and an email newsletter, but I’ve only seen the quarterly. It weighs in at 24 pages, more of an appetizer than an entire course, but it covers a wide range of topics from mini-bios to preservation studies to overviews of various cemeteries and traditions. If it has any fault it’s that it occasionally lapses too heavily into stories of who’s buried in a particular place, more the province of local historians rather than gravestone researchers, but it’s a temptation many cemeterians fall prey to.

The current issue, Summer 2009, is especially well oriented towards cemeteries themselves and not the inhabitants, particularly in its main article “The Evolution of Modern Slovenian Cemeteries and Cemetery Customs: the Case of Brezice” (sorry that I lack the proper diacriticals), which is essentially a thesis for a collegiate degree. Written largely in that dry, academic style, it lacks, perhaps, the verve it could attain, but it’s a detailed history of the evolution of cemetery customs up to the present day in a country which switched back and forth between Christianity and communism. It could have used a broader overview and summation, but it’s otherwise comprehensive.

If I have any significant grumps with the Quarterly, it’s in the editing (which seems lacking) and the layout, which emphasizes text over pictures. I can understand the economics of not publishing color photos, but still, the photos are the main exhibit the field has. You can talk about gravestones all you want, but in the end there’s not much to say beyond what you can see. The Farber Collection is a case in point. It has no text beyond field notes, but it’s infinitely illuminating. The AGS Quarterly would do well to severely edit the commentary and greatly expand the visuals. And I know that it’s expensive, but I’d find a way to add some color. After all, this is art, not mourning.

What Hey?

2009-09-11T09:58:00.001-07:00

Agency Mission Cemetery

Dear Friends,

A word might be in order. You might have noticed my silence (relative) during this the height of cemetery season, as it were. Oh why, oh why, you might ask? (Always the chance you might not.) I do have a large collection of photos yet to upload to Flickr from my spring run, but I’ve been tardy in that, as well.

If there’s a cause, it’s depression over my photo collection. In the process of changing computers, my new one ate my old photos for lunch and spit them back unarranged. Twelve-thousand photos, oops! There’s a chance the old order is recoverable, but I’ve been too depressed about the entire situation to do anything about it. It means spending another chunk of nonexistent money.

On a lighter note, a friend forwarded a set of humorous gave marker photos the other day, some of which were quite amazing; I particularly liked the guy riding the motorcycle, full-size out of marble, but the beer spigots weren’t bad, either. One of the shots, that of the scrabble board in Lone Fir, looked exactly like my shot of the same, but it wasn’t. On the other hand, my shot of golf clubs in a wooden golf bag was in there. I know it was my shot because my car is in the background. I did think, though, that they should have scoured my collection more closely, because I’ve got a lot more amazing shots than much of what they showed.

OK then, time to upload Keno, Oregon.

After Fifty YearsBill Broxon

2009-08-24T16:19:00.000-07:00

I walked among the Grave Markers,
Near my old home town,
And I saw a number of
Old friends.
John: Killed in world war two,
Buckey, Tooter,
And Teenie.
All were childhood pals.
There was Ann's mother, And
Verna Karhryn's Mother and
father. Uncle Levi, Aunt Sally,
And Mr.Smith. I saw Uncle
Charlie—And so many others
That brought fleeting Memories
of other days.
Then I came to the plot,
That Mama had bought for herself.
Suddenly the world was still,
Except for a bird
That was singing.
Once again I heard
Mama say to me,
"Son, when I die.
Take me home!"
I think that they were glad,
That I came and walked among
Their headstones,
And remembered
Each of them,
As they used to be.
I think that they were glad,
That I came all alone,
And did not disturb
The bird
That was singing.

This was theft, pure and simple, from The Writer's Almanac. I was altered to it by one of my oldest and dearest friends, Marshall Marvelli. For what it's worth, I have a slug of cemetery cartoons which I fantasize getting permission to run someday.

Losing Thomas

2009-08-11T18:15:00.000-07:00

Did you notice how it grew a little colder around the middle of July? Not the air temperature, the world temperature? In the midst of this global warming, a fleeting chill swept the land like ripples of light before an eclipse of the sun. It passed; we went on. But there’s something missing in the landscape. Something that is not there. It was, but is no longer.

It was not a timely death. Way too young. Way too talented. And way too much left to give to the world. We didn’t even know how much until he was gone. “Hey, wait a minute. We’re not through.”

But, alas, we were.

Even though I have a couple gift books inscribed with Thomas’s name, I couldn’t claim closeness with him; that was my wife’s purview. The connection was through his wife, Jeanne, one of my wife’s longest standing friendships. When Jeanne married Thomas, Kay came along as part of the deal (with, to be sure, a host of other friends). The details of Thomas and Jeanne’s life together aren’t germane to this remembrance, but suffice it to say that Jeanne, pursued the long, loping, dashing ad man with a certain determination; and the two of them successfully meshed their existing families. With grandkids dropping in like butterflies and a new retirement studio in the backyard, life was reaching the sublimity one can only hope for.

So close.

Then he was gone. Poof, one day there was a seizure, and then little over a year later it was all over. The grandkids have no more Opa and the studio is lonely. Jeanne’s looking at a life she hadn’t imagined. The world begins again.

What happened to Thomas after his death is another matter. As per his wishes, he was cremated and his remains will go to various places dear to him. In lieu of a traditional funeral and burial, a “memorial service” was held, appropriately and tellingly, at a recently defunct art gallery amongst a hastily arranged showing of tributes to him from many of his creative and talented friends. The photos illustrating this post are from that service.

And, at present at least, that’s it. If you’re looking for a memorial marker for Thomas somewhere, you won’t find it. Like most other people cremated, his memory will have to live on in the hearts of his friends, and in Thomas’s fortunate case, the bespoke artwork created for his memorial service, which functions as a fragmented cenotaph scattered into many different homes. Which, I guess, is my rather weak excuse for including this post, which is not much about cemeteries, at all. My plea for cenotaphs.

Collaborative work between Thomas and a fellow artist
alternating panels.
As we’re aware, cenotaphs are markers for people whose body is elsewhere. They are not common, but one runs across them now and again. Where one sees them more than at cemeteries, perhaps, is at places like zoos and parks where people sponsor benches or artwork in someone’s name. Offhand, I’m in favor of spreading the cemetery work around, and putting cenotaphs in the unlikeliest of places seems a good idea to me. Maybe someday there’ll be a quirky little stone in a glade at Hendricks Park with Thomas’s name on it. A place where we can go and smile a bit. A place from which we can see children. A good place.

Maybe someday.

Chief Schonchin CemeteryLast Gasp of the Modoc War

2009-07-30T15:22:00.000-07:00

Chief Schonchin Cemetery
What follows is the introduction to my Chief Schonchin Cemetery set on Flickr, which I recently posted. I thought the information about the participants in the Modoc War of sufficient interest to pass along.

I'd had four Indian cemeteries located prior to my recent "southern swing," from whence this series of cemetery visitations, but two were posted with "no trespassing" signs, which is perfectly understandable, but unfortunate. Photographing Indian cemeteries is a touchy subject; in fact, cemeteries are a touchy subject among some Indians. I can say from personal experience that the matter is so sensitive that some people are unwilling to discuss their funeral/burial practices at all and are angered if one inquires after the subject. It creates a Catch-22 situation of being damned for information one doesn't have yet which at the same time is withheld.

Chief Schonchin Cemetery
The incident to which I allude — old Flickrites will recognize the issue — is unique in my experience. Until running into a buzz-saw of spiteful reaction to asking a tribal historian about Native-American burial practices, I'd never found any ethnic group unwilling to discuss their particular customs. To the contrary, most other cultural informants are glad to give you more information than you could possibly retain or use.

Without boring you with trivia, the bottom line was that, after much huffing and puffing and threatening with law suits (God knows what they'd have done had they known where I lived) and contacting all the other tribes to warn them about me, only folks from the one tribe ever objected. I got one timid letter from the state office of cemetery supervision, trying to placate the natives, but that never amounted to anything either, other than cementing my "odd man out" reputation with them. (I'm the "odd man out" because I actually go to the cemeteries.)

Chief Schonchin Cemetery
I did get one letter from a Native-American living in Arizona who wrote and said that she took the tribe's advice, looked at my photos, and found them pretty nice and that she liked to take pictures in cemeteries, too. So, sensitivity is far from universal, but it exists.

In defense of NAs not wanting the location of their cemeteries publicized, given their long and painful history of having their sacred grave goods stolen or destroyed, I can understand their concerns; but since cemetery locations are posted on the Web, I don't feel I'm violating any trust by more precisely pinpointing them. I would like to assume that grave robbers don't surf the Net for targets; but I'm quite sure my audience of friends wouldn't steal anything from anyone's grave. I know you're a respectful bunch; my eccentricities don't appeal to the morally suspect.

Chief Schonchin Cemetery
The Intro
Chief Schonchin, also called Old Schonchin to distinguish him from his brother, Schonchin John, was the titular chief of the Modocs during their war with the U.S. in 1872-73 (there was some debate as to his legitimacy). Unlike John, the Chief didn’t participate in the post-treaty part of the war, and has hence been a favorite of the Americans ever since. This is Klamath Indian country and they were historical enemies of the Modocs (Chief Schonchin was born at Tule Lake, CA), but the two tribes were pushed together after the war, as often happened.  

Aside from the memorial for Chief Schonchin, two other participants in the war are honored here with plaques. I didn’t see headstones for either Schonchin or the others, so they could be buried elsewhere, but there’s an implication they’re laid to rest here. The other two were a couple that went as interpreters to a famous council meeting between the Modocs and representatives from the U.S. government. Supposedly an unarmed meeting between the two sides, the Modocs came armed and ambushed the council party, killing a number of them, though sparing the interpreters; probably because the woman in the couple was a Modoc herself. In any event, that couple, Frank Riddle and his wife, Winema, are honored today in this three-plus acre cemetery under the ponderosas at the edge of a meadow. A cluster of pines greets the visitor at the cemetery gate.  

You might note that the plaques for Schonchin and Winema were erected by the D.A.R. in 1932, while Frank Riddle wasn’t so honored until 1985, and that by the Klamath County Historical Society. (There’s a story there somewhere.)

  This would be typical of Indian cemeteries on the dry side of the state, but there’s much more effort made here to keep order in the place than is normally the case. I have no idea who maintains it.

Bonanza Cemetery

Mr. Gaiman Came to Play

2009-07-16T19:30:00.000-07:00

Jacksonville Cemetery
When I began visiting graveyards, I would worry about which way the headstones faced. Did they face over the grave, or away? It was important because I was concerned about walking on the graves as a matter of respect. Was it respectful to march all over someones grave? Enough visitations and it became a practical matter to not worry, because how else was one going to read a headstone without standing in front of it; and if that meant standing on a grave, then so be it.

A more important consideration turned out to be the feelings of the residents. As far as they were concerned, they were happy anyone came by at all. Eternity, after all, is a long, long time; and a visitor now and again is the most one can hope for. Family’s nice, but anybody’s better than nobody.

So, that’s a role I play: ol’ better-than-nobody.

Jacksonville Cemetery
It takes time to get comfortable in a graveyard. Scarlett, the female protagonist in Neil Gaiman’s, inspired fantasy, The Graveyard Book, states the graveyard case succinctly: “I want to sit here and think.” She exclaims how Mr. Frost (another character) “thinks they can be the most peaceful places in the world.” Gaiman credits his son Michael for inspiring the book, when as a two year old he would “ride his little tricycle between gravestones in the summer, and I [Gaiman] had a book in my head.” Which he then took “twenty-something years to write.”

It was worth the simmering because the result is a small gem of a novel aimed at the early-teen years, but worth a delve at any age. It’s an English cemetery and the cast of characters is decently British (and earlier), but they’d be recognizable, accents apart, in any cemetery. Different sorts inhabit different parts of the graveyard, the paupers and witches, for example, holding court in their own unkempt corner, and each holds to the language, manner, and knowledge of its time. And as their store of information is only added to by the addition of new residents, their knowledge of the world is ancient, if incomplete.

The nuances of a good graveyard are well tended to. Consider this paragraph:

One grave in every graveyard belongs to the ghouls. Wander any graveyard long enough and you will find it—waterstained and bulging, with cracked or broken stone, scraggly grass or rank weeds about it, and a feeling, when you reach it, of abandonment. It may be colder than the other gravestones, too, and the name on the stone is all too often impossible to read. If there is a statue on the grave it will be headless or so scabbed with fungus and lichens as to look like a fungus itself. If one grave in a graveyard looks like a target for petty vandals, that is the ghoul-gate. If the grave makes you want to be somewhere else, that is the ghoul-gate.

The essence of the tale, a murder-mystery, if I can spill that much without letting the baby slip away, is of a child brought up by the denizens of an English graveyard. Gaiman displays a sure hand in keeping the story moving swiftly and engrossingly along, with each sentence riding to its destination with comfortable assurance. He credits Kipling as an influence, which is never a bad place to start, but I also detect notes of Tolkein in there as well, echoing the complex English love affair with language. The words are simply fun to read. Aloud would be even better.

The damps, drafts, and underplaces of a large and overgrown cemetery are lovingly sketched in this quick read of slightly over 300 pages. Characters are often introduced with their names followed, in parentheses, by their birth and death dates and epitaphs. It’s that attention to small detail and the ambiance of a cemetery which speaks to the years spent absorbing them. Gaiman has done his homework well, and the tale unfolds effortlessly. If a few details are glossed over, well, it’s a novel, after all.

A previous Gaiman novel, Coraline, was recently turned into an animated, 3D movie by a local shoe salesman here in Portland, although I assure you I have no connection with either. But I wouldn’t be surprised if this made it to the big screen, too. I’d go watch it.

[My copy of The Graveyard Book was published in 2008 by Harper-Collins and weighs in at 312 pp.]

Jacksonville Cemetery

Del Norte Photos of a Dying Tradition

2009-07-09T08:28:00.000-07:00

Hilltop Cemetery
In my lifetime Mexico has transformed itself from being an exotic country down there somewhere, to being the neighbor that moved in to stay. The folks caught up in the anti-immigration and English-only movements more and more appear like King Canute ordering the tide to halt. Good luck, guys.

Hilltop Cemetery
And hang in there on the picket line. You won’t starve. A taco wagon will be by at any moment.

Hilltop Cemetery
Like your part of the world, the Mexican-Americans have transformed mine. Taco wagons are only the most visible benefit of having an admixture of people from south of the border. Having the opportunity to begin to learn and use in real time another language is perhaps even more important. Not to mention that we’ve been able to enrich our holiday traditions with the additions of Cinco de Mayo and Day of the Dead. Any culture that can talk the whole nation into celebrating two new holidays — take that, St. Pat’s Day — has a strong grip on the popular imagination.

Why, it’s as big as pizza!

Hilltop Cemetery
The first Mexican-American grave we noticed was that of Roger Santanus at the quintessential, Western cemetery, Lone Pine , on Smock Prairie outside the tiny hamlet of Wamic, OR. I’m sorry I don’t have a picture of Roger’s grave, but it was a long time ago. We noticed it, though, because it was the most colorful grave in the cemetery, which was otherwise a typical somber graveyard. Roger’s grave, on the other hand, was festooned with gaudy faux fleurs that drew your eye immediately. I only had to see it once to know that those people had a whole lot more fun at the cemetery than my folk did. We were satisfied with a sprig of flowers or a tiny flag, but the Santanuses were not content with such modesty bordering on forgetfulness. Roger was definitely not forgotten and was evidently still a part of their world.

Hilltop Cemetery
Ever since Roger, I’ve had my eye out for the gaily bedecked grave and have in particular sought out Mexican-American graves, hoping for the same exuberance the Santanus Family demonstrated. Alas, I have not often been rewarded. In the spirit of disclosure, I’ll confess to never having been south of Santa Cruz, CA, so I’ve never seen a Mexican cemetery live, but I’ve seen enough photos to know that, as a rule, Mexicans lavish a lot more attention on their graves than do Americans. Day of the Dead itself in Mexico is spent celebrating in the graveyard. As previously noted, I was hoping to run into more Mexican-American graves on my swing through central and southern Oregon, those regions being home to big agriculture and lots of immigrant labor, but was disappointed there, too. One finds, of course, the graves of many Mexican-Americans all through the state, but for the most part their graves aren’t especially distinguished from those of their neighbors, save for names and occasional writing in Spanish.

Hilltop Cemetery
The one major exception to that rule is Hilltop Cemetery outside Independence, OR, in the heart of the Willamette Valley. For a long time I wondered how come no other Oregon cemetery contained an extensive collection of Mexican-American folk grave memorials; but as it appears that truly none other does match Hilltop for its collection (I haven’t visited most of the cemeteries in the far eastern part of the state, but I’m running out of options here), the question is not why don’t the other cemeteries have them (folk memorials), but why Hilltop does?

Hilltop Cemetery
For that I have no answer. Someone’s going to have to dig up relatives of the people buried there and ask them.

Hilltop Cemetery
In any event, if you want to get a taste of a Mexican cemetery, however attenuated, here in Oregon, Hilltop is your answer. That may even hold true for Washington, as well, though I haven’t begun to comprehensively cover that state.

So, don’t lose faith; we still have Yakima.

Hilltop Cemetery

Grave Torpedos

2009-07-07T20:36:00.000-07:00

Last night’s (7/9/09) History Detectives on PBS had a segment sure to pique the interest of any cemeterian: Grave Torpedoes.

It turns out that in the latter half of the nineteenth century, largely due to the demands of medical schools for dissection subjects, the grave robbing, not for artifacts but for the bodies themselves, was a lucrative business. To deter would-be grave robbers, a variety of grave “torpedoes” were designed to blow said robbers to smithereens. A devise similar to the one exhibited was patented by a Thomas Howell in 1881, the year the law was changed to allow medical schools to use unclaimed and donated bodies, which effectively put an end to the torpedo business.

“Torpedo” in those days didn’t mean an underwater missile, as it does today, but instead included many sorts of explosive instruments. This torpedo was essentially an iron ball filled with gunpowder and a trip-hammer trigger to ignite it, should it be disturbed. Such as by a grave robber digging nearby.

The flaw, of course, was that it would also blow up if a legal grave digger happened to dig nearby.

The torpedo segment in the show is titled “Grave Alarm” rather than “Grave Torpedo,” because the current owner of the object thought that that is what he had, until research proved otherwise.

The Siskiyous

2009-07-04T16:13:00.000-07:00

Pilot Butte Cemetery
I am stalked by death. Many a morning I wake with a tight cold sweat and a taste of steel in my mouth. I feel the suspension of time that says a crisis is at hand. I am fine. Around me is death. Around me is a cancer eating at my friends and family. Around me people are waiting for the birth of a new child. Around me walk proud young women with newly extended bellies. A friend’s wife is told, “You have to decide on a place for him. A bed. A couch. Soon you will be unable to move him.” The doctor says months. The wife says no, sooner. He has seen the people he will see. I am on the long list. I have seen him for the last time.

Jacksonville Cemetery
Where do you go when you’re no longer here? Is there morning there?

Is there there there?

Chief Schonchin Cemetery
The Siskiyous
The Siskiyous are a jumbled mess of mountains straddling the Oregon-California border. They are what happens to the Cascades as they dribble out in their southern reaches. What distinguishes them from the Cascades is hard to say other than that they spread out into rugged terrain that for a time held one of the fiercest pockets of Indian resistance to the white invasion: the Modoc Indian War. Out here “Indian Fighter” on a tombstone is a not fanciful sobriquet, and the Modocs took down their share of soldiers. Gold strikes were common in these parts and camp town sprang up and disappeared overnight (cf. the introduction to Golden Cemetery on DeadManTalking, when it shows up). Life was as rough and tumble as the mountains.

Jacksonville Cemetery
Today the region is dotted with agricultural valleys separated by precipitous hills. Outside of the valleys it is sparsely populated, but the valleys hold concentrations of people that allow for quasi-independent development, and each city is the Mecca for its own micro-world. In the early days of white settlement Jacksonville was the center of travel and commerce and its cemetery reflects that former glory; it is one of Oregon’s great pioneer cemeteries and worth a trip to the restored town for it alone. Since those days, Medford, Grants Pass, Ashland, and Klamath Falls have run the show. Famous for fruit trees (Harry & David are from Medford), the region has long been a magnet for migrant workers who provide a vibrant addition to the cultural landscape. (Thanks to them, I can attest that you can find an excellent taco in Merrill among the braceros and the teenage girls in their skin-tight Levis.)

In 1941 the Army built a training camp, White City, north of Medford, which left its stamp on the character of the region, even though it was abandoned by the Army after the war. Nonetheless, the region prides itself on its conservative bent and the road signs for Klamath County (I believe) read “We support veterans.” (Let it be known that other parts of Oregon do support veterans, as well.) One legacy of White City is the nearby Eagle Point National Cemetery, which began in 1952 and has bucolic views over the neighboring farm land stretching off to deep-clad mountains.

Antioch Cemetery
Another nearby cemetery, Pankey Cemetery, had a curious involvement with White City. It was located in the middle of the gunnery practice range, not an ideal situation for tombstones; but the Army, bless its heart, sympathetic to the descendants of people buried in Pankey, prior to bombing the bejeezus out of the place, laid all the tombstones flat and covered them with six feet of sand. When they were done, they sucked up all the sand and tilted the stones upright again; although a volunteer caretaker confessed to me that she had a slight concern in the back of her mind that one day she’ll run across a live round left over from those times and meet her demise in that very spot. A short trip, she figured, provided they find the pieces.

Chief Schonchin Cemetery
Thanks to Southern Oregon University in Ashland along with a regional Shakespeare company, the region has also long been a draw for a more lettered and artistic class, which was joined in the 1960s and 70s by a wave of hippie immigrants who brought their own indelible style with them. More recently wine makers and organic, sustainable farmers and ranchers have begun to transform the region’s agriculture and, frankly, cultural life, as well. It’s a heady mix in an area where at least one town (Grants Pass) boasts a banner across its main street proclaiming: “It’s the climate.”

Woodville Cemetery
Scenery’s not bad, either.

Tag Ends
Chief Schonchin Cemetery
Nearly half the photos I brought back, though, are not from the Siskiyous but are distributed between central and south-central Oregon. I’d located four Native-American cemeteries before I departed, none in the Siskiyous. I found the four, but two were adorned with “no trespassing” signs, so there you have it.

I had hoped in this swing through Oregon’s high, dry farm and orchard lands that I would find quintessential Mexican grave sites, but alas, I was disappointed. Still, the best collection of Mexican graves in the state are in the Hilltop Cemetery outside Independence, in the heart of the Willamette Valley. Yet the proliferation of taquerias and taco wagons almost made up for the lack of colorful headstones. Aside from the outstanding tacos from the Merrill taqueria, I had serviceable ones from stands at the Deschutes River Crossing in Warm Springs and at the intersection in Wolf Creek, of all places. I never did find the Wolf Creek Cemetery, but a stop at the fire station directed me to the unmarked cemetery at Golden.

Pilot Butte Cemetery
All in all a successful trip, rich with photos. And aside from getting snowed off Hart Mountain on the Solstice (where the mosquitoes were pestiferous), the weather cooperated just fine.

Milo Gard Cemetery

Update

2009-07-01T20:07:00.001-07:00

And a note to Deez. I'm still having technical difficulties and can't email you or leave a comment on either your stuff or my own stuff, but, hopefully, this will get published, and, if you see it and could send me an email address that I can actually see, I'd write to you about eh banner proposals, which I enjoyed a lot. There are technical question, such as how to employ it, but that can wait until I've got myself operating smoothly. I'm looking to buy a new computer soon and will wait till that's up and running before I get on to refinements.

The photos have been saved — Thank God! — but it will be some time before they get organized and posted on Flickr. I visited 30 cemeteries on my swing through the Siskeyous. Two were posted with "no trespassing" signs and three were lawn cemeteries for which I did minimal drive-by shootings; but the other 25 produced some 900 photos.

Technical Difficulties

2009-06-24T12:03:00.000-07:00

A quick note to let you know I’ve been busy, have lots of stuff which may never make it out of the camera; which is a pity. I have some 900 new photos (maybe 25-30 cemeteries) from a swing through southern Oregon, including the magnificent Jacksonville Cemetery and two Native-America burial grounds. But they may be lost due to technical glitches.

Shoot me.

But I’m still here, and when I save anything — if I do — I’ll send it on to you.

A Little History

2009-06-06T17:42:00.000-07:00

I found what follows stuck in a folder in my computer. I'm no longer quite sure why I wrote it, but it's not a bad summary of the situation.

Cemeteries are, first and foremost, living spaces. Like any other cultural artifact, be it school, factory, town, library, shopping center, state, what-have-you, each cemetery has a life of its own. Living cemeteries are those still in use. They are not static. Their changes may be slow and subtle, but they continue all the time.

Dead cemeteries tend to disappear through neglect, forgetfulness, or conscious removal or destruction. Forgotten cemeteries continually reappear in the process of digging for foundations, road cuts, pipe lines, etc., while other dead cemeteries are among the best preserved, and best known, structures on the face of the Earth: the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, and Stonehenge come quickly to mind. To be sure, given the considerable length of time humans have been here, most cemeteries have long been irretrievably lost. Nonetheless, long lost burial grounds are constantly discovered. In rediscovered cemeteries, aside from the bodies themselves, the most important findings are the trappings left with the corpse, the grave objects. One can often make the case that the single best window we have unto an ancient culture comes through through its grave offerings. Without them, our knowledge of the past would be much less full. And certainly when it comes to our most famous cemeteries, said Pyramids, etc., the cemeteries and their attendant objects far outweigh the bodies in importance. King Tut’s okay, but it’s his paraphernalia which really excites and informs us.

But there’s a disconnect between how we view ancient cemeteries and how we view our own, although the disconnect is not uniform across our culture. The disconnect is more than academic; it’s led to enormous changes in our burial practices which in turn are having a commensurate impact on the cemetery industry. A headline in The Oregonian from August 5, 2007, encapsulates the problem: Oregon cemetery plots go begging. The problem, author Anna Griffin contends, is that “more and more, particularly on the West Coast, consumers are choosing cremation over burial.” In Oregon, Griffin says, the cremation rate is now 65%, which corresponds to Portland Metro’s data of 67%. Just forty year ago the rate was 5%. The problem affects virtually all the state’s major cemeteries with the notable exception of the Veterans Administration cemeteries, which are constantly looking to expand; but their reason is simple: they give away their plots and pick up the burial tab. It’s an offer veterans and their wives find hard to refuse. Even in non-VA cemeteries, the incidence of government supplied markers often dominates the graveyard, but even that hasn’t stemmed the drain away from using the major cemeteries servicing the cities of the region. The stark truth is that cemeteries are now competing for a severely shrunken market. It’s bad enough that only 35% of people now opt for burial, but many of those left come from cultures which frown upon not being able to have upright, visible grave markers and hence shun the major cemeteries, which are invariably lawn cemeteries.

But it is a mistake to think that cremation is the cause of the cemeteries’ problems. The cemeteries’ problems are self-inflicted and cremations are a response to the problem; at worst they’re a symptom. There is nothing that prevents cremains from being buried. The problems are related to the disconnect, and much of the secret lies in the cultural response that requires some people to have upright monuments versus flush memorials. What might seem a minor cultural eccentricity affecting a small minority of non-assimilated Americans is in truth symptomatic of an underlying yearning of many people that is not being satisfied in conventional lawn cemeteries; a yearning that drives potential customers away from cemeteries and paradoxically towards cremation. What author Griffin failed to notice is that there is a whole class of cemeteries largely unaffected by the switch to cremation, ones right under the nose of the problem, as it were: the vernacular cemeteries.

Cemeteries for the most part can be divided into two classes: designer and vernacular, the difference in which is fairly self-explanatory and contained within their names. The designer cemetery appeared in Paris in 1804 under the name Père Lachaise. It’s still there and contains, among other luminaries, Jim Morrison. It was the first time anyone had tried to place the dead in a landscaped park designed especially for that purpose. (In fact, the idea for parks came out of cemetery design.) The intention of such early cemeteries was that the dead would have edifying monuments built over them which would be instructive to the masses who, hopefully, would come to visit them, bringing art and culture, as it were, to an artificially tamed landscape where the teaming masses can be enlightened in the open air. The first such cemetery built in the United States was Mt. Auburn in Cambridge, MA, in 1831, and it and many early similar ventures were started by horticultural societies. And they were extremely successful with thousands of people streaming to visit them on fine weekends to such as extent that traffic rules often had to be promulgated to contend with the throngs, with sometimes only plot-owners allowed to bring horses or carriages onto the grounds. The Eugene Masonic Cemetery, for example, had a city trolly come to its front door.

Two things happened to stem that tide of popularity: one was the invention of parks per se drawing the throngs of cemetery visitors to them instead. That invention, though, might have altered the use patterns of cemeteries, but wouldn’t alone have significantly affected the primary role of the cemetery: that of memorial ground had not cemeteries gone through further design changes that drastically altered their function.

By 1855 Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati had begun the process of consolidating management of the cemetery under one person, in this case Adolph Strauch, who introduced the idea of clustering large monuments on the side of open lawn areas, the size of which he also increased. The process reached its apogee some 58 years later when Hubert Eaton opened Forest Lawn Memorial Gardens in Glendale, CA, doing away with family uprights markers altogether and turning the entire operation into a lawn cemetery with stones flush to the ground for ease of maintenance. Eaton was following the time-honored American tradition of streamlining his business, making it more profitable, and cutting costs. But he took his idea one step further, one that exacerbated the problem begun with the implementation of the flush marker. Neither Eaton nor Strauch knew that in their efforts to maximize their profits and minimize their costs they were sowing the seeds of their own destruction.

Eaton eliminated, not only the monuments to death that dominated the early designer cemeteries and which can still be seen in cemeteries such as Portland’s Lone Fire or Cottage Grove’s Fir Grove, but he tried to eliminate the very idea of death itself, as witnessed by the name change. “Cemetery” carried too much the burden of death with it, so he opted for “memorial garden” which immediately became the code for the new style of cemetery, to such an extent that sometimes older cemeteries changed their names to adopt the new nomenclature, such as Rest Lawn Memorial Park outside Junction City which is a pioneer cemetery that subsequently adopted the “memorial garden” tag. You can be sure that any cemetery you find with the name “memorial garden” attached will be a lawn cemetery. In cases such as Rest Lawn, and in many other vernacular cemeteries, one can see land developed prior to and after the invention of the lawn cemetery. Many pioneer cemeteries mistakenly adopted this approach and in many a charming wooded spot now sits next to a barren open plot.

Eaton didn’t stop their, though. Instead of shroud-draped statues and lamentations for the departed, Eaton erected his own monuments that avoided any mention of death, most often classical reproductions or Christian statuary. Eaton’s goal, essentially, was to chase death from the graveyard, and in this he pretty much succeeded. But in the process, he chased away his raison d’être. He could call his place a “memory garden,” but if there was nothing to remember, why end up there? Slowly, as memorial gardens spread, more and more people took up cremation. It’s not that they necessarily preferred cremation, but given the exorbitant cost of funerals, what’s the point if there’s no place to go remember your loved one? One flush stone next to another in a limitless lawn is hardly conducive to visitation and rumination. The very reason to visit a cemetery was largely eliminated. That was coupled to a cost explosion resulting from the American post-Civil War predilection for embalming and the sales insistence of the funeral industry into more and more expensive coffins. The bottom line became that traditional funerals and burials became exceedingly expensive while the product offered was in equal part diminished. It was a lot of money for something people didn’t use much, and subsequently they began pulling out of the lawn cemeteries altogether. Unless, of course, they were free.

Lift that Barge, Tote that Bale Working Skiffs

2009-05-29T21:54:00.001-07:00

Cove Cemetery (Cove, OR)
It’s tempting, when considering maritime motifs on cemetery markers, to hark back to our liquid origins and suggest that boats on tombstones recall ancient associations with the water, but I don’t think that’s the case. Certainly, burning bodies on the banks of the Ganges before floating them down river smacks of primordial memory, but I think that water-craft images on Oregonian tombstones are on a par with other vehicular images, which fall into two rough classes: occupational and recreational. You’re either working that boat, or you’re drifting around dreaming.

Tombstone vehicular images, whether of wheeled, water, or air craft, are almost invariably masculine symbols. Occasionally they’re shared with a spouse, especially if one considers RVs, but primarily they’re a man’s world. Women might engrave their monuments with flowers, pets, or a piano (guys get guitars), but men are more likely to carve an image of something that moved. There are occupational images of things other than planes, trains, and automobiles — loggers get represented out here often and I’ve seen a printing press on one stone once — but there’s something primal about boys and things that move, be it skateboards or jet planes. Maybe it’s testosterone: tombstone images of big pieces of equipment are a way for a guy to display his cajones to the world forever. But movement is important. You don’t see images of desks or sales counters or drill presses or labs or cubicles or die stamps on tombstones. It’s train engines, tractor-combines, bow picking gill-netters, or 747s. If it doesn’t move, it’s not worth telling eternity about.

Oaklawn Memorial Park (Corvallis, OR)
Working boats tend to require bigger water than pleasure craft. There aren’t a whole lot of working boats on inland rivers and lakes, save for guide boats and a scattering of minor occupations such as catfish noodlers and frog catchers. A lot of the working boats found on tombstones are military craft, which, I suppose, is a category all of its own. I’m no expert on naval ships, they’re all destroyers to me, though I’ve had two engravings of the aircraft carrier USS Lexington. Naval personnel, of course, are drawn from the entire country and I don’t know if there’s any statistically significant increase of personnel drawn from coastal versus inland communities, but I rather doubt it. In any event, one would expect to find engravings of military craft following normal patterns of personalization over the entire country. I would further suspect that tombstone personalization might be ubiquitous but not uniform across the country; although I have nothing upon which to base that presumption.

River View Cemetery (Portland, OR)
In the set of photos accompanying this post, therefore, there is nothing that geo-locates a tombstone image of a Navy vessel, and to a certain extant the same is true of most of the other commercial craft depicted on local memorial, although there are a few boats pictured which could come from few other places. They aren’t exclusive to the Oregon Territory, but they’re otherwise uncommon and restricted to specialized areas.

Offhand, I’d guess that commercial cargo ships and tankers, while theoretically drawing their work force from the entire country just as the Navy does, in reality share a degree of crossover with the fishing community. There is to an extent an oceanside community that enjoys connections among itself separate from the world a few miles inland, and members of which transfer from one type of vessel to another as opportunity arises. Or, perhaps, as prudence demands. That and the on again/off again, nature of the shipping business — one tends to work several months or years straight and then take several months off — means that it’s easier to maintain seaside employment if one lives close to the sea to begin with; and consequently one is more likely to find engravings of commercial craft in seaside communities than inland. Axiomatic, one might say.

Woodbine/Green Mountain Cemetery (Rainier, OR)
Of the pictured vessels, several are of interest and a couple are very place-specific. Woodbine cemetery, where the image of the tugboat is found, perches above the Columbia River at Rainier, OR, halfway between Portland and the coast, a highly likely place for a tugboat captain to live. Tugs ply both the Columbia River and the open ocean, dragging barges around the world; though I imagine that different vessels, not to mention crews, do different tasks, and it’s not a matter of one tug fits all. Unlike fishing boats, the miscellaneous cargo ships depicted on tombstones are probably not the ship owners proud portraits, as the stones are generally more modest than large ship owners might desire, and more likely represent career vessels. It’s hard to tell just looking at a stone.

Wind River Memorial Cemetery (Carson, WA)
The log tender from a headstone at the small river town of Carson, WA, though, is indubitably a place-specific working boat, evident from the scene shown along with the craft. The body of water is neither ocean nor river nor even a lake (note the leaping fish) but rather a mill pond where logs are stored until processed. Almost miniature little tugs push and pull logs and rafts around these pond, or at least did so in times past, when life was flusher; and that’s what’s memorialized on the stone.

Iman Cemetery (Stevenson, WA)
But it’s the image of the small steamer “Wasco,” in the tiny, eponymous Iman Cemetery on the edge of the river hamlet of Stevenson, WA, that is not only place-specific, but historic, as well. The Wasco was built by one Felix Iman (the eponym) in 1854 and was the third steamer to run between Cascade Locks and The Dalles on the Columbia River. I suggest that non-natives search Google Images for the “Cascades of the Columbia” and “Cascade Locks” to get an idea of what kind of country we’re talking about. The Columbia slices a gorge straight through a snowcapped mountain range here, the Cascades, beginning at The Dalles and ending at the outskirts of Portland. Cascade Locks is in the middle. It’s a world-class chunk of geography.

The first wagon train of immigrants came through the gorge in 1843, making the Wasco an early economic venture for the white population. Iman quickly sold the Wasco and went into the saloon business, from which he immediately exited, as well. Both Felix and his wife, Margaret Windsor Iman have modern markers with brief histories etched into the stones. Hers is particularly dramatic:

Born at Tippecanoe Co., Ind.
1852 Missouri to The Dalles on horse back
Carried motherless babe 500 miles
Took raft down river to Cascades
1853 met and married Felix G. Iman
Survived Indian War of Mar. 26, 1856
Indians burned home
Had 16 children, 9 boys, 7 girls

That was not the half of it. (Notes on her life from an oral transcript of, perhaps, c. 1915 are available on line.)

The Indian attack which she mentions was part of a general uprising in 1856 as a result of a broken treaty on the part of the whites (I know you may find that hard to believe). During the fray the Wasco came under fire from Indians collected where White Salmon is now, across the river from Hood River; but the river is sizable and their balls had no effect

Earlier this month (on the 11th to be exact) I wrote a bit about the Palmer/Bell grave site, on the Washington State side of the Bridge of the Gods (modest name, no?) Norman Palmer, who is buried there with his sister, perished in the same uprising.

Eventually, the Indians were subdued and nine of them hanged, including one who was, according to Mrs. Iman, definitely not guilty; but revenge is often not meted out to the perpetrators of a crime, nor is it necessary. Any Indian will/would do. Mrs. Iman wrote of the hanging that they were “hanged on a tree about one mile from where we lived. Some of them, when asked to talk, shook their heads and put the noose around their own necks. Others laughed at those who were hanging.”

In any event, with the Wasco pulling barges of troops from Portland, the whites won and the steamer subsequently returned to her trade, albeit for only a short period of time. By 1857 she was pretty much out of business on the river. A later newspaper advertisement, from probably the 1860s, offered passage between Bellingham, WA, and Seattle on the “fast and commodious” steamer Wasco for $1; although I can’t be sure it’s the same steamer Wasco. Good price, though.

Lift that barge,
Tote that bale;
Get a little drunk,
And land in jail.

Woodbine/Green Mountain Cemetery (Rainier, OR)

Mothers & Children

2009-05-26T19:45:00.000-07:00

Belle Passi Cemetery

A Bit of Housekeeping:

I suppose I should have done something for Memorial Day, but I didn’t. I worked that day.

Too bad, too, as down at the local mausoleum they have a locked family room containing two coffins and a stained-glass window, which is open once a year for an hour and a half each Memorial Day. There are no known survivors to the two people entombed there, so it’s unexplained why the room should be secreted away. I suppose I could ask.

Saturday prior to Memorial Day we stopped to eat lunch (from a taco wagon in Brooks) at one of our favorite cemeteries, Belle Passi, outside Woodburn. I write a little bit more about Woodburn and its surroundings in the intro to the cemetery on Flickr at Dead Man Talking (hit link above), should you be interested.

Woodburn is an old (for here) town in the center of the Willamette Valley, which is the agricultural marvel of the Pacific Northwest. Belle Passi was a whilom town near Woodburn. The core of downtown Woodburn is Mexican these days, offering some of the best Mexican food in the state in a scattering of restaurants and bodegas. Throw in the Russian True Believers, who haunt the outskirts of town, and you have one of the most interesting burgs in the region. And it’s got an outlet mall and a drag strip to boot. What more could one want?

Belle Passi Cemetery
But back to the cemetery: The three photos accompanying this post were shot that Saturday before Memorial Day. There’s no significance to or connection between the three other than that I was struck by the pathos exposed in them. Children’s graves are often the hardest to absorb, but their poignancy acts like chili powder for the soul: it’s painful, yet we can’t walk away.

Not only are these children’s graves, but they all appear to be of children who didn’t survive birth or much beyond. From the tombstone alone, it’s impossible to tell if Susanna Cravens was stillborn or died shortly after birth, but she evidently didn’t survive for a second day. Carole Ritzenthaler was eight months pregnant when she and her baby died, although we don’t know the specific causes. Then there’s the sorrowful anonymity of the stone chiseled simply “Mother/Baby.” Given no other information, it’s hard to avoid thinking that mother and child died together at childbirth.

I have felt the pain.

And I feel so much better.

I’ve never been to war so I can’t say this from first hand experience, but I’ve read often enough of the great sense of relief that some people feel on the battlefield when a person next to them has just been killed; the sense of relief coming from the uncontrolled and very real relief of not having been killed themselves, of having dodged the bullet, very literally. I’m aware, naturally, of the guilty pain many people suffer from having had that involuntary reaction. In trying to figure out why I, myself, one, likes going to graveyards, I’ve come to suspect that part of it comes from the relief of still being able to go visit them, period. And perhaps unconsciously, the added pain of a child’s grave gives one the added burst of relief that it didn’t happen to them or their loved one. (And if it did, God bless them.)

Belle Passi Cemetery
More Housekeeping:

A quick “hello” to all you new duly registered “followers” of this blog (what the heck, hello to you old ones, too), and let me say how grateful and amazed I am that anyone finds this of interest. My wife and children don’t read it, trust me; so I’m delighted that others find entertainment and their own relief with these walls.

Our turn is coming. Let’s whoop it up while we still can.

ResomationNews of the Hereafter

2009-05-13T16:36:00.000-07:00

Masonic Cemetery (Sheridan, OR)
Late breaking news from the world of the dead:

You probably saw this stuff in your hometown paper or elsewhere, but if you happened to have missed it, here are a couple notes from our paper, The Oregonian:

An unnamed cemetery in Chicago (4/26/09) has built “a red brick wall designed to resemble the one in dead center at Wrigley Field… and is ready to accept the cremated remains of Cubs fans—inside $800 Cubbie blue and white urns if they wish.”

I’ve heard said that being a Cubs fan will kill you.

The same paper reported (5/13/09) that the State of Oregon is looking to regulate new body disposal methods, ones I’d never heard of. One process called “resomation” (if you can believe that; I couldn’t find it in any dictionary on-line) “dissolve[s] bodies into a soapy liquid.” That sounds especially wonderful. Another alternative is to freeze-dry Uncle Jake and grind him up “into a fine powder” which can be disposed of in a biodegradable coffin.

Or, presumably, added to your favorite cake recipe, little by little.

“Eat up now, children. Remember how Uncle Jake used to love chocolate cake?”

2009-05-11T20:40:00.000-07:00

Ah, Fellow Cemeterians,

A note to let you know I’m still here but occupied elsewhere these days. I have done a little cemetery photography, which you’ll see by and by (a return to River View), but including a quick stop at the Palmer-Bell grave site in Washington, the Flickr entry for which (plus minor additions) follows this. If you think my cemeteries have suffered, you ought to hear my banjo. Maybe you shouldn’t.

Gardening takes up an inordinate amount of my time right now, with a lot of hours spent simply idling among and admiring the flowers. For the first time in our lives we have birds renting a bird house for the season, Bewick’s wren; and not just any bird house, but one our granddaughter made for her Grammy. A few days ago we started hearing the peeps of tiny newborns.

The rest of the time, the time where I carve out “writing time,” has largely been spent of late spitting out one more version of a small article which I write over and over again, usually stopping somewhere midway and abandoning the project for several more months or more, only to start over anew. It’s one of those quirky obsessions that lay people get into now and again, trying to prove one set of professionals or another that they’re full of hokey. I’m working on archaeologists, particularly those interested in human evolution.

Essentially, I’ve known for a long time where humans evolved. Ever since reading Desmond Morris’s “The Naked Ape” in the late 60s, I’ve known that the savannah theory of human revolution didn’t hold water and that water was the key to human evolution. It took me some time before I figured out just how water played its role in our evolution, the theories of the late 60s weren’t as advanced as they later became. The premise of “The Naked Ape,” which followed the seminal work of Alistair Hardy, which was popularized through Elaine Morgan, was that there was an aquatic phase in humans’ past, which caused the curious abnormalities shaping people: hairless, slow of foot, defenseless, etc. Hardy’s epiphany of the relationship between human body fat and that of seals discovered the obvious: water had something to do with it.

Which is does, and there’s been a group of adherents to that theory who have been hounding the profession ever since Hardy/Morgan/Morris went public. The profession, for its part, has resolutely ignored the water-babies, as it were, and stuck as religiously as possible to their theory that humans evolved on the savannah; but they’ve nonetheless slowly begun to adopt some of the probabilities of a water-based evolution theory. The evidence is too hard to ignore.

My addition to the fray has been what I call the demographic theory of evolution. It’s premise is that, essentially, we all currently live in the same place that we did when we first became bipedal: on the shore/beach/bank. We never moved; we’ve learned how to recreate that environment wherever we go, but, effectively, we haven’t left that environment. It was living on the beach that made us stand up for good; the pickings were too rich. The advantage of the demographic theory is that is avoids all but the most minimal ecological changes. Another name for the theory could by the Occam’s Razor Theory of Human Evolution. Occam’s Razor is, essentially, the geographical theorem that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line; i.e. the simplest explanation is probably the best. The demographic theory doesn’t have people moving from anywhere to anywhere to acquire all the characteristics they have now (including their migratory history); ergo, it’s the simplest theory of human evolution. By the rules of the game, if you have the more complicated theory, you have the burden of proof.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been piddling away at.

See ya later.

Palmer/Bell Grave Site
And herewith, the Palmer/Bell Grave Site spiel:

Not really a cemetery, containing but two-plus people. The “plus” being the leg of an Indian chief who, according to “Explorations,” a newsletter from the Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center Museum, lost it during “a shooting accident and was a friend of the Palmers”; a story which was repeated to us by a honey vendor parked there when we stopped by. Related to the old chief by marriage, the vendor also said that recently a buried skull was found in the course of some utility pole work and that everything was currently halted to see whether or not the entire place was an old Native American burial ground. If so, he claimed, then the Indians would own the bridge, which appeared to amuse him considerably. According to legend and backed up by geologists a large chunk of a neighboring mountain fell into and blocked the river about 500 years ago, providing a natural bridge across it until washed away. Legend has it that the bridge lasted for several years, but my guess would be that any blockage would have been cleared away the first winter, at the latest. I’m told the USGS estimates it to have lasted “several months.”

The massacre referred to on the stone was, according to the same “Explorations,” brought on by the “breach of the Treaty of 1855.” It’s an old and oft repeated story.

The man-made bridge, which stands where the natural bridge once was (or close enough), while suggesting a more mundane origin, is still a bridge for, if not of, the gods. Of all the Columbia crossing from Oregon to Washington, this is the most heavenly. The view from the middle of the deck is sublime. One can only imagine what it was like when the river ran free. Maybe someday…

Hollywood Forever Redux

2009-04-27T19:43:00.000-07:00

A little over a year ago, April 9, 2008 to be exact, I ran a column—regulars will remember it well, I'm sure—listing movies I'd seen the previous year that contained at least one cemetery scene. It was so easy, I did it again: kept another list.

Who said dying wasn't chic?

The List

Brave One
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
The Real Dirt on Farmer John
Harold and Maude
Gates of Heaven
Down by Law
I'm Not There
Charlie Wilson's War
The Prestige
The Kite Runner
Things We Lost in the Fire
Under the Sand
When the Levees Broke
Simple Life of Noah Dearborn
I am David
Goodnight, Mr. Tom
Lemony Snicket's a Series of Unfortunate Events
Wag the Dog
Taxi to the Dark Side
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
King Corn
Sounder
Ocean's Twelve
The Reader
Kinky Boot Factory

Go now to a cinema and ponder.