A Ray of Sunshine

That's what they are - a representation of a ray of sunshine, reaching to heaven.

The obelisk.

Sunshine in January!

The Egyptians first used the obelisk in the Old Kingdom (2650-2134 BCE), according to Douglas Keister in his book, Stories in Stone (Motes Books 2009). He also tells us that few and fewer examples of Egyptian Revival architecture appear the closer you get to the Bible belt. So there's that! There is a lot of Egyptian Revival architecture in Laurel Hill - there are special tours that highlight it, so if you are interested, keep your eyes open for those tours.

BTW, I own a book (see above) with a 2 page "Glossary of Major Epidemics/Pandemics". Just saying.

Another thing that there is a lot of in Laurel Hill is the obelisk! The cemetery is full of them, so many that at one point the cemetery had to write to their plot owners, asking them to please find another style of monument to commemorate their loved ones.

A vista of one of the seas of obelisks at Laurel Hill Cemetery

I was going to discuss the largest obelisk in Laurel Hill today - the monument of Mayor Edwin Henry Fitler. 

The Fitler Obelisk

It's 55 feet tall - that's big. Rumor has it that Fitler was a small man.

Just saying. :-)

He was Mayor of Philadelphia from 1887-1891, and was the first Mayor to work out of the current City Hall (but only because he moved in before it was done, just so he could say that). 

So Fitler's monument is HUGE.

 His wife's - not so much. LOL!

Anyway, I was going to go on and on about Fitler, who was an interesting guy. But then I started to think about where the SMALLEST obelisk in the cemetery might be. So, not being a fool, I asked the staff. They directed me to the general vicinity of General George G. Meade's burial place, which is always easy to find since you can see the floral tributes left there.

You might note that General Meade's stone is pretty small. At least compared to Fitler...

And just above the good General, up the rise, are these two little darlings:

They are so adorable, leaning in towards each other. After some digging in the cemetery archives (fun!!), I figured out that they belong to Henry C. Perot, who was buried on 6/13/1848, aged 2, and Elizabeth M. Perot, who was buried on 9/15/1851, aged 1.

Aged two, and aged one.

The best guess I had to their identity was that the children were the first ones buried in the Perot plot, and their marble obelisks were the most worn in the plot. Marble doesn't hold up very well. If you see a stone that looks brand new but with an older death date, it's probably hard granite. Marble is soft and doesn't hold up well in the weather and the pollution.

Some of the stones in the Perot plot had been re-set over the years, so all of the other stones were straight. But these two little ones were leaning towards each other, partially fallen over.

And they stole my heart.

So let's think of Lizzie and Harry when we think of Laurel Hill Cemetery obelisks. They are some of the sweetest little monuments there. If you go to visit General Meade, look up the hill and see them, cousins looking after each other even in their way too early deaths.

Developing a Tour

I've been avoiding writing this post because I know it's going to be all over the place, a real jumble. But I finally had to admit that this is part of the process, so here it is.

Each tour guide at Laurel Hill Cemetery designs and researches a signature tour, based on their specific interests and the stories they want to tell. Finding your voice by finding your topic can be a challenge.

My personal academic background has developed into something I feel very passionate about - the influence of clothing and textile production on societies, making me a Textile Anthropologist. While my specialty concentrates on Coptic Egypt, before the year 1,000 CE, I wanted to consider translating that interest into my signature cemetery tour.

But how to proceed?

Should I discuss the residents of Laurel Hill who were involved in fashion and textiles? Possibly.  I should at least include Martha Drinnan was identified in death by the dress she was wearing. But I am really more interested in common people and the clothing they wore. And finding the stories of the non-"famous" people in Laurel Hill.

How could I know what clothing people were actually buried in? Couldn't, really.

Maybe I could track mourning clothes throughout the time periods of the cemetery.

Hmmmm...

Most information you find kind of jumbles Victorian mourning clothes into one large lump, but fashion changes rather quickly.

I could try to find a timeline of Victorian mourning fashion and conventions and attach burials to the various changes in fashion. But I couldn't find such a timeline.

Which  means making my own timeline. Newspaper and journal accounts, advertisements that possibly even give prices for various gloves, crepe, veils, mourning dresses, etc.

Doable, given my academic background.

Hmmm...

I could just pick random burials based on death date and match them to dates when fashions changed (mostly based on newspaper and journal accounts, perhaps advertisements. That could work.

To test the process, I picked a random death year of 1875. Then went on Find a Grave to find any burials at Laurel Hill dated to 1875.

If you haven't seen Find a Grave, you definitely want to go on over there and play! You can search by name, by dates, by cemetery. It's a genealogist's dream. Since one of the people responsible for it (Russ Dodge, a wonderful tour guide at Laurel Hill - if you ever see him advertised giving a tour, TAKE IT!!) is a specialist in the Civil War, it is especially helpful for that. You can add your own family's graves, as well. I found my family stone, "WILD", and we even found my husband's father's grave and learned that he served in Korea. Check it out -  https://www.findagrave.com/.

So I pick a name, LTC Frank A. Reynolds (buried in Section L, Lot 27-28). Born August 10, 1841 in West Virginia and died July 19, 1875 in Ilion, Herkimer County, New York. He was a confederate soldier - so that's an interesting thing about him. Both of his parents died in 1876. Since I have his burial section and lot location, I will be able to get more information about him from the files in the cemetery archives, if there is any information there. That's for further down the road.

Oddly, both of his parents died a year after his death, 1876. That will take some looking into, as well.

So now the trick is to find information about mourning practices in 1875. That might include what kind of veils women wore and for how long (years? months? changing as time goes on?), the size of a black band on a male relative's hat, did they wear gloves, etc.

Here are some photos of mourning dresses from 1875:

  

      

1875 Mourning Dress from the Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection (front and back)

Mourning Dresses circa 1875 from "Morbid Portraits" from the Daily Mail, October 30, 2017

A possible process!

But how to communicate these photos and examples of fashions to my guests? Large reproductions on foam board? Maybe a handout that they can take as a memento of their time on the tour? Turn that handout into a pamphlet that could be sold in the cemetery shop? 

Hmmm...

So many possibilities, and as you get more into the development process, some ideas will be dropped and some ideas will stay and some ideas will lead in other more interesting directions.

I'll be back on this topic as I come up with more of those ideas. And, of course, help me out and leave a comment with your suggestions!

A short post...

It was the week before Christmas, and your intrepid cemetery tour guide volunteered at a fancy party event, not coming home until 4 AM.

She had to come to the cemetery the next day to take pictures for all of you, for her next post.

So this is how she ended up looking, with the caption below when she put it onto her Facebook page:

Where the hell is the Starbucks in this cemetery???

She came back the week AFTER Christmas, and found this:

                                      

And her thoughts were:

1.  I guess we're more of a Dunkin' Donuts kind of cemetery...

2. Did a worker or visitor leave it there, covering it with a piece of marble so it wouldn't fall over?

3. Did someone find it as a piece of trash and ground it with the marble so it wouldn't blow around??

4. Does this finally explain groundhog behavior????

and finally, 

5. If this is a sacrifice for someone buried there, I am SO not touching this cup of joe.

The End.

Had To Be Shared

Originally posted October 26, 2017 to Facebook

50+ Brilliant Tombstones By People Whose Sense Of Humor Will Live Forever

https://www.boredpanda.com/funny-tombstones-epitaphs/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=doyouremember

An Explanation and A Beginning

First posted October 24, 2017 to Facebook


I wanted to create a place for me to record stories, photos, and information about cemeteries and those resting in them.

While I have a large amount of photos and information about different cemetery monuments, I thought I should start with a few cemetery stories about my family.

I was just recently asked how I got so interested in cemeteries. I think it's because of the cemetery ritual in my family. Every holiday - Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Mothers' Day - my mother and her mother, with the husbands and whoever they corralled into going with them, would gather cleaning supplies in a bucket, and flowers, and head off to the cemetery to tend to the family graves. Clean the stone, pull the weeds, lay down the flowers.

Cemeteries were places where you visited the family, cared for the graves, and started the onslaught of stories about the relatives buried there.

So cemeteries have always been about family, and stories.

Revenge of the Reilly Stone

Here is my first stone story.

My parent's families are both buried in the Mount Saint Mary Cemetery, Flushing, Queens NY. I said before that my mother's family would go to the cemetery on holidays to clean the stones, lay flowers, etc. So it must have been around Thanksgiving, I get a letter from my mom at college, with a photo of her family's monument, a map of the cemetery marked with all the family, and then one of my father's parent's stone. Mom, who hated my father with a passion, had cleaned their stone, pulled the leaves, put down flowers.

She asked me to give the photo to my father and to tell him that she had tended his mother's grave.

He started to bellow before I could even get the first sentence out of my mouth. What kind of GHOUL takes photos of a headstone??? What kind of nerve to touch his mother's grave!!!! Your mother is a MONSTER!

Wow. And that, right there, shows the difference in how people face death.

So I'll post my own photo of my grandparents stone. Somewhere, my father will be spinning in his grave. Oddly enough, for me, I have no idea where that grave is.

Lafayette Cemetery #1, Firefighters

Originally posted October 29, 2017 on Facebook

It's Sunday! Time for some reflection...

Today I want to share a monument from Lafayette Cemetery Number 1 in New Orleans, Louisiana. It's the Jefferson Fire Company #22 communal tomb.

It was built in 1852. During that time, firefighters were given free life insurance and burial benefits. Which says something scary about safety on the job.

Do you see the squares on the long side? The coffins went into those slots. No below ground burials in New Orleans because of the water table.

It made me think about my relatives who were firefighters in the NYC Fire Department, the volunteers who gave me and the Burn Foundation in Philadelphia their time and dedication, and the firefighters who lost their lives on 9/11. Understanding that those lives had been lost was one of the most harrowing moments of my life.

Never mind all of the volunteer and professional firefighters who work so hard to keep us all safe.

When I took these photos, mostly I thought of my dear friends Hawk and his partner Diane. We pay attention. We worry. We thank you.

White Bronze - Fancy!

First published November 5, 2017 It's Sunday - time for some reflection.

Today will be the first of my photos of monuments in Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, PA. I am a tour guide for the cemetery, which I love doing so much! The training takes a good while and can be very time consuming, but I am very proud to have completed it successfully. I hope to be a LHC tour guide until I enter my plot and become part of someone else's tour route. :-) I will talk about the cemetery in general another time, but I really want to tell you about this one monument.

Professor Levi Franklin Smith and his wife, Mrs. Catherine Drinkhouse Smith were both devoted Spiritualists at the end of the 19th into the early 20th centuries. Spiritualism was a big movement during that time, more of a religion than anything else. If you think of mediums trying to contact the deceased, people holding séances for the same reason, etc. - that's a part of Spiritualism. Really, the most important thing about it is the belief in the afterlife and that you can communicate with those who have gone before.

The monument is a four sided sort of obelisk, with an open book on top. One side is for Professor Smith, one for his wife, one has all quotes about Spiritualism, and one is about Free Masonry.

Catherine Smith's side says that she "passed to spirit life 15 minutes before 12 o'clock, the 27th Day of March, 1893 from the residence of her husband" and describes her as "one of the best mediums of her time".

His side says that he "passed to spirit life October 24, 1901 from his residence, 2430 Thompson Street (that's Philadelphia, PA) and that he was a "consistent and devoted Spiritualist, and passed to spirit life with a full knowledge of this beautiful philosophy".

All of that is enough to make me love the Smiths and their monument, BUT there's more! If you tap on the side of it, it will ring like a bloody bell!

Because it's made of white bronze, a fancy term for ZINC. There are two other zinc monuments in the cemetery, and one additional one out for repair. I love them and may have to start travelling to find every other zinc monument in the US. And abroad!

I had trouble finding the one smaller monument and mentioned it to the Laurel Hill cemetery supervisor. Who laughed at me and said, how can you not find it, it's BLUE! Yup. William Casey. You can find him right behind The Silent Sentry, in a plot full of veterans of the Civil War.

And in Laurel Hill’s South section, the Shoemaker Family’s zinc angel:

So, ending with two quotes from the Smiths.

“The individual who will not reason is a bigot, who dare not is a slave, and who can not is a fool.” (I'm thinking I have a number of folks who need to read that one...)

And the favorite quote of the Laurel Hill Cemetery tour guides: “Life is eternal; death is merely a change of conditions."

The Milgrim Mosaic

First published November 13, 2017 on Facebook A day late! But still time for reflection...

Another monument from Laurel Hill Cemetery, and again one of my favorites. This one is in a part of the cemetery most people don't get to - down by Valley View, which is up against Ridge Avenue.

The Conway/Milgrim monument. It's actually designed as a bench, with two amazing mosaic panels that depict the journey of the family from Israel to Poland, across the ocean to the USA - looks like Ohio area and Philadelphia.

This entire piece is about family, to me. There is one person buried there (cremains, according to the cemetery records, even though one online source says that the young man's body is there). Alexander Evan Conway Milgrim, born 5/20/76, died 6/6/98. Only 22/23 years old. His marker says "Beloved Father - Son - Brother; PEACE.

I have been told he committed suicide, but I can neither confirm or deny. Does it matter? His family loved him and lost him too soon. Since my own life has been so impacted by suicide, I feel a special affinity for this young man and the love of his family indicated by this very special resting place. There are two curved rows of high bushes on either side, so that when you enter the area of the burial, you are extremely private. In the spring and summer, you can't really see the monument at all because of the bushes being so high. This time of year, it is easier to find, but still isolated. You can see in these picture the flowers that have been left. I am told that you can find flowers there quite often. 

So much love, such a testament to family. Exactly what a memorial should be, I think. And a true piece of art, one of a kind. If you join me in Laurel Hill Cemetery, I will be sure to share it with you.

My Wild Family

First published November 20, 2017 on Facebook

So...Time for some contemplation.

Since it is the beginning of Thanksgiving week, the week of my Nana's birthday, the

death of my Step-Father Jack (the man who raised me), the time I found out about my

breast cancer, Thanksgiving has a lot of emotional significance for me.

Thanksgiving was also one of those times when the family went to take care of the family

graves and leave flowers.

My mom's family plot is in the cemetery of St. Fidelis catholic church in Flushing, NY - the

same cemetery as my father's parents (as discussed before). My great-grandparents,

Leopold (Leopold Wild - best name EVER!) and Katie - aka Pa and Mom Wild; Martin and

Sue - Great-Uncle and Great-Aunt Uncle Marty and Aunt Sue; Mike and Elsie - Grampy

and Nana (my maternal grandparents). Surname WILD. If I hadn't met my husband when I

did, I was prepared to change my maiden name (Reilly) to Wild because it is just such a

cool name.

You can see on the stone another name - Marie Iris Paulik - that's my mom with the surname of her third and last husband, Eddie.

There is a setup about this story. When I was in college, my stepfather Uncle Jack died the day after Thanksgiving. It was a difficult time. I remember my mom getting the phone call from the hospital as we were getting ready to go and visit him, and I remember her collapsing to the floor. My roommate was staying with us for the holiday, and she ended up babysitting my niece and nephew while we dealt with the death.

Uncle Jack was buried with his father, his Uncle Roy, and his beloved mother. But there was no room there for my mother. It really bothered her that she had no space ready for her in the future, and it REALLY bothered her to have Jack buried with his mother instead of finding a new place for the two of them together. Note - she still buried him there with his mom.

So the local community cemetery was building a brand new mausoleum where you could buy individual spaces in a large building. Mom decided to get herself a spot there (Hah! So there, Jack's mother!). And she decided that we all needed spots with her. Including future spouses that hadn't even been met yet. And a place for Mom's possible future spouse. 10 places in the new building - TEN. Never used.

My poor brother, as Executor of her estate, had to deal with those 10 spots. Now my mom had a hobby. That was buying and selling read estate. Not really flipping - just buying homes and business buildings, all for her own use, then selling them for a profit. She loved it. So the brother needs to sell the spots. Mom and I had discussed selling them on eBay, but the brother is smart and he calls the cemetery and asks if they will buy them back.

Which they do. For a LARGE profit. So the husband says that even in death, she was a making a killing (no pun intended!) in real estate.

So, Mom passed away four years ago from complications from Alzheimer's. Instead of a funeral mass, we kids gathered a few weeks before she passed, all together, and spent time with her.

One of the amazing moments was when my sisters and I started to sing the old family songs. Does your family have such thing? The brother was particularly surprised because he did not know the songs!, but mom actually sang along, all the words and all. Amazing.

Here are the songs:

First one I can't even give you, it's so offensive now a days. Just know that the words include "Mammy" and "Snowball"...

"Won't you come over to my house? Won't you come over and play? I have some playthings, a dolly or two. I live in the house cross the way. I'll buy you candy and sweet things. I'll put your hair in a curl. Won't you come over to my house and play that you're my little girl"

That was the Pedophile Song

"Playmate, come out and play with me, and bring your dollies three, climb up my apple tree. Slide down my rain barrel, climb up my cellar door, and we'll be jolly friends for evermore. Playmate, I cannot play with you, my dolly has the flu, boohoo boohoo boohoo. Ain't got no rain barrel, ain't got no cellar door. But we'll be jolly friends forevermore..."

Flu Epidemic Song

"Poor kitty! Poor kitty! My poor little kitty! I looked through the house all around. Looked under the table and out in the stable but nowhere could my kitty be found. Those bad little boys with their popguns and noise have frightened my kitty away... {note - if you look up this song, there are a large number of verses, all about how the little boys torture and kill the kittens - shudder}"

The PETA Song

But I digress...

So my mom died. We gather at the cemetery where she wanted to be buried, the catholic cemetery in Flushing, NY. There is a Deacon from St. Fidelis there because you have to have some kind of service to be interred there, so he will say some prayers and such. I started to talk with him, telling him about our family. And I said, see Mike and Elsie? They were marred on Christmas Day in St. Fidelis Church in 1929. And the Deacon said, no that's not possible. The catholic church doesn't allow weddings on Christmas Day. AHA! Father Ambrose did the service - he was a special friend of Grampy/Mike's - they werefishing buddies (translation, they would go out in the boat and drink, smoke cigars and fish), so he was willing the bend the rules for my grandparents. My Nana LOVED Christmas, and this was a gift from Grampy to her. The Deacon started GUSHING about The Sainted Father Ambrose and we went on together about him. My siblings were pretty shocked that I knew who Father Ambrose was and even some stories about him, and that this Deacon was the same!

Just to show how stories about stones can bring people together...

BUT this is not even the main story about my mom's burial! She had always said that she wanted to be buried with her family, but the vault was full. Somehow my sister convinced the cemetery that mom was so small, we could bury her in a child's coffin and just about slip her into the vault.

Tell me. Just how the hell did THAT conversation happen?? Does the cemetery supervisor just mention that the only coffin they could fit in is a child's?? Did my sister just bully him into it? Who first brought that up? SOMEBODY TELL ME? Because I think about it a lot and just can'tsee any other family pulling that off. LOL. I do appreciate that it happened because I wouldn't want mom haunting all of us for not following her wishes.

Phew.

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving. I wish you all good health and happy family memories.

Cradle Graves

First published November 27, 2017 on Facebook Monday morning...time for reflection. Cradle graves. Not for babies - monuments shaped like cradles. (Yes, I don't think they look like cradles, but
work with me here). Headboard, footboard, side slats. Babies can be buried here, as in the
small versions below, but really it's all about the shape. The rectangular section of the stone
is actually a little garden space.

Cradle graves were popular from the early 1800's through the 1920's, when they began to
lose popularity. There are at least 1,000 at Philadelphia's Laurel Hill Cemetery, in all shapes
and sizes. Here is the thing about them, and why I think they speak to me. Cradles graves were created
so that families (or in some cases, their gardeners, dahling) grew flowers and sometimes
grass, made to look like a blanket on the bed, sometimes stones in decorative patterns. A
little garden. That took some work and maintenance. Cradle graves were meant to be interactive. Somebody had to come out to the cemetery on a regular basis to weed and replace plants,
to put in bulbs, to care for the grass. Somebody had to actually physically interact with the monument, and thereby the burial of
the person under that stone.

















Looks like a beautiful blanket...

It reminds me of the family ritual of coming on holidays to clean the family stone and weed
around it, and put down flowers. Most of the cradle grave garden spaces in Laurel Hill are empty. Perhaps the families have died
out. Or they don't realize what the shape of the stone is there for. In one Philadelphia cemetery, Woodlawn in West Philly (near the University of PA), they are
bringing the tradition back by having folks adopt a cradle grave. The volunteers are trained in
the types of plants and flowers that would have been used during the period of the fashion of
the cradles. They agree to take responsibility for the stones. And they learn about the people
buried there, so the interaction is preserved. How cool is that? https://hiddencityphila.org/…/gardeners-bring-cradle-grave…/ Unfortunately my favorite cemetery, Laurel Hill, has so many cradle graves that a similar
program is not possible. I couldn't have don't it anyway - I have a seriously black thumb, and
I don't think dead sticks are what the organizers at Woodlawn have in mind... So. Cradle graves. But more importantly, interaction with our dead. Let's think about how to
bring that back... Here are some photos of mine. The first is a pair of cradle graves. For some reason, I don't
really remember seeing only one - they are in pairs or at least more than one. That's probably
wrong, but that's how it is in my head.

One even has some grass growing in it!

The same two little cradle graves, at night. These probably ARE for babies. Sad.

Those were all from Laurel Hill Cemetery. But this last one - New Orleans, LA. Not exactly
like the ones in Laurel Hill or Woodlawn, but you can see that someone is taking care of the grass.
Cradle graves were apparently particularly popular in the South.

And here are a few from Ireland, where I am told they still use this monument style today

More like what we see in Laurel Hill, albeit a bit rough around the edges…

These (also from Ireland) are truly just damned creepy! LOL!    

  

Laurel Hill Cemetery New App!

First posted December 4, 2017 on Facebook

Monday morning...time for some reflection.

I'm not going to talk about a particular stone or story today. Instead, I want to introduce you to a super cool resource that has just been published by my favorite cemetery, Laurel Hill!

There is now a great mobile app, available for free through Google Play or Apple, that introduces you to the cemetery.

It features various tours (more than I thought there would be), which match some of the in person tours you might take here in Philadelphia. So it can be like being at the cemetery when you are not in the Philly area or able to visit any time soon. Or you can use it for a solo trip though the physical site, since it tells you how to find each spot being portrayed as you move through the tour.

Photos, audio clips, some videos - it's pretty comprehensive. I even have been learning from it! (Shhh! Don't tell anybody!)

Some might worry that this type of technology would try to take the place of me and my fellow tour guides. I think it's an excellent addition to the information we like to share with everyone. Some folks just can't make it to the cemetery, or prefer to wander it solo. This way, everyone gets a chance to access our history.

I have gone through the tour titled "Pop Culture from the Gatehouse", which has 13 'stops'. There are often multiple photos, so don't forget to flip through them, to get the full picture (get it??). I learned a lot from it! and look forward to exploring all of the tours at my leisure.

For the record, I did look online for other cemetery mobile apps. Two notable ones I found are Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY (seems to have a lot of glitches in it so far - they say that are working on it), and the Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis, MN. That one is sort of a middle of the road app, without the audio-visual elements of Laurel Hill's. So Laurel Hill is currently the one to beat!

Let me also tell you that the app was produced by the Friends of Laurel Hill Cemetery and Night Kitchen Interactive, and funded by The 25th Century Foundation and The McLean Contributionship. A lot of work obviously went into the whole production, from the fundraising, research, photos, scripts, physical plant. It's impressive.

I always talk about the stories in a cemetery, how those stories help us to find a connection to history or our own family. Congrats to Laurel Hill Cemetery for finding yet another way to make that important people, living and dead, connection.

Go search for it! Or look here:

http://www.thelaurelhillcemetery.org/visit/mobile

Cemetery Animals

(Originally posted December 12, 2017 on Facebook)

It's Tuesday (good thing I don't have an editor breathing down my neck...), time for some
reflection.

Today I am thinking about cemetery animals. Not pet cemeteries, which are a whole 'nother
cool thing, but animals that live in cemeteries. And cats will be featured, because cats.

But I'll give you an aside that there are movements towards letting people have their cremains
buried in pet cemeteries, along with their pets...

There are a lot of stories about cemeteries in England, for instance, with a resident cemetery
cat, who greets people who are grieving and make those people feel better.

Some cemeteries have turned into animal sanctuaries, like this one in Japan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=Lvh0TPrEjOU

Cemeteries are a great place to see wildlife. Almost any animal can be found in a cemetery
somewhere. Deer, coyote, rabbits, little critters like mice and moles, birds. Think about it -
it's quiet, not a lot of humans, grass, places to make a nice burrow, bushes, trees, stuff to eat.
Pretty nice.

Laurel Hill Cemetery has cheeky birds that will sit on top of a stone and basically dare you
to mess with their home. Rabbits, fox (!), gophers. The fox families sometimes take over
abandoned gopher burrows.

Gophers can cause a lot of damage to the cemetery - their burrows and underground tunneling
can topple stones easily, and you really do have to be careful about the holes when you are
walking around.

Another side note - the gophers this year are FATFATFAT. Which, according to my Grampy,
means that the winter is going to be COLDCOLDCOLD. Put on a sweater.

There was a great story on CBS Sunday Morning some time ago (I hate you, Steve Hartman -
you always make me cry!!) about flag markers put out for Memorial Day disappearing and the
local veterans and the cemetery staff getting upset about it (understandably). They put up motion sensitive cameras and caught the culprits! GOPHERS! And the CBS crew put a little camera
down one of the gopher holes and got amazing footage of the den being LINED with flags. Just redecorating, guys!

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/burrowing-into-a-mystery-who-stole-flags-from-veterans-graves-in-ny-town/

I am always looking for the cemetery foxes in Laurel Hill. I've seen them twice, once jumping
from stone to stone. Amazing. Here is a pic from the LHC Facebook page (taken by Emma Stern,
her photos of the cemetery are fantastic):

https://www.facebook.com/EastFallsLocal/photos/a.1447805311967618.1073741961.719735274774629/1619753451439469/?type=3&theater

The new book about the cemetery, "Images of America: Laurel Hill Cemetery" has an adorable
photo on the last page of a fox family in the stones. Worth the cost of the book, if the book weren't
so great as it is!

http://laurel-hill-cemetery.mybigcommerce.com/images-of-am…/

There is a concert venue near to the edge of the southern region of the cemetery. It's one of those outdoor concert places where you can bring in your own picnics. So good eats in the garbage cans whenever there is a concert in the summer. And the fox community from LHC will go over after the concerts and choose their dinner choices, and BRING THEM BACK TO THE CEMETERY!!!!!
That cracks me up - Why?? Probably just quieter.

Full moon, glass of wine, you and some leftover chicken wings...

Then there's this one:

http://www.phillyvoice.com/watch-concert-laurel-hill-cemet…/

Add some entertainment!

But this rant started with something more serious. I ran into the wife of one of the cemetery workers
last Friday. I didn't know that her husband had been injured in November and only just got out of
the hospital.

This gentleman is one of my favorite people. He is a cemetery storyteller - he always teaches me something new (did you know that mausoleums used to be built at a slight tilt down at the back so
that liquids from rotting bodies could drain out? HOW COOL IS THAT???), makes me laugh,
stands up for what he believes in, and cares passionately about the cemetery, his wife...

...and cats.

He's one of those crusty on the outside and a big old marshmallow on the inside kind of people.
He is the one who takes in the cats who show up in Laurel Hill.

Because, yes, there are despicable people who just leave their unwanted dogs and cats in the
cemetery. Maybe they are not despicable but figure that the animals will be safer in the cemetery
than on the street. Maybe the cats and dogs get loose and take sanctuary there. Anyway, this one
person generally corrals the lost cats. And other staff members corral the dogs (this dog was
fostered and, I believe adopted by the fosters - note that she was an older dog, with a collar, but
they searched and could find no owner).

https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=Laurel%20Hill%20Cemetery%20lost%20dog

Ok, so my friend is now home and recovering from his injury, thank the gods. And we need to
step up and help take care of the cats and the foxes (also ones he loves to look out for). His wife actually works for the Women's Humane Society (America's first animal shelter, founded in 1869), since she is also an animal lover with a marshmallow heart. I once told her that I have all rescue
cats, and she cried. Nuff said.

https://www.womenshumanesociety.org/

The Humane Society actually hosts birthday parties for kids! All of the other mothers/fathers will HATE YOU!!

What could you do to honor my friend, who does so much for the cemetery community?

Become a member of Laurel Hill ($35!! - a bargain!), or donate - they take care of the animals
as much as us people.

Or donate money or things from the wishlist of the Women's Humane Society:

https://www.womenshumanesociety.org/wishlist

You can bring things to them personally in Bensalem, PA, or have them shipped directly from
places like Amazon, or contact me privately, and I'll let you know how to drop things off to me
in East Falls (North West) Philadelphia.

You can also contact your local animal shelter and see what they need. Old towels for cats -
when you are doing your pre-New Year cleaning. There. That simple.

So maybe you're thinking, where's your famous cemetery connection? The connection is that
animals needs cemeteries just as much as humans do. Even the ones we can't take home with us
share this special space with us. And they have their own story to tell. Our connection is so
strong, even in death.

I hope they get those regulations on being buried with our pets changed. Sooner rather than later.
We need their eternal comfort more than they probably need ours.

Especially the cats.

(Love you, B!! Get better soon!!! We need you!!!!)