Epitaph

Cemeteries are unique places in our lives. Some are beautiful, some are historic, and some are even entertaining. There is a quiet sadness about all cemeteries because they are the final resting places of our loved ones. We intend to post pictures here of cemeteries and head stones that are original photographs. We are looking for beauty, dignity, funny and above all something interesting. Feel free to comment and to contribute. We will provide a mail box if you want to contribute.




Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Personal and Challanging - Arlington

I have not been doing a lot of photography recently.  Life has been a bit challenging.  In January my 100 year old father died and I had to clean out his apartment. I have had to deal with the aftermath stress form his illness and death.  More recently, we have had some unusual weather in Hurricane Sandy followed with an early in the season Snow Storm, the second October storm like it in two years.  I am hoping to get back to work and have seen some new interesting looking Cemeteries recently.  I have a few Pictures I shot at my Father's interment at Arlington National Cemetery.  My father was in the Military for 26 years and retired as a Master Sergeant in the Air Force.  He started in the Missouri National Guard, and a year later enlisted in the regular army as an infantryman.  In 1939 he was stationed at the Presidio, in San Francisco and decided to join the Army Air Corps.  He served in the Pacific through WWII and in Japan during the Korean War.  He retired from the Air Force in 1959 and worked another 20 years for the Navy Exchange in Groton, CT.

On to the pictures:




I didn't comment, because the sequence is kind of self explanatory.  I was presented with the flag.  My Son went down there with me and I was joined by my Cousins and some of their families.  It was very moving.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Blast from the Past

I found these pictures as I was looking through some of my older material and I decided to put up some of these that didn't make it previously.  This cemetery has a very close and personal meaning for me.  Many of my family on my mother's side are buried here, including my mother.  I live in Connecticut, but for the time I have moved in with my father to help care for him. I am, therefore living in Rhode Island right now, very near this cemetery.
The urn shaped stone in the middle here is the marker for my mother and my grandfather.  Many of the surrounding stones are for family of some sort.  This is in the very old part of this cemetery.  This is a very dark photo, as many of these are, because the weather was terrible!  The day was totally overcast and at times I took pictures in the rain.
You can see the river in the background here.  There is a stark beauty here.  The winter had ended but spring wasn't quite here.
I think this picture conveys the starkness of the day and the setting.  This stone from this angle looks like it is all alone in a desolate place.

Above are two of the mausoleum's that can be found in this cemetery.  These take monument building to it's height.   Certainly they can be found in many cemeteries, but this cemetery has many.
I took this picture because the stone with the angel was striking and because of the placement with the bare tree in the back.  Angels are a common theme for monuments.
Occasionally you find a stone with a portrait of some kind, but not often.  It is more frequent in Europe, I think.  This is a stone carving of this person and it is quite impressive.  This man was born in 1820 and lived to be 94.
This stone is very dark, but it is finely engraved with a scene common to this part of Rhode Island, a beach scene.  Rhode island is known as the Ocean State and the sea and related  activities dominate.

You can see the nautical theme here with the lighthouse stone.  There is a lighthouse not too far away in Watch Hill.
I had to include this head stone.  It appears to be made of pink quartz and is very unusual.  The stone is unfinished and the name is inset.

I intend to take more photographs here in better weather conditions.  I am very nearby now and I can mostly pick my weather and season. By the way, the cemetery's name is River Bend Cemetery.




Thursday, June 16, 2011

Like the "Good Old Days" in New Haven


Nancy Aborn Wuennemann, Executive Producer of the Eldercare Channels of Connecticut and Editor of Connecticut Generations Magazine was featured as the guest speaker at the annual meeting of the Connecticut Cemetery Association on June 9, 2011. Utilizing social media for business conversion and conversation was the presentation topic at the event held at Amarante's of New Haven. Pictured along with Ms. Wuennemann are David Evans from David Evans &Associates (r) and Craig Neal, Executive Director of the Catholic Cemeteries Association Archdiocese of Hartford.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Historic, Patriotic Cemeteries

New England, hence Connecticut, is filled with historic Cemeteries.  Each pat of the country lays claim to it's own history, but Connecticut played a major roll in the Revolutionary War as well as the Civil War.  Few actual battles were fought in Connecticut but Connecticut people participated significantly.  The City of Meriden, CT goes back to the 1600's as a settled area.  It became an organized City in the early 1800's, but residents o the area were active in the life of Connecticut. 
The sign below gives a brief summary, and is locate at one corner of an old cemetery off Broad Street in Meriden.
 

Below see some vistas of the cemetary, which is on a low hill just off the street.
Patriots from the Revolutionary War are buried here and there is a Bronze placard indicating this.
Finding the particular stones for these individuals would have been too time-consuming so I just photographed some of the more interesting stones.
Aside from having the name Yale on this stone it is interesting in that it is one of several stones that have been coated with a preserving surface. If you click on the picture to make it larger you can see the texture of the coating.
The stone above is another preserved stone.  What I find interesting is that the Anchor and the word Hope are featured.  I grew up in Rhode Island and know that the Anchor and Hope are the seal of Rhode Island.  There may be no connection, but it is interesting.

What follows are some rather distinctive stones from the 1700's.  The first name is Ives and I do know that the Ives family was prominent in Meriden and Wallingford.
Gideon Ives, 1777
Samuel Hall, 1795
Captain Divan Berry, 1783
I usually point out Obelisks when I find them there were a number of smaller obelisks and they follow.


There are two here!
This last one is the tallest of the bunch.  Many of the stones are of a red kind of stone.  It has lasted since the 1700's but weathering is obvious.  Many of the stones here were damaged by the weather and I suppose that lead to the attempt to preserve some of them.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Ethnic Cemeteries - A Visit to Ireland?

Tired of flowers?  I promise there are no flowers featured in this post.  Some cemeteries are definitely religiously oriented and the one in this post is a Roman Catholic Cemetery.  This one also seems to me to be predominately an Irish cemetery.  I say this for two reasons; there are a large number of Celtic Crosses and most, but not all, of the family names are Irish.  I come from a Danish-Irish background myself.  My mothers grandparents came to this country from various parts of Ireland.
St. Joseph Cemetery is located in Waterbury, Connecticut and I have often passed by it.  I live in this community.  This was a beautiful Spring day and the cemetery was a quite refuge from the busy streets beyond.
There were several stones similarly designed here.  This was one of the nicest. The image was nicely carved and the engraving on the base stone was exquisite.
This statue rests on a pedestal that indicates that this is the marker for the Parish Priests.  I think that this is a nice way to do this.  I have seen many individual markers for Clergy, but this one is a nice way to remember the Parish Clergy as a whole.

These  are two of the many cross monuments.  They are among the smaller of the crosses, but they are nice in their own way.
 This large monument was a part of what appears to be a family cluster of monuments.  This is the largest of the cluster and some of the smaller ones can be seen to the right.
Perspective can make a great difference.  This is the same monument from above, but from the end.  Notice the nice straight lines of the other stones.
Remember I mentioned Celtic Crosses?  There are three here.
There are several more here.

I especially love the carving work on this final Celtic Cross.  You can click on the picture to see a larger version.  These are very traditional Irish and Celtic designs.  The IHS comes from somewhere else ( it is a monogram for the Greek name of Jesus ( I H C O Y C).  The C is a sigma, so IHS or IHC is the first three letters in the Greek name for JESUS.  If you pronounce the J as a Y then you will pronounce the name as the Greeks did.  This use of the monogram for Jesus is common in Celtic crosses.  Let me point out there are other explanations for the IHS. The other designs on the cross predate Christianity.



Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Spring is Here!

Spring is here and Easter has already come and gone.  The trees are budding and once again I am venturing out to shoot pictures of the area's Cemeteries.  I found yesterday to be an excellent day weatherwise and managed to cover two cemeteries.  One of them is in m home-town of Waterbury and the other is a historic Cemetery in the city of Meriden.  These of course are all in the State of Connecticut.  I will feature each of the Cemeteries in future posts, but this time I am going to feature some of the flowers I saw.  Often flowers in a cemetery are in some sort of pot, but these are growing in the ground.  Some of them have been specifically planted, but some are volunteer plants.  Now to the flowers.
This is a Tulip that has been planted by the stone.  Tulips are beautiful, but the flower lass only a short time.
Daffodils are like Tulips, they are beautiful but are short-lived.  I actually cropped out some of the withered flowers.
The Bluish flower is a Hyacinth. I don't know what the red flower is.  the Hyacinth is one of the first bubs to bloom and these are well past their prime.  The red flowers are beautiful.
I am not sure what this plant is.  It is very small and delicate and I believe a derivative of something that was once planted.  They were all around this stone.  This is a closeup view.
These delicate little bluish flowers  were found all over a certain area of the cemetery.  I know them as May Pink.  They are a wild flower and appear to be a kid of pansy, but I am not sure.  Why are they called May Pink?  I have no idea they are a purplish blue color.  They tend to grow until someone mows the lawn.
Dandelions are often thought of as weeds, but this one set near the blue flowers is quite pretty.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder I guess.

Peace!

Monday, March 28, 2011

The Hope


Looking to Spring and Easter


For all too long this has been the look out in the Cemeteries this year.  In fact, this picture is from last winter.  This winter was far too nasty for me to be out and taking pictures in Cemeteries.  I am not twenty any longer!  I thought that it would be nice to do a Blog Post of some of the flowers from last year in anticipation of this Spring and Easter.  These are not new photos, but I have in most cases cropped them to show mostly the flowers.

These are very much Easter flowers.  There is a palm cross with lilies in the center.  In many ways this is quite traditional.

Again this is quite traditional.  Tulips are very much Spring and these are quite nice.

This is very beautiful, but not place here by someone.  These are wild flowers.  I have heard them called May Pink.  I am not great at flower naming, but I will a times make an attempt.

I don’t know what these are, but I like them.  This little cluster was off to the edge of the cemetery and these didn’t get mowed.

These were on the side of the same cemetery as were the following two.  The last one is a bush and is quite bright.




I will now post some without need for comment.







In the end the following are not the most beautiful, but they may be the most meaningful.  These are a form of Lilly.  Lilies are symbolic of the resurrection.  Christians will find this  important as the message of Easter and ultimate hope from God.