Invigorate the Boneyard

Connecting Directors has an article, 8 Ways Cemeteries Can Enliven Their Communities

• Historical tours
• Veteran Remembrance Ceremonies
• Stargazing
• Theater in the Cemetery
• Graveside Movies
• Dine with the Departed
• Yoga in the Cemetery
• Cocktails in the Catacombs

Spring Grove Cemetery has a pretty active calendar.
But maybe these ideas could be used by the city with Wesleyan Cemetery.
We have hyper programming in several parks, The Banks & Fountain Square. Why not Wesleyan? It's a large park like area with a good sized area with no interments. I don't know about electricity and the roads are narrow and there's no parking lot per se but most of these issues aren't unsolvable.
Maybe 3CDC would be interested. It's not like they don't have precedent with digging up stiffs & burying parking garages...

Let the Fat Lady Sing !

There's pretty much no place more associated with finality than a cemetery, so an opera performance in Bucharest’s Bellu Cemetery makes perfect sense.
This would be really cool in Cincinnati's Spring Grove Cemetery.
In the past, their Lantern Lighting event focussed on international music. This year they will have The Pete Wagner Orchestra which plays old pop tunes. The Drive In event plays recorded pop/rock music.
I think opera, real opera, not the operetta that will be performed in Bucharest, would fill the hills & trees very nicely.
A Lumenosity thing would be kinda cool in the cemetery, too but the added logistics might be a bit much. And, again, that's pop music. I think the old cemetery with it's sacred roots deserves older music.
And it would be even better if I-75 could be shut down for the event.

Read more about the Bellu event here.

Spring Grove Cemetery Annual Cruise In

The 9th annual Spring Grove Cemetery Cruise In is nigh upon us, Sunday, October 12, 3PM - 7PM.
"Quimbob, that date sounds familiar…"
Of course, fair reader, it's (Uncle) Al Crowley's birthday!
While I doubt they will celebrate that with a portable rock wall climbing thingy or a cat blood drinking contest, there will be grub, (recorded) music, tram rides, hayrides, and lots of cars.
While one would expect a lot of hearses, there are, but, unfortunately, not that many.
There is no official motorcycle show, but in the past, there is a pretty good showing of bikes that make for a show in itself.
People argue over this kind of event at a cemetery because it defeats the 'eternal rest' aspect of a cemetery and smacks of self promotion on the part of the cemetery. On the other hand, it makes the cemetery more relevant to the community & the cars are older and lend themselves to the past & ancestry that is kind of an aspect of a cemetery, too.

I admit that my visions can never mean to other men as much as they do to me. I do not regret this. All I ask is that my results should convince seekers after truth that there is beyond doubt something worth while seeking, attainable by methods more or less like mine. I do not want to father a flock, to be the fetish of fools and fanatics, or the founder of a faith whose followers are content to echo my opinions. I want each man to cut his own way through the jungle.
—The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, Ch. 66

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

What's a cemetery without a cool wrought iron fence around it - you know, with spikes ^ stuff up top? Unfortunately, when you have cars, you can't have nice stuff.
Ferncliff Cemetery, in Springfield, OH, has a problem with motorists losing control on a Bend in the road and careening into the cemetery destroying the expensive iron fence panels. They cost about $1,240 apiece and a car can take out 4 pretty easy. Apparently they stop the cars, tho…
FWIW, I never had any problem navigating that turn.
The latest chunk to get creamed wasn't on the bend, however, it was on a straight stretch of road.
I have seen this at Cincinnati's Spring Grove Cemetery, too. One of the few straight, flat stretches of Roadway in the city and people manage to veer off the road & destroy iron fences pretty regularly.
The corner of Spring Grove and Crawford, at the SW corner of the cemetery is so impossible to navigate the cemetery has moved their fence back incrementally over the years to accommodate the shitty drivers.
The aforelinked Frogtown Noose Son article has the headline:

Springfield cemetery fence a magnet for car crashes

So, I guess the villain, a temptress, I guess, is the fence luring innocent motorists to their demise with their siren call, "come to me, come to me, crash, crash…".
I'm gonna go out on a limb here & say we need to quit handing out drivers licenses like candy at a parade & stop assuming peoples' driving skills never diminish. A reduced speed limit, Cemetery Zone, like a school zone might help but on streets like Winton Road, on the east side of Spring Grove Cemetery is a daredevil race track and any speed limit signs are pointless.

Happy 'Visit a Cemetery Day' Everybody !
The fine folks at My Send Off have decreed October 28, 2012 Visit a Cemetery Day. To make it more family friendly they have concocted a sort of scavenger hunt with this cardAnyway, every day is 'Visit a Cemetery Day' around Blogging Isn't Cool HQ. Or maybe it's more like 'Visit a Body Farm Day'.More from Spring Grove Cemetery

Springfield's South Fountain Porch Festival & Ghost Walk
Saturday, 10/27 The South Fountain Preservation Association will present their third biennial Porch Festival starting at 2PM. At 5:30 they will commence a 'Ghost Walk' in a haunted cemetery and from 6-8PM Springfield's non-Halloween Beggars Night.
What more could you ask for?

Details from the Noose Son

Traditional v. Natural Burial
Caitlin Doughty of Order of the Good Death discusses the differences between natural & traditional (which has only been 'traditional' for less than 200 years) burial.
Seriously, the burial vault ($$$$) was designed to thwart grave robbing but since the average criminal is too lazy to dig up a grave nowadays, that ain't a problem. Now the vault is indeed used to keep the lawns looking nice.
Well, that & so you don't hit soft spots while strolling through the boneyard. That's always a little disconcerting - especially when your foot gets stuck in a hole.

Funerary Fun !
Every year around Memorial Day a number of families of Scottish descent pay tribute to their ancestors at Spring Grove Cemetery. In the midwest we tend to bury our dead in boring ceremonies & go on. Other cultures pay a bit more attention. Dia de la Muerte is a good example to the south.
These guys at Spring Grove celebrate their dead with lavish decorations that kind of stand out in the generally staid cemetery.
If you are going this weekend, just get lost & enjoy yourself. To find the "gypsy" graves -
Enter the cemetery from Spring Grove Avenue. You will be heading north when you enter. Turn left/west. From the funeral home entrance just stay to your left. From the main entrance, go under the railroad bridge & hang a left. Go past this lake & head North (right).

John Robinson (circus owner) has a crypt just east of the lake
Travel north til you see this gate on your left

And this monument on your right.

On the first road past the monument go right (east). Explore.
Or on the first road south of the monument head east along the north shore of a pond & pay a visit to Powell Crosley.

As usual, don't bug, photograph people, leave the decorations alone. The people in white SUVs are watching you.
Anyway, Spring Grove is hosting events all weekend, so you can have a fun time in an extremely rigid excursion (You can talk to Lincoln!), or you can just relax & take in the beauty & history.

Election 2009
The candidates cite fiscal responsibility, safety, road improvements & recreation as top priorities. Readers cite issues of police malfeasance and label the current administration as "the worst ever". Some candidates suggest just giving up on the city altogether. Sound familiar ? If Cincinnati could only get some candidates willing to dissolve the hell hole once called Porkopolis.
But this is the politics of Tremont City. Tremont City is a town the gravediggers have to hate. It has a traffic light. It has a fire department. It also, apparently, has all the political squabbling that big hell towns full of poverty, negroes & liberals like Cincinnati has.
You can run.....

Noose Son story here.

Passport to Springfield
yep. Finally happened. The Champion City has seceded from the US of A ! You will be required to show your papers at it's iron gates.
no, not really. It's a community / Wittenberg event arranged by a kid involved with Wittenberg’s Center for Civic and Urban Engagement to bring students together with Springfield organizations and businesses. It is meant to bridge the gap between students and the community and, maybe, to retain some of the students as future citizens.
In the past, students introduction to the city was frequently the neon sign on a prominently located church that blinked back and forth, "Jesus Saves / Sin Kills" in red and white, complete with crucifixes & lightning bolts. After that it was chance encounters in the cemetery or students picking fights with bikers at area bars. Things seem to have taken on a more genteel tone, here in the 21st century.

Noose Son story here.

The Schoedinger Funeral Home now offers streaming webcasts of funerals. It's not open to Harold and Maude types, the family decides who can watch. It is intended for far flung families who can't make it to funerals and, especially, for service people who can't just get up and go to a funeral.
While it may smack of one of Rev Glenworthy's schemes and one might expect Jonathan Winters to walk out on screen and narrate the funeral, it actually makes sense. The technology is cheaper and simpler and the individual's access to high bandwidth internet is pretty commonplace these days. The little slideshows funeral directors have offered for years are pretty much drag and drop operations these days. Figure in people's increased mobility and international businesses and it makes perfect sense. Unlike weddings, you usually have less than a week to put a funeral together and even when you are expecting a death, it usually doesn't give much of a crap about YOUR schedule.
The Columbus Dispatch has a series about death and interviews Schoedinger. As I watched I wondered if his videos were as overproduced as the Dispatch's.

Noose Son story here.

Black Cemetery Vandalized
Black Cemetery, Clark County's oldest cemetery, was recently vandalized.
A $500 reward has been offered for the arrest of the culprits who desecrated this small and old cemetery.

WHIO story here.