With Halloween (October 31), All Souls’ Day (November 2), and the Day of the Dead (extending from Halloween through All Saints’ day on November 1 through All Souls’ Day on November 2 or so) fast approaching, a trip to a graveyard seems particularly…
I have a penchant for dramatic graveyard art, those winged but bent angels, the weeping women clinging to crosses, the monuments that stretch toward the heavens. One stone in the Greenridge Cemetery in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.that has me wondering about…
Touring Graveyards for History and Understanding I suppose if you are bashful, a cemetery is a great place to visit given that no one is likely to talk to you much. I like cemeteries for the opportunities they provide to…
Nothing becomes October better than the Old Dutch Church in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y. Even if you can’t make a performance of story teller Jonathan Kruk as he brings Washington Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow alive, a walk through the graveyard…
The Bashful Adventurer finds some intriguing graveyard art at a graveyard at St. Philip’s Church in the Highlands in Garrison, NY.
At Westhampton Cemetery, at Station Road and Montauk Highway in Westhampton, N.Y., I am struck by the contrast of artistic embellishments on old gravemarkers: corporeal skulls suggesting, to me, the deceased’s present existence, or smiling angels with wings, indicating the…
The Key West Cemetery is probably the first one I visit recreationally. No relatives of mine are there. I hesitate: Is this okay? Just going in to look? Appreciating the stillness, the spookiness, the peace, the quiet, the flowers? Is…
Add the explosion of the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898 to the list of historical events I don’t know enough about. I would “remember the Maine” if only I could. I know the incident triggered the Spanish-American War.…
A fitting finale for our last day in Paris is a visit to Père-Lachaise Cemetery. On the subway ride there, I begin to doubt the appropriateness of this trek. Are we squandering our time by looking to the past? Will…
The Brawny Sherpa and I wander aimlessly through Captiva Island, Fla., having ditched our rental car somewhere with the optimistic hope that we’ll remember its color, make and license number when it’s time to retrieve it. This is a day…