St. Paul’s Churchyard, Manhattan
The challenge for this week is to show perspective. I like this photo because it captures both proximity and distance, but also spans time from the colonial graveyard to 21st-century Manhattan outside the cemetery gates.
I took this photo on my iPhone on our first day in New York City. We were jet-lagged and it was hot (or at least, it seemed hot to people used to San Franciscan summer). My daughter dragged her feet and whined about having to visit a cemetery.
Stories always make her perk up and connect to the places we visit, so I told her briefly about the 9/11 attacks. I pointed out the skeleton of the new World Trade Center rising nearby. I told her about the planes and the firemen and the people who died. I told her about the photo I’d seen of this churchyard snowed over with debris fallen from the towers: insulation and financial papers and children’s drawings, things blown out of the offices above. I told her about the rescuers who’d slept in the church while they searched for survivors and the empty t-shirts that hung on the fence when I visited last time, eloquent memorials to the first responders who were lost when the towers fell.
St. Paul’s Churchyard stands as a symbol to me. My feelings are complicated, threaded with horror and sadness, but at the heart, I felt compassion and connection there. The graves are old. They endure. The world swirls around them, but here, in this shaded green place, a traveler found peace. May the world find peace as well.
Cemetery of the Week #75: St. Paul’s Chapel churchyard
Wonderful post and such a great picture. I love the perspective of the old and the new.
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Thanks! It gave me a lot of food for thought.
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A most unusual shot! I too like your story and agree with the symbolism. Very well put.
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Thank you!
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This is a fantastic take on near and far. I really hadn’t thought of the theme in this way so thanks for sharing this!
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Thanks! Time is kind of telescoped by this photo: now looking back, June when I took the photo, my first visit 10 years ago, 9/11. and the origination of the churchyard. Near and very, very far…
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I reall y like the story that goes with the pictures as they say a picture paints a thousand words
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Some pictures need words to paint them, too. I don’t know why that is. Thanks for coming by.
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A very touching post and an interesting picture.
I love your blog theme, too 🙂
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Thanks! I’m a little bit obsessed with cemeteries. They always give me something to think about.
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nice post, a different way of thinking.. and also a touching story
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Thanks. It was an emotional day, so I was glad the cemetery was so restful.
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It’s so strange to think that the kids growing up now don’t know anything about 9/11. It must be difficult to explain such a horrible event to little kids.
P.S. Nice photo. I love the purple pops of color from the flowers.
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I hadn’t planned to say anything at all to her, but since we were in the shadow of the new World Trade Center, it was on my mind. She took the whole story in stride (I didn’t dwell on any of the details), but she really wanted to know the names of the pilots. I told her that they didn’t deserve to be remembered. She was surprised by that. I was surprised by her interest in who the bad guys were.
I loved these purple hydrangeas. They were the only flowers growing in the graveyard — and they were such an amazing color. I took five or six photos of them.
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Very touching post. It’s really interesting to see the old tucked away, right next to the new. Lovely photo, too. 🙂
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