Category Archives: Good cemetery news

News about graveyards coming back from the brink, new uses for graveyards, or features on the people who care for them.

More Cemeteries to See Before You Die

The past several months have been intense. My father fell in August last year and was too fragile for surgery, so he had to spend a couple of months healing in the hospital. When he was released, I was in the middle of sending out the Kickstarter copies of Death’s Garden Revisited. I spent most of November and December traveling back and forth to Michigan to care for him and my mom.

At the end of November, I was contacted by my publisher, who was interested in updating 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die for a second edition. I had to tell her that I was excited to work on the project again, but I couldn’t commit to starting work on it until things with my dad settled down. Still, we signed the contract and I made a list of new cemeteries I wanted to write about.

I was on my way back to see my dad again at the end of February when I got the call that he’d passed. I helped my mom through his funeral and ordered my first gravestone before rushing back to San Francisco to get down to work on writing the new cemetery pieces.

As it turned out, I’d only just gotten the research done and was starting to write the new entries in April, when my mother had a stroke.

I flew back to Michigan once more to care for my mom, but I made myself take a break every day to write about another of the new cemeteries. To be honest, the work was a life raft. It felt good to have something I loved so much to look forward to each afternoon.

I returned to California in the middle of May, turned in the new cemeteries, and finally started fact-checking and updating the original 199 Cemeteries. I turned in 25 pages of notes last Thursday.

Now I’m waiting for the editor’s notes, if there are any, and the redesign of the book with the new cemeteries and photos added. I haven’t seen the new cover yet, but I know they’re working on it.

The book is planned for release in Autumn 2024. I cannot wait for you to see it. It’s going to be lovely.

Death’s Garden Revisited

I’ve just now finished the final proofing for my next book, Death’s Garden Revisited: Personal Relationships with Cemeteries. Today we’ll order a paperback proof to check the quality of the photos one last time, then I can order the books and start fulfilling the Kickstarter pledges. The book will be available to everyone else in October.

It’s such an exciting time. The genesis of this book began in 1994, when my friend Blair gave me a box of photos he’d taken in cemeteries. Automatism Press published the first book inspired by them in 1996 and ever since, I have wanted to do a sequel. This book exceeds all my expectations.

I cannot wait for everyone to see how beautiful this new book is. I knew the text was going to be powerful, emotionally affecting, and life-affirming, but Automatism Press had never done a full-color book before. The photos truly are all I had hoped.

If you are interested in preordering a copy, you can drop me a note via my bookshop and I will let you know when the books are available.

In the meantime, enjoy some of the photos from the book! My phone isn’t really doing them justice, but you can get the idea.

Old Stirling Cemetery, photographed by Ann Bollen.

Unnamed graveyard, photographed by Greg Roensch.

St. Stephen’s Cemetery, photographed by Emerian Rich.

Cemetery Happy Hour!

What is a Cemetery Happy Hour? Last summer when I attended the Association for Gravestone Studies conference online, Dr. Sharon Pajka hosted a virtual happy hour for attendees. She’d even created a PDF recipe book filled with tasty drinks like Preservation Punch, Decoration Day Daquiri, and Cemetery Cider. What a great souvenir!

When the contributors to Death’s Garden Revisited and I started talking about events we could hold to get the word out about the book, Sharon offered to host a Cemetery Happy Hour. We recorded it last weekend.

If you’re reading this on your phone, sometimes the video embedding doesn’t work. You can watch the video on youtube: https://youtu.be/H5BN8WWZq-c

Each of the contributors — Chris LaMay-West, Sharon Pajka, Denise N. Tapscott, and me — created a drink to celebrate the cemetery they wrote about in their essays. I wanted to include my recipe here.

The Ghost of Lone Mountain Cemetery

2 oz. St. George Vodka

1 oz. Creme de Mure

1 oz. Creme de Violette

A squeeze of lemon

Served in a martini glass and garnished with a skull ice cube.

Remember, if you’d like to preorder a copy of Death’s Garden Revisited, personal essays about the cemeteries we form relationships with, the Kickstarter ends on Saturday, April 16, at 9 AM Pacific. Here’s the link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lorenrhoads/deaths-garden-revisited-relationships-with-cemeteries 

Cemetery Podcasts

I had the honor of being a guest on two really great podcasts this year.

In March, I chatted with Tui Snider on her Tombstone Tuesdays video podcast. We talked about Wish You Were Here and 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die, how I came to love cemeteries, and some of my favorite cemetery sculptures. It was really fun.

Here’s the link, in case the embed doesn’t come through: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc8atGbwYis&t=2s

In November, I hung out with LaShell Scott for her Stones, Bones and Shadows podcast. We talked about our favorite cemeteries that we haven’t visited yet — Highgate for her, Savannah’s Bonaventure for me, and so much more.

Click to listen to it here or go directly to Spotify with this link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/00tHCvVT7dq8Rm8bFhvRI0?si=e0af30ed3d574505

I know it’s been a couple of years since I had a cemetery book published, but that hasn’t been for lack of trying on my part. Hopefully, something will work out for next year.

In the meantime, if you have a cemetery podcast, I’d love to chat with you. Hit me up through the Contact form above!

Price Drop on the Cemetery Travels Notebook

I’ve dropped the price on the Cemetery Travels Notebook, so it’s more affordable. Check it out!

cemetery-travels-notebook-cover-1

The Cemetery Travels Notebook is a place to keep the field notes from your own cemetery adventures. It features 80 lined pages, interspersed with 20 lush full-page color photographs of cemeteries from Paris to Tokyo, with stops at Sleepy Hollow, San Francisco, and all points between, to inspire your wanderlust.

Photographer Loren Rhoads, author of 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die and Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel, blogs about graveyards as travel destinations at CemeteryTravel.com. She’s a long-time member of the Association for Gravestone Studies.

Ordering information:

The Cemetery Travel Notebook is available for $19.59 (softcover) or $23.39 (hardbound) from Blurb.com. See a preview at Blurb.

Autographed and inscribed copies can be ordered directly from Loren via the Cemetery Travel bookstore in the tab above. For details or to request inscriptions, leave a message through the Contact Me form.

Praise for the Cemetery Travels Notebook:

“The Cemetery Travels Notebook is the perfect notebook for a taphophile. It’s a lined notebook for all your note-taking needs. It’s also filled with beautiful full-color photos of monuments from the US and beyond.”—Minda Powers-Douglas, The Cemetery Club

Cemetery Travels Notebook is a great book for recording notes and thoughts while you explore cemeteries. It is also a unique gift idea for your taphophile friends.”—Andrea Carlin, Association for Gravestone Studies Quarterly

“The Cemetery Travels Notebook is great! I love the photos and the amount of space for keeping notes and thoughts.”—Joy Neighbors, author of A Grave Interest

“The Cemetery Travels Notebook is really beautiful. It will be very useful.”—Jeane Trend-Hill, author of the Silent Cities series

“The photos in the Cemetery Travels Notebook are inspirational. I love the fact that there’s a lot of writing space for my thoughts.”—Leni Panopio, Cypress Lawn Memorial Park

“I love my Cemetery Travels Notebook. It has beautiful pictures and fits into a purse perfectly. What more could you want from a notebook?”—Martha Allard, author of Dust and Other Stories