I haven’t updated this blog in much too long. I ended up being much busier than I expected in October. It’s always my busiest month, but this year was nuts. At this point, I have an essay I need to turn in and a couple of podcasts I’ve trying to lock down for next year. Then the 199 Cemeteries promotion is done until 2018.
Of course, I am taking the National Novel Writing Challenge again, trying to finish a book (in my case, a nonfiction book) in the month of November. I tend to get depressed when I finish a book — naturally, I think, after the excitement of getting something into print passes. I decided the cure for moping over 199 Cemeteries was to dive straight into a new book.
In this case, it’s actually an old book idea, one that I’ve been toying with for more than 15 years. By the end of this month, I would like to finally have the first full draft of The Pioneer Cemeteries of the San Francisco Bay Area.
Obviously, this book will have a much smaller focus in geographic area than 199 Cemeteries, but I’m visiting and photographing each of these cemeteries myself: from Cloverdale in the north to Gilroy in the south. I think there will be 80 cemeteries in the final book, although I expect there will be something closer to 100 in the first draft. That’s not even all of the Bay Area cemeteries by any stretch (there are rumored to be 90 in Sonoma County alone), but it’s as many cemeteries as any sane person might be likely to visit. It’s taken me twenty years to cover my first 100 local cemeteries and I’m not done yet.
The book will include some of the cemeteries I’ve written about for Cemetery Travel: Woodlawn, Lick Observatory, Mission Dolores, Mare Island, Hills of Eternity, the Stanford Mausoleum, etc. It will also have a bunch that I haven’t written about here but should: Tulocay (where Mary Ellen Pleasant is buried), Watsonville Pioneer (where transgender stage driver Charley Parkhurst rests), along with the final resting places of the survivors of the Donner Party, survivors of grizzly bear attacks, Forty Niners, Comstock silver barons, Native Americans, Portuguese fishermen, Mexican rancheros, and America’s first black millionaire.
It seems particularly important to finish this project now, since the firestorms this year threatened some of the historic cemeteries I want to include. I watched in horror last month as the town of Calistoga was evacuated, knowing that the emphasis would rightly be on saving homes and businesses from the flames, not on the fragile old cemetery that lies just outside of town. As this writing, I haven’t heard if the Rural Cemetery in Santa Rosa survived the conflagration. Once that history is erased, whether by wildfire or earthquakes or vandalism, it won’t be replaced. Land is too valuable here.
I hope to get back to putting up a Cemetery of the Week every Wednesday soon. I’d love to publish more Death’s Garden essays. I’ll announce my 2018 speaking events as soon as I get them settled. I plan to organize some field trips to local cemeteries, for those who might like to join me. And I’ve got 20-some more cemeteries to research for this book.
There’s no rest for the morbid, baby. I’ve got a lot of work to do.
Many of the graves here remember children of British soldiers stationed here who died of disease. The hand-lettered monument to Amelia Walker mentions her father, a lieutenant, but says nothing of her mother. Amelia died at two months and nineteen days in March 1812.
Normandy American Cemetery
A half-mile-long access road leads to the Normandy American Cemetery, which covers 172.5 acres on the headlands above the D-Day beaches. The cemetery is the largest US World War II graveyard overseas. Buried there are 9383 men and four women, victims of various battles. 33 pairs of brothers lie side by side. The graves are aligned on a vast green lawn divided by paths.
The necropolis is so large that “vistas came be found within it that are completely contained within the cemetery landscape, providing an aesthetic retreat for the senses of the viewer,” according to its National Trust listing. When it was added to the National Trust of Australia (NSW) in 1988, Rookwood was commended for being a “comprehensive and tangible manifestation of the social history of Sydney, documenting the cultural and religious diversity of the Australian community since 1867.” Rookwood serves over 90 culturally diverse communities, also displaying Australia’s diversity of religious beliefs and burial practices in its monuments and memorials.
Buried here are Peter Dawson, a singer and composer who became famous as a gramophone recording artist; Louisa Lawson, a suffragette who owned a newspaper and wrote poetry and short stories; John Fairfax, who emigrated from England with five pounds and later purchased the Sydney Herald; and Roy Rene, who performed as Australia’s most popular vaudeville star Mo McCackie.