As I sipped from my Hellfire Club coffee mug thinking about tonight’s dramatic Stranger Things’ mini-movie episode, one of the Season 4’s two “final” episodes, I was hit with a flash of inspiration respective of a direct tie-in to Bonaventure Cemetery. I’m ever fond of saying “All roads lead to Bonaventure,” as the history has shown me at each and every turn, but never thought it might have some connection to the cult hit TV series, Stranger Things. But it does, and at levels I wonder if all of the rabid fans of the show may ever truly come to realize. For good and for evil.
I decided this video should come to pass as a way of telling a passion play of war, romance and doom. While its a cute video with a wonderful song from my teen years by Kate Bush, “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God),” its meant as a personal devotion to history so powerful yet in so many ways gone lost from America, the world, and perhaps most oddly, France who’s connection to the story runs so deep. When telling this story on Bonaventure’s river bluff, its not unusual for my voice to crack, tears surface. It is haunting if just because of all things I hate war between brothers who without war, might otherwise be good friends. So the video while for fans of Stranger Things, its my humble attempt to re-tell stories of old or re-insert them into the consciousness of the youth or anyone of any age made curious for it. I hope you enjoy!
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Lambs of God In Cemeteries
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People often think my life just starts and ends with Bonaventure Cemetery or that I’m just another tour guide or tour company owner. This is hardly the case and a perception that is unfortunate at times. If you ever meet me in person you’ll see I have broad shoulders. Some of that comes from digging graves as a teenager. I’ve done the hard labor and the mental labor equally. All of which lives in my company spirit and how we do things. In the 1980s, while working in a Victorian Cemetery in high school, on a hot summer’s day, I was weedeating at the very edge of the cemetery overlooking a farmer’s field from a higher point where it dropped off a few feet down. Suddenly, the wire blade began kicking up tiny bones, some of them in medical bags, some of them far older. It turns out I’d uncovered a forgotten section where stillborn infants had been reposited. Over time, the erosion had washed that edge more into the farmer’s field bringing the bones closer to the surface. In the end I suppose I saved it by bringing it to the attention of those in charge, but it to this day, remains unmarked and cannot say whether its any more protected than it once was. The world is full of such cemetery sections. Its like a dark secret. Most are only known to certain elders of towns or authorities. And when they die, that knowledge tends to go with them I’ve found. Today its unusual to find a family with 4 children let alone 10, 12 or 16. Having such stock was once seen as the ultimate statement of a family’s richness vs what they simply “owned.” It certainly meant longevity but was also a practical matter. Mothers and fathers knew the deal and at times wondered about the loving faces smiling up at them, “Will we all be together by Christmas? or “Will we all know each other next Spring?” It was not a question of “if,” but rather “WHO” — would end up dying young. This theme has stayed with me as in many ways, children were the number one customers and drivers of the funeral industry in America’s 19th century. Its a bittersweet subject of course but inescapable in my work so I wanted to make this video as a devotion of a kind. It will be one of many. Hope you enjoy it.
