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.
Tag Archives: God
My Easter Message To Humanity of 2022
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Hello all. If you want, in our Short Attention Span Theater Life, you may just scroll to the video below and watch it purely without the explanation. Or, if you’d like to know the story of how it came to be, please read on! I came home to Illinois for Easter but to also celebrate my joint or dual birthday with my father on April 21st. Which ironically, is also the founding day of Bonaventure Cemetery in 1846. So a triple header of a blessed birthday! Its also the birthday of Robert Smith from The Cure, but that’s just me making a fan connection. And speaking of blessed, I was adopted by some great parents who clearly took the birthday sameness as a sign from above many years ago before being blessed by the birth of my younger brother two years later. So you see, to be both born of a sign, under a sign or connected to “signs,” which is simply another word for “significance,” I’ve always paid them attention throught the special lens of my very blessed existence. In fact, I’m not sure if I consider anything insignificant. We as human beings process a lot of them at any given moment through our senses, and if anything, spend most of our time, sorting through them to identify which are the most important and meaningful. Which then comes down to our frame of reference or knowledge of life. I get caught saying this a great deal, but some of us just use salt while others use it, enjoy it, but want to know why we do and where it came from. That would define my mind at a glance. So no surprises here, I was simply out for a walk in Mahomet, Illinois, where I once had a young love named Shannon, and where there are some pretty interesting cemeteries, on a trail called The Buffalo Trace Prairie Trail which like its name, was once buffalo grazing grounds and where natives and pioneers tracked them. You see, even my walking trails have to have rich historical texture as I like walking with ancestral energy things you could say. And if ever in the area, do check out The Museum of The Grand Prairie nearby and the loads of unique walking trails replete with awesome historical markers and ways of observing prairie restoration and other types of plant and land studies. Really interesting! All of that said, it was on a walk there on the Buffalo Trace Trail Loop where I caught site of these medeval like spikes in menacing clusters growing out of the lower part of Honey Locust Trees. Picture every ancient battle movie scene with swinging spike armaments, sometimes horror flick or on The Walking Dead, the spiked walker, you’ll understand. Except these are smooth and worn over with bark, like a true appendage. And in certain light seem like flowers made of really sharp tooth picks. Nature’s barbed wire.
Even if initially alarmed and awed by the sight, I could not help but to be in deep respect for its life as well as the intelligence of its survival mode. Tree huggers need not apply? Or bring gauze and Neosporin if you dare! As I continued to walk by these woodland warriors and considered how they might be useful planted around my house in case of an attack, my mind turned to Easter, the state of the world, and how we now must all be wise as serpents and harmless like doves. Or live more like The Honey Locust Tree. The video and narration is the end result and while it may not be for or speak to everyone, I truly hope you taking something away from it that is meaningful.
