Friday, March 20, 2009

Turn Left for Eternity


Who knew that hanging out with a few thousand dead people could be so much fun? Today I spent the morning and early afternoon with fellow blogger Jim of The Blue Elephant in Oakland. He's encouraged me for some time to join him for a tour of the Mountain View Cemetery. Like Manhattan and Boston, San Francisco has little room for the dead, so many are buried in Colma to our south, but many of the grander names such as Crocker, Bechtel, Fillmore, Merritt can be found at Mountain View.

With pitch perfect weather heralding the first day of spring, death was the last thing on my mind, but it was a reminder of how the dead are with us on days like today. The memories of lives once lived are filled not with sadness but a wonderful sense of providence.

Keeping on our theme, we took a tour of The Chapel of the Chimes next door, with a few rooms designed by Julia Morgan of Hearst Castle Fame. Thanks, Jim, for making an introduction to such a great local treasure. It will be on my itinerary when out-of-towners come to see me.

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10 Comments:

At 8:14 PM, Blogger mouse (aka kimy) said...

looks like a wonderful day to have an outing - why do the dead often get such great views - I mean they are dead!

hey blue!!!

 
At 8:41 PM, Blogger Ladrón de Basura (a.k.a. Junk Thief) said...

Mouse - I may need to put my bid in early for my own shrine up on that hill.

 
At 8:32 PM, Blogger The Blue Elephant said...

A fun day sharing one of my favorite cemetaries and columbariums with Gregg, and wonderful to see, after the fact, how Gregg saw things with his special difference -- I intend to look at things in a different way next time I take photographs -- the motion that occurs when things are photographed at an angle, letting light obscure some parts of a scene, etc. I guess I cannot attach the photos I took of him there. I will have to include those on my blog: http://bluele.blogspot.com

 
At 9:05 PM, Blogger Ladrón de Basura (a.k.a. Junk Thief) said...

Jim - Thanks for a fun and memorable day (even if I got a slight sunburn, but in a good way). It would be fun to have a photographers' field trip and then compare how we see the same things through different eyes.

 
At 4:58 PM, Blogger Gary said...

I did 'enjoy' my trek through the catacombs in Paris so I would imagine your experience would be even better. Bonaventure cemetery in Savannah is splendid. At the time I thought I would love to have my ashes spread there. Then thought "how odd" to have ashes strewn at a cemetery. It seem redundant somehow.

 
At 5:37 PM, Blogger Ladrón de Basura (a.k.a. Junk Thief) said...

Gary - I don't know if there is a "Greatest Cemeteries of the World" book but Paris, New Orleans and Buenos Aires would be high on the list. I've also been to some spooky ones in Haiti.

 
At 9:06 PM, Blogger Bryce Digdug said...

Julia Morgan- why does that sound familiar? I liked the urns of Bacon.

 
At 9:20 PM, Blogger Ladrón de Basura (a.k.a. Junk Thief) said...

Bryce - One of Julia's grand daughters is designing a confessional in my bedroom.

 
At 11:35 AM, Blogger ArtSparker said...

I have been shooting over there recently. Photos, that is.

 
At 11:45 AM, Blogger Ladrón de Basura (a.k.a. Junk Thief) said...

Susan - We missed you this trip, but hope we'll meet up soon. Be careful talking about shooting in Oakland!

 

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