Tag Archives: cemetery

How did you spend this Memorial Day, oddlings?

Bubo and I took a stroll through The Green-Wood Cemetery, paying our respects to the soldiers who have fallen in their service.

We missed the annual concert the cemetery hosts each year, but we had a lovely and contemplative walk.

Memorial Day was originally called Decoration Day and there are over two dozen towns and cities across the United States claiming the title “birthplace of Memorial Day”. The tradition could have started in the South before the end fo the Civil War; organized women’s groups were decorating the graves of soldiers who had died in the bloody battles even then. Waterloo, New York was officially declared the birthplace of Memorial Day in 1966 by President Lyndon B. Johnson but it’s rather difficult to prove an exact date or origin. And, honestly, does it matter? The important thing is that countrymen and women remember their fellow countrymen and women who died in military service.

The National Moment of Remembrance resolution was passed in December of 2000 and asks that all Americans observe a moment of respect and remembrance at 3:00 pm local time each Memorial Day.

It’s never too late to take a quiet moment and remember things.

I had my moment of silence at The Green-Wood Cemetery. It’s been a bit of an aural melee here at the house; Mordecai has been shooting fireworks off from the widow’s walk and the yeti seems convinced that what she’s doing to my great-great-great-grandfather’s bugle is playing taps.

Trust me, she’s not.

Happy Memorial Day, oddlings.

You must book ahead for a seat at the cemetery! I am crushed that I missed the midnight showing (and catacombs tour) of The Spoon River Project at The Green-Wood Cemetery. Bubo and I reasoned we wouldn’t need tickets, especially since it’s summer and so many people go away for the week-ends.

We reasoned incorrectly.

Instead, I sat on the Widow’s Walk and read Poe whilst Bubo sang softly to herself. I think it was Count Basie, but I can’t be sure.

I know many of you are anxious for the chill and the rain to end and for the warmth and sunshine of summer to fully embrace us. But it’s important for you to find the spectacular hidden in every type of weather, under every rock, and in every cobwebbed nook. That brings me to today’s word:

Delitescent is an adjective meaning hidden, latent, concealed. It comes from the Latin dēlitēscent-. Stem of dēlitēscēns. Present participle of dēlitēscere to hide away (some say to lurk). Medically speaking, it can be used as a noun, meaning the sudden disappearance of a lesion or of the signs and symptoms of a disease.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, Bubo and I are going to explore the delitescent stories at The Green-Wood Cemetery. Hopefully it will rain and we will have the place (mostly) to ourselves.