Skull Art and Other Transgressive Behavior

One frigid morning in January, I headed out to my local cemetery to do some photography. There was snow and ice all over the place, so why would I not head out to my local cemetery to do some photography. In fact, weeks later an ice storm was forecast for the following day and my brother told me to be careful - I told him I was prepared: I knew which cemetery I was going to visit.

On this particular January day, I was rather careful each time I stepped out of the car, cautious with each step. Last year, I slipped on the ice in a cemetery and tore my rotator cuff. Took eight months for that to heal. Had my hip replaced at the end of April 2024, so I really did not want to break any more body parts. Still, I am always looking for a new place to spend the rest of my sins.

I did not want to slip, fall, and crack my skull. Actually, either of my skulls. Today was BYO Skull Day at the cemetery, and I had two of my largest with me. One might be a quondam deer, the other a pit bull. Of the roughly ten skulls I own, all but one was found in an abandoned cemetery. The largest, an antlered deer, I severed from its spinal column with an ice chopper (in an abandoned cemetery). Yes, I know, you have questions. Really wasn’t as dramatic as it sounds – most of the flesh had been either eaten away or rotted off the bones by the time I got to it. Most of the other skulls were picked clean and bleached white by the sun by the time I found them. Takes forever for that to happen. It intrigues me that people go to such extremes to strip flesh from bones. 

Assuming I haven’t lost you by this point or severely grossed you out, lets get to the photography part. I was hoping there would be snow on the statues but there was very little. Still, the snow on the ground lent a stark, uncluttered backwash for the photography I’d planned. Well, “planned” is a strong word. Planned in the sense that I brought my skulls and some cameras. I began by looking for skull settings, i.e. statues of appropriate scale to maybe hold one of the skulls. That’s a photo of St. Lucy above holding a skull as opposed to holding her own disembodied eyeballs (look that up, I’ll wait…… I think my image is actually less bizarre than what the statue is really meant to portray.) 

For what I was doing in this cemetery today I wished I could have visualized the end product or at least recognized what step I was at in the process. Pursuing a new artistic endeavor like this is like brushing your teeth with your less dominant hand. Awkward. But you know, nothing great ever came from people who operated solely in their comfort zone. My friend Jason calls this “leaning into your limitations.”

Physically, being there that day was far from comfortable. It was almost too cold to think. Temperature was about twenty degrees Fahrenheit and even though I was wearing long underwear and had chemical warming pouches in my shoes and gloves, my fingers got cold, red, and numb on many occasions. I had to repeatedly jump back into the running SUV and blast hot air out the dashboard vents onto my numb fingers.

I would drive to a statue, decide whether it was skull-worthy, then perhaps spend twenty minutes staging a photo. On two occasions, police cruisers drove by. I assume they just figured I was some photography nut photographing statues. And of course they would be right. I kept the skull of the moment close to my chest so they wouldn’t see it as they drove by. I assume, I hope, they would’ve stopped to question me if they thought any skullduggery was afoot.

Maybe I’m channeling my inner Joel-Peter Witkin with all this, but I’m sure Witkin did all his startling, grotesque, and macabre body parts-photography in a fancy studio, with assistants - not outdoors in below-freezing winter. Maybe we’re searching for a similar grail here, I don’t know. The process of arranging skulls on cemetery statues got me thinking about Witkin’s process, what he may have been thinking or planning. The viewer typically only sees the final product. 

But art “is an event in itself, something that comes into being,” says Karl Ove Knausgaard, in his New Yorker (Feb. 3, 2005) article, Private Eye. The piece is about how a particular artist creates presence in her painted portraits. Without a doubt, a Witkin still life, or one of my images here clearly imply presence of the artist in the creation of the piece. What I’ve done should elicit a different reaction from the viewer, different from the viewer seeing a simple photograph of a gravestone. The viewer certainly can feel my “presence” in these images.

As with any still life, the material world is supposed to suggest something else. If Witkin’s and my photographs seem about as joyous as the Doomsday Clock to you, consider this other skull fun: see how artist Filip Hodas creates “cartoon fossils.” There are in fact, people even more deviant than I. Visit this website to see his lovely work!

Glenn Hendler asks in his book, Diamond Dogs, is there any way to ‘use’ a medium without being at the same time ‘in’ it? He wrote this about the David Bowie album of that name. He describes Bowie’s music on this album as having “randomness balanced with an assertion of control.” I think that might be an honest description of my own photographs. Like Bowie as he was writing these songs, I think I’m trying to stimulate my own imagination. Maybe what you see here is merely a step in a much longer process, rather than a final product. I’m not a U2 fan, but I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.

Staged still lifes can be beautiful, but random beauty can be startling. A week after my photo shoot at this cemetery, I visited another snow-covered one, where I saw the most beautiful red fox break the stillness of the snowscape with its gentle trotting. It was so fluid and graceful as it padded through the snow between the tombstones, it seemed random, but for the fox, it was probably the same path it took every afternoon. The fox trotted up the small hill toward a mausoleum. It turned around, looked at me, and flopped down in the sun alongside the mausoleum. Seemingly random nature can be more beautiful than anything a human can create.

It made me feel better about my progress, transgressive as my behavior may be. As Douglas Adams said in his novel, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” 

For reference and further examination:

Joel-Peter Witkin | Artnet

Karl Ove Knausgaard Latest Articles | The New Yorker

A 3D Artist Imagines the Realistic Fossilized Skulls of Endearing Cartoon Characters — Colossal

Post-COVID Death Photography

Scary. Biblical fear. I felt it when I left the theater after seeing the fifth Hunger Games movie, “Spiders and Snakes.” I was headed for the bathroom and this rush of humanity was coming at me as people were exiting the other indoor movie theaters. Strangers all around me, tributes – and I feared any one of them would come at me with a trident. Fear is situational. Like the first time I visited the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. After seeing so many parts of dead bodies, I was startled on the bus ride home whenever one of the passengers moved. And I couldn’t eat sausage for a month. COVID was less scary than either of those situations. Deadlier, but less scary. 

Recently I had to think about the art I’ve created since COVID, in the four years since 2020. Why? Well, this group I belong to, The Philadelphia Photo League (est. 2012) is putting together an exhibition and a book of work (a “Members Journal”) to showcase what we’ve done, what we’ve created in the past four years: 

“Your images contribute to a powerful narrative of creativity and resilience, reflecting the transformative years from 2020 to 2024. We’re honored to have you as part of this celebration of photographic artistry and storytelling.” - The Photo League

In addition to choosing five of my photographs that are representative of my past four years’ worth of photography, I put together an under-100-word bio. Basically, that amounted to one sentence for each of the five images. I naturally had more to say - hence, this blog post! The five images you see in this article are the five I submitted for the League project. The exhibition of the members’ work will occur in a Philadelphia-area gallery sometime in the spring of 2025. This was a good exercise to gather my thoughts regarding what I’ve done and what I might do in the future. What you’ll notice (surprise, surprise) is that all my artwork has to do with death. Scary stuff to the unsuspecting, perhaps.

The first image that you see above, “COVID Death,” is a digitally-manipulated photograph of an physically manipulated scene in a cemetery. I brought the skull. Remember social distancing during the winter/spring of 2020? People were advised against indoor gatherings, even with extended family members. Many people much more normal than I took to cemeteries as a place to go. It was one of the few safe havens to spend time - you could be there with family and friends, you were outdoors, and all the strangers observed the six-foot social distance rule – they were six feet under.

I took many of my skulls (like guitars, you never admit how many you actually own) into the basement during lockdown and photographed some still lifes (is it lives?). But there's a limit to how creative you can get in your basement. So I took them to cemeteries and created images like the one you see above. I even loaned my skulls to a photographer friend of mine to do similar work. Funny, no one ever had any issue with me playing with skulls in a graveyard, but masks are another thing altogether. Remember how polarizing they were? "You have no right to make me wear a mask," and all that? (Obviously the anti-maskers never thought about why surgeons and dental hygienists wear masks…). Anyway, the social media audience went ballistic when I published photos of masks on cemetery statues. Puzzling, but hey, art is what you can get away with, as Andy Warhol said.

Another COVID-sprung idea I had was to get people who only knew each other through social media, together physically, to tour some local cemeteries. Actual reality is much preferable to virtual reality, I’ve always thought. In the spring of 2020, when everything was going sideways, I wanted to merge social media with actual human interaction. People were missing that. I invited local Instagram cemetery photographers who only knew each other through that platform, to one cemetery to meet, trade stories, learn from each other. About eight people met at Mount Moriah Cemetery in Philadelphia. My friend Jenn (@cems_and_things) organized a meetup group on Instagram so we could communicate better. She invited others. 

That first meetup was so wonderful that we all agreed to continue meeting in cemeteries, making photographs, and enjoying each other’s company. This has been going on for four years now. The photo you see above was made in December 2024, in Riverview Cemetery, Trenton, New Jersey. We do a group photo every time we meet. Membership has expanded to about twenty people and we average about eight people per meetup. We try to do this every few months. Wonderful friendships have developed and I must say, this has been a great catalyst for my creativity!

 “No Indoor Gatherings During COVID Pandemic”

 “No Indoor Gatherings During COVID Pandemic” is a photo I made in February of 2021 during a COVID surge where there was lockdown and no indoor gatherings. After a snowfall in Philadelphia, I photographed this temporarily closed church in Bridgeport, PA. I think it speaks volumes about our social situation at that time, when virtual meetings via the internet were becoming the norm and physical meetings were abruptly stopped – this included gatherings in places of worship. To this day, virtual meetings have replaced a percentage of physical meetings, sometimes for our benefit (efficiency), sometimes to our detriment. In certain situations, virtual meetings cannot replace physical meetings – dating comes to mind.

“Gardel Monument.” Mount Vernon Cemetery, Philadelphia

“Gardel Monument” is an image I made in Mount Vernon Cemetery, Philadelphia, in February 2022. It is one of the most interesting monuments in any Philadelphia cemetery, but few people have ever seen it. Why? Well, Mount Vernon has been closed to the public for decades. Its grand entrance stands at the intersection of Ridge and Lehigh Avenues, directly across from Laurel Hill Cemetery. Many people think it is an extension of Laurel Hill, but it is not. It is derelict and had not been maintained. 

Abandoned cemeteries have always piqued my curiosity, and I have photographed, researched, and lectured about them over the years. My virtual lectures on the destruction of Philadelphia’s Monument Cemetery (est. 1837, destroyed 1956) were popular during COVID, when podcasts and virtual gatherings became the norm. Abandoned cemeteries loomed large in my four-year odyssey. I was approached to write a book on the topic in 2023, and completed it in 2024. Abandoned and Forgotten Cemeteries of Philadelphia and its Environs will be published in 2025 by Fonthill Media. 

I researched many other cemeteries for the book, some that were saved like Mount Vernon, some that were not so lucky. The book also covers cemeteries that have disappeared – either moved or simply built over. I met many interesting people and dragged some friends into the fray as I visited (and revisited) many of these sites as I conducted my research.

While it was never legally abandoned, Mount Vernon Cemetery was locked up and left to ruin from around 2000 to 2020. Nature grew and wreaked havoc, endangering monuments and statuary while thieves stole bronze doors from its mausoleums. It was derelict to the degree that in the past, it might have been levelled and a strip mall built over it. In 2020, a Friends group and a conservation group stepped in to stabilize the cemetery and its buildings, essentially pulling it back from the brink of destruction (and pulling it away from its former owner). It is quite the cosseted property at this point.

"Snow Flower"

Lastly, the photo you see here, “Snow Flower,” was in two art exhibitions in 2024. First in a group show sponsored by the Montgomery County Guild of Professional Artists at 431 Gallery, King of Prussia, PA, and later in the year in a two-artist exhibit at Box Spring Gallery in Philadelphia. In the latter show, entitled, “Ghosts,” I had nine snow-related cemetery images on display. I’ve slowly begun to get back into public display of my photography, with gallery shows and events like the annual “Market of the Macabre” at Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery. 

To summarize, I’ve been fairly active, artistically, since COVID. Physically, not so much. The pandemic stifled a lot of things in the world, but it did invigorate my creativity. I hit 64 years of age in 2022 and health-wise, the wheels began to fall off. George Harrison was quite prescient in the Beatles’ song, When I’m Sixty-Four. In February 2024 I fell on the ice in a cemetery and tore a rotator cuff. That April, I got a hip replacement. So while I’m still active artistically, my days of jumping off walls into abandoned cemeteries are over. But for all you youngsters out there reading this, please jump off as many walls into abandoned cemeteries as you can. And as they say in the Hunger Games, may the odds be forever in your favor. 

The Scattering

This blog post was guest written by my friend George Hofmann. George writes the newsletter "Practicing Mental Illness."

Down the hill just out of reach beyond a black, cast-iron fence still lays a cigarette, dusty, flicked without thought or respect into a pile of ashes, as if someone chain smoked pack after pack and tossed all thoughts of the past onto the heap. Although it has become the same color as the grey fanning over it and out across the hill it stands out, like nagging thoughts of things you should have done that you can’t push away. Guilt over someone else’s carelessness. That one thing you’ll never escape. All that remains among the remains. This is where ghosts come from.

The cemetery is such a well-ordered space that something out of place just glares at you as it breaks the peace, the silence, of the columns of dead. One after another, immobile, but drawing us back into a timeless past upon which we write the history and we choose what to inscribe on the granite that lasts longer than that history, till a time comes when no one cares anymore, and the earth takes it all back.

The scattering garden is different. It sits upon a hill that would overlook the graveyard, but a circle of trees conceals it. Evergreens, so the place is always shaded and always tucked away. There are two tables of granite off to the side, crowded with the names and dates of those scattered there. A third will be added soon, so many lives have ended and rested on that slope. Birds sing in the trees unseen, and the sound of traffic from somewhere off to the left is overtaken by the wind that makes the trees sway, but does not lift any ashes from the ground. Like the lives lived the ashes scattered here are not unform, at least not up close. But the black iron rail keeps you away, and it all looks the same, except for the time when the bag is held and the arms outstretch and empty all that is left onto the charnel on the hill.

Some would say this is just throwing the dead away. It’s not a remembered place like the ocean or a hiking trail or off the last row of the stadium of a favorite sports team. It’s contrived. It’s a built garden reserved for disposal, but with a bit more dignity and a place to come and visit and reflect. A beautiful place. The flowers and shrubs, the trees and the ribbon of sky that peaks through, and yes, the heaps of cremated remains that dive off deeply onto a patch of exposed earth where grass no longer grows.

Others would say here we don’t throw away the dead at all. Instead, we release them into consciousness where all are joined indistinguishable from one another, in the image of some unnamed god, sent back into the fabric from which we all came. This is a sharp contrast to the rest of the cemetery, with its insistent distinction of one plot from another, standing out alone with markers to prove it, and no doubt of who lies there. The scattering garden is a common grave for people secure with being common people. The ashes merge together with the souls risen and the memories swirl and while the culture may scream “me!” the dead know better. The dead are all one. It is the living that makes each stand out.

The living come in groups to the scattering garden. One is chosen, usually the groundskeeper, to open the urn and empty the bag inside. Overt religious services are rare here, but words are always spoken. Most people think they are more profound, more notable, than they truly are. But in these small groups they are notable indeed. Whereas, like the ash, we all kind of blend together into some secure irrelevance to the broader world, to these groups of loved ones, right up to the point of release, we are spectacular. Today, in the bitter cold, a widower stood with his collar raised and his eyes tearing as he leaned into the wind. His wife did routine work but in new, unusual, sometimes remarkable ways. He spoke of an early mentor who saw the way she did things and said, “you can’t do that. It’s not normal.” He said of his wife, “but she was not normal. She was better than that.” 

The groundskeeper held the bag just above the lip of the hill and poured out the remains gently, so that none would take to the air and cling to the widower’s long coat. Tonight, at home, his wife does cling to him. As does a flake or two of ash just beside the left lapel of his coat. By instinct he raises his arm to brush it away, and then realizes what he is doing and stops. He sits on the bed, falls over, and sleeps in the coat. In the morning he rises, first thought of his wife. On the way to make coffee, as he always did for her, he stops in front of the mirror in the hall. His coat is disheveled and the ash is gone.

As the sun rises the groundskeeper scales the fence and moves across the hill of the scattering garden with a rake. The little piles are evened out and a bit of dirt is mixed in to keep it all down. Midday there’ll be another family. The groundskeeper notices the cigarette and moves to rake it under, then stops. He picks it up and puts it in his pocket to take very far from here. We will be judged by the way we treat our dead and the places we leave them. What we learn from them, and how we bring them back.

Some Cemeteries of Trenton, New Jersey

Okay, so when you think of interesting cemeteries to explore, Trenton, New Jersey may not immediately (or ever) come to mind. However, your opinion may change. For our 2024 end-of-the-year meetup, the cemetery photography group I hang with decided on Trenton. It was a midway spot between Philadelphia and north Jersey (the general areas where most of us live), so about ten of us agreed to meet at Riverview Cemetery in Trenton, then continue on to the chain-link graveyard cluster in Hamilton, ending with the State Prison cemetery (whatever that is). All of a sudden, you’re interested, right?

It was a cold morning in December, with rain forecast the following day. Hopefully the rain gods would take pity on us and delay the downpours. I got to Trenton a bit early and was dismayed to find Riverview’s gates closed. I’d been here before – it is a wonderful, sprawling Victorian garden cemetery, full of unique statuary, grand monuments, interesting epitaphs, and the mausoleum of John Taylor, the creator and founder of Taylor Ham! 

You may not realize this, but from Trenton north in the Garden State, this breakfast meat is known as Taylor Ham. South of Trenton, it is merely pork roll. Mick Jagger famously told the audience at a Rolling Stones concert in August, 2019 at the MetLife Stadium that “he and his band mates grabbed Taylor ham sandwiches at the Tick Tock Diner on Route 3 in Clifton earlier that day.” Clifton, New Jersey is near the MetLife Stadium, in East Rutherford, where the Stones were playing. 

Word of Jagger's comments spread like wildfire and so fans would go to the Tick Tock and order “the Mick Jagger special” – Taylor ham, egg and cheese with disco fries.” I think if I ordered one at the diner for breakfast, I’d want the Stones’ song “Start Me Up” blasting from the sound system! However, this morning I had to content myself with a Wake-Up wrap at the Dunkin Donuts in Trenton, near Riverview, while I killed time waiting to see if the gates would be opened at ten. I sat in the parking lot munching away, watching the panhandler at the corner go from car to car. He was a largish guy, dressed all in white, looking like either Elvis or porn actor Ron Jeremy. 

I drove over to St. John's Cemetery down the road from Riverview, and shot the zinc Jesus, then thought there might be another entrance to Riverview. Found that and it was closed too. I texted my graver pals to apprise them of the gate situation and was promptly told about the third entrance, which was open. Three of my friends were already there. How I ever get into these places on my own is puzzling, lol.

This grave marker bears the inscription, "Nevermore."

The light snow on the ground lent a nice contrast to the landscape, and did not totally cover up the chicken eggs laying about. Offerings, of some sort. The group fragmented and visited some familiar spots, like the “Nevermore” door and the receiving vault. I wanted to shoot a short video in John Taylor’s plot, since the poison ivy around its low fence had been cut away. As I approached it, I realized I had forgotten my empty box from Taylor Ham! As I said this, my friend Phil, who was walking with me, said, “You can borrow mine,” as he pulled a neatly folded box from his coat pocket! Cemetery nerds, aren’t we hysterical?

You can see my video at this Instagram link on my @mourningarts page. And while you’re there, check out this awesome “Long Live John Taylor” page! 

Not the first time I've seen the word "cemetery" misspelled!

After about two hours at Riverview and our standard group photo shoot (that's us in the first photo of this piece, with me in the orange cap) we jumped into our respective vehicles and headed off to the Hamilton cluster, as one of our group members has dubbed it. I’d been there once before, but it did not seem all that interesting. Just shows to go you - hang out with other artists and you see things you normally might not. And that happened to me today - note one of the many cemetery signs in the cluster (above).

The cluster is near Hamilton, NJ, but might actually be in East Trenton. It’s not unusual to see a couple of cemeteries next to each other, separated by fencing. What is unusual about the Hamilton cluster is that there are so many separate cemeteries in this one area that it is difficult to even count them! Maybe ten? Fifteen? Not sure. Acres and acres of Christian and Jewish burial grounds, side by side. St. Mary’s, Our Lady of Lourdes, People of Truth Hebrew Cemetery, Congregation Brothers of Israel, Knights of Pythias (I think its cool that there’s a fraternal organization based on math – this group follows the philosophy of Pythagoras, he of the Pythagorean Theorem that you learned in high school. The Masons are based on math as well, come to think of it….) 

Anyway, you didn’t actually need to read the cemetery signs to know which ones were Christian and which were Jewish at this time of year. All the Christian cemeteries had Christmas decorations on many of the graves. The Jewish cemeteries did not. 

The cluster is all on level ground, and each cemetery is bordered with four-foot-high chain link fence. It very much reminded me of the cluster of cemeteries in Old San Antonio, Texas, where there are 31 cemeteries across 103 contiguous acres! (read about that visit here). Very much the same layout. Efficient use of space, but not very picturesque. Zero landscaping, no arboretums, these are “lawn” cemeteries, as opposed to the more picturesque Victorian sculpture garden cemeteries. Beginning in the mid-1800s along with the American rural (Victorian) cemetery movement, there was also an effort to establish more modest cemeteries which were basic, more frugal places to bury loved ones. Hence, what came to be known as a "lawn" cemetery - almost uniform grave markers in neat rows, with little ornamentation. You can read more about lawn cemeteries here. 

The only things that make such a cemetery interesting, or would call attention to any specific grave, are the occasional unique monuments and other memories that punctuate the gravescape here and there. Note the bottle of booze (I hope that's booze) left with a few roses at a gravesite. 

The American Institute of Commemorative Art opines that:

“Sculpture should be used only when it is true art, such as we see in the famed cemeteries of Europe. The dignity of all too many American cemeteries is spoiled by the use of commercial statuary such as no trained memorialist would tolerate.”

A bit highfalutin, those words. Certainly, anyone who wants an angel statue on their grave would prefer a hand-sculpted marble piece, versus a factory-cut angel bought at a roadside memorial business. But not everyone has the money for that. So we tend to see a mix of statuary and monuments of varying quality and design, spanning generations - some new, some aged, produced by various carvers. One thing is certain - someone wanted to mark that grave and this is the best they could do. A bronze Jesus plaque set into a home-cast concrete stone may have more character that a weeping marble angel bought from a roadside stone vendor. 

The light snow on the grass gave the grounds a bit more character, but the chain link fencing was rather annoying. Most people are visiting a specific grave in a specific cemetery here, so they can just drive around the border of the cemetery, look for the gate, park and walk in. But if you’re there to visit many of the cemeteries, it is tiresome to have to walk a block to the entrance to the next cemetery to get in. The fence is only four feet high, but that’s still a bit much for most people to jump over. When I was in San Antonio, the fencing presented quite a hardship. Not only were there 31 (!) cemeteries all separated by chain-link fence, but that fence was even higher, and it was close to a hundred degrees the day I visited! So, the effort required to walk a block (or more) in the blazing sun just to get to the next gate was exhausting. (You can read more about that visit here.)

Of the cluster cemeteries, Our Lady of Lourdes Cemetery was the most replete with interesting statuary, if that draws you. This is the half of the cemetery north of East Brown Street. The southern half includes the numbered graves of either the New Jersey State Prison or State Hospital burials, not sure which. These are uniform concrete markers in a small plot within the cemetery. There is a bit more landscaping at Lourdes than in any of the other cluster cemeteries. More trees, a columbarium, an interesting angel-flanked family memorial. It is also the largest cemetery in this cluster. There is a sign at the entrance stating that it is “consecrated ground” (i.e., ground that is blessed and made sacred via some religious ceremony).

New Jersey State Prison graves, Our Lady of Lourdes Cemetery, Trenton

The angel-flanked memorial seen above is unusual. Down the road from here is a columbarium, a building to house cremains within individual niches. One of our group said it smelled funny in there. Can't imagine why.

Xmas tree and creche inside the columbarium

Concrete Jesus on a stainless steel cross

Our group fractioned off then rejoined several times, based on our varied interests. Eventually, we all went for a late lunch at a Thai restaurant, traded stories, then went our separate ways. I was done graving for the day, so I went home. With an hour of daylight left, others hit the local pet cemetery and the Presbyterian Church graveyard heading toward Princeton. Hanging with these people is always enjoyable, respectful, educational, and so much better than just appreciating their work on social media. All in all, a grand day out.

So, if you do venture to the Trenton area in search of interesting cemeteries, you will not be disappointed. As I learned, even basic lawn cemeteries offer interesting memories of lives spent, lives that are no more. The dog tags on the urn of cremains stopped me in my tracks.

For your reference and further reading:

https://patch.com/new-jersey/fairlawn-saddlebrook/mick-jagger-waffles-pork-roll-taylor-ham-debate-report

https://www.instagram.com/p/DEM0cBgRPp4/

https://www.instagram.com/longlivejohntaylor/

https://thecemeterytraveler.blogspot.com/2022/07/all-city-cemeteries-of-san-antonio-in.html

http://www.deathreference.com/Ke-Ma/Lawn-Garden-Cemeteries.html

https://www.monuments-aica.com/

Shootout at the Christmas Village

You would think that Christmas trees in cemeteries would be a depressing sight. Well, compared to other goings on about town this season, a decorated Christmas tree on a grave seems like a breath of fresh air. 

“Shootout at the Christmas Village” would sound funnier if it wasn’t true. Unfortunately, there really was a shooting in the crowded Christmas Village across from Philadelphia’s City Hall two weeks before Christmas this year. A fourteen-year-old boy is in critical condition, shot in the face. Two other boys, fifteen and fourteen, shot in the calf and leg. Two fourteen-year-old male suspects were taken into custody. Seems this was a fight that escalated to gunfire. Festive, right? So, if you plan on taking in some ice skating at the holiday rink at Dilworth Plaza this year, consider wearing a Kevlar jacket instead of that fashionable down vest.

Happy Christmas, everyone. That same weekend, two dozen people were shot and four died in a series of eleven shootings from Center City to Germantown to Northeast Philadelphia. The mayor went on the news saying this was a one-off, and despite it being a particularly violent weekend, Philadelphia really is safe.

Fast forward to the morning of December 17, when I picked up a package from my neighbor’s doorstep. Porch pirates steal packages in my neighborhood. Neighbors look out for each other and grab boxes and envelopes from each other’s front steps before thieves can get them. We text each other to let the recipient know their package is safe. After I texted my neighbors, they thanked me and said when they came home the previous night, they found someone’s Christmas gifts ripped open on their front steps. Children’s books and a game in a torn open box from an address several blocks away. Children’s books and games have little or no street value. 

So just when it all seemed too much to bear - no más, por favor, as the Spanish say - I heard on the radio (B101), a caller describing an “angel tree.” The radio station invited people to call in and describe their Christmas trees. In the mix of callers describing bright, gaudy, vintage, and all other type trees, one woman said her mother used to keep an “angel tree.” This was a smaller tree in the living room alongside the regular, full-sized decorated tree. The angel tree had an ornament for each family member who had died. 

What a way to honor and remember! I assume each angel ornament bore the name of the deceased. Any new angels were added for people who had died in the year just passed. A lovely way to honor and to CONTINUE to remember their loved ones! I’ve already put myself in a better mood and forgotten about the shootout at the Christmas Village.

Why do Christmas trees stir up memories? And why a tree, anyway?  Why not a hay bale or a life-sized Jesus cutout? I recently heard that chopping down a tree and setting it back up in your living room symbolizes Christ being raised from the dead. Real or artificial, the tree tends to bring back memories of Christmas past, and people past. This may be partly why people set up Christmas trees in cemeteries, and even have Christmas trees engraved on their headstones!

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In those cemeteries that allow Christmas trees at gravesites, I am always intrigued that people go to so much trouble to set them up. Some are six feet high and some even have solar-powered lights. Usually they have ornaments, typical shiny balls or maybe photos of the deceased with their family. Some are small and more manageable. John Waters, the film maker, famously sets up a decorated Christmas tree at the actor Divine’s grave every Christmas (Prospect Hill Cemetery, Towson, Maryland) - simply because his friend enjoyed Christmas so much when he was alive. If you want to join in that celebration, you can always top your tree with a Divine Christmas tree topper, as shown here. Unless you’re an atheist. Atheists have no holidays.

So while it is easy to be pessimistic about Christmas when there’s a shootout at the Christmas Village and thieves are ripping apart your Christmas presents, a Christmas tree in a cemetery can provide hope, or at least a distraction. Maybe setting up a small angel tree to memorialize the departed would make perfect sense at this time in your life.

And if you’re lucky enough to be near a cemetery that stays unlocked at night, drive toward that light in the distance – it may be an illuminated Christmas tree. Like violence, Christmas and cemeteries will always be with us. Maybe they balance each other out. As Emerson, Lake, and Palmer sang in their song, Karn Evil 9:

“Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends, we’re so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside.” 

References and Further Reading:

https://www.fox29.com/news/christmas-village-shooting-dilworth-plaza

https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/philadelphia-gun-violence-mayor-cherelle-parker/

Cemeteries as Roadside Attractions

South Jersey (especially along Route 9) is unparalleled for roadside attractions. Giant fiberglass cartoon figures, fanciful soft serve ice cream stands, diners, pyramids made of hubcaps, the list goes on. The list now, for me, includes small, pocket-sized cemeteries, like the one above, along Route 9 in Cape May Court House, New Jersey. 

In the summer of 2024, I was researching forgotten cemeteries for my book, “Abandoned Cemeteries of Philadelphia and its Environs” (expected publication in late 2025, on Fonthill). South Jersey, being in the general area of Philly, was on my radar. I happened to be in Cape May, so why not check out the local cemeteries? 

On my drive back north to Philly on Route 9, I noticed some small burial grounds pop up on my phone map. They were right along the highway. I stopped at two of them, plots of land about twenty feet wide, and fifteen feet deep, with maybe as many as ten old headstones standing at attention. The grounds were well taken care of.

Robert Morris in Holmes Family Cemetery

No doubt, these were family plots that had been on private property at one time. A few such burial grounds still exist in Philadelphia, e.g. the DeBenneville (est. 1758) and Vandegrift (est. 1775) cemeteries on North Broad Street and Bristol Pike, respectively, but New Jersey has many more. Why? Certainly south Jersey is more rural, but there must be other reasons why most private family cemeteries in Philadelphia were moved or built over. Chances are that heavy industrialization and rapid population growth in Philadelphia in the mid to late 1800s contributed to the eradication of small family cemeteries.

One of the topics I cover in my book is the disappearance of such small family burial grounds. Large farms and estates dwindled in size as parcels of land were sold off throughout the 1800s and early 1900s. These family burial grounds either disappeared, were built over, or the graves were moved. Some still exist, providing us with interesting slices of history. 

Holmes Family Cemetery along Route 9, Cape May Court House, NJ

A cemetery I stopped at on Route 9 in Cape May Court House (that’s the name of the actual town) was a place that my cellphone map app called the Holmes Family Cemetery. Most of the gravestones had a death date in the early 1800s. Someone had placed small American flags on the veterans’ stones, men who had fought in the Revolutionary War. But wait, there was no Battle of Cape May, right? According to the book, Cape May County Story (Avalon Publishing, 1975) by Boyer and Cunningham:

“New Jersey became the foremost state in resisting British tyranny in January of 1775 when the Assembly voted to present grievances to the King. Jonathan Hand and Eli Elrdidge represented Cape May County at that meeting. No colony was more deeply involved in the Revolution than New Jersey. It was a natural passageway between New York and Philadelphia and was always in a condition of siege. Benjamin Franklin likened it to a barrel, open at both ends. It had been called the “Corridor State” and the “Cockpit of the Revolution” by some, and others referred to this state as the “Pathway to Freedom.”

American men who fought in the famous New Jersey battles of Monmouth, Trenton, Red Bank, and Princeton, had to come from somewhere. Many came from south Jersey, some of whom are probably buried in the Holmes Family Burial Ground. Excluding Quakers (conscientious objectors) and Tories (loyal to the King), the above noted historians tell us that “49 percent of the male population in the state bore arms and New Jersey contributed one eighth of the total men from all the colonies that fought in the war.”

The Holmes Family Cemetery was distinctive in that every headstone had daddy-long-legs spiders on them! Odd. What was even odder was all the other types of spiders dangling from the pine trees on web strands above my head. 

About a mile up the road was a rather peculiar small cemetery in that it appeared to be in someone’s front yard. Curious, I parked across the busy street and walked up to the house, which had a pickup truck parked in the driveway. I knocked on the door. A man about 45 years old appeared. I told him I was researching a book on abandoned cemeteries and asked if he knew the story behind the gravestones in his front yard. My cellphone app called this the Hand Family Burial Ground. Perhaps the Jonathan Hand (1728 – 1789) mentioned in the passage above was a member of this family, and may be resting below one of the nameless, worn stones in this plot.          

The homeowner asked me to wait while he put his shoes on. He came outside carrying a paperback book. He told me that when he bought the house about twenty years ago, it was explained to him that he did not own that small portion of land in his front yard. It was owned by the state of New Jersey. When Route 9, a state-owned highway, was built, all the small burial grounds along it were purchased by the state. The state maintains them. 

Roadside view of Craig's property, Hand Family Cemetery in foreground

Craig's front yard looking toward Route 9, with Hand Family Cemetery near road

The owner, Craig, told me a rather comical story. He said that shortly after he bought the house, he woke up one morning to a lot of activity near the street. Cars were pulling up, people getting out and gathering in the cemetery. Suddenly, shots rang out and he hit the deck! He peeked through one of his windows and realized that a twenty-one gun salute had just occurred. It was Memorial Day and people were placing flags on the graves!

As I thanked him and was turning to leave, he held out the paperback as a gift. He said “My mother was a historian and co-authored this book. You can have it.” The book is called Cape May County Story, the very book I quoted above. And yes, it does mention cemeteries. 

Sarah Somers (1770 - 1796)

It is interesting to see familiar surnames on the stones in these old cemeteries. Sarah Somers (1770 - 1796) and Sarah Hand (1741 – 1826), both buried in the Hand plot, each have surnames that should be familiar to beachgoers who frequent the Jersey shore. Sarah Somers and her husband, Constant Somers, may be related in some way to nearby Somers Point, a south Jersey beach town. Sarah Hand along with her husband Jesse Hand, Esq., may have been related to the still current and popular shore business, Hand’s Department Store on Jersey's Long Beach Island.

Sarah Hand (1741 – 1826)

The two small cemeteries I stopped at had been private family burial grounds at the edges of farms. As the farms were diced up and sold as small packets of land for development as residential properties, the burial grounds were kept intact. There is another small cemetery on the grounds of the Cape May Zoo, but I could not find that one. They may all have been forgotten by the public, as they are hidden in plain sight, but they have, thankfully, been saved from oblivion by the state of New Jersey. They may not be as eye-catching as a giant fiberglass cow, but they will outlast most of Jersey's other roadside attractions.