Rest in peace, Murphy

So I’d like to visit some area cemeteries this summer and I’d like to mark them on a map app and maybe make notes. I’d also like for the app to be somewhat privacy oriented (which I know means “not free”). Any recommendations?

One of my favorite tools: my dad’s Petersen Manufacturing (Dewitt, Nebraska) Vise Grips, complete with his initials etched into it. He worked as a signal maintainer for the railroad in my early childhood—a job he was always proud of. His work there ended when he seriously injured his back.

The previous owner of my house left behind some heavy duty Lyon shelving in the garage. It is a heap of trouble to disassemble and reconfigure but I’m going to hold onto it because it’s older than me and will probably outlast me.

It’s been a rough week here with the sudden decline of our fifteen year old dog Murphy. Last weekend he seemed to be not quite right. He laid down on the floor on Saturday afternoon and never stood up again. His front legs seemed to have stopped working. We took him into the vet on Monday morning and she said it was likely a neurological problem. If it’s temporary inflammation, he should be better in a few days. If he’s not better, then it’s likely permanent.

So we’ve been nursing him this week, waiting to see what will happen. He’s confused about why he has to potty into a diaper. He’s a good boy and he knows he isn’t supposed to potty in the house. He’s struggled to get up a couple of times but it’s just not working. It’s hard seeing him like this. Frankly, he doesn’t seem to be improving and it seems likely he will leave us on Monday. He’s been with us almost as long as Darcy has.

It’s “Limestone Month” here in Bedford and this morning Rachel and I went on a tour of Green Hill Cemetery, the large cemetery in town that also has the most notable monuments and locally carved limestone folk art.

The tour guide was engaging and very knowledgeable. Unfortunately he was an old guy with a bad foot walking with a cane. And he can’t get volunteers to help. And there’s not enough money to cover the high costs of restoration and maintenance. And the number of available burial plots is decreasing and likewise their prospects for long-term revenue stream.

So the situation is not good. There were complaints about how people are less engaged with cemeteries now, buying fewer plots (presumably due to the rising popularity of cremation) and visiting the dead less regularly.

There are important things that could be lost if the trend continues, like historical knowledge and local, totally unique works of art. At the same time, I do not plan to be buried in the traditional manner; I would like some sort of green burial if local regulations are enlightened enough at the time of my death. Preferably I would be left atop a hill sacred to a local deity and consumed by crows. Barring that, at least no vault and no embalming.

So while I believe mainstream American burial customs reflect certain unhelpful beliefs and should be modified, I would not want to see Green Hill Cemetery fall into ruin. I don’t know what the answer is. Some cultures leave people buried for a period of time and then (once the memory of the person has faded over a few decades) inter the bones in a charnel house. This at least maintains the character of the land as a place of the dead without locking it up for the sake of long-forgotten souls who happened to live in an era of strong property rights.

Part of the problem they’re having is with maintenance of the monuments—precisely because they exist outside, in the weather and on shifting earth. Preserving them in a museum would be much easier. And, fascinating as some of the monuments may be, how many of them are simply the vanity of wealthy men etched in stone?

Part of me wants to volunteer to help and part of me wants the whole, unsustainable system to be replaced by something better.

2 Samuel 5:24:

And let it be, when thou hearest the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees, that then thou shalt bestir thyself: for then shall the LORD go out before thee, to smite the host of the Philistines.

As a kid I always loved that phrase “the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees” and I still think of it every summer evening when the wind is blowing in a storm—as it is tonight.

I’m sad to finish Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Next, I would like to at least read The Portable Jung and the Red Book. Any other recommendations for an interested layman?

Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p.356

It is important to have a secret, a premonition of things unknown. It fills life with something impersonal, a numinosum. A man who has never experienced that has missed something important. He must sense that he lives in a world which in some respects is mysterious; that things happen and can be experienced which remain inexplicable; that not everything that happens can be anticipated. The unexpected and the incredible belong in this world. Only then is life whole. For me the world has from the beginning been infinite and ungraspable.

Now spinning: Beach Boys compilation “Endless Summer.” Not my usual music but it caught the attention of my teenage daughter. I came into the room and found her taking a video of it playing.