Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier, Tomb Of The Unknowns

Thanks DailyHistory:

MAY 30, 2013 'Here Rests in Honored Glory...' Many Americans, particularly those too young to have a recollection of, say, the Vietnam War, are not aware that the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetary actually contains the remains of three unidentified soldiers. In fact, the true name of the memorial is the Tomb of the Unknowns. On this day in 1958, two caskets—one containing the remains of an unidentified casualty of World War II; the other containing the remains of an unknown Korean War soldier—were carried by cassion to Arlington.President Dwight D. Eisenhower awarded each soldier the Medal of Honor before they were interred in separate crypts alongside the remains of their unknown brother from World War I, who had been interred on Nov. 11, 1921. The crypt that once contained the remains of a soldier from the Vietnam War now lies empty. In 1998, 14 years after he had been interred at Arlington, it was announced that the remains were identified as Air Force 1st Lt. Michael Joseph Blassie, who in 1972 had been shot down near An Loc, Vietnam. He was exhumed and reinterred in his hometown of St. Louis, Mo. Being selected to stride before the Tomb of the Unknowns is one of the military's highest honors.

Why Is Dracula Called Vlad The IMPALER?!!Yikes.

strightdope.com/cecil:

The real-life fellow you're referring to is Vlad the Impaler (c. 1431-1476), also known as Prince Dracula. Vlad briefly ruled Wallachia, next door to Transylvania, in what is now Romania. Vlad was not a vampire, but that's about the only nice thing you can say about him. He was a vicious tyrant who butchered between 40,000 and 100,000 people during the six years of his principal reign, 1456-1462.  His preferred method of execution was to impale people on wooden stakes. Typically this was accomplished by inserting the stake where the sun don't shine, tying the victim's legs to a couple horses, and hollering "giddyup" whilst holding the stake in place. The corpse would then be put on display for the edification of the public. The number of rotting bodies hanging outside the Wallachian capital was said to exceed 20,000.

Much of what is known about the Impaler is hearsay. But there appears to be general agreement on several incidents:

• Early in his reign he invited 500 Wallachian nobles, or boyars, to a banquet at his castle. Upon asking how many princes had ruled them over the past few decades, he was told there had been several dozen. He then said something to the effect of, "This is due entirely to your shameful intrigues!" Whereupon he ordered his attendants to seize many of the boyars, impale them, and hang the bodies outside the city walls. Others were dragged off to rebuild Castle Dracula, the remains of which may still be seen near the border between Transylvania and Wallachia.
• On another occasion Vlad invited the local beggars as well as the old, the sick, and the lame to a feast. Having gotten everybody drunk, he inquired, "Do you want to be without cares, lacking nothing in this world?" Sure, said the assembled multitudes. Vlad then ordered the building boarded up and set afire, killing all inside. "I did this so that no one will be poor in my realm," he supposedly said.
• He raided neighboring Transylvania, slaughtering tens of thousands of people. The most notorious atrocity occurred on April 2, 1459, when he looted the church of St. Bartholomew in the town of Brasov, impaled numerous victims on the nearby hills, and then sat down for a meal amid the bodies. This event was commemorated in several widely circulated woodcuts printed in Germany that are largely responsible for Dracula's enduring infamy.

There are also tales claiming that Dracula had a woman impaled for letting her husband go out in a shirt that was too short; that when some Turkish envoys refused to take their hats off to him he had the hats nailed to their heads; that he forced mothers to eat their children and husbands to eat their wives; that he had various people boiled in cauldrons, fried, or cut up like kraut; and so on ad nauseam. How much of this stuff really happened is not known. But the sheer accumulation of stories suggests that Vlad either had the worst case of bad PR in the history of the universe or else was one brutal SOB.

Debate on this point continues down to the present day. In the West, Dracula is generally regarded as a monster who killed for the sake of killing. In his native Romania, however, Vlad to this day is considered a national hero, a cruel but just ruler who mightily smote his enemies, notably the Turks, and enforced strict morality at home. Some historians point out that this was the era of Machiavelli, when princes were brutally attempting to consolidate their power all over Europe. They say that Dracula was merely a product of his times. Cecil, needless to say, regards this as craven bootlicking.

In the end Dracula proved to be too much even for the Romanians. After an inconclusive war in 1462, the Turks set up his brother, Radu the Handsome, as an alternative ruler backed by Turkish troops. Even though it meant losing their independence, the Wallachian boyars abandoned Dracula, who was later arrested and imprisoned by the king of Hungary. Some historians believe the boyars simply feared the superior power of the Turks. I prefer to believe they'd gotten tired of life under a psycho. In 1476 Vlad was restored briefly to the throne, only to be killed under murky circumstances after a few months.

Bram Stoker, who wrote the 1897 horror novel Dracula, apparently read about Vlad while doing research in the British Museum. He cheerfully conflated the historical Dracula with the legends about vampirism that had circulated in Eastern Europe for centuries. The courtly blood-sucker now familiar to all was the result.

Like Brothers We Meet-Civil War Poem

Poem of the Day: Like Brothers We Meet
BY GEORGE MOSES HORTON
Like heart-loving brothers we meet,
    And still the loud thunders of strife,
The blaze of fraternity kindles most sweet,
    There’s nothing more pleasing in life.

The black cloud of faction retreats,
    The poor is no longer depressed,
See those once discarded resuming their seats,
    The lost strangers soon will find rest.

The soldier no longer shall roam,
    But soon shall land safely ashore,
Each soon will arrive at his own native home,
    And struggle in warfare no more.

The union of brothers is sweet,
    Whose wives and children do come,
Their sons and fair daughters with pleasure they greet,
    When long absent fathers come home.

They never shall languish again,
    Nor discord their union shall break,
When brothers no longer lament and complain,
    Hence never each other forsake.

Hang closely together like friends,
    By peace killing foes never driven,
The storm of commotion eternally ends,
    And earth will soon turn into Heaven.

Source: “Words for the Hour”: A New Anthology of American Civil War Poetry, edited by Faith Barrett and Cristanne Miller (University of Massachusetts Press, 2005)

To An Athlete Dying Young

Poem of the Day: To an Athlete Dying Young
BY A. E. HOUSMAN
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears.

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.

Source: The Norton Anthology of Poetry Third Edition (1983)

Relax Into Death,Sinner's Welcome,MaryKarr Poem

For a Dying Tomcat Who's Relinquished His Former Hissing and Predatory Nature

by Mary Karr
I remember the long orange carp you once scooped
from the neighbor's pond, bounding beyond
her swung broom, across summer lawns

to lay the fish on my stoop. Thanks
for that. I'm not one to whom offerings
often get made. You let me feel

how Christ might when I kneel,
weeping in the dark
over the usual maladies: love and its lack.

Only in tears do I speak
directly to him and with such
conviction. And only once you grew frail

did you finally slacken into me,
dozing against my ribs like a child.
You gave up the predatory flinch

that snapped the necks of so many
birds and slow-moving rodents.
Now your once powerful jaw

is malformed by black malignancies.
It hurts to eat. So you surrender in the way
I pray for: Lord, before my own death,

let me learn from this animal's deep release
into my arms. Let me cease to fear
the embrace that seeks to still me.
"For a Dying Tomcat Who's Relinquished His Former Hissing and Predatory Nature" by Mary Karr, from Sinner's Welcome. © Harper Collins, 2006. Reprinted with permission.

Cemetery,Serial Killers,Vampires,Ghosts-Grim Philly Tours (& Blood)

Grim Philly Tours - All New - March 2013!

Vampires, Sex, Ghosts! ...& so much more!

Our maiden tour voted best in Philadelphia. With an eclectic array of sites and frights from dark & deviant sexcapades to torture, mass burials & execution, to vampires, pirates, and ghosts! A solid year of research & development by university professor Joe Wojie this high energy, R-Rated adult night tour ensures the highest value in entertainment and fact. An exceptionally one of a kind, unique, and far different tour than any other- adventurers are guided past Independence Hall, The Library of Congress and 2 dozen other sites starting with a core of traditional stories from our founding fathers and quickly moving to Philly's most seedy locations like our whipping posts, gallows, red light district; even recounting hauntings such as that of the City Tavern, pirate ghost ships that sail the Delaware, and more!

Duration: 7:00 pm - 8:45 pm (& other times available)

Cost: $19.99

*Departs from Independence Visitor Center (April through November)- 1 N. Independence Mall West Phila, Pa 19106.

Cemetery, Serial Killers; Blood & Beer!

From the burial ground to the bar! Eat, drink, & be merry!

From grave robbers like Dutch Pillet and Levi Chew to
psychopathic killers like the “Corpse Collector,” “Frankfort Slasher,”
“Hednik’s House of Horrors,” and H.H. Holmes; America’s first- this is not your
typical Liberty Bell tour! And…after a fact-packed late afternoon Grim Philly®
walk we’ll rest our weary bones at Mexican Post Tavern for beer and snacks just in time for dinner before leaving on our (optional) "Bootleggers Ball Historic & Haunted Pub Crawl!"

Sparsely sprinkled with national icons, tales of yellow
fever death, & up close visits to the graves of Ben Franklin, & other
founding fathers- this tour tells more of the modern; gritty…some would say
“twisted” side of our history. So join us, please- on this fascinating Grim
Philly® adventure of blood & beer!

Tour price includes:

3 historians/guides.*

Paid admission to burial ground, & Christs Church.

 Beer and snacks at Mexican Post Tavern.

Numerous historical sites including Franklin's Grave, Elfreth's Alley, Betsy Ross House, & more!

Duration: 2:30 PM - 5:30 PM (& select earlier 12:30 pm times).

Cost: $29.99

*Departs Sat. & Sun. afternoons from Independence Visitor Center (April through November)- 1 N. Independence Mall West Phila, Pa 19106.

Mother Bethel's 1800s Historic Burial Sites R Under A Playground

Archaeological survey set for unmarked Mother Bethel cemetery

Terry Buckalew, a retired facilities manager who has documented much of the burial ground, visits Weccacoe Playground in Queen Village. APRIL SAUL / Staff Photographer

STEPHAN SALISBURY, INQUIRER CULTURE WRITER

POSTED: Monday, May 20, 2013, 3:01 AM

It's not that the old Mother Bethel Church burial ground has been lost, exactly. How does one lose a place for the dead?
James Champion, an original church trustee, dead of tuberculosis, was buried there in 1813. Stephen Laws, another founder, succumbed to typhoid in 1814 and joined Champion in the graveyard.
The Rev. Richard Williams, Mother Bethel's pastor in the 1840s, lies there. So does the Rev. John Boggs, one of the early legends of the church, whose 1848 funeral was attended by 1,000 mourners.
And Sarah Bass Allen, passionate abolitionist and wife of Richard Allen, founder of Mother Bethel and of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, was laid to rest in the old burial ground in 1849, according to city records.

Yet there is no marker at the site, no indication that many members of the founding generation of black America and of the AME church are buried beneath the asphalt, swings, and community center of Weccacoe Playground, near the intersection of Queen and Lawrence Streets in Queen Village.
But now, as renovation of the playground looms and the work of a diligent independent researcher has captured attention, an archaeological survey of the ground is set to begin this week. On May 29, a committee of the Philadelphia Historical Commission will consider whether to place the site on the city's Register of Historic Places, providing a measure of protection for the ground from development and disturbance.
"To have something like this is absolutely vital to the story of African Americans in America," said Richard Newman, professor of history at the Rochester Institute of Technology and author of Freedom's Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church and the Black Founding Fathers.
"Allen was always looking for safe and secure places for ritual practices - religious services, burial services - which are absolutely essential to African American life. . . . This is a new layer of the black past that shows how ubiquitous it was in early Philadelphia."
No one is exactly opposed to memorializing the site or certifying it as historic. But lack of opposition does not translate into active support. There has been friction between Mother Bethel and the numerous parties seeking playground renovation, and the independent researcher, Terry Buckalew, a retired University of Pennsylvania facilities manager. Buckalew has documented much of the ground and submitted the designation application to the historical commission on his own. Letters of support have come from U.S. Rep. Bob Brady (D., Pa.) and others.
The Rev. Mark Tyler, current pastor of Mother Bethel, supports commemoration of the burial ground and trumpets its importance to the church and to the city's history. Though its existence was known to some church members, he was unaware of it until Buckalew contacted him about three years ago.
Still, Tyler said, the church would not be writing in support of the historic-designation application.
"The application was not submitted by the church and was submitted without any church input at all," he said. "I don't know why I would support something I have not seen."
He characterized Buckalew as "a Lone Ranger type."
Buckalew, 62, who runs a history consulting business, said he stumbled on a reference to the burial ground several years ago while working on another project. Surprised at the paucity of information, he began to pore through city archives as well as those at Mother Bethel, at Sixth and Lombard Streets.
Allen acquired the Bethel site - the nation's oldest piece of land continuously owned by African Americans - in 1787 and began services there in 1794. In 1810, he acquired property bounded by Catherine, Queen, and what are now Lawrence and Leithgow Streets for use as a cemetery. Before that, church members were interred beneath and around the church.
So far, Buckalew has documented 1,380 burials on the Queen Street land, which he believes to be a fraction of the total.
"It was the founding generation of the church, but also the founding generation of a colony, a self-sufficient colony, which is what the African Americans in the early 19th century had to be to survive in Philadelphia," he said. "They had to found their own schools, their own churches, their own stores - everything they needed to survive. I'm very taken by that story."
The burial ground was in active use from 1810 to the 1860s. In 1889, the church sold the site, which was seriously dilapidated, to the city, and it has largely been a park since.
There are no city or church records indicating any remains were ever removed from the ground, according to Buckalew. (No city or church records indicate Sarah Allen was disinterred and moved to the church, where a crypt for her is maintained.)
As Buckalew was gathering this information, a number of neighborhood groups, city agencies, and political leaders were putting the final touches on Green 2015, a plan to turn 500 acres of underused land into green space. Weccacoe Playground, busy but not particularly green, filled the bill and now is in line to become the plan's first site, thanks to converging interests of the Queen Village Neighbors Association, Friends of Weccacoe, Councilman Mark Squilla, the city Parks and Recreation and Water Departments, and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society.
More than two years ago, Buckalew presented his findings to the neighborhood groups. He was welcomed, he said, but got the distinct feeling there was more concern about project delays than about the ground's history.
Jeff Hornstein, president of the neighborhood association, acknowledges "there was a bunch of city money on the table and in a time of economic uncertainty, there was a feeling of 'use it or lose it.' "
About $535,000 in city and state money is available for the green renovation of the playground.
"We're not at all opposed to this thing being historically designated," Hornstein said. "We want to do more commemoration."
Mark Focht, executive director of Fairmount Park, said finding old cemeteries on park sites was not uncommon. "We take this very seriously," he said, noting that his department determined an archaeological survey should be conducted.
All the groups now say they will do whatever Mother Bethel Church wants. Tyler said he was working with the neighborhood groups on memorialization of the site and providing visitors with information on its significance.
"I don't know anybody who loves this story more than Mother Bethel does," he said. "Terry has chosen to go his own way. I do plan to attend the [historical commission] meeting."

---

Contact Stephan Salisbury at 215-854-5594, ssalisbury@phillynews.com, or follow @SPSalisbury on Twitter.

Stephan SalisburyInquirer Culture Writer

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/living/20130520_Archaeological_survey_of_unmarked_Mother_Bethel_cemetery_begins_this_week.html#76bZw0QrUODVeSJW.99

Stones Of Remembrance, Stumbling Stones, Stolpersteine

Sidewalk plaques honor the memory of Nazi victims

CLAIRE DUNCOMBE

The author's two great-uncles, Oskar and Ludwig, and a great-aunt, Hannchen, died at Theresienstadt. A cousin, Erna, is believed to have taken her life and that of her infant daughter, Tana, while being deported to Auschwitz. The five new "Stolpersteine" in Stuttgart naming them all are now part of a tribute that crosses national borders.

MARIAN UHLMAN

POSTED: Sunday, May 19, 2013, 3:01 AM

STUTTGART, Germany - So many people had come to witness the ceremony in front of my great-uncles' former home that they had to squeeze together on the sidewalk to stay out of the busy street.
They had gathered on a recent Saturday morning to learn about five members of a family - my family - who perished 70 years ago, although the exact dates are not known. I learned more, too, not just about their ordinary lives and terrible fates, but also about this moving act of remembrance.
While a teenager from my father's old high school played clarinet, Gunter Demnig set five brass plaques into the sidewalk and then hammered them into place. He worked quietly and quickly because he had other plaques to lay in Stuttgart that day.
A German artist, he started creating these Stolpersteine - translated as stumbling stones - more than 15 years ago to remember the victims of the Nazis. Engraved on each stone are spare but poignant details. My two great-uncles, Oskar and Ludwig, and a great-aunt, Hannchen, perished in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. A cousin, Erna, is believed to have taken her life and that of her infant daughter, Tana, while being deported to Auschwitz. The five new Stolpersteine naming them all are now part of a tribute that crosses national borders and includes more than 32,000 stones in Europe.

The Stolpersteine typically are placed in front of the last home where the victim resided of his or her own free will. Often, the homes are no longer standing, as is the case for the home of my great-uncle's mother-in-law. The Stolperstein in her memory was placed that same day in front of an empty lot down the street from the Uhlmans' home. Inscriptions on most stones begin with the plain words Here lived.
The power of this grassroots movement is that it prods people to remember individuals who were students, homemakers, teachers, lawyers, and, like my uncles, businessmen. Even though the visible part of each stone is modest in size, just under four inches square, it is hard to miss on a sidewalk. It compels one to look and then think.
I became aware of the group doing research for the Uhlman stones when my German-born cousin contacted me two years ago. Coincidentally, he was undertaking his own genealogical journey. His search led him to a retired teacher in Stuttgart who was amassing binders filled with information found in government archives about our extended family.
There's no easy way to sum up this dedication of Susanne Bouché-Gauger. She genuinely cares about the memories of all the victims she has come to know through her Stolpersteine work, not just the Uhlmans. And as do many Germans of her generation, she deplores the denials and silence that her parents' generation maintained about their involvement in the Nazi regime.
At the ceremony, Susanne gave a brief overview of my family's 200-year history in the Stuttgart region, and the relatives who lived in the apartment building that withstood World War II bombs. She then turned over the microphone to high school students who read family letters and text. Susanne had done additional research with them to deepen their understanding of the past and to link that past to the present.
Among the crowd of about 100 at the ceremony were 10 Uhlman relatives from England, Israel, Germany, and the United States, including my daughter and myself. It was the first time that most of us had met one another. We are all descendants of three Stuttgart brothers. My grandfather fled in 1939 to the United States, where he lived his remaining years.
Now, these five stumbling stones have connected us to one another, and to a street where our grandfathers and fathers had walked.

---

Marian Uhlman is director of Healthy NewsWorks, a student media program, and a former Inquirer staff writer. E-mail her at muhlman@HealthyNewsWorks.org.

Marian Uhlman

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20130519_Sidewalk_plaques_honor_the_memory_of_Nazi_victims.html#DXvoVGR1ieXMhdyX.99

Online Funeral Planning Help; Help At A Sad Time

Per this article and website why can't we make the funeral home/cemetery world less byzantine and pricey?!

Philadelphia Inquirer, Thursday, May 16, 2013, Tech Life, Business Section, Page A15 and at Philly.com:

Jeff Gelles: Providing online help for funeral planning

Bucks County entrepreneur Rachel Zeldin and her new website, "I'mSorrytoHear.com"' aims to give help in funeral planning and advice. Zeldin noticed that lots of websites offer consumers help in booking the perfect meal, vacation or wedding - special events often planned months in advance. Her site fills a gap by dealing with a more urgent need: when a loved one dies and grief-stricken relatives have to make hard, costly choices in a hurry. She is shown at the Volo Coffeehouse May 15, 2013 with her website shown on her laptop and a promotional card on the right. ( CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer )

GALLERY: Jeff Gelles: Providing online help for funeral planning

JEFF GELLES, INQUIRER BUSINESS COLUMNIST

POSTED: Thursday, May 16, 2013, 5:29 AM

Compared with his many siblings, Rachel Zeldin's great-uncle Rafe led an adventurous life.
He headed west, worked as a musician and as a roadie and hairstylist for jazz groups, and eventually settled in New Mexico. But he never married, had no children, and left no will or final directions.
When he died at 73, Rafael Perno had few resources. But he may have left his grand-niece a valuable legacy anyway: the germ of an idea for an online business Zeldin calls I'm Sorry to Hear L.L.C. and envisions as a "TripAdvisor for funeral planning."
If it sounds a bit macabre, well, that's hard to dispute. But Zeldin, who holds a business degree from Drexel University, makes a good case for why her website, www.imsorrytohear.com, addresses a real need: providing reliable, local information to consumers when they're at their most vulnerable.

That's the position Zeldin's mother found herself in when her uncle died in January 2011 and his elderly siblings seemed overwhelmed by logistics and costs. She stepped in, with an assist from her web-savvy daughter, and both were underwhelmed by the resources they found - mostly phone book-like lists of funeral homes.
Prices were baffling, with inconsistent package deals that made comparisons difficult. Some funeral directors were less than comforting.
"When all was said and done, we ended up with a wonderful funeral," Zeldin recalls. But it was painful to reach that point. She came away thinking, "There should be a better way to do this."
She reasoned that people spend weeks or months planning other important events, such as vacations or weddings, using online resources such as TripAdvisor. Why not something similar for events that must be planned in hours or days by grieving relatives?
Working from a home office in Yardley and with the help of contractors, Zeldin launched imsorrytohear.com in October with data on licensed funeral homes in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. This month, she expanded to New York, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.
The site provides more information about funeral homes that have their own websites, listing special services - such as cremation or chemical-free "green" burials - and details such as religious or ethnic specializations.
How does it aim to make money? Zeldin offers an "enhanced profile" to funeral homes for $55 a month, enabling them to display extra information, photos, and video tours, and gain more prominent placement in search results.
Although there are only a handful so far, Zeldin hopes the site will eventually provide the kind of user reviews and ratings that consumers find valuable on TripAdvisor and similar sites. She encourages people to post feedback about their experiences - even from a year or two ago.
Meanwhile, Zeldin's site offers a planning checklist and tips, a guide to casket pricing, and information about other consumer resources, along with a blog on funeral-related issues.
Are there similar sites? Zeldin sees two other recent start-ups as her main competitors: eFuneral, an Ohio company that has portrayed its goal as being the "Yelp of funeral planning" but that so far doesn't offer funeral-home information for the Philadelphia region, and Illinois-based Funeralwise.
For those in need now, the nonprofit Consumers Checkbook offers similar advice and resources, as well as consumer ratings on 80 Philadelphia-area funeral homes - though its ratings, at www.checkbook.org, are available only to subscribers.
Checkbook actually does a good job of illustrating Zeldin's basic point - that funeral planning, and prices, are likely to be baffling. It sought prices for a sample funeral at homes its users rated. Among 56 homes rated as top-quality, prices varied from less than $6,000 to more than $11,000, and a third of the homes provided insufficient data.
Clearly, the bereaved could use some basic consumer help.

---

Contact Jeff Gelles at 215-854-2776, jgelles@phillynews.com, or @jeffgelles. Read his blog at www.inquirer.com/inquiringconsumer.

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/business/technology/20130516_Jeff_Gelles__Providing_online_help_for_funeral_planning.html#WZ2WKdVHvqPV2jjh.99

Do Your Kids A Favor Before You Die!

Making funeral, cemetery or cremation plans while you are alive is truly a gift to those you leave behind.  Your children/survivors won't need to guess what you would have wanted or worry about many large expenses at a very difficult time.  Pre-Plan!

Expressing Grief Through Words, Poetry/Lisel Mueller Poem When I Am Asked

Poem of the Day: When I Am Asked
BY LISEL MUELLER
When I am asked  
how I began writing poems,  
I talk about the indifference of nature.  

It was soon after my mother died,  
a brilliant June day,  
everything blooming.  

I sat on a gray stone bench  
in a lovingly planted garden,  
but the day lilies were as deaf  
as the ears of drunken sleepers  
and the roses curved inward.  
Nothing was black or broken  
and not a leaf fell  
and the sun blared endless commercials  
for summer holidays.  

I sat on a gray stone bench  
ringed with the ingenue faces  
of pink and white impatiens  
and placed my grief  
in the mouth of language,  
the only thing that would grieve with me.

Lisel Mueller, "When I am Asked" from Alive Together: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1996 by Lisel Mueller.  Reprinted by permission of Louisiana State University Press.

Source: Poetry (October 1987).

Stages Of Life, Comic, Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis

Hatfields vs. McCoys Deadly Feud Cemeteries & Tourism

Kyle Green for The New York Times

The Hatfield cemetery in Sarah Ann, W.Va. The Hatfield-McCoy feud officially ended in 2003 with a truce by the families, who are working together to promote tourism in the region.

Kyle Green for The New York Times

Emily Chaney performing a skit on the Hatfields at the cemetery, which is on the National Register of Historic Places but has fallen into disrepair.

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Kyle Green for The New York Times

Ron McCoy, left, and Reo Hatfield. "If tourism goes away, it’s still my family,” Mr. McCoy said. “But we know the Hatfields and McCoys can be a real boon to this area.”

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The New York Times

The area where the Hatfields and McCoys lived and where many of them are buried.

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Kyle Green for The New York Times

The grave of William Anderson Hatfield, known as Devil Anse.

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Kyle Green for The New York Times

The tombstone of the McCoy patriarch, Randolph, in Pikeville, Ky.

Hatfields and McCoys: bitter rivals to tourism draw By Chase Purdy The New York Times The Denver Post Posted:

DenverPost.com

SARAH ANN, W.Va. — Standing on the back of an Appalachian hillside, Reo Hatfield fixed his gaze over the land of his infamous forebears, a scowl etched across his face.
Before him, the graves in the Hatfield Family Cemetery had surrendered to years of gravity and weather, slender headstones slumped and overgrown, the inscriptions of some erased by time.

The graveyard, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, has become a focal point for Hatfield, 63, a Virginia businessman seeking to restore and preserve the cemetery in hopes of luring tourists eager to learn about the Hatfield-McCoy feud.

It is a burial spot for members of both families — some of whom died in the 19th-century interfamily war over land and family honor.
"They come here with expectations of seeing something special," he said. "But you start up the road, and you can hardly walk up there. And once you get there, the graves are unkept, and the fence that guards the gravesite has fallen down in numerous places."
Four years ago, Hatfield approached West Virginia officials with a plan to clean up the cemetery, but they have been unable to determine whose land it is. The owner's approval is needed for the project to go forward, so nothing has happened. The lack of progress has frustrated Hatfield, who called the initiative a goodwill effort by both families after their truce in June 2003.
Local tourism departments, along with members of the Hatfield and McCoy families, are working to transform feud folklore into a dependable source of jobs and revenue for Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia, a region facing the twilight of coal. In the past year, communities along the Tug Fork, the stream that is the state boundary in the area, have witnessed a surge in out-of-town foot traffic, tourists by the thousands drawn to the region in search of history.
Officials on both sides of the river attribute the increase to "Hatfields & McCoys," a 2012 History Channel miniseries that told the families' story. There is an urgency to capitalize on the show, Hatfield said, and to promote the feud as a major draw to the region.
In Pike County, Ky., thousands of state dollars have been funneled to the local tourism department to that end. Tony Tackett, the county's executive director of tourism, said his office had spent close to $40,000 in state money on billboards and a national advertising campaign since April 2012.
"The mines are shutting down every day," Tackett said. "We have to put our people back to work."
As Hatfield left the site of his family's cemetery on an April afternoon, Adam Warren stepped off a rented bus with a tour group. Warren said he decided to start his own business, Hatfield & McCoy Guided Tours, shortly after the History Channel show ended.
"As soon as the miniseries came out, we had tons of people showing up, looking for sites," he said. "I was home, applying everywhere away from here because I didn't want to work in the mines. But here I am. This is what I do."
The family feud — which some say started over a pig, and with a stabbing at a polling place — officially ended in 2003, after more than a century, when the families united in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks to show that they could overcome their differences and stand in solidarity, Hatfield said.
The last feud-related death has been traced to the spring of 1947, but a majority of the violence took place in the late 1800s, when dozens of Hatfields and McCoys died in tit-for-tat skirmishes.
Stepping around the cemetery with his customers — on that day the Romeos (Retired Old Men Eating Out) of Ashland, Ky. — Warren expressed concern about the state of the site.
Officials with the West Virginia Division of Culture and History said that they had fielded phone calls about the care of the Hatfield Family Cemetery but that the burden of site upkeep fell to the property owner. The state does not police the conditions of sites.
"People are concerned that it be taken care of, that it continue to be mowed, that it's accessible," said Susan Pierce, the deputy state historic preservation officer. "I know my mother would complain if she went up there."

By contrast, Dils Cemetery in Pikeville, Ky. — the grave of the McCoy family patriarch, Randolph McCoy, and other family members — was once an eyesore, but it has been restored and is now heavily advertised as a must-see spot.

Standing in the cemetery with Hatfield, Randolph McCoy's great-great-great-grandson, Ron McCoy, 49, sympathized with his friend and the rest of the region.

"If tourism goes away, it's still my family," said McCoy, a finance officer for the state of North Carolina. "But we know the Hatfields and McCoys can be a real boon to this area."

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