Emerging

I took some time today to head to the local cemeteries. I was missing a few of my stone-dates, one of which was coming up this week. We went to three graveyards and were able to find all my missing dates for the year! Now I will have to go through to see which ones I would like to redo, and I would like to have some with snow and ice (I will take in December or so), but otherwise, all done! Hooray for finishing a project (kind of)!

Living in a small town like Crawfordsville, the historically prominent figures are ever-present in the forms of famous homes, street names, town names, legacies at the college, etc. To walk through the cemetery and know so many of the names was slightly eerie. Above, you see a rather eccentric stone to a former Wabash professor (where I teach). These are gentle reminders that all people, great and small, find a resting place eventually. I think the inscription is funny, like a loaded allussion I will have to investigate from historical accounts of the man himself. "A Maker of Men" could refer to the constant revisitation of the debate to make the college co-educational. It could mean he was a cruel teacher. It could mean he was an admirable teacher. It could mean he experimented with Frankenstein-like ideas. It could mean he thought of himself as god.

This little skeleton was on one of the graves. It is the discarded skin of the nymph cicada, still covered in the mud it was living in for some number of years before its emergence this summer.

This is Crystal and I with Lew Wallace. I don't know if he also emerged from the ground this summer for the Montgomery County celebration. His grave seemed in order today, though there is the photographic proof from last night!