Cemetery of the rich and famous

You can find some artistically inspiring monuments in cemeteries for the rich and famous. For example, consider the elegant mournful figure below:

mourning statue in bellefontaine cemetery

The above monument can be found in Bellefontaine Cemetery, in St. Louis, Missouri. The brochure distributed by Bellefontaine rightfully indicates that Bellefontaine is “recognized as an arboretum as well as a sculptural museum.” Bellefontaine includes dozens of aesthetically memorable monuments tucked among equally memorable trees. It is a large, quiet and contemplative space that I visit each year or so, even though I don’t know anyone who is buried in Bellefontaine.

lion on tomb bellefontaine cemetery

Bellefontaine is “home” to many notable personalities, including Thomas Hart Benton, Adolphus Busch (the brewer) and Sara Teasdale (the poet).

Yesterday, I took my two daughters to view the monuments and trees of Bellefontaine, including the monument marking the grave of William Clark (of “Lewis and Clark”). At Clark’s burial site, he is accurately touted as a great explorer. It’s a simplification of this complex man, however, chiseled in stone. Clark accomplished far more than co-lead the famous expedition. In cemeteries, we make cartoons of the dead, and we overlook their faults entirely.

william clark tomb in bellefontaine cemetery

While my daughters and I walked about Clark’s grave site, I commented that it’s sometimes necessary to see their graves to remind yourself that the famous people in American history once really lived and walked about. They weren’t simply stories or legends.

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This Just In: Hannah Montana May Have A Clitoris!

What are we to make of this latest flap over a teen icon revealing herself as a potentially sexual being?

I was only dimly aware of Hannah Montana till the Vanity Fair scandal (if scandal is the word). Now it seems I can’t get away from her, which is, of course, the goal of marketing—to make something inescapable for the general public. There are elements of the incident that require less froth and more examination. The accusations of “whose idea was it in the first place and how was Mylie Cyrus manipulated?” are loud and in many ways naive.

First off, Hannah Montana is a Disney product. I don’t think we’re yet quite comfortable with the idea of a person—even a fictional one—being a “product” like a box of soap or a car, but this is indeed what the character is. Designed, engineered, and road tested, Hannah Montana is a money-making machine for Disney and the various participants in the show and franchise.

Pause for a moment and consider: Disney.

It is difficult to imagine a marketing machine that is better at what it does. Which means the chances of something being done with one of its properties that it (a) doesn’t know about and (b) doesn’t approve are next to zero. Especially when you add to that:

Vanity Fair.

Big magazine, famous magazine, a magazine people in show business lust to get into. In the vernacular, Lot A Bank there.

So we’re talking about two major corporate entities, …

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Carving and seeing nature at its joints

I previously wrote that I bought a little camera that I try to take everywhere. Having that camera nearby forces me to look more carefully at the startling sights that are everywhere. Many of those sights are the postures and expressions of people, but privacy concerns keep me from freely photographing or sharing the photos of strangers (I haven’t given up somehow accomplishing this!). To this point, I’ve focused on taking photos of nature and architecture. This morning, my wife Anne and I took a walk in Forest Park (in St. Louis, Missouri). In the morning light, we came upon some startling bursts of color, causing me to take out my little camera.

When I look at biological wonders, I sometimes imagine standing with Charles Darwin and learning from him. That’s how I felt a few weeks ago at an orchid show at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Even before Darwin published his findings there were various levels at which one could appreciate nature (it’s beautiful, it’s functional, it inspires poetry). Darwin added an explosive new level, however. Such was his impressive legacy. Before I appreciated Darwin’s contributions, my attention to plants was limited. But now I see functionality embedded in the beauty–there is now so much more to behold [I was also inspired last year when I viewed David Attenborough’s Private Life of Plants and Life in the Undergrowth (focuses on bugs). These are both spell-binding must-watch collections].

There are life and death wars going on out there …

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The Digital Let Down

I have been anticipating the FCC switch from analog to digital for several years. The original plan was to have the final demise of NTSC (“analog”) broadcast in 2006. Now, it will really happen. The change that they averted when they went to color is finally here. Everyone needs a new TV.

Unless you have cable or satellite. Then you can wait until your old box dies. But I use rabbit ears in my multipath hell of a location in the city. On good days, I can get 7 channels of regular interest, plus 4 explicitly Christian channels (24, 26, 49, 51. The 700 Club shares 11). Sometimes I cannot get ABC-30 or CW-11 clear enough to record or avoid watering eyes. Other times Fox-2 and My-46 are too bad to watch, too. So I really only have 3 reliable channels in analog.

Enter digital clarity. Yesterday I got my gummint subsidized converter box and hooked it up. Now I get perfectly clear (in numerical order) Fox-2.1, CBS-4.1, NBC-5.1, local weather 5.2, and PBS 9.1-9.4. That’s it.

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