Jon Crispin's Notebook

Willard Cemetery / Thanks

Posted in History, Willard Asylum, Willard Suitcases by joncrispin on 28/02/2014

Last February, Craig Williams and I were at Willard shooting the attic where the suitcases were “rediscovered. (Here’s a link to an earlier post)  There aren’t many of these upright metal markers left.

After we were done, we walked across the road to the cemetery.  It is always very moving to see the field where many of the Willard patients are buried in numbered graves.  And interesting to note that starting in the late 1930s, and ending just before he died 1968, a patient named Lawrence M  was the primary gravedigger.  Amazing.

I have posted before about the cemetery and the people who are working diligently to honor the dead by attaching names to the numbers.  Click here and here to read those previous posts.

Thanks for all the tremendous response to my “appeal” post the other night. We are at $14,000 on the Kickstarter appeal, and I am feeling very positive.

Graveyard

Posted in Flowers, Landscape, People, Plants by joncrispin on 14/07/2010

No matter where I live, there is one spot which I am always surprised to see.  It is as if it doesn’t belong to its surroundings, so in my mind I block it out.  In Ithaca there was a stretch of road that gave me the feeling of being somewhere else, and there was a street in Springfield, OH that had the same affect on me.  /  Peter and I were walking in downtown Amherst yesterday and as I looked to my left down an alley, I saw this graveyard.  It is literally in the very center of town, but is situated in such a way that it is not visible unless you are really looking for it.  Emily Dickinson is buried here, so there are almost always vague looking people wandering around paying their respects.

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