Up Front: Feeling Like Death
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I'm not a genealogist, but that's a group that understands the fascination of cemeteries.
In that respect, the cemetery in Waipu is quite fascinating - it's both a graveyard and a genealogical map.
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...where my great-grandfather lived 160 years ago, which is now the Holy Smoke restaurant in Ferry Road.
I had lunch there last sunday
and it was very good... -
She wasn't Caroline Webb née Adams, was she? Because that would be weird.
Elizabeth Overend, later Moss, née Smith, as it happens. Disappointingly her headstone's vanished from Woolston cemetery. I take some comfort from Ferry Road being long enough, and Christchurch large enough, for a whole heap of things to happen, both sequentially and in parallel.
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Gio's remark about the Waipu cemetery reminded me of a small family one, on the Otago Peninsula. There's a few dozen bodies buried there, on a fairly steep slope. It's not full yet - room for more. BUT - it truly made me feel good when I first saw it, during a Motoitoi-Richard Driver family reunion:all those family names over the past 5 generations! (Probably 6 - there's a couple of boulder-marked graves with no names attached.) And - this was what made the visit for me - there is not a religious verse or symbol anywhere...just expressions of loss and grief.
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The Smiths, on plagiarism, Keats, Yeats and Cemetery Gates.
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And that's how it should be, how it is in my mind when I think about Canterbury winters, and surely how it usually is. Cold, yes, but sharply, almost painfully clear. And that's fine, I don't mind the kind of bright cold you can feel on your eyeballs.
After a few to many grey, windy, wet, cold, horrible Wellington winter days, I long for those freezing, crisp, but bright blue winter days Christchurch has. When you can see your breath, and clothes freeze on the washing line, but it is sunny and cloudless.
Of course, Wellington always seems to know exactly when I am about to snap and book flights down, and it puts on a day of such brilliance I am inspired to walk to Roseneath just for the view.
Oh. And cemeteries? I grew up just around the corner from the Linwood cemetery. It was ramshackle then, so I can't imagine what it is like now. But my late grandmother and I used to go walking in it, and look at the graves. I can remember her being horribly sad looking at the headstones of small children.
I actually think I did a primary school project on it, complete with pictures of some of the cooler monuments. I wonder if it is still around somewhere....
These days, I pretty much only go to Ashvegas to visit the dead relatives.
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The Smiths . . .
Not your average genealogist's favorite band. Like the Joneses, Taylors, and, I'm sorry to say, the Browns, you can get stuck forever sorting who is and who isn't who.
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These days, I pretty much only go to Ashvegas to visit the dead relatives.
Heh, so we were driving down the road a bit back, and Karl was puzzled as to why there were so many cars outside the crematorium. I said, "Because it's Mothers' Day." He was even more confused. Not a great one for sentiment.
I take some comfort from Ferry Road being long enough, and Christchurch large enough, for a whole heap of things to happen, both sequentially and in parallel.
Indeed. See, Caroline married her second husband (after my great-great grandfather died) in a civil ceremony in her front room on Ferry Road, some time around 1860-ish.
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@Jolissa- gosh that could be the same graveyard.
But only if the trees have advanced considerably; the grasses been cleared or shaded out; there's pirate gold under the third headstone on the left; there are two stone lions prowling in the trees- and dreams are to be believed.
Because the graveyard become part of a recurrent dream, the dream of a twelve-year-old I hardly know any more, I can't vouch for any details. (And really- I've forgotten where I found that danged treasure. Somewhere in the woods, covered in poison ivy. Probably why Captain Kidd abandoned it: poison ivy has no respect for the living- even pirates:) -
Has anyone mentioned the fabulous Karori Cemetery? Among its many delights is a bronze statue of Mrs Chippy, the cat taken along on Shackleton's Endurance expedition by the carpenter Harry McNeish.
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Hi Carol. Link broke. Try here.
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Well, I am on the other side of the world from where all but my immediate forebears would be interred so I don't get the hankering. Dearly Beloved has started looking into her family background but we're a long way from her family's resting places, too.
I know I have the blood of ages running in my veins but I am happy to look forward from here, rather than back.
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It takes an amateur astronomer to know this, but actually the absolute latitude of Ithaca is lower than Christchurch.
In other words, the winter days are brutally shorter in Christchurch than Ithaca.
So you can multiply your Ithaca SAD by about 102 per cent to reach how lousy poor Emma is feeling...
Actually, David in the long tradition of internet pedantry, there is more to it than just latitude. Ithaca stands at the south end of a glacial valley, and from downtown (Cornell is "on the hill") this can shorten the effective period of daylight, as the sky does not subtend a full hemisphere to many observers, reducing the amount of direct sunlight experienced around dawn and dusk.
Secondly, Ithaca is well to the west of the boundary of Eastern Standard time, whereas Christchurch is closer to the leading edge of its time zone. Consequently, dusk and sunset can occur somewhat earlier in local time in Ithaca than in Christchurch, further increasing the apparent duration of darkness for those of us who are not to greet the dawn.
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Actually, David in the long tradition of internet pedantry, there is more to it than just latitude. Ithaca stands at the south end of a glacial valley, and from downtown (Cornell is "on the hill") this can shorten the effective period of daylight, as the sky does not subtend a full hemisphere to many observers, reducing the amount of direct sunlight experienced around dawn and dusk.
La la la la la I can't heeeear you.
Some of us still live in this town, you know. And even though we're currently setting up gigantic support structures around our tiny tomato plants and admiring our peonies and wondering if it's entirely natural for a clematis to grow THAT fast and bracing for the start of the CSA vege-onslaught, we know in the back of our minds that the grey lid will come down all too soon.
At least we have electricity. What could the earlier waves of people have been thinking when they settled here?
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I see the Ithaca Festival is about to start and put paid to any seasonal disaffection...
The "singing in the Rain" theme is a good umbrella for it...
Angry Mom Records featuring DJ Gourd sound fun...
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