Tree Shaped Tombstones - Pictures from the Road

My sister in law drove from Minnesota to Ohio.  She must have taken back roads as she kindly sent a few pictures of tree shaped tombstones taken at what appear to be far less than highway velocities!

An interesting and rather highly stylized tree stump.  The vines and lillys are kind of taking over here.  I have not seen this placement of the "clasped hands" on the cut surface of the stump before.

A nice family grouping.  On the far right is what looks like a cement base for a now vanished component to this grouping.  We will see more of this, artistic as soft limestone is for stone carvers it is not as durable as hard granite.  The geometry of this picture puzzles me.  The little short stumps with an A on top would seem to mark out four corners of the Alexander family plot.  But where are the other two?  Hard to imagine that those pushy newcomers, the Allon Yerkes, would just be allowed to plop right down in Alexander real estate....

Here is a nice one.  The peak popularity of tree shaped tombstones roughly matched the demise of the Civil War generation.  I assume this fellow served in the artillery.  Note again the advanced weathering of the inscription.  Not even memory is permanent.

Tree Shaped Tombstones - Sickle and Cut Wheat

The first time I encountered a short "tree stump" style monument like this I admit to a bit of bewilderment;

The cut sheaf of wheat and the sickle were clear symbolism of a life ended.  Perhaps too soon or perhaps at the due time for a rich harvest.  But the odd thing draped over the wheat sheaf puzzled me. I thought it looked like a chicken foot!  But it was simply a somewhat poorly executed edition of what must have been a stock form for the monument carvers.  Below are a few more that have come my way since this first one.

As you can see, the work is done with variable levels of skill.  And the odd "chicken foot" is nothing more than a twist of stalks used in the traditional fashion to bind up a sheave.

Defending Cornwall - A Thousand Dawns

Cornwall has a seacoast full of hidden coves.  That's what contributes to its long association with the honorable practice of smuggling.  As we walked about last spring I was surprised to see that pretty much every tiny little beach on the south coast was under the watchful eye of a decommissioned World War II bunker !

Sometimes you have to look closely for them, and I imagine it was even harder when they were camouflaged.

This overlooks the small harbor at Charlestown.  See the bunker to the left of the house?

A public swimming beach, the bunker is about 1/3 of the way up the slope, even with the right edge of the house above.

Now being used as storage for a kayak rental business.

When I saw all these bunkers my first thought was that many of them must have been completed after any real threat of invasion had passed.  The time interval from the Fall of France to the end of the Battle of Britain was a matter of months really.  Even if you figure that some threat of invasion remained in theory until Hitler invaded Russia, that's only a year.  So many military schemes these days have a long planning stage and are obsolete when finished.

But I underestimated the Brits.  It seems that most of these bunkers were actually completed in 1940 or 41.  Bunker construction went on at a furious pace.  One source I encountered said that at peak construction in the summer of 1940, a bunker was finished every 20 minutes!   We forget how much can be accomplished under existential threat.

After a while though, watching the seas for an invasion that would never arrive must have become tedious.  But it still had to be done.  The British were mindful of the need to keep the Germans from landing spies and saboteurs.  That of course being exactly the sort of thing that the British did all the time and the Germans almost never.  By 1943/44 that need was actually rising, Cornwall was a staging area for the Normany invasion and any slip in the secrecy that surrounded Operation Overlord would have cost many thousands of lives.

It must have been a lonely vigil.  High up in the cliffs west of Falmouth we found a monument to this diligence:

"Dad's Army", they also serve who only stand and wait.

Defending Cornwall - Enemy Sails !

My earlier post on St. Mawes touched upon the subject of "Device Forts", fortifications from the era of Henry VIII that breathed one final breath of life into the concept of castles.  These were designed not for royal pomp, nor for withstanding a long siege.  They actually took advantage of the development of artillery which had generally doomed castles to obsolescence.  They were designed to sink approaching enemy ships.

In recent years Cornwall has become a most unlikely route by which to conquer England. The distance from Continental ports is much greater than at say, Dover.  Modern inventions such as aircraft and submarines would make the approach fraught with danger.  Also, having seen the ridiculous little sunken roads of Cornwall I can say for certain that no modern army would wish to attack this inhospitable chunk of rock.  I suspect that elderly Home Guards with pitch forks could keep a sizable foe at bay without much trouble.

But in earlier times it made sense for enemies, be they French or Spanish, to consider an attack. The fortunes of England depended on her command of the seas, and if you could occupy a few key ports along the Cornwall and Devon coasts you might challenge the Royal Navy's mastery.

On our walking tour in April and May we ran across many fortifications old and new.

This is St. Catherine's Castle overlooking the approach to Fowey.  It is another "Device Fort" built by Henry in the 1530s.  It is named not for Henry's last wife Catherine Parr (although I actually think all of his Queens deserve some kind of Sainthood for putting up with him), but for the point of land on which it stood.  It was refurbished and rearmed to keep watch for a possible Napoleonic invasion fleet in the late 1700s.  In 1855 a lower battery was added with a pair of 64 pounders.  I am not sure exactly who they were expecting to defend against at that point in history.

I'd be surprised if a few bad jokes about St. Catherine did not originate from this design.  Faintly visible on the far point is the expected fort on the opposite side of the harbor.

Falmouth is the most important port on the south Cornwall coast.  So it is well defended. You see a mix of fortifications near the town proper, some old, some new.

This location has served for many centuries.  The carved out arch is very old, the cement probably World War II.  The odd arrangement that looks like a picnic table set up is some kind of range finding device.

On the opposite side of the bay we find a very well preserved coastal battery.  It was built in 1880. Once again I am not sure who they thought they were guarding against at that point in history.  Queen Victoria seemed to have the whole world running smoothly back then.

I found it rather charming that the aiming marks for this six inch gun were scratched into the cement.

At some sites you find all different eras of lookout stations.

This is on a point of land called "The Gribbon".  Iron age folk lived here.  From this spot the Spanish Armada was sighted and a warning beacon was lit.  Later a signal station was build to watch out for Bonaparte.  Exactly which of these eras is recalled in the above remains is difficult to say.

The Birth Place of Bill the Squirrel

Bill, my prized taxidermy squirrel was created at a shop called Dreaming Badger.  It is a little out of my usual route but the other day I was passing by with a few minutes to spare.

They have a lot of bears.

As to why it was effectively a Bull Market for Bears the owner indicated that several of these had become without homes due to spousal refusal to have them about.  In one instance there was a divorce involved.

And there was other stuff too.

I found the raccoon to be a little alarming.  I am sure it was supposed to look as if it was poking its head out of a hole in a tree trunk.  But the actual effect looked more like a hideous raccoon-fungus hybrid.

Finally, speaking as one who has been closer than you should get to a live moose, here is what a stuffed one looks like close up.

Yes, I do like me some taxidermy.  Maybe the existing bear skin rug - a ridiculous bargain at an antique shop - needs an upgrade.

A Road Trip to Darwin's Playground

A new Affiliate Member of the family is one smart cookie.  We recently went down to be there for her PhD defense.  Just to show support you know.  I would not actually leap up and punch any members of the examining committee for asking mean questions.  My wife might have but none were forthcoming.

On the drive down we saw this interesting vehicle pulled into a gas station.

We made sure to leave before they did.  It is not a trailer you would want to be following at highway speeds, just in case the back door jolted open.

The Defense was held in the building where she has had her office for the last couple of years.

It is pretty impressive....most of the areas require a key card to enter, and on the top floor is some kind of biology research unit for NASA.  Maybe that helps explain the interesting statue collection out front:

The collection is titled "Darwin's Playground" and is the work of a Chicago artist called Tony Tasset.  They seem to have originally been called "The Blobs" which does do them justice.  They require occasional scrubbing and have needed some holes drilled to drain off water, otherwise they accumulate various molds and algae that are a little too concrete a representation of Life.

One grad student claimed that they were inspired by the shape of ribosomes.  I think it more likely that they are just weird creations designed to frighten new undergrad researchers into cleaning their Petrie dishes diligently.  "You know, the last time the lab got that grubby things got a little out of hand...."

A whimsical side light to a day filled with proud accomplishment.  I am now demoted to being maybe the 5th or 6th smartest person in the family and that is excluding Bruce the Dog on the technicality of his not being an actual person.

York - The Roman Dead

In my recent post on Roman Remains in York I gave you a teasing glance at the inside of the Multangular Tower, once one of the main bastions in the defenses of "Eborucum".  There you saw a bunch of sarcophagi scattered about.

Lets get this straight from the outset, the Romans did not bury their dead inside their cities or forts. This was forbidden by the oldest of their laws and seems to have been a universal dictate. The rare exceptions can safely be assumed to be murder victims such as the body found at Vindolanda a few years back.  So, absent skulduggery*, no dead Romans inside of settled areas.  So what gives?

Just this.  When York was expanding in the 19th century the area outside the old town was being heavily built up.  This is where the numerous Roman cemeteries actually were.  People kept finding sarcophagi.  And giving them to the local Museum.  Some of these were marvelous, finely decorated artifacts.  Most were of the "gee thanks, another sarcophagus" plain variety.  Some of the former were put on display in the Museum or held there in storage.  Most of the latter were left scattered around the Multangular Tower and the adjacent St. Leonard's Hospital.

But apparently in 2011 a decision was made to spread the sarcophagi around a bit.  Oh, we still have some by the Tower:

And in the Museum Gardens:

And a very nice assemblage including three from a disused storage tunnel under the museum.  This bunch has been set up on a former bowling lawn in a pattern felt to be reminiscent of an actual Roman burial site:

There is something fascinating about sarcophagi.  For one thing they are an interesting cultural bridge across a very long stretch of time.  The Romans borrowed the concept from the Egyptians.  And since it was the form of burial in vogue in the Late Empire it got adopted by the early Christian church and carried on into the Middle Ages.

The grouping above has some especially nice specimens.

This one was for Julia Victorina and her 4 year old son Constantius.  It was provided by her husband Septimus Lupianus a veteran centurion of the VI Legion.

A sarcophagus for Aurelius Super, Centurion of the VI Legion.  Provided by his wife.  This one was found near the previous example in a burial ground near Castle Yard.  It is speculated that there was a burial club for Centurions and their families.  Note the two part lid.  Several of the sarcophagi had these and with lines too straight to be mere breaks.  I doubt they would follow our custom of keeping the top part open for viewing at a funeral, but it makes an interesting parallel to modern coffin design.

A rather nice specimen.  The inscription says it was supposed to house a woman named Aelia Severa.  But when it was found it had a male skeleton inside it suggesting reuse.  This is not the original lid, they borrowed one off another sarcophagus in their collection.  The letters DM appear on both top and bottom.  This stands for Dis Manibus.  It translates to "for the Manes".  In Roman theology the spirits of the dead would become Lares if they had been good, or Manes if they had a mixed record.  Bad men became malign spirits called Larvae or Lemures.  Interesting thought number 1: we have adopted these last two names for somewhat unlovable creatures that live in dark places.**  Interesting thought number 2: in the Roman schema it appears you expressed hope for the equivalent of the Christian purgatory rather than heaven!  Perhaps in a society where dead Emperors were often deified it was considered presumptuous to aim for the top spot?

A nice example of the "two part lid".

On a lot of sarcophagi you saw these sets of holes.  Sometimes one, sometimes one on each side. They were used to anchor metal brackets that held the lids on tight.  A lot of these sarcophagi were actually above ground, and one would not want grave goods pilfered.  Or your loved one tossed out to make room for a clandestine burial.

I like sarcophagi.  They are the sort of ancient artifact that we can still relate to.  Their functionality has endured, and has perhaps even influenced the design of our modern day coffins.  They seem to have survived from antiquity in substantial numbers, they are just so darn sturdy.  No doubt quite a few of them around the former Roman Empire are doing duty as a planter, as seen above, or as an animal watering trough in some rustic locale.
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* I had always assumed that the term "skulduggery" had something to do with digging up skulls.  Not so at all.  It is a derivation of a fairly modern Scottish word skuldudrie that means adultery.  Who knew?
**This per the late and somewhat opinionated Christian writer Augustine of Hippo.  There are a lot of variations on this general scheme from other writers.