{"id":1247,"date":"2010-11-12T03:05:25","date_gmt":"2010-11-12T07:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/?p=1247"},"modified":"2010-11-12T03:05:25","modified_gmt":"2010-11-12T07:05:25","slug":"cold-and-lonesome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2010\/11\/12\/cold-and-lonesome.html","title":{"rendered":"Cold and Lonesome"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

I did not find what I was looking for at Calvary today. I rarely do. Today, though, I had a mission of sorts, and I failed, though it was all for fun and fun for all, and a beautiful day for a boneyard. I will sort out that mission sooner or later, but in today’s meantime I spotted some interesting things, spottable by virtue of inching my way through each and every row one slow step at a time.<\/p>\n

I liked this tiny marker, from 1936:<\/p>\n

\"Cold<\/p>\n

I mostly see burial sites by day but these markers assume a dignity from being there, at attention, 24 hours a day.<\/p>\n

On Veterans Day I spotted a\u00a0 number of people wandering the grounds, looking for graves. A man approached me, asking if I knew how to find the sections and rows and graves. He had a sheet of paper from the cemetery. He was looking for 3\/12\/J\/#, and I think I gave him good directions, though I forgot to mention that many of the graves here are unmarked. He looked like he may nave never been to a cemetery on his own before. I imagine he was looking for a military veteran on this day, but I know not what guarantees veterans have of securing marked graves at Calvary. My favorite Queens cemetery find, the Civil War Soldiers Monument at Calvary, is both a war memorial and a burial site for 20+ anonymous Civil War veterans. I asked people who should know why, why are these burials anonymous? These soldiers were not unknown casualties from the battlefields. Burials of un-named Civil War Veterans at the Soldiers Monument occurred into the early 20th century.<\/p>\n

I have purused these Calvary projects in the past, and today I encountered the familiar feeling of drowning in a sea of graves. I approach these seemingly orderly row of graves with just a single marker in mind, but my ambitions are quickly submerged. There are so many people, so many dead, so many tombs rising into the sunlight and\u00a0casting shadows longer than the legacies they record.<\/p>\n

\"Long<\/a><\/p>\n

I return tomorrow, for to complete my mission.<\/p>\n

Aha, whilst writing these paragraphs and looking through the pictures I took today, I spotted a dazzling and amazing clue. In fact, between the last sentences and this one I jumped up and down, doing a little happy dance, dancing lightly so as not to wake the neighbors at this 2am hour, and so as not to intrude upon the stars softly shining on those cold and lonesome graves I will find on the morrow. It appears I stood today within a few yards of my goal, but the prize was lost to me in that sea of tombs. Now I see it! Now I see it!<\/p>\n

\"Sea<\/a><\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I did not find what I was looking for at Calvary today. I rarely do. Today, though, I had a mission of sorts, and I failed, though it was all for fun and fun for all, and a beautiful day for a boneyard. I will sort out that mission sooner or later, but in today’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19230,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-181-2","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/DSC02614-650-1.jpg?fit=650%2C365&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-k7","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}