Graveyard Ramblings August 14, 2004 ~ 4:29 pm
Posted by Julie in : Daily Grind , comments closedI had to go to the Post Office to pick up a package this morning (thanks for the CDs, Steph!!!), and dealt with the usual bumper crop of idiots that work at the Kensington Post Office. I got there at 9:30, hoping that the line would be shorter, but no, incompetence will affect your wait time no matter how early you get there. They should have a disclaimer to that effect. I was the only one in line who actually got their package today. The three people in search of their packages were told that they couldn’t be found and had probably gone out with the mail carrier. Now I ask you, why would they send a package back out when the mail carrier has left me a little slip saying “Come pick this up at the Post Office”? I want a disclaimer posted on their front door saying “Logic Free Zone” as well.
I feel like I’ve been eating everything in sight lately (freakin’ Golden Oreos and Mike’s Hard Lemonade!), so I wanted to exercise a little of that off. I decided to go for a walk, and ended up wandering around the perimeter of Greenwood Cemetery, where there are more famous people buried than you can shake a stick at. Not Jim Morrison-type famous. Horace Greeley-type famous. Boss Tweed-type famous. Jean Michel Basquiat-type famous. Leonard Bernstein-type famous. Charles Ebbets-type famous. Albert Anastasia, Joey Gallo, and Bill “The Butcher” Poole mobster-type famous. It’s huge, about the same size as Prospect Park, and with over 600,000 people are buried there.
I’d walked about halfway around the cemetery when I decided it was too nice to be walking around on cement sidewalks, so I went in. I was determined to find Boss Tweed’s grave, which is what I always say I’m going to do and end up never finding it. Today was no exception. See, the only maps are at the entrances, and despite having “Take Landscape Avenue to Locust Avenue to Mossy Path” firmly embedded in my mind, I didn’t find it. Should be right there, but maybe I was looking for a more impressive grave than it is. I don’t know. So I walked around for about 45 minutes, and then stumbled across the Memorials for New York’s Civil War dead and the Revolutionary War dead. The Battle of Brooklyn was fought on that ground in August 1776, so it’s only fitting. I wish I had my camera with me, so I could have taken some pictures of it, but as per usual, I didn’t. The Revolutionary Memorial is especially cool, because it features a statue of a classical female figure (Athena or Artemis, maybe?), girded for war, with one hand clasping an olive branch crown over the Memorial, and the other raised to hail something. She looks out into the distance, and when I turned to see who she was hailing, I had to smile. The statue is on the highest point in Brooklyn and has a clear view of Manhattan and New York Harbor, and was saluting the Statue of Liberty, who was facing Athena with her own arm raised. Complete accident that Liberty was facing her, I’m sure, not such an accident that Athena was facing Liberty, since she was built in 1919.
I just found out that there’s a guided tour of the Cemetery tomorrow, and if it’s not raining cats and dogs, I’m going to go. Maybe they’ll be able to find the Boss for me. And this time, I’ll bring my camera.
