Cemetery art
Saturday, 29 April 2006
Today, we voyaged to north Georgia to hike with our wonderful neighbors. In the woods, we saw huge rainbow trout circling in unfished pools, freshly leafed out poison ivy, some one-inch salamander youngsters, and the tails of a pair of disappearing deer, but the most blahgable was the tenderly maintained graves at the cemetery attached to the churchyard where we ate our picnic lunch.
At this grave, note Santa driving a motorcar in the front left, hopefully taking care to avoid the immense praying hands in front of his bumper. I have no idea what the take-away message is of the deer with the nice rack in the back near the gravestone.
Is this a new pattern of on-going ritualization, adopted since locals started to imitate the Latin habit of erecting small commemorative monuments along the roadside where loved ones have died in car accidents? Or, is this a long-standing tradition I’ve just never noticed before?