Laurel Hill Cemetery

For some time I’ve been meaning to visit Laurel Hill Cemetery.  Founded in 1836, it is one of the few cemeteries in the United States to be designated a National Historic Landmark.  It covers over 70 acres in North Philadelphia, adjacent to East Fairmount Park.  Laurel Hill isn’t that far, but if I lived closer, I know I’d go there more often.  I’d make friends with the dead, like the boy in The Graveyard Book.

The office staff and groundskeepers were all friendly and helpful.  I picked up a map and some brochures in the office, and the employees gave me some suggestions on where to head first, based on what I was most interested in.  I was surprised that I didn’t see anyone else visiting that day.  In some places, I felt like I was the only person in the world.  

Many of the graves were from the 1800s.  The older graves tended to have the more elaborate tombstones and statuary.  The Warner plot in particular was interesting.  

the more well-known Warner monument

One of the most recognized graves in the cemetery is the Warner monument.  If you google “Laurel Hill Cemetery,” often you will find a photo of this memorial.  I think another figure in the Warner plot is also remarkable.  

the lesser-known but more liked by me Warner monument

Angels were well represented among the statues.  I didn’t see any Weeping Angels.  

One large tombstone noted that the man it was memorializing was buried in a cemetery in France.  He was an Army soldier in WWI.  I noticed that this monument faced east.  I wondered if that was a coincidence and if his headstone in France faced west, looking home.  

A grave both beautiful and sad was that of a mother and twins.  They died in the mid-1800s.  She was 34 years old.  The gravesite was at the southwestern corner of the cemetery, high up on a hill, overlooking the Schuylkill River.  On top of a pedestal was a statue of a woman holding two babies.  The inscription on the pedestal noted that they were all buried there together.  

These words from a poem by Philip James Bailey were engraved on the side of the pedestal:

WE LIVE IN DEEDS NOT YEARS

IN THOUGHTS NOT BREATHS

IN FEELINGS NOT IN FIGURES ON A DIAL

WE SHOULD COUNT TIME BY HEART THROBS

HE MOST LIVES

WHO THINKS MOST

FEELS THE NOBLEST

ACTS THE BEST

I like cemeteries, especially old ones.  I’ve mentioned previously that cemeteries are peaceful places.  City cemeteries can be a respite from the chaos and noise that typify an urban environment.  More than this, the dead are at peace themselves.  Whatever hurt them or burdened them in life is gone, as they are gone.  I don’t believe in heaven or hell.  I don’t think that people are burning for their evil deeds or floating on clouds with harps in reward for their good ones.  Everyone gets the same peace of the dead.  

Beside the Dead

By Ina Donna Coolbrith

WITH hands that folded are from every task,

It must be sweet, O thou my dead, to lie

Sealed with the seal of the great mystery,—

The lips that nothing answer, nothing ask;

The life-long struggle ended; ended quite

The weariness of patience and of pain;

And the eyes closed to open not again

On desolate dawn or dreariness of night.

It must be sweet to slumber and forget;

To have the poor tired heart so still at last:

Done with all yearning, done with all regret;

Doubt, fear, hope, sorrow, all for ever past:

Past all the hours, or slow of wing or fleet—

It must be sweet, it must be very sweet!

A visiting I shall go

I went to stay with some friends a couple of weekends ago and never blogged about it.  A quick recap is in order:

I was introduced to the HBO show Bored to Death.  It's fantastic!  It is now at the top of my Netflix queue, so I can see the rest as quickly as possible.  We also watched the Gravity Falls episode "Carpet Diem."  It was one of the best episodes of the show yet.

While reading a bedtime story to their daughter, I learned that I cannot do the voice of Scooby Doo.  In fact, she reads so well that we alternated reading pages.

We met a mutual friend at the Quakertown Farmer's Market.  That was a lot of fun.  It's not a traditional farmer's market.  It was more like a giant indoor flea market.  We had Puerto Rican food at Sabor De Mi Tierra.  It was delicious!  I had arroz con pollo.  It was chicken stew, beans, and rice.  YUM.  I need to learn how to make this myself.

I talked with my friends' neighbor about who we thought Jon Snow's parents were.  He is a character in George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire books, made popular by the HBO series Game of Thrones.  We were of the opinion that his parents are not who he thinks they are.  This neighbor is very cool.  I hope I get to see her more the next time I visit.

We played tv tag with my friends' daughter.  This is tag in which you can be safe from being tagged anywhere you run, as long as you squat down and name a television show.  Shows I named included Black Books and The Muppet Show.  I am old.

My age also showed as their daughter ran circles around me in Lego Batman on the Playstation.  I played General Zod.  Why is General Zod in a Batman game?  I don't know.  I'm old, remember?

I made us dinner on Saturday night.  I made open face eggplant melts.  It didn't turn out quite as I wanted, but my friends graciously said they liked it enough.  It needed more mozzarella and some parchment paper underneath to prevent the bottoms from browning too much.

We walked to an Indian restaurant for dinner on Friday night.  This was wonderful.  Where I live now, I can neither walk to restaurants nor get good Indian food.  I miss both of these things very much.  Combined with great company, I had an amazing dinner on Friday night.

I had an excellent weekend with my friends, as I always do.  They are great people and even better friends.  I was informed after I left that their daughter would like them to adopt me so that I could spend more time there.  Huzzah!

Sugar cookies

This is a short post to share these sugar cookies:

Bake or bake not, there is no try.

Yes, these are Millennium Falcons, Death Stars, TIE fighters, and X-Wings.  The cookies were tasty enough.  I'm still searching for a better sugar cookie recipe.  This recipe was from Wilton.  The cookie cutters came from Williams-Sonoma.  You can never go wrong with Star Wars cookies.

Doctor Who: The Five Doctors

I wrote about the tenth anniversary, multiple-Doctor episode "The Three Doctors," so I might as well discuss the twentieth anniversary, multiple-Doctor episode "The Five Doctors."  "The Five Doctors" is like a gift to Whovians from the producers of the show.  It's the ultimate fan episode.  It's filled with Gallifrey and old companions and classic villains and Time Lords and each of the five Doctors who had been part of Doctor Who to that point.  This might be my favorite episode of all time.  That being said, if one doesn't know anything about Doctor Who, this probably isn't the episode with which to start.

Hey, that's not William Hartnell!

The above photo features, from left to right: the third Doctor (Jon Pertwee), the second Doctor (Patrick Troughton), the fifth Doctor (Peter Davison), and the first Doctor (Richard Hurndall).  WAIT.  Every Whovian knows that William Hartnell played the first Doctor.  Sadly, Hartnell passed away long before "The Five Doctors" was made.  Hurndall is no Hartnell, but he does an adequate job filling in for him here.  One other issue needs to be addressed.  There are only four Doctors in the photo.  "The Five Doctors" is mostly the four Doctors shown above.  Tom Baker, the actor who played the fourth Doctor, didn't want to be in the special.  They ended up using footage from a different episode that had been shot but never aired to show that he was stuck in a time vortex and couldn't join his other selves.

Someone is taking the different regenerations of the Doctor out of their timestreams and dropping them in the Death Zone on Gallifrey.  They are giving him friends and companions to help him and providing enemies to make things interesting.  The Master shows up, too.  Each Doctor decides that the answer to why they have been brought there lies in the Dark Tower.  The Dark Tower holds the tomb of Rassilon.  Yes, nuWhovians, in classic Who, Rassilon has been dead for a long time.  Ancient Time Lords misused their powers and kidnapped other beings to fight each other in the Death Zone.  Rassilon put an end to that.  In classic Who, Rassilon is known as the most powerful Time Lord in their history.  The second Doctor sings a little song for the Brigadier as they make their way to the tower.  "Who unto Rassilon's tower will go, must choose above, between, below!"  I guess it is entertaining to me, but not to the Brigadier.  The Brig asks the Doctor if he is in pain after the Doctor starts singing.

I've mentioned before that some of my favorite episodes are those with Gallifrey and the Time Lords.  I like the new series, but I think my biggest problem with the reboot is that Gallifrey and the Time Lords have been eliminated.  Their episodes in classic Who are always such fun.  I downright love this episode.  I've seen it more times than any other.  I won't say any more about the plot, other than that it hinges on this: "To lose is to win, and he who wins shall lose."  Oh, Rassilon.  You were one smart cookie.

Doctor Who: The Three Doctors

This year is the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who.  Other big anniversaries have had multiple-Doctor stories, so there is much anticipation among Whovians that this will occur in this year's 50th anniversary special.  Multiple-Doctor stories are episodes in which more than one Doctor appear.  "The Three Doctors," for the tenth anniversary, had the first, second, and third Doctors, and "The Five Doctors," for the twentieth anniversary, had the first five Doctors.  There was one other multiple-Doctor episode, "The Two Doctors," which had the second Doctor and the sixth Doctor, but it was not an anniversary special.  It was during the 22nd season.  (Okay, technically, there were two more, but they were short bits done for charity, not episodes of the show.)  I love when the Doctors encounter each other.  They're all arrogant know-it-alls, and they each think that they are the best regeneration of their shared life.  It's fantastic!  Multiple-Doctor stories generally involve Gallifrey and other Time Lords, too.  It will be interesting to see how the current series of Doctor Who will handle this, as it is usually the Time Lords orchestrating the situation that brings different incarnations of the Doctor together.  Gallifrey and the Time Lords have been destroyed in the rebooted version of Doctor Who.

2nd Doctor on the left, 3rd Doctor on the right

"The Three Doctors" is an episode of Doctor Who from the Jon Pertwee era.  It was the first story of the tenth season of the show.  It mostly involves the second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) and the third Doctor (Jon Pertwee).  William Hartnell, the first Doctor, was quite ill at this point, so he appeared very little.  This was his final role as an actor.

I think "The Three Doctors" is a good episode for those who aren't familiar with classic Who.  Not only are there three different Doctors, but there is also a big UNIT presence in this episode.  The United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (what it stands for in classic Who) is a major part of Pertwee's adventures.  For most of his time as the Doctor, the third Doctor was stranded on Earth by the Time Lords, so he acted as a scientific advisor for UNIT.  Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, the head of UNIT, is great in this episode.  Nicholas Courtney, the actor who played the Brigadier, used to ad-lib lines to inject more humor into the role.  There is a debate over whether the Brigadier counts as a "companion" to the Doctor.  I don't think he is.  He isn't a sidekick to the Doctor.  He is the Doctor's boss, as much as anyone can be the Doctor's boss.  He doesn't usually travel in the TARDIS with the Doctor, although he does in this episode.  The Brigadier is a great character and one of my favorites from classic Who.  When the Brigadier steps into the TARDIS, he doesn't have the normal reaction of shock that it is bigger on the inside.  He looks around and makes a crack about how this is how the Doctor is spending so much of UNIT's money.

left to right: the 2nd Doctor, the Brigadier, Jo Grant

So, what happens in "The Three Doctors?"  An energy beam is being sent from a black hole to Earth.  An energy blob appears (well, that's what it looks like) and starts making things disappear.  It is determined that it is after the Doctor.  The Doctor, his assistant Jo, and Sergeant Benton of UNIT retreat into the TARDIS.  The Doctor sends a distress call to the Time Lords.  It turns out that Gallifrey is also under attack from something in this black hole.  All of their power is being drained away.  They can't help him, but they decide to send one of his former selves so that he can help himself.  (This is after an argument over violating the first law of time, wherein a Time Lord cannot cross his own timestream and meet himself.)  The second Doctor appears in the TARDIS.  He and the third Doctor immediately start to bicker.  The Time Lords are watching and basically say, "OH, GREAT."  They send in the first Doctor to force them to work together.  The Doctors come to the conclusion that there is an antimatter universe inside the black hole and let the energy blob transport them there.  Who or what is sustaining the antimatter universe?  An ancient Time Lord!  A renegade Time Lord?  Always a good time.  It is Omega, and Omega is angry.

"The Three Doctors" is an outstanding episode of Doctor Who.  Sure, it has some questionable special effects and weird looking monsters, but that's just classic Who.  I didn't even mention the creatures that look like red bubble wrap.  "The Three Doctors" is not just funny and entertaining.  It also clues the viewer in on some of the history of the Time Lords and their ability to travel in time.  To me, this is a must-see episode of classic Who.

New Bolton

I visited New Bolton this past week.  New Bolton is a large animal veterinary center associated with the University of Pennsylvania.  My cousin's horse has been having soundness problems, so I went with her, horse in tow, to this 700 acre campus.  New Bolton has a reputation of veterinary excellence.  I was curious to see the place.

my cousin and her horse

New Bolton not only lived up to my expectations, it exceeded them.  The facilities were impressive.  The vets were knowledgeable and friendly.  I was surprised by how down-to-earth they all were.  The vets also explained everything that was happening and let us see everything that they were doing.  That included seeing the horse undergo x-rays and ultrasounds.  It was incredibly interesting.  Even the veterinary students were more competent than one would think students would be.

I referred to the New Bolton Center as a large animal veterinary center.  It is most associated with horses, but there are other animals there, too.  I saw goats, cows, and calves.  I spotted two llamas.  The llamas were pretty cute.  So were the calves.  I tried not to think about how the calves were probably going to be eaten.  Moo?