birds at erie street

I have been checking a bird watchers' page on daily sightings [click].  There are many sparrow sized birds, and if they are active in fidgeting movement, it is not always easy to get a clear glimpse, nor a foto snap. A few of the recent postings concerns a clay colored sparrow at Erie Street Cemetery Cleveland. How big a deal is this amongst local birders, i don't know. 

Well, that cemetery is directly opposite the Cleveland Indians ball park. Now, this is the oldest extant cemetery in the city. Early last century the street which it sits on was re-named, 'East Ninth'. Also, this is one of the streets that has been in the process of resurfacing, this year; as are several nearby streets, and the big innerbelt highway bridge.

Wednesday, i got around to visit again. That night Cleveland was to host a playoff game with Tampa Bay. Also, the gate house to the cemetery was being put up again, after disassembly.

The cemetery is a green island in this part of downtown Cleveland, that has various trees and shrubbery, and regular grass cutting. The care of the gravestones and grounds is uneven. Bums overnight under the greenery, and next to walls. They leave debris. What looked like, to me, a raccoon skeleton is weathering away.

Infra, are a few of the fotos i took. I also took pictures of branches, and patches that had a bird or birds in that spot a second or two before; and what i thought was the subject for the camera to focus upon, was not always what the camera decided upon. Please correct any misidentified birds. I am posting this on the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, who famously spoke to birds.

 gray catbird

 acadian flycatcher

white throated sparrow

little lamb

at Wellington's Greenwood Cemetery

In the late XIXth century many marble lambs were placed on children's graves. Most to-day are indistinguishable lumps, they have eroded smooth. After a time, the lambs went out of fashion. This one, is not of marble, and late in the time frame.

woodland woodchuck

this dusty fellow just popped up in his hole

where think you doth said woodchuck reside?

in a burrow to the left and fore of this building

Quoting Camus

Albert Camus was the great French existentialist, and the most important writer in the modern age in French, and maybe any language. He, himself, was not interested in death memorials. He is very quotable, and people may pick up a sentence of his without knowing it was from him.

O light! This is the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I knew it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.  — Return to Tipasa (1952)

« Au milieu de l'hiver j'ai découvert en moi un invincible été. »

translation found in 1960s English anthologies:
In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

Memorial Day

Memorial Day Association

recent statues in Cleveland's Lake View

Lake View Cemetery Cleveland bills itself as 'Cleveland's Outdoor Museum', and they have a point.  Recently they have added to their monuments.

Some they write up in their bi-yearly newsletter, and sometimes a new statue gets an article in the city's daily. Such as this one, by Rosa Serra for the family of Mark A. Smith. This bronze lion is a Spanish bronze that looks like stone. It is modeled after the character, Mufasa, in the movie Lion King. It still has the cemetery's temporary marker on site.

a more traditional lion photographed 5 August 2011

Sergey Gaidaenko by Ivan Grigoriev

This new statue is accompanied by a poem's line from Robert Browning, “Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?”

family plots

Cordoned off in iron chains, and hollow tassels. Clink, clink, to keep something away?

After the years these stone stanchions are persuaded by gravity. At one time, these were connected too.