Cemeteries have always fascinated me but I worry that we will soon run out of land for them. I say that we should "digitalize" the headstones using GPS and turn them all the cemeteries into golf courses. As you move from hole to hole, the virtual headstones of the bodies below you will pop up on your app
That way, you can visit your long dead aunt while getting in a round of golf.
I'm surprised that nobody but me has thought of this before.
[old punchline] “...Well, she was a good wife.” [/old punchline]
That would ensure the cemetery grounds were kept up, the cemetery and those buried there would be remembered and visited often. Tax revenue could be generated. I think you’re onto something.
The Democrats could get in some golf while going over their voting rolls too.
No, leave the stones. A drop and a two stroke penalty.
there is a old cemetery outside of Winchester TX with very old stones, from the early 1800’s. 200 yards away is a old live oak tree that is know as the hanging tree.... and those in that cemetery were patrons of that tree. least that’s what the locals say.
One of my favorite things to do is wander around ancient cemeteries and look at the old headstones. My grandfather loved to do it and took me with him when I was little.
There is an old one about 1/4 mile from me with stones that date in the 1700’s. Some are so worn that you have to look at them from an angle to read them. Most are nothing but carved rocks.
The ones that grab at me are the ones from the 1700’s and early 1800’s that say “Baby (last name)”. They didn’t even name most of the stillbirths. Lots and lots of babies under a year old died. There is one in my family cemetery that says “Baby Vaughn”. He/she was my grandmother’s sibling but was not named. That was around 1898. Nothing even says if it was a boy or a girl.
“Some of those headstones are so old that all the engraving has worn out.”
May be acid rain?
I have done photographs for “Find a Grave” here in east central Illinois. It is common here for limestone headstones to be no longer readable. Granite and some other stones last longer. I found one small cemetery off the road a ways, in a cow pasture in which most of the limestone headstones had been broken off by roaming cattle and sort of stomped into the ground. I uncovered a few, turned over a few and the engraving on each was nearly pristine. I do not remember the most recent burial, but it was many years ago. My guess it that the soil and plant life cover prevented erosion of the limestone surface.
Another somewhat related problem is that the reduction of acid rain has allowed a significant recent increase in the growth of lichens. Gravestones located under trees become encrusted in lichens and become impossible to read. I do not know if the lichen growth has detrimental effects on the rock?