Free Republic

When I lived in Indiana, one of the things that I did was to visit every park in the state. I went and bought a book showing all 25 state parks. Then, my wife and I went and visited every one of them. When we were finished, we then went to the local library. We looked at a large map of the county and then visited every cemetery in the county. It was an “eye opener” and very informative. Let’s talk about this experience Many of the cemeteries were in isolated areas. We would get to ride on little used...

In south Tehran there is a huge walled cemetery dedicated to the martyrs, the young men who died fighting in the 1979 revolution and the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988. This vast city of the dead, complete with its own subway station and shops, does not share Arlington National Cemetery's sublimely stoic aesthetic of identical tombstones, row upon row. In Tehran's war cemetery, each of the fallen is remembered individually with his own martyr's shrine, a sealed glass cabinet on a stand. The cabinets are filled with faded photos of men forever young, some in helmets or red bandannas, some carrying...