Memorial Hunt - Crown Hill Cemetery

Since I went home to northern Indiana this weekend, I was looking for memorials on my way to and from my destination. I was not inspired - I went to a cemetery in Knox, Indiana. However, the layers of representation were fascinating. At the entrance to Crown Hill, one is greeted by this sign:

I particularly like the statement that opens the sign. Simply by observing the rules (not obeying, just visually observing), I have made the location more beautiful - an empowering thought.

Beyond this is another memorial commemorating those who founded and care for Crown Hill. As  Derek pointed out in his post, the creators of memorials are often forgotten in favor of those being commemorated. While we don't know the stonemason and ironmonger involved in creating this memorial, it still honors invisible creators of the larger memorial - the cemetery.

Since the memorial is at the entrance to the cemetery, it also serves to thank, encourage, and implicitly demand (as opposed to the previous example, which explicitly demands) good behavior and civic duty. This reflects Roach's insights into the controlling geography of New Orleans (14). As the cemetery was rather busy on the day I visited, the sign - whether read or not - appeared to be performing its duty admirably - it was encouraging and thanking those who were mowing, weeding, tending and remembering.

In line with Roach's argument, the memorial for the caretakers brings the act of performing, preparing, and maintaining mourning out into the open. Mourning and its related behaviors are "reinforced [sign and caregiver memorial], celebrated [caretaker memorial], and intensified [both signs working to celebrate and thank the performers]" (28). Add into this mix the memorial to fallen soldiers that face these two and the hills of gravestones behind them, and the entire "place of memory" is a complex spectacle, in Debord's sense, of performed memory.

One comes here not to live, not to honor life, but to review life past. To quote Thornton Wilder's play Our Town, "Live people don't understand, do they? ... They're sort of shut up in little boxes, aren't they?" Debord would certainly agree - they are all divided, row upon row, into their boxes, both in life and in death.

(I also examined some of the individual and family stones in the cemetery, but I'll leave those for my personal blog, rather than crowding our class space any further.)