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Reviews
LIVING AMONG HEADSTONES: LIFE IN A COUNTRY CEMETERY
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by Shannon Applegate
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| Thunder's Mouth Press, New York, 2005. Illustrations, bibliography. 320 pages. $24.00 cloth. |
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| THIS IS A VERY BEAUTIFUL, albeit unconventional, book. Defying ordinary classification, it irresistibly places readers under its spell through a seemingly incongruous but highly effective combination of elements. Its subtitle, "Life in a Country Cemetery," might just as easily have been "Ruminations in a Country Graveyard" for, like Thomas Gray's famous "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (1751), it uses the primary setting of an actual burial ground as a departure point for a number of important observations about life, death, remembrance, and a host of other issues. |
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Shannon Applegate's recounting of her experiences as sexton of the Applegate Pioneer Cemetery (located just north of the Douglas County, Oregon, town of Yoncalla) — a job which, in her case, carries the inevitable weight of both familial and community responsibilities — is a remarkable compendium of fact and philosophy. The unpredictable but perfectly orchestrated flow and interplay among personal anecdotes, travel narratives, and highly detailed descriptive treatments of Oregon's history, geology, and ecosystems are bolstered throughout by the author's considerable knowledge of both American and international funerary and memorial practices. |
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The Applegate Pioneer Cemetery, by no means the oldest or most spectacular of Oregon's early graveyards, is interesting because of its association with one of the state's most important pioneer families and because it provides an excellent example of a frequently seen evolutionary pattern in American frontier landscapes — burial spaces originally created to accommodate members of an initial family of settlers eventually expanded to serve the needs of an emerging rural community. This is a phenomenon yet to be thoroughly researched by historians, cultural geographers, and cemetery scholars and although it is not this book's intent to undertake such a study, it nonetheless provides important insights into a process which in many instances — such as the present one — is ongoing. |
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Oregon is fortunate, and quite distinctive among western states, in the amount of care and attention that has been focused on its historic cemeteries. Two capable bodies, one private (Oregon Historic Cemeteries Association) and the other government-mandated (Oregon Commission on Historic Cemeteries), have provided extraordinary leadership in fostering community understanding and initiating legislative actions designed to preserve and protect these valuable cultural landscapes. Several important catalogues and guides — the Oregon Cemetery Survey, created by the Oregon State Department of Transportation in 1978, its even more comprehensive successor, the Oregon Burial Site Guide (2001, compiled by Dean H. Byrd, Stanley R. Clarke, and Janice M. Healy), and the Oregon Historic Cemetery Association's Visitor's Guide to Oregon Historic Cemeteries (1999/2000, compiled by Jeanne Gentry Robinson), not to speak of the many volumes of cemetery "readings" generated by local and county historical and genealogical associations — are currently available to provide a wealth of demographic data and to assist the visitor in locating any of the vast number of these old burial grounds that are to be found in all areas of the state. And although no sweeping historical/cultural analysis along the lines, for example, of Terry G. Jordan's 1982 Texas Graveyards: A Cultural Legacy has emerged, this new Oregon-based work by Shannon Applegate is a most welcome addition to the growing body of statewide material related to this topic. |
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The book's sole disappointing feature — owing most probably to editorial decisions on the part of the publisher and not to any failing by the author — is the seemingly haphazard and poorly contextualized placement of photographs and other illustrations throughout the text. Moreover, locating the captions in the rear of the book rather than in conjunction with the illustrations themselves is a poor editorial practice that is insensitive to the needs of readers. |
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When all is said and done, it may well be that the greatest strengths of Living Among Headstones lie in the depth and honesty of its humanity and the sheer elegance of its writing. These are not the features one usually expects in works about cemeteries and gravestones, but then, as noted at the outset, this is a work quite unlike any other on the subject. These factors are reason enough to read this book, and if along the way readers find their knowledge of Oregon's past and present and of the long human traditions of burial and memorialization to be enhanced as well, than that is all to the good and a most valuable bonus indeed. |
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| RICHARD E. MEYER
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| Western Oregon University (emeritus), Monmouth |
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