Author: lsmoore

Ghost Bikes

lsmoore 8 Comments

Memorial on Raytown Road in Kansas City, Missouri

Have you ever seen a ghost bike memorial?

I’d heard of them. I’d seen temporary memorials spray painted on the pavement at the site of  bicyclists’ deaths.

Kansas City, Missouri

This is a different kind of memorial than I usually photograph, but when I saw it I had to stop. I pulled onto the wide shoulder where the man and his granddaughter had ridden. It was a long, straight stretch of four-lane, country road. Hard to imagine what must have happened that morning to cause the accident.

Kansas City, Missouri

Despite the obvious age of this memorial, the grief still felt raw here. Like crosses marking  car accidents, I hope that ghost bikes serve to wake people up a bit. I know when I pass them I’ll sit up a little straighter behind the wheel, scan ahead a little farther. Share the road.

Guest blogger

lsmoore 2 Comments

Here are some gorgeous shots by a cemetery girl after my own heart. Enjoy.

trippybeth's avatarReflections Upon My Reality

My favorite place in all of Cincinnati has to be Spring Grove Cemetery. I would challenge anyone to find a more beautiful place in the tri-state area.

It is overflowing with the most lovely flora and fauna, not to mention the statues and mausoleums…

I trekked across the river two weeks ago to try and capture some “winter bleak” photos with my new camera.
I thought I was well prepared; I had charged the battery the night before, gathered all my equipment that morning and headed out.

I get to Spring Grove just in time to see that there is still some fog floating above one of the ponds, I’m excited!
I sling the camera around my neck, stick the iPhone in my pocket and head over to the pond.
I turn on the camera.

NOTHING.

What?!?!

Annoyed, I head back to the car, switch out the batteries.

NOTHING.

I’m…

View original post 92 more words

Oh, Pioneers!

lsmoore 6 Comments

Antioch Pioneer Cemetery, Overland Park, Kansas

Finding this beautiful little cemetery was one of those brakes screeching, right-turn-without-a-signal moments for me. It was a rainy day.  I hadn’t planned on visiting anyplace that didn’t involve parking close and scurrying into an open door as quickly as possible.

Quaint, little church still standing on the site.

Lucky for me, the Antioch Pioneer Cemetery called to me, and I had my camera in the car.

Exquisite, marble flutist.

I’m a sucker for an elegant marble statue and these girls took my breath away.

I need to go back and take more pictures on a day when I don’t have to worry about keeping my camera dry.

Surprises like these keep me digging graves.

Visit this one sometime.

Rocks of Ages

lsmoore 10 Comments

Rolla, Missouri

Sure, there’s a lot of stone in cemeteries, but there aren’t a lot of rocks. They always grab my attention when I see them. This one in Rolla, Missouri was about the size of a Smart Car.

Ashland Cemetery, St. Joseph, Missouri

They can’t help but be striking, some for the sheer size of them.

How do you choose a boulder for your loved one? Is there a store? Is it a rock from the deceased’s favorite mountainside…a beloved picnic spot? Once you’ve picked one out, how in the world do you transport it?

Genoa, Nevada

Sometimes the natural beauty of the stone makes it pretty obvious why someone chose it.

Dungeness, Washington

And I like the functionality of this boulder in Dungeness. Two people’s remains are encased there. I’ve seen this type of burial from Washington to Florida. Sometimes whole families will be entombed in the same stone. I bet it’s a greener way to go.

City Cemetery, Nashville, Tennessee

Sometimes you just know there has to be a story.

Are natural stone memorials a common sight in your part of the world?

Christmas Eve, Nashville, TN

lsmoore 5 Comments

Twilight at the City Cemetery in Nashville, Tennessee

Is it weird to seek out a quiet hour on Christmas Eve and find myself in a cemetery? I can see some of you nodding. “Yes, Laura, it is kind of odd.”  I’ve got to admit that when I got in the car and left my family – not in a huff, my family’s great – with Google map in hand, to drive to a part of Nashville I’d never seen,(after twenty years of visiting for the holidays), I wondered a little myself.

But when I found the City Cemetery and got out to walk around, that familiar sense of peace settled over me and I knew that at least for an hour, I was in exactly the right place.

It’s a beautiful, old cemetery with some really interesting stones. Like this one. Does anybody know the story here? The plaque reads, Ann Rawlin Sanders. She was 21 when she died. No, wife-of or beloved daughter.  It was 1836. It would have been quite a feat to move a boulder this huge. It crossed my mind that the rock is a natural feature of the spot, the tip of the iceberg so to speak. But then how could they bury someone under it?

There were three great angels.

Erosion had washed away details on this last one, leaving rather more to the imagination than the sculptor probably intended.

The second shot shows the outline of a wing better, giving the sense of the angel carrying off the dearly departed much better than the first shot – in which I got the wrong idea all together.

This was an interesting marker. It reads, Thomas B. Coleman, Mayer of Nashville, 1842. Really? The mayor with a misspelled,  plain, wooden plank? There’s got to be a story here too.

It’s a lovely place. I would have stayed longer if it hadn’t been getting so late. Stop by next time you’re driving through Music City.