Military funeral at Arlington

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A woman emailed me a couple of months ago, asking if she could use one or two of my Flickr photos in a video she wanted to make to honor her father, who was buried at Arlington National Cemetery last spring. Of course I said yes, and went back to the cemetery to take some specific pictures for her. Please take a few minutes to watch her video and see parts of this iconic cemetery that needs just a one-word name: Arlington.

The cemetery's official website has details of its fascinating history that dates to America's Civil War. I think we who live here may take it for granted, but it really is a special, sacred place.

Engravings du jour

This one's largely for Joanna of Morbid Anatomy. We had a researcher looking at the 19th Century Army Medical Museum this week so I pulled down a book I enjoy using - Mary Clemmer Ames, Ten Years in Washington: Life and Scenes in the National Capital as a Woman Sees Them (Hartford, CT: A.D. Worthington & Co, 1874). This is from when a guidebook had opinions and was proud of them. Here's five plates that we've scanned from the book, because they relate to medicine or the Civil War.



"All that remains above ground of John Wilkes Booth..." - now that's a guidebook!



"The City of the Slain"! Talk about accurate!

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I was at Arlington National Cemetery Sunday morning when it opened so I could photograph the grave markers of the parents of a friend of mine from San Diego. She was able to come back for her dad's funeral in March but can't swing another trip to visit their grave. While I was there I wandered around and found the memorial that marks the graves of sailors and Marines who went down on the United States Battleship Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898.
The ship exploded and all hands, 229 of them, were lost. Seventeen years later their bodies were repatriated and buried in section 24 of Arlington, near the mast of the Maine. Their names are engraved on the foundation of the memorial.

A sad story in and of itself, but the most poignant part is when you walk among the tombstones and see this. Our Resolved exhibit shows how far we've come and made this kind of memorial obsolete.