We went on a cemetery tour at dusk yesterday with the incredible NOLA native, tour guide, and Voodoo priestess Bloody Mary. The picture above was taken at the Masonic cemetery, where there is a stairway to a rooftop where you can look down on the whole thing. It was dark, so that picture is autoleveled and grayscaled to show some definition. We sang to the spirits. Gave them candy and whiskey (although it was Scottish whiskey on St. Patrick’s Day, I hope we didn’t piss anybody off!) I think this quote from Mark Twain about summed it up:
“Our cities of the Dead look just like our cities of the living- long narrow houses, housing multi-generations of the same family with above ground basements .”
We also went to Holt Cemetery (warning – PDF). It’s an underground burial cemetery, mostly used by people who can’t afford expensive burial. There are handmade headstones, graves built with railroad ties, pvc piping, old chairs that were taken apart and repurposed. Some of the graves over a hundred years old. Lots of flowers, lots of decorations. It is obviously visited regularly. There’s no regular maintenance, so it’s overrun with weeds and plants, and since it’s underground burial, if you look hard, you can find a few bones popping up out of the ground. Fortunately, it’s on high ground, so the storm didn’t flood it too badly.
There are way more dead people here than living.
