STONE GARDENS

One of today's news headlines reads, "what is the difference between a graveyard and a cemetery?"  Leaves one to understand the plight of the news reporter struggling to write articles related to the current holiday.  

A few years ago four of us girls went for an over-night getaway.  One of 'em suggested the ghost tour, and my heart stopped beating.  My reluctance was outnumbered, and I remember handing over three $10 bills for the unwanted experience.  One of the places the guide took us to was a cemetery.  People reportedly have taken photos there that showed orbs hovering over the gravestones...orbs that can't be seen by the naked eye.  Well, this girl took no pictures and kept my thoughts to myself.  Sorry, can't buy into that ghost and spirit stuff.  My hope was that the guided tour around town and in supposed haunted houses would not plant any terrifying ideas in my head.  

Back to the difference between a graveyard and cemetery.  To sum up the article, a graveyard refers to a resting place on church grounds.  A cemetery refers to separate burial grounds, generally not tied to a specific place of worship.  

Here's another tidbit I just came across.......do you know what a taphophile is?  It's a person who is interested in cemeteries, funerals and gravestones.  Another name for a taphophile is a 'tombstone tourist.'

Oh, there's a world of interesting things to learn about cemeteries, graveyards and tombstones.  "If you see the word WOW on a gravestone, you have found the burial place of a former member of the Woodmen of the World, an American Fraternal Insurance Company that was said to have given widows $100 and a free gravestone if the company logo was put on the stone.  The WOW emblem is a sawed-off tree stump, often with a mallet or beetle, an axe, and a wedge."

My question.....what's a beetle got to do with it?  Come to find that a mallet is a small maul with a short handle, used especially for driving a tool, as a chisel.  A beetle can be a type of mallet with a large wooden head, used to drive wedges.

We've seen these gravestones that look like sawed-off tree stumps.  They're quite common to see.  However, we've never looked for the  WOW logo, but that's a good reason for us to be tombstone tourists so we can check out this bit of history.

So many traditions are being changed these days, perhaps it's time they changed cemeteries and graveyards to STONE GARDENS.  That's just my opinion.