A Mexican Contemporary of Tolomato

 

I was sorting through some photos I had taken on a recent visit to Oaxaca, Mexico and some of the more remote surrounding towns. This was glimpsed from the window on the way up to one of these remote towns…I don’t recall which one, at this point. But the area has been settled and Christianized since the 16th century, so there’s no telling the age of this cemetery.

Burials in the early days weren’t marked, or at any rate, not with anything that was going to endure for very long.  In recent times, Mexicans have tended to build little shrines over or near the graves.

Below are a few lines from a poem by Miguel de Unamuno, the Spanish poet and philosopher, entitled En un Cementerio de Lugar Castellano (In a Country Cemetery in Castilla). It describes a typical cemetery on the plains of Castilla, windswept, abandoned looking, behind adobe walls – very similar to our Mexican cemetery above.

Corral de muertos, entre pobres tapias,
hechas también de barro,
pobre corral donde la hoz no siega,
sólo una cruz, en el desierto campo
señala tu destino….

Corral of the dead, between humble walls,
made like them of clay,
poor yard where the sickle no longer reaps,
only a cross, in the barren field,
points to your destiny…

Below is a very beautiful video/musical arrangement of the poem.

The Fossil Club

Spring has sprung and it’s time for school visits. We recently had a great visit with some highschoolers from Newsome High School in Lithia and Alonso High in Tampa. They are members of the Archaeology, Anthropology and Fossil Clubs of their schools. Teacher Valerie Walker, who is the coordinator of these clubs, arranged the trip. 

About 100 students came over to visit Tolomato Cemetery, the Huguenot Cemetery and other sites in St Augustine.  Here they are at Tolomato, standing around the vault of Elizabeth Forrester and listening to Sarah Miller give her great presentation on Ground Penetrating Radar.  I think we might have some future archaeologists in this group…

Tolomato by Infrared

Tolomato Cemetery is so photogenic that photographers simply can’t resist it.  When we were open last month, we had two photographers quietly posted in a remote corner taking some rather unusual photos.

These are infrared photos, meaning that they are taken using a filter or a film that is sensitive to infrared light. They were taken by photographer Steve Neff, who plans to come back and take more photos at some time when the cemetery doesn’t have as many visitors.  The technique is a little tricky, and judging by what we could see of the photographers as they focused and refocused, requires considerable care and adjustment, and having unexpected human figures suddenly walk across their carefully composed scene made it a lot  more difficult. 

The above photo is the marker of “Little James,” a child who is buried near the front of the cemetery and is a favorite with the ghost tours.  This photo certainly makes his burial place very evocative and mysterious looking.  Notice how the leaves of the trees come out as a sort of shimmering cloud.

Steve Neff also took this photo of the marker of Fr. Edward Mayne, one of our more dramatic markers because of its shape and the way it leans.  Steve will be back and tell us more about his work sometime later this spring.

Tolomato on the Map

Preparing for a talk I have to give on St Augustine maps, I visited the Google mapmaker site…and I got Tolomato on the map!

Google has a feature that allows people to add a site to their maps. Google map enthusiasts review the addition, authenticate it, and then add it to the Google map as one of those little orange balloon shapes.  It’s called Google Mapmaker, and it’s a lot of fun!

So I sat down and did it this week. It was surprisingly easy. The reviewer wrote with a couple of corrections, and lo and behold, here it is.  It’s accompanied by a photo taken from Google Streetview, so it has the coordinates. A screen shot of Tolomato Cemetery on the Google map:



If you want to check out Google Mapmaker yourself, this is the short URL: http://g.co/maps/5uajm

Early Spring at Tolomato Cemetery

Yesterday, Saturday January 21, the Cemetery was open and we received about 365 visitors on that beautiful, balmy afternoon.  Winter has been fairly mild in St Augustine so far, although earlier in the week we had some very nippy days, and it was nice that the weather cooperated with our Open Day.

Best of all, when we came in to set up, we found this lovely white violet, sure sign of early Spring!

Cemetery in a Jar

TCPA board member and preservationist Matt Armstrong has a creative streak a mile wide, and once again he has surprised us with something completely different! 

You may remember that Matt made a large 3-dimensional “map” or paper model of Tolomato several months ago.  And yesterday, he presented the TCPA Board with our very own Cemetery in a Jar.  Here it is next to a roll of tape for comparison purposes, although the photo doesn’t do it justice and convey how charming it is!

Matt constructed it out of plant materials of the kind used by model railroad builders, combined with tiny “markers” that he made out of self-hardening plastic modeling clay.  And he built it in this small canning jar, just the way people used to build ships in bottles many years ago.

As a special treat, visitors to our next Open Day (Saturday, January 21) will have a chance to see this mini-cemetery “in person” on the table at the gate.

2012 at Tolomato Cemetery

Here we are at Tolomato Cemetery on December 31, 2011 – the last day of a  very busy year.  The incoming year, 2012, looks to be equally busy as we continue the work of preserving and interpreting the cemetery and also embark on new projects, possibly even including a new fence and reconstructed wall.  Details will be forthcoming after the TCPA has its first board meeting for 2012 this coming Thursday.

Happy New Year to all the friends of Tolomato Cemetery!