Mosaics & Tombstones

This was July.  I've been sitting on this post since then when a BFF took me on a birthday adventure, and it's a bit of a *departure* from my usual posts.   I wanted to wait closer to Halloween just for a spooky effect, but I don't really want to creep anyone out.  Mostly I was just in birthday age denial, yet happy to be around to celebrate another.  Nothing makes you appreciate getting older more than visiting a place where that opportunity no longer exists.

So what kind of friend takes their best garage sale'n pal to a cemetery for her birthday?  One that knows you have an appreciation for mosaics silly!  Dii (I did not make up her name for this post) didn't mean to take me to a cemetery it just so happened it was on the same grounds as this amazing quaint chapel.

 This is the Lakewood Memorial Chapel.  

Minneapolis, on the shore of Lake Calhoun.

From the web site:   
Mosaic interior ....created by designer Charles Lamb and many consider it the most perfect example of Byzantine mosaic art in the United States. In 1909, Lamb traveled to Rome to enlist the services of six mosaic artists who had just recently completed a project in the Vatican. The artists created more than 10 million mosaic pieces, called tessellae, from marble, colored stone, and glass fused with gold and silver. The artists then traveled to Minneapolis to assemble the work inside the chapel. Upon completion in 1910, the Lakewood Memorial chapel was the only building in the country with an authentic mosaic interior.

 Did you catch that?... 10 million tiny pieces.  1909, completed a year later.  Someone better than me do the math... if they worked 365 days how many tiles a day is that?

Pictures of course do not do it justice.

 

Dii is a mosaic artist in her own right, she's the one who turned me on to smashing china.  Dii actually plots out things in a pattern, me I just smash something and glue it on randomly.  I don't have the patience, you know that lazy crafter thing, and I can't even imagine doing the whole interior to a building in tiles the size of a fingernail.  

I wanted to see the cemetery, this is art too.  It was the most well kept cemetery I have ever been to, especially for its age.  No I don't hang out in cemetery's but I'm no stranger to loss.  I really prefer to visit them in this fashion than have reason to go.

 Reading the names on the skyscrapers tombstones it was easy to see why it was so well kept; these are the movers and shakers of the area buried here.  The namesakes and founders of towns and businesses across the state. 

And then there were the ones that caught my eye...... 

I kid you not, Griswold and Chase were next to each other. 
You know... Chevy Chase and the Griswolds from the Vacation movies?

 

This was my favorite stone.  The lettering just looked all vintagy and cool.  

 Some make you wonder the significance of the design.  Why did Rosie get a log?

No matter how old I get the last name of butts will always be funny. 
Probably because I'm thankful it's not mine.
Seymour was not next to it.  I looked.

 And everything in it's place.....

 The deceased mortician from our town was named Grimsmo.  Appropriate huh?  The current mortuary owners are friends of ours and employ one of my sons from time to time for things like vehicle washing or extra hands for what ever is "needed".  Occasionally it makes for interesting dinner table talk.  And yes often we find humor in it, but don't doubt for one minute the admiration we have for that family.

Old cemetery's are historical places.  I found this one very interesting.  Just ponder for a moment how fast time goes by.  Death is certain and that fact wasn't any different 100 years ago!  Someone still felt the loss that each one of these stones marks yet only 100 short years have passed and no one is left that even knew the people buried beneath the oldest ones. 

I said ponder, not dwell.