I think it all started with genealogy for me, and most of all the money. Each place wanted to help me find a lost person in a grave. Fifty dollars, twenty dollars, adds up to a lot over time. Then this year I decided to have my great, great grandmothers tombstone cleaned. Seventy five dollars, but would I like to spend a few thousand to buy a new one. Not that I wasn't greatfull to pay to have it cleaned, I was. Father John Coropi says one should not have to pay for the sacriments of the church. How telling, and so one night I saw a tombstone. Agnus Juanita Mayo, white mable with a lamb...it was black as coal. I said I am going to clean that. In doing so, eighty pounds of white marble sliped from the base, I fixed that. What others say can't be done, usually can if you try. Now Agnus Juanita Mayo is sparkly clean, not black as coal and forgotten. As her stone says a ray of sunshine has been taken from the earth, now it has been restored, at least in some way. That was number one. I have since gone on to clean more and photograph each grave, leaving the memory for someone who cared for them to find them and for free. Todays efforts in section C at Palms Woodlawn in Homestead found me pearing into a paper bag. It had been left there for several days. UGH! Someone had put a dead chicken in it and dumped it on the graves. Section C seems to be old and in dissaray. Wouldn't you think someone would care beside me? Section C holds many old graves, some born in the mid eighteen hundreds and long forgotten. My work is for their rememberance.
