Cemetaries search for new revenue streams

I can't blame them, especially old cemetaries that are filling up. There are only so many plots to sell and maintenance costs that are perpetual. They need ways to bring in revenue.

Historic cemeteries, desperate for money to pay for badly needed restorations, are reaching out to the public in ever more unusual ways, with dog parades, bird-watching lectures, Sunday jazz concerts, brunches with star chefs, Halloween parties in the crematory and even a nudie calendar.

I've been both creeped out and fascinated by cemetaries since my teens. Growing up, one of the popular places to watch the Fourth of July fireworks in Eau Claire was a vacant portion of one of the city's cemetaries. Invariably, extended family members and I would go on a walk through the "occupied" portion of the cemetary. We'd look at head stones and ask out loud, "I wonder what their story was?" As a teen, I'd occasionally ride my bike through my hometown cemetary and be amazed by some of the famous names I'd see on headstones. In college, part of an art history final assignment was done on some of the architecture in a local cemetary. Our cemetaries are the final resting place of the actors of our history, and all to many of us are more scared by them than curious about their eternal occupants.

My second book idea was to tell the stories of some of the people in cemetaries around the area when I grew up. I never followed through on that one purely because it creeped me out a bit, but who amongst us hasn't asked the question that my cousins and I asked in that Eau Claire cemetary, "I wonder what their story was?" Why did they pass so young? What happened during their time at war? Why did they have their dog buried next to them? If a cemetary were to tell some of those stories, I'd probably open my wallet to hear them or read them. And I'd be glad to do so because it would help preserve the memories of our dead and of those people on whose shoulders we stand on in our communities today. As long as the fine line between revenue generation and disrespecting the dead isn't brazenly crossed, I say good for the cemetaries.

Side note
To me, one of the saddest trends of the last thirty years is that of cemetaries forbidding above ground headstones and monuments. Yes, in ground headstones help keep maintenance costs down, but the cemetaries of old tell us a lot about their occupants with the wide variety (might I even say diversity?) of headstones and monuments. The small limestone headstone of a man next to the even smaller limestone headstone for his dog says something about the man (yes, it exists) as much as the huge monument.