A chilly spring morning, and off we went to Elmwood Cemetery for one of the occasional history walks they offer. This is a very old cemetery, with every name you now see on street signs, or in the names of Michigan counties, on some monument — the founding fathers (and daughters) of the state. I think the theme of this one was Art and Architecture, so we stopped at a lot of artists’ stones, but as always, the interesting stuff was everywhere.
People leave change, and an occasional bill, in the lap of this lady, who serves as the unofficial logo of the cemetery.
This coffin-size bronze is actually the entry to an underground vault for one family. It’s only been opened once in modern times, the staff historian told us — on her day off. The lid alone weighs a ton, but once it was raised, they could see inside to several niches with initials on the end. And it was totally pristine, no water, no seepage from the earth. Whoever built it, built it to last.
The co-founder of Pewabic Pottery. There was originally an open pot in that niche, but weather took a toll and it was later replaced with the mosaic.
A plate on a natural rock monument:
It exists, and you can get it via Project Gutenberg. Wikipedia:
He practiced for several years in Mansfield, Ohio until he started his journalistic career in 1860. He was the editor of the Port Huron Commercial (Port Huron, Michigan), and the Detroit Evening News (Detroit, Michigan). In 1880, he abandoned journalism and entered the US Patent Office. He was appointed principal examiner in 1886 and served until 1893. In 1877 he became Washington correspondent for the Scripps Syndicate, serving several prominent newspapers.
He continued in this capacity until after publishing his groundbreaking 1893 work “The Law of Psychic Phenomena,” which brought him international fame throughout the English-speaking world. The book’s sales continue to this day.
This was followed in 1895 by “A Scientific Demonstration of the Future Life” (considered by many his superior work), then “The Divine Pedigree of Man,” and finally “The Law of Mental Medicine” in 1903, published just days before his death from heart failure on May 26, 1903, in Detroit.
A more modern resting place. “Asiwaju basegun” is apparently a title associated with his native tribe; he was Nigerian. Also, an accomplished medical doctor.
I was reminded of the Sedgwick Pie, the burial ground of the Sedgwick family (Edie and Kyra being the most notable examples), in Massachusetts. The patriarch and matriarch of the clan are buried in the center, with descendants arrayed around them in concentric circles, feet toward the middle, so that on judgement day, when they arise from their graves, they only have to see other Sedgwicks. Ha ha ha.
After that, we had a late lunch at Saffron De Twah, came home, collapsed into dual naps and awoke to find the wind had changed and the temperature had risen by 20 degrees. Everybody outside was in shorts. I opened the windows. We’re still alive, might as well enjoy this warm breath while it lasts.
So much news over the weekend. Orban ousted, JD Vance fails in Pakistan, the president farts out another few emissions on Truth Social. I’d rather enjoy the spring weather and let my laptop run a software update. So take it away in the comments while I eat a piece of cake and enjoy the sounds of playing children through the open windows.
Dorothy said on April 12, 2026 at 7:52 pm
Cemeteries fascinate me. Reading the headstones, you can learn so many kinds of names. The older the grave, the better the chances of reading a name you’d never heard of. I should have written some of them down.
The first house we owned after we got married was on a steep hill in Wilkins Twp, PA. Our street intersected with Churchill Road. At that intersection was a cemetery, and before we had kids we used to walk up to the cemetery with our dogs Dublin and Peanut. We’d walk onto the very back section of it where there no graves, and walk the pups in all kinds of weather. (and yes of course we always picked up whatever the pups put on the grass) Then we’d take the paved road where cars could drive and walk out toward the front of the cemetery, coming home on our street again. It was always so nice and quiet to walk there. And there was a separate Jewish section where you could find the resting place of Allison Krause, who was killed at Kent State in 1970. I only visited it once. That was enough. It made me terribly sad.
I was glued to The Masters today, and was ever so glad that the Irishman won! It’s been 24 years since the last back-to-back winner. You all know who that was.
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Colleen said on April 12, 2026 at 8:08 pm
I loved walking through Lindenwood when I lived in Fort Wayne. The city’s history is there.
Yay for my ancestral land of Hungary. If they can vote out an authoritarian who stacked the deck in his favor, so can we.
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Sherri said on April 12, 2026 at 8:37 pm
Someone on Bluesky suggested that the idiom “screwed the pooch” should now be replaced with “fucked the couch”, as in “JD really fucked the couch in Hungary.”
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BigHank53 said on April 12, 2026 at 9:34 pm
The Artemis mission returning was pretty cool. Other than that…yeah, this weekend’s news makes software updates look good.
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Peter said on April 12, 2026 at 10:20 pm
I am also happy for my ancestral homeland (although the part of Hungary that my father’s side was from is now Romanian).
However, the US equivalent would be if Trump was replaced by a senator like Tom Cotton. Peter Magyar is not a nut job, but no one will ever mistake him for a centrist, much less a liberal.
It is very interesting, however, that a major issue turned out to be that Orban personally tried to cover up a pedophile scandal; several of his followers said that was a line too far. Maybe lightening can strike twice…
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Ann said on April 12, 2026 at 10:48 pm
I love a good stroll through a cemetery. When we lived in the Chicago area, we were right by the DesPlaines River, which was lined with cemeteries, including Forest Home, which earns its own Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_Home_Cemetery_(Forest_Park). It’s most famous for the monument to the Haymarket Martyrs, who were buried there because it was a secular cemetery and no religious cemetery would take them. But it also has a large section of very ornate Romany graves. Family members often left open bottles of beer by those graves but one day I took a photo where a cup of coffee had been left instead. The granddaughter of the deceased found the photo and replied that yes, her grandparents and parents did not drink and that one day she would be buried in this section herself. https://flic.kr/p/dHZmYu
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David C said on April 13, 2026 at 5:45 am
I’m a cemetery fan too. When my grandfather was the township clerk, he was also the sexton for the cemetery. So as a kid, I was helping him mark out graves to be dug. There was a lot of time left over to wander around and look at headstones, especially my family’s. There are seven or eight generations buried there.
There’s a cemetery in Kalamazoo named Mt. Ever-Rest. Punny cemetery names are fine for pet cemeteries, but I’d never plant a relative in one.
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ROGirl said on April 13, 2026 at 7:32 am
My brother and niece were in town this weekend, so yesterday we went to the Clover Hill Park Cemetery in Birmingham to visit my father’s grave, and they went to the Workmen’s Circle Cemetery in Clinton Township to visit our grandmother’s grave. She died in 1923, when my father was 5 years old.
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Jeff Gill said on April 13, 2026 at 7:34 am
Updates… I’m frustrated because my 2020 MacBook with an Intel chip no longer can take on new OS updates, and so can now no longer accept Chrome updates plus some other apps. That, plus not having access to MS Office 365 (mostly because I don’t want to pay for it), has me looking at a new computer. I’d be more philosophical about it if it wasn’t for my suspicion these hardware replacement forced mandates are going to keep getting closer together. That & property taxes are the biggest variable in calculating where our retirement targets are over the next twenty years (he said with uncharacteristic optimism).
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Jeff Borden said on April 13, 2026 at 8:38 am
Any event that breaks the heart of both tRump and Putin should be celebrated. And now Diaper Don is feuding with Pope Leo, who is “soft on crime” and “bad on foreign policy.” I’m sure the pontiff is quaking.
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alex said on April 13, 2026 at 9:01 am
Yay Hungary. I guess this means Rod Dreher loses his sinecure and has to come back to the U.S. to scrounge for his wingnut welfare.
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David C said on April 13, 2026 at 9:35 am
The Trump as Jesus picture is weird AF. Seeing as everything Trump touches dies, RIP to the guy he laid his hands on.
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Suzanne said on April 13, 2026 at 11:07 am
I am searching for a good Chicken paprikash recipe to make in honor of the defeat of Orbán. Anybody have a good one?
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alex said on April 13, 2026 at 12:09 pm
Suzanne, Sam Sifton in the NYT has a good basic recipe, although he uses egg noodles rather than the traditional galuska, which are dumplings made from flour/egg/water and can be cooked directly in the broth. I’d do some googling and see if you can find a recipe that includes making the dumplings — they’re the best part of the meal.
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susan said on April 13, 2026 at 1:06 pm
Yeah, dumplings cooked in the broth is the way to go. My Mom always made chicken paprikash that way, which she learned from my Grandma (her Mom) who grew up in Vienna. Oh ymmmmm! I’ll see if I have her recipe. But I bet she never wrote that down. She just made it.
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Jakash said on April 13, 2026 at 2:13 pm
Deborah,
Yesterday, in the previous thread, you said about the film “One Battle After Another”: “I can’t remember if it won any Oscars, it didn’t seem like Oscar material.”
I apologize for obnoxiously leaping to the movie’s defense, but here’s what the proprietress has had to say about it.
10/5/25: “I won’t spoil anything, or tell you too much, or anything at all. Just go see ‘One Battle After Another’ and thank me later. That was the highlight of the weekend…”
3/15/26: “Most of you will read this after the Oscars. I only made one prediction on my 2026 Bingo card, that ‘One Battle After Another’ would win best picture, but I fear it will be shut out by ‘Sinners,’ or maybe ‘Hamnet.’ I’ve seen ‘Sinners.’ It was fine, but OBAA was better, in my opinion.”
I agree, and was delighted that it won 6 Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (for Sean Penn, as you noted), Best Casting, and Best Film Editing, while having been nominated for 7 others.
That being said, there are many who were unimpressed, so you’re far from alone in your evaluation. 🙂
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Deborah said on April 13, 2026 at 2:14 pm
Chicago has a great cemetery, Graceland in Uptown. It’s got a lot of familiar street names and business names in it like Marshall Fields, Charles Wacker plus lots of architects, Louis Sullivan (who also designed some of the monuments there), Mies van der Rohe, Bruce Graham (Sears Tower), Walter Netsch (Air Force Academy Chapel) Holabird and also Root etc.
Everyday we wake up to some horrendous Trump psychotic uttering. It’s so sickening. When will the cult of personality die?
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nancy said on April 13, 2026 at 2:19 pm
OBAA just had so many delightful moments. People complained about the whole Benicio DelToro section, but I thought it was lovely. And funny.
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Scout said on April 13, 2026 at 2:36 pm
Sherri, I can totally see the ‘oh look, JD fucked the couch again’ meme taking off. Pretty sure the main reason the Grand Old Pedo party won’t invoke the 25th is because they know once their leader is deposed, dead or whatever, JD cannot command any love or loyalty with the 29%ers or whatever the magat base’s current percentage of the voters is. They know that once he’s gone their entire party collapses. His conduct over the weekend was beyond alarming, and his dementia is not going to reverse itself, ever. But the msm and the party electeds remain steadfast in their refusal to even talk about ending this debacle.
Phoenix’s ridiculously early heatwave has broken for now and we are back in normal spring temp territory. I got to take a lovely walk and plan to once again play pickleball outside. Also, a day trip to Sedona is planned for some hiking.
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Jakash said on April 13, 2026 at 2:46 pm
“Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime” As ridiculous observations from the orange felon go, that’s in the top ten, IMHO. His having been a criminal himself for much of his life, and currently a convicted one, makes it all the more absurd. Uh, caring for strangers and prisoners has been a kinda significant component of Christianity from the get-go, but Mr. “2 Corinthians” may not realize that.
One can only guess that publicly attacking the Pope is another bizarre and inscrutable example of the 5D chess that his supporters think he’s playing. Why, the other option would be to conclude that he’s completely bonkers.
As for OBAA – Leo on the phone arguing about the password and Benicio’s part were 2 of my favorites. When he gives Leo the gun and then disappears beneath a trap door and then a rug covers it up — that’s gold, Jerry!
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Peter said on April 13, 2026 at 3:20 pm
Suzanne, On You Bet Your Life Groucho Marx would occasionally tell contestants his favorite Hungarian chicken paprikas recipe: “First, steal one chicken…”
Or better yet, just make Ernie Kovac’s Chicken Molnar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F23OKcnh7BQ
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Julie Robinson said on April 13, 2026 at 3:42 pm
The Chicago White Sox, Pope Leo’s team of choice, have announced August 11 as Leo Day. Everyone attending will receive a Pope hat. Bet it’s already sold out.
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Sherri said on April 13, 2026 at 5:44 pm
At least Eric Swalwell suspended his campaign for governor and now has resigned from Congress. Meanwhile, Tony Gonzalez, the Congressman from Texas who coerced a staffer into sex, and the staffer later killed herself by lighting herself on fire, remains in office.
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Suzanne said on April 13, 2026 at 8:55 pm
The chicken paprikash was a success, although it wasn’t nearly as good as my encounter with it last year as made by the Hungarian mother of the husband of a close relative. I think being Hungarian is part of making the dish successfully.
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basset said on April 13, 2026 at 9:53 pm
We’ve been to the cemetery in Liverpool where Eleanor Rigby is buried, right across from the churchyard where Lennon & McCartney first met. Several of the graves there are trimmed with what looks like colored glass gravel, all I know about it is that the glass is green if you’re Irish. I think I remember blue and white, maybe a few more.
Hmmm… turns out this stuff is called “chippings” and has several uses:
https://sgionline.co.uk/blogs/news/decorative-glass-chippings-for-graves
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Julie Robinson said on April 14, 2026 at 11:13 am
basset, I’ve never seen that before. The cemetery my family uses in Illinois has gone to gravestones that are flush to the ground so the mowers can go straight over them. I hate the way they look, like afterthoughts.
Jon Stewart has a hilarious segment on last night’s show, riffing on the resemblance between the patient in Trump’s AI pic, and Stewart himself. Laura Benanti was on Colbert with another Melania segment. And Door Dash Grandma has been located in a previous Trump interaction, almost as if she was a paid actor, hmmm.
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Jeff Borden said on April 14, 2026 at 11:28 am
The funniest reactions I’ve seen to tRump’s feud with Pope Leo are from a handful of evangelicals –of course, they’d be evangelicals– arguing the man who has spent his life in service to others in the name of god simply doesn’t know his Bible. While it is true Catholicism embraces the New Testament far more than the Old, I’m going to wager Leo knows the book front to back. He certainly understands the philosophy of Jesus far better than the loons.
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Dexter Friend said on April 14, 2026 at 6:02 pm
Hoosier college/university students are now OK to use their school IDs to vote. Mark Elias Law Group got it done, and now he’s going after DeSantis for the Florida students’ right to vote.
Gasoline was $3.89 in Angola, Indiana today, yesterday medium grade for the F-150 was $4.39.
MSNOW talkers are saying gasoline will be much more expensive by August.
Vivek Ramaswamy is plastering signs everywhere here. If he becomes Ohio governor, MAGA policies will roll in like tanks into Ho Chi Minh City on April 30, 1975.
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Brandon said on April 14, 2026 at 6:58 pm
TMZ now has a bureau in Washington. https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5830247-tmz-opens-dc-bureau/
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Sherri said on April 14, 2026 at 9:22 pm
Isn’t it about time for JD to convert to Eastern Orthodoxy? I guess that would be inconvenient for his latest book, though, but with a Methodist church on the cover, it’s already confused.
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ROGirl said on April 15, 2026 at 4:29 am
From Neil Steinberg:
Once you get in the habit of ignoring reality, the exact nature of the reality being ignored hardly matters.
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Dorothy said on April 15, 2026 at 7:41 am
We sat down to watch OBAA without knowing one thing about it except for the names of a few of the actors. It’s rare to do that these days, I think, because we all seem to be bombarded with ads on social media. Somehow I missed them if there were ads for OBAA. I liked the movie very much and might have to re-watch it sometime soon. Sean Penn’s character just made me squirm he was so awful. But of course that was the point.
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Sherri said on April 15, 2026 at 2:26 pm
The people who scream the loudest about DEI and meritocracy of course have their own wingnut welfare path to judicial clerkships, thanks to Federalist Society vetting: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/14/federal-clerkships-earlier-timeline/
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