Walkabout Reflection 08/06/09

-Week 6-

As this is the sixth week at Spring Grove, I feel like I am beginning to find a sense of direction and placement wherever I am within the cemetery. Recalling my first two weeks, I could not leave the Historic Office without feeling lost or overwhelmed. This week, I felt myself beginning to embrace the cemetery landmarks we walked past such as the Dexter, Strauch Island, Cedar Lake, the Sphinx, and the Burnet Mausoleum, making the walkabout seem less foreign and more native to my overall senses. I also find myself beginning to become familiar with the stories behind each stone. For example, this week I learned that the Dexters, of the Dexter Mausoleum, were whiskey barons in Cincinnati, originally from Germany. I also had the experience of seeing the Dexter mausoleum's large Gothic arches that hold its amazing structure and walking underneath the mausoleum, viewing it from the ground, up. Some of this history I'm learning is beginning to connect with the graves themselves so that when I hear the name, I think where the person is buried in Spring Grove, and I recall upon the history of the person's life. I also had the experience this week of seeing both the Spring Grove sphinx and the pyramid. These Egyptian icons like the obelisks, symbolize Egyptian beliefs in life and afterlife. The sphinx was used in Egyptian culture as a guardian of tombs and treasures. The pyramid, or the common Egyptian tomb, has such a unique shape in order to symbolize the rays beaming down from the sun. I learned that the sphinx in Spring Grove cemetery is a burial marker of Ann Lawler (1781- 1835) and Matt Lawler (1781- 1835), and Davis and Augusta Lawer, from Berlin, Prussia. I also learned that the pyramid in Spring Grove has four different languages written on each side of the pyramid's base. There is so much perspective I have been gaining each week when I visit Spring Grove. Its been a journey of ideas, history, art, architecture, spirituality, nature, and so much more.