Grave Matters in Fortuna

On the weekend before Halloween, the Fortuna Cemetery District hosted "Grave Matters and Untimely Departures". Scattered throughout the Fortuna Sunrise Cemetery, actors tell the story of people who are buried there. This year, we heard tales that were touching, often amusing, and always enlightening about some of the local personalities who touched the Fortuna area with their lives, loves and losses.

Not pictured: Brian Walker as A. Ivanoff, a Russian survivor of the Czar's greed and the Red Army, who eventually hanged himself in a brothel to silence the cries he kept hearing; and Bill Ryder as Per Nelson, a Swedish inventor of a bread slicing apparatus who took a misstep in a hayloft.

Every year the characters change. I look forward to the next installment.

Don Brown as Ed Whitchurch, a fellow who was fond of chatting on the telephone

Kathleen Marshall as American Jane Moore Elliot Burge Cameron, an oft-remarried seamstress

Megan Johnson as high school sophomore Vera Linser, who contracted spinal meningitis the day before she was to play the female lead in the school play

Rigel Schmit as Silas Bezley, a veteran of the Blackhawk War

Shannon Daily as Martha Gould, a gossipy laundress who tried to revive a fire by tossing kerosene on the coals

Michael McClimon as WWII military band member and high school band teacher Sewell Lufkin

Unusual Names

One thing I enjoy when cruising through a graveyard is reading the names. I typically find at least one unusual name among them. I recently stopped at the Ukiah Cemetery in Mendocino County, California. I found a high proportion of unusual and interesting names. I'm not even considering the Italian, Slavic, Azorean, Japanese etc. names I've seen. I'm certainly not able to say if they are common or unusual in their native lands.

I may use some of these when naming my honeybee queens.

Granted, Seraphim is the name he took upon entering the church, but it's still interesting.

A few family names also caught my eye.

Redwine seems an appropriate name for a winemaking region.

Many remind me of a refrigerator poetry magnet set.

Here are a few other interesting names I encountered elsewhere:

 In Cloverdale Cemetery, Sonoma County, California

In Oak Mound Cemetery, Healdsburg, Sonoma County, California