A last post from Alton, Illinois, still in Old Alton Cemetery. I've been in a lot of places like this and never seen so many ruined monuments. What caused this collapse - poor materials or workmanship? A terrible storm or an earthquake? (We have small ones occasionally, with a low but definite risk of a big one.) It's interesting to see how the obelisk cracked in two as it fell.
The posts get much more colorful starting tomorrow.
Something else from Old Alton Cemetery, Elijah Lovejoy's grave and monument. He was a major figure in the early abolitionist movement in this country. Lovejoy was born in Albion, Maine (I think I've been through there), later ending up in St. Louis and Alton as a Presbyterian minister, journalist and newspaper editor. It was in the latter capacity at the Alton Telegraph that his opinion pieces lead to his murder at the hands of a pro-slavery mob at the age of 34.
The hazy light wasn't good enough to make the text in the second picture legible. If you would like to learn more about him, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elijah_Parish_Lovejoy.
Alton has an Old Cemetery that's worth a visit. It is very hilly (most of the town is) and some of it is in poor condition. We were looking for the grave and monument of Elijah Lovejoy (more about which later) and came across this. The stones are hardly bigger than my shoe. The scene looked sorrowful and dejected.
It has been said that I have loose associations (something I'm happy about). The loudspeaker in my head immediately began to play one of the great moments in Western music, O Mio Babbino Caro (O My Dear Daddy) from Puccini's Gianni Schicchi (https://youtu.be/uFLVKaFVGag). Mamma doesn't get nearly enough credit.
Another statue of a native of Alton, Illinois, Miles Davis. One of the giants of jazz came from this bit of a backwater, although he didn't stay long. It's a wonderful statue, showing him with his spine arched backward, so often his posture in intense passages.
The caption comes from an early album of the same name (an example at https://youtu.be/KcoqwKEtYDs). I became acquainted with Davis when his style turned to jazz-rock fusion in the powerful Jack Johnson of 1971, https://youtu.be/DEBKksupBVA. A glance at the album cover on Youtube will show you where the statue's posture came from.
