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Sunny California Morning Everyone,
Tombstones, This subject is a personal project near and dear to my heart. I won't even be able to scratch the surface of it all here. That will take more blogs down the road. I started my first Tombstone pictures ages ago, like 30 + years ago. When I asked my Mom to show me the family plot in the cemetery. It had been so many years since she'd been there & it took us some time looking around for her to recognize it. I took polaroids of it. Raise your hands, who remembers polaroids?
Over the years, as I've found the different people and the graveyards they are at rest in, I photographed their gravestones. And let me say I LOVE cemeteries. To me they are the best art galleries and everybody should get out to them and spend some time. They are happening places. People go now to cemeteries, and jog, walk, think, sketch, relax, hike, photograph, eat their meals, sightsee .... go for yourself. Every single cemetery office I've called or gone in person to talk with or written to, have been super helpful and friendly.
Hey, I have been a science fiction junky since I could watch TV and hold a book, and I've seen most of the worst stories about cemeteries. But being in a cemetery in real life has never once given me any creeps!
Maybe because my great GRandfather, EWM Evans, - Jane's oldest son, owned the Cypress Hills Tombstone and Monument, I feel so comfortable about it. But I think I would feel this comfortable even so.
So lost and found and lost again and found again. I had amassed a good pile of tombstone pictures on my laptop and decided to get them off to discs, which I had never done before. Of course, I lost my entire file of digital photos. Put in the newly copied disc and nothing - blank, Wahhhhhhh :( . . .
So here's a tip. If your going to try something new, do it with something you don't care about. Make up a dummy and practice with it before you try it on your good stuff.
Many I had taken, many from volunteers around the USA and many from overseas. Thank God, some I have are actual paper photos. Photos in hand - the best backup. I was crushed for months. Then told myself that if I wanted those pictures bad enough, I'd get off my depression and write to my volunteers again. Tell them what happened and beg and sob and plead - offer my first born, if they could resend things to me. Yeah! I felt stupid and embarrassed, telling them what I had done. But I wanted those photos bad enough to get over myself, so I pulled up the laptop and wrote to everybody. Let me tell you, every single person I rewrote to, felt so bad for me. Everyone has lost things with their computers & they completely understood. Some actually still had their photos for me, filed away in their computer. They just had to find which file they were in. Others were happy to go back and make new pictures for me. Some, I've forgotten who had sent them before, and I found new volunteers.
The super special, dear ones to my heart, were the ones I took when my daughters could go with me. I had snaps of them helping me clean brush off, clean up and find stones. What makes these easier to replace, is now I know where those people are, and
"Oh Darn, honey! Mom needs you to help her get out to this cemetery today".
Happy Trails Katiebird
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