Heat and Headstones

It is truly hot here. Hot like you open the car door and the heat from the parking lot pavement burns up and you and the heat from the metal of the car burns at you from the side and the humidity just wraps it all around you. The heat from the actual sun seems irrelevant. It's very familiar and summery- in general, I'm still in the honeymoon stage with Frederick Maryland. It's just a lot less work here than being at school. For most of the day I'm not expected to talk to anyone and I don't worry about whether anyone else is talking to me. And then no one thinks it's weird when I randomly break into song all the time, and in fact the people around me (my family- I haven't seen anyone else) know the same songs and sing along.

I went running at 10:00 this morning, which was way too late considering the heat that I have described. It's not that hot yet, really, it's just over 90, but it's crossed the line between warmth and heat, and you remember what the long summer will be like. But anyway, I ran to Mt. Olivet Cemetary, where I so often have run before- the route takes me through most of downtown Frederick, then there's the very interesting and quiet break of the cemetary itself, and then it's back through the bustling metropolis to get home. It's about 2.5 miles around the circumference of the cemetary I think- it sort of seems like an endless field of graves. It's very interesting what people put on the stones- at the enterence are the older graves, all worn, mournful-looking angels and very few words (usually just names but sometimes something like "resting in the Lord") and the occasional union soldier. The graves get more recent as you go futher in, and they become that unattractive polished stone with the edges artificially roughly hewn. Here the imagery and text are much more focused on this world than the next- people have pictures of their farms, their tractors, their yappy-looking little dogs, the Frederick Keys Baseball diamond, themselves- often in full color. When there are angels they are gaudy or fairy-like. There are sometimes heart-breakingly-awful poems. Couples' graves almost always say "together forever." Lots of these graves only have a birthdate and are not yet filled. I wonder if people go visit their own graves- clearly they've thought a lot about them. It reminds me of when my grandparents, when they were driving through Mississippi one time, went to see the plots they'd bought for themselves, and my grandfather made my grandmother take pictures of him popping up from behind the gravestone and such. Anyway, when the path is circling back toward the entrance you pass a long stretch of unidentified Confederate soldiers, tiny little stones like teeth sticking up. Some historical group put up new stones in front of them a few years ago, since you couldn't read the old ones anymore. They just have the ranks on them, and someone goes by and puts up fresh Confederate flags every once in a while. I think it's overflow from Gettysburg.

Still haven't started work on my paper. Tonight.

Edit: I forgot to mention the super-creepy section on the cemetary called "Babyland." Also, I just looked at the weather in Middlebury and I see that it's pleasantly cool there. I bet it will get hot just when I get there. Also, I am now officially at a loss for things to do. Saving up for the excitement when my grandfather and Mary come next week. Oojas.