Up on Spring Hill

It's another picture perfect Spring day, and I decided to go up to the Spring Hill Cemetery, just up the street and around the corner from me, as I hadn't been up for a visit in a while. It was definitely a nice walk.

Part of a large patch of Periwinkle along the south border of the cemetery

Looking across Shippensburg to South Mountain from the cemetery

A scenic section of the Spring Hill Cemetery

An interesting bit of carving on one of the stones

Looking toward South Mountain from the middle of the cemetery

This Mockingbird sang me out of the cemetery

© 2020 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Tucked Away

A couple of years ago I stumbled across a little family cemetery in the middle of a cornfield out in the farming country between Shippensburg and Newville, not far from the Rail Trail. I went back last Wednesday to get some better shots than I got when I first found the place; here they are.

The Smith family plot on Smithdale Road, smack in the middle of a corn field

A well-carved stone

An interesting stone. Unfortunately the first name is weathered beyond legibility

The farm across the road from the cemetery

And finally, on the Rail Trail heading home

© 2019 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Samhain 2018

It's Samhain time, when Autumn begins to fade toward Winter, and the spirits come to visit the physical world. This was the old Celtic New Year, a celebration of those who have passed on, a celebration of the last of the harvest; in general, a celebration of the glories of Autumn. It was eventually appropriated by the Church and "christianized" to become All Hallows Eve (Halloween). All Saints Day, and All Souls Day. And it's still a celebration of the best that is Autumn. I've posted about this in more detail; to read more just type Samhain in the search box at the top left of this page. For this year, I thought I'd just post some of my favorites among the seasonal photos I've taken through the years. And after you've looked at them I'll hook you up with some of my favorite seasonal music.

Clifton Burying Ground, Newport, RI

A trail in Miantonomi Park in Newport, RI

A pair of Mallards on Gooseneck Cove in Newport, RI

Extravagance - Ginkgo leaves on King St. in Shippensburg, PA

Autumnal reflections on the north duck pond in Dykeman Spring Nature Park, Shippensburg, PA

South Mountain from Black Gap Rd., Chambersburg, PA

Spring Hill Cemetery in Shippensburg, PA, with South Mountain in the background

I've created a YouTube playlist of videos of some of my favorite music for the Samhain/Halloween season; click here to check it out. But before you click, here's a list of what you'll find:

1. Camille Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre in an animation from PBS back in the 1980s. This has become one of my seasonal favorites.

2. All Souls Night, Loreena McKennitt's musical bridge between Samhain and All Souls, another of the songs I listen to this time of year.

3. A-Souling by the now-defunct New Zealand group Lothlorien. Soul cakes and souling (begging for said cakes from house to house) were originally a Samhain and early Halloween tradition before drifting over to Christmas. This tradition transformed into trick-or-treating.

4. Into the West by Howard Shore and Fran Walsh for the soundtrack of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King movie, and performed by Annie Lennox. This is a beautiful setting of  Gandalf's description of death as sailing into the afterlife in Tolkien's mythology, and a perfect fit for the theme of Samhain.

5. Tam Lin by Fairport Convention. Tam Lin is one of a collection of old ballads from the British Isles about less-than-savory characters luring innocents into the scarier corners of the afterlife.

6. Thomas the Rhymer, another of those old ballads, this one performed by Steeleye Span .

7. Now we hop over to Halloween, with I Put a Spell On You, a hit for Screamin' Jay Hawkins back in the '50s. But I have a particular fondness for this cover version by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

8. The Monster Mash by Bobby Pickett, a comic Halloween favorite.

9. The original video for Michael Jackson's Thriller, which was actually a short film by John Landis as a tribute to those old, cheesy horror films of the '50s and early '60s. I've never been a big fan of MJ, but this video produced by him and John Landis and Quincy Jones is a classic.

10. Beetlejuice is one of the best of the Halloween comedies, and this scene set to Harry Belafonte's Banana Boat Song has got to be one of the funniest and most fun scene of all time.

11. And last but not least, Time Warp from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. What a hoot!

Enjoy!

© 2018 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Worn and Stained - The Beauty of Old Stone

I've been photographing old gravestones ever since I discovered photography as my art. There's an austere beauty to the work of the 17th, 18th, and 19th century stone carvers which attracted me right from the start. To this point I've been photographing these stones as a means of documenting them, discovering and identifying styles and carvers, but over the weekend I had something of an epiphany - approached at the macro level, the individual elements provide a focus of their own, especially with the patina and wear of the ages. So I went up to Spring Hill Cemetery this morning with my camera set to macro function and set on black & white to capture the beauty of old carved stone - worn, weather-stained, and dotted with lichen. This is beauty carved out of the bones of the earth and painted with time by Mama Gaia, and it made my heart soar to search out and capture these gems!

© 2018 by A. Roy Hilbinger 

It's Been a While

I haven't visited the Spring Hill Cemetery in a while, so I went up there this morning. I've taken a lot of pictures there, so today I went for an aimless ramble and waited for something to catch my eye. And what did grab my attention were two graves for infants and an excellent example of Art Deco carving. The infant graves were similar in shape but different in carving, and that leaves me to believe that a granite cube topped with a lamb was the area standard for infant deaths. The gravestone for Alonza, Maudie, and Jessie, children of George and Emma Wallace is considerably older than that of C. Gregory Ott, which is dated 1951. The Wallace stone is considerably older, given the wear and the style of lettering; plus the only references to a George and Emma Wallace I could find in the public record pointed to the 1890s, which fits with the lettering style. But the similarity of the style of the stones themselves suggests that this was a standard template for children's graves. And I chose George W. Cramer's stone because of the Art Deco design and lettering style; I'm such a sucker for Art Deco!

© 2017 by A. Roy Hilbinger 

Samhain, the Original Halloween

[Note: This is a re-post from 2009. It's my best essay on Samhain, so I figured I bring it out again this year.]

Samhain (pronounced SAH-wen) was the Celtic New Year, signifying the end of the growing season and the "death" of the earth until it would be reborn in the Spring. Death as a natural part of the cycle of life is the central theme of Samhain and is at the root of all the symbolism in the holiday. The celebration of Samhain was such a major part of culture in the British Isles and parts of northern Europe that the Church appropriated and "Christianized" it, thus creating All Hallows Eve, which with the passage of time became "Halloween". With the reemergence of ecologically inclined earth-based spirituality, Samhain has been gradually coming back to some importance. And yes, I'm one of those people who celebrates Samhain rather than Halloween.

As I said above, Samhain is all about the recognition of death as a natural part of the cycle of life. Seasonally, it represents the "death" of the earth. The final harvest of the last of the crops - mostly gourds and root crops like beets and turnips - took place now. Many of the fruits set to dry to last the Winter - raisins and sultanas from grapes, figs, prunes from plums, etc. - are ready now, and many baked goods that use these are baked, like barmbrack (Irish: Báirín Breac), which is a Halloween staple in Ireland, where symbolic objects like pennies and rings are baked in the bread for children to find as prizes. Livestock is also slaughtered now to provide meat for the Winter and to thin out the herd so that it, too, can survive the "dead" months.

Another aspect of the death theme of Samhain is the belief that the border between the physical and spiritual worlds is at its weakest now. This has both positive and negative aspects. The negative aspect is the possibility that spirits with evil intent can roam the world of the living at will and spread panic. The tradition of carving gourds (although it was originally turnips that were hollowed out and carved) with diabolical faces and lit from within by candles came from this; the intent was to scare off the evil spirits.

The positive aspect of this weakened border is the possibility of communication with loved ones who have passed on. Seances are often held during Samhain, and tributes to those who have passed during the preceding year. The most beloved of these tributes is the Dumb Feast or Dumb Supper, where the table is set for both the living and the dead, with pictures and personal objects of the deceased placed at their place at the table, and the favorite foods of the deceased served at the meal. The meal is eaten in silence, which is only broken at the end of the meal when a toast is made to the deceased and stories from their lives told. The meal starts out solemnly and ends up in joy.

I love Samhain, possibly because I also love Autumn and Samhain is the very essence of an autumnal celebration. You all know my fascination with cemeteries and stonecarving, and it's usually around Samhain that I do a lot of visiting and taking pictures in historic boneyards. All in all, it's a lovely season for me, and a nostalgic one, too.

© 2009 by A. Roy Hilbinger 

Walking in Spring Hill Cemetery

While checking my overnight email and catching up on all things Internet this morning I decided that I hadn't been over to Spring Hill Cemetery in a while. And since we don't have any Spring color yet and today was looking overcast and gloomy, I decided to stay in yesterday's black & white mode. So after all was done. I put on my boots and my coat and hat and headed out the door.

And got a surprise. It seems we got a dusting of snow overnight, and there were still some drifting flakes in the air. When I'd gone into the kitchen to get breakfast together it had still been dark, and I hadn't been near an uncovered window since then, so I'd had no clue. But not to worry, it just added to the mood that made b&w perfect for today's shoot.

I focused on general shots rather than on individual gravestones, plus views of the mountains from the cemetery, both Blue Mountain to the north (the second shot below) and South Mountain (the other two mountain shots). All in all I'm pleased with today's shoot; it captures the mood of the day perfectly. Enjoy!

© 2015 by A. Roy Hilbinger 

Woohoo! First Snow of the Season!

Well, we're getting our first snow of the season. It's a heavy, wet snow and it's slushy on the roads and sidewalks, but otherwise it's very scenic. I walked around downtown while my laundry dried, and then later took a walk in the Dykeman Spring Nature Park looking at the lace the snow turned the bare branches into. Come with me.

God's Acre cemetery on Prince St.

Prince St. and Martin Ave.

Branch Creek at King St.

The boardwalk on the Dykeman Walking Trail

The Dykeman Spring wetland in the snow

The red bridge over the creek in the wetland

Branch Creek between the ball fields

© 2014 by A. Roy Hilbinger 

Samhain 2014

It's Samhain (SAH-wen) time again (actually, it's tomorrow, but I'll be at work, so I'm posting a day early). This is the old Celtic New Year, celebrating the last of the harvest and settling in for the "death" of the Earth in Winter, waiting for life to return in the Spring. It was a time when it was believed that the veil between this life and the afterlife was thin, and the dead could cross over and speak to the living. So it's a time for remembering those who have passed on, memorializing the ancestors and the recently departed. It's a somber time yet it's also a joyous time, celebrating the lives of our loved ones. It was appropriated and "Christianized" by the Church in the early days, turned into a holiday to celebrate the lives of the saints; it was called All Saints Day, or All Hallows Day, and the night before was called All Hallows Eve, which is now called Halloween. You can read my full essay on this here.

My favorite image for Samhain is a gravestone with Fall foliage. I decided to take a new one this year.

Samhain is also about the last harvest and getting ready for the onset of Winter. Mr. Squirrel knows all about that!

And of course Samhain happens at a time when Mama Gaia is at her most colorful, so we celebrate the holiday with the appropriate colors.

I missed it last year, so this year I've decided to go back to celebrating Samhain with two favorite videos appropriate to the holiday. First is the gorgeous PBS special animation of Camille Saint-Saëns' "Danse Macabre".

The other video is Loreena McKennett's "All Souls Night", a favorite of mine for years now, and I don't know what I was thinking not to post it last year. Here it is again.

A Blessed Samhain and a Happy Halloween to all!

© 2014 by A. Roy Hilbinger 

Around Town

I have today off, but it's just a single, so I've been running around town on errands. These are some shots taken while doing so; as you can see, Spring is marching right along!

Dandelions brighten up God's Acre cemetery

McLean House

The creek-side cottage behind McLean House

Dogwood blossoms along King St.

A female Cardinal at my feeder

© 2014 by A. Roy Hilbinger