I like walking in a cemetary

When I travel, I like to visit cemetaries and take pictures. I'm fascinated by how we memorialize our dead.

The two at the top are from my trip to Scotland in 2003. I think this is in Edinburgh, but I can't remember which cemetary (pretty sure it's the one on the royal mile...). The beauty of stumbling around cemetaries is that you stumble on gems like this...the memorial to Adam Smith. It reads, "Here are deposited the remains of Adam Smith, author of the Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations. He was born 5th June, 1725, and he died 17th July, 1790."

The bottom two are from a cemetary in a small town near Eureka, CA. It was over Memorial Day weekend last year. Memorial Day (once known as decoration day) was originally a day to visit the graves of friends and family and decorate them with flowers and maybe have a picnic. Now it seems that people just go right to the picnic. I was particularly struck by this small marker. It's a typical marker for a veteran, but this one seemed so much more lonely - and I realized, from the inscription, that it was a civil war veteran - pretty rare for a CA grave yard. It reads, "C. W. Gill, Co. A, 1st Cal, Volunteers."