Marvin Finn's Grave

The Kentucky folk artist Marvin Finn, known for his primitive woodcarved chickens, has a suitably beaky headstone on his grave in Louisville Cemetary; presumably designed himself.

Swastika Grave

Although the appearance of a swastika on a gravestone may seem surprising to some, the swastika is actually an ancient mystical symbol that predates its unfortunate appropriation by the Nazis by many centuries. It's still used with its original pre-modern connotations in Buddhism, Raelism, Jainism, and other world religions.

Graves of the Periphery

When visiting a cemetery, I always make a beeline for the outer edges, the fringes, the periphery of the property. As often as not, I find "lost" graves that have gradually been forgotten by all.

It usually starts when foliage on the edge of a cemetery is allowed to begin to overtake graves nearby. At first whoever mows the cemetery is aware of these graves, but they lazily stop mowing around them because of the overgrowth. Years later, someone else is mowing the cemetery and doesn't realize the graves are there. Decades pass and they end up becoming completely obscured as the woods and shrubbery move the outer border of the graveyard inward by several feet.

I estimate that in the last decade, I've rediscovered 200-300 "lost" graves in Kentucky cemeteries. They may have been listed in the cemetery records (or they may have not if the lists were compiled after the graves were covered up) but they were completely invisible. From the looks of them, many had not seen the light of day since before my lifetime.

For example, today in the historic old Louisville Cemetery I was puttering around the far corners and came upon this grave marker well on its way to being lost. Covered in leaves and debris that's been piled up on it and around it, only a corner peeked out. This area has increasingly become part of the wooded edge, rather than the cemetery proper. But there's a grave here, and deserves better treatment than this.



It's a fascinating marker, actually: mailbox letters are used to spell out the name, and some sort of ink drawing seems to be encased under glass but has faded to an ethereal pale blue with time.

Sylvester Weaver

Born in 1897 in Jefferson County, Sylvester Weaver was one of the greatest and most creative early Blues guitarists, with a jaunty, unpredictable, brittle style (predating the quirkiness of Tom Waits guitarist Marc Ribot) on songs like the immortal and truly bizarre "Me and My Tapeworm," which should be required listening for any students of real American music.

At the peak of his career, he abruptly quit the music business and moved back home to Kentucky, leaving a short recording legacy that spanned only from 1923 to 1927. When the blues revival occurred in the 50s and all the old guard were seeing new fame, Weaver stayed home and preferred to remain obscure.

He was buried without a proper headstone in the Louisville Cemetery in 1960, but funds for one were raised by the Kentuckiana Blues Society in 1992.