Posts Tagged ‘tess conrad’

I’ve been combing Lafayette No 1 looking for a particular tomb for a researcher, doing just a little at a time because…well, because it’s summer in New Orleans, which means it’s insanely hot. You have to pace yourself, so I stay through 1 bottle of frozen water. I know, that’s not a typical measurement of time, but it takes about an hour and a half for the bottle to go from frozen to evaporated- long enough to be productive, short enough to leave you standing.

Normally, that would give me enough time to cover a lot of ground, but there have been a surprising number of visitors*, and when I hear them wondering aloud what this-or-that is, I fill them in. Often it becomes a sort of mini tour, so there’s less tomb searching and more talking. I go back the next day, carve out another area, and set to it. I don’t mind – I enjoy chatting with everybody, and it’s been a lot of fun to find out how interested people are.

So it’s great. But it’s still hot, and I’m a girl who likes her A/C. So when I moped around the corner clutching desperately to my few droplets of water and saw this guy, an ancient aphorism came to mind…

I once cried because I had no shoes, then I met a man with no feet.

This is a job I really wouldn’t want:

Hot? Merciless? I can’t imagine what it must be like to be up there all day long in the direct sun. Plus, doesn’t that look like an exterminator’s canister he has up there? Eeek. Doesn’t bear thinking about.

Walking around chit-chatting while trying to stay under the shade of the tree canopy suddenly seems like an absolute walk in the park…which, come to think of it, it sort of is.

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*Typically the only people looking to task walking tours in July/Aug are either masochists or they enjoy a full time sauna. If you’re a fan of drinking your oxygen, August in New Orleans is for you.

Well, the very bare bones of the database is up, anyway.

The Database tab is no longer marked “Coming soon,” instead linking to a searchable .pdf that will be slowly built up to include the thousands of cemetery photos I’ve taken over the years. Currently, it’s far from thousands- only 279 interred in 100 tombs. But it’s a start.

Currently it links to photos of the tombs on flickr, but the database is actually set up to include tomb styles, details, ironwork, inscriptions, etc, so ultimately there will be several different searchable reports up. For now, though, I wanted the basics to be there and see if anyone reported problems.

Click here to access the database, and I hope it’s useful!

The inscription reads:

Wife of W.H. Muir
A native of Malvern England
Died October 15, 1889
Aged 63 years

A MODEL WIFE.