God's Acre

Diane's been reading my blog for years, and she knows what makes my canary chirp. Big trees, great architecture, old and venerable things...The grand destination of our Friday afternoon walk was an ancient (well, for America) burying ground on the campus of Moravian Academy that's known as God's Acre. Moravians (from the easternmost part of the Czech Republic) came to America in the mid 1700's thanks to religious persecution at home, and they set up a peaceful community in eastern Pennsylvania that honored everyone no matter the color of their skin. 

This is reflected in the headstones. None are bigger or more ostentatious than others, and all are flush with the earth.

I'm thinking the Little Strength is a ship. Gee. Not many of these good people are making it out of their 40's. It must have been incredibly rough.

 One year-old Thomas Otto Braun gets the same treatment 

as 12-year-old Benigna Antes. Smallpox. How awful. I marveled that her marble stone was as crisp and readable as if it had been carved yesterday, instead of 224 years earlier.

I kind of fall into headstones when I start reading them. I absolutely love the font used on Sarah Iselstein's stone. Wow, wow, wow. There's something so 2014 about it. It's absolutely alive, antic. Might have to steal that font for a project. I'd call it Saccona.

The cemetery makes for a beautiful parklike space, albeit a kind of trippy one (in more ways than one!)

The Moravians established more than 30 settlements around the world on the "Herrnhut model," which, according to Wiki,  "emphasized a lifestyle of prayer and worship and a form of communal living in which personal property was held but simplicity of lifestyle and generosity with wealth were considered important spiritual attributes. As a result, divisions between social groups and extremes of wealth and poverty were largely eliminated." Moravians believed in universal education, for men and women, for people of color too. 

This one arrested me. It's doubtful that a mixed-race person would have received a place in many cemeteries at this time, in any other spot but here in this Moravian community. I bet she was beautiful, at 15.

Each stone I study starts a train of reflection, a set of mind perfectly in tune with walking, hands behind back, reading stone after stone, wondering about each one. I surface with difficulty from my reverie and am surprised to see people driving cars and walking about, noses down, poking away at their phone screens. I blink at them like a traveler from another time, set down in 2014.

Looking at Pennsylvania

Bethlehem and Kunkletown, Pennsylvania are very beautiful towns. Although I've been to mainland Europe only for the briefest time, and that was Holland, I can't help but feel I'm being transported back to my ancestral Germany with the gorgeous architecture and lush plantings. 

An allee of hydrangeas. Really! An Italian villa, plopped down against the Kittatinny Ridge.

And yet a fieldstone house is so uniquely Pennsylvanian, and I celebrated that fact every time I went for a walk. My dad was so enamored of Pennyslvania's fieldstone houses. I remember as a kid wondering what the big deal was, what a house was made of. Now I get it. Local stone that nobody else has. And so beautiful. I'm so thankful to have been raised by parents who sought out and appreciated what was special about each corner of the America they knew. Dad, Mom, it sank in.

A John Deerey bit of Americana. I couldn't resist.

More Europe in Bethlehem, but with New England asters. 

Diane Husic and I went on a little tree safari around the campus of Moravian College, where she is Professor and Chair of Biological Sciences. This oak rang a distant bell, but I don't get to see many of them, so I held out a leaf and used Diane for scale against its magnificent trunk and rectangular chunky bark so I could check my Sibley Tree Guide when I got home.  It turns out to be a burr oak, which my dad always called "Vanguard of the Forest" because it was the first one to grow on the prairie. Sigh. Glad I remember all this stuff. Or maybe he's whispering in my ear. This photo makes me smile. iPhone as Naturalist's Companion. Note to self: identify this oak. Tiny Diane perched on my hand like a parakeet in her chicory-blue sweater. I had a parakeet named Bing. Chicory blue he was.

Diane showed me a fern garden growing in a London plane tree (sycamore, Platanus x acerifolia). Those little fern spores can blow around and land about anywhere. Moravian College's campus is absolutely loaded with plane trees, which glow golden in fall light. Their bark is distinctly yellower than our native sycamore's.

Ahh, I could look at their bark for hours. 

There are so many pictures in it.

Moan. These trees are such extravagant beauties, such a lovely choice for streets and campuses. Magical.

 We walked toward Moravian Academy, where soon-to-be-world-famous naturalist Corey Husic had his start. It was all so beautiful, so surreal, so very different from my low-slung brick elementary school, baking in a field next to a strip of loblolly pines in Richmond, Virginia.

 Diane showed me the building where I'd lead a creative writing class that morning. Wow. It was so...Harry Potter.

Out on Main Street, a duplex that made me laugh out loud. A schizophrenic house. Yes, we are joined at the awning and roof, and have had to live as Siamese twins for decades. But don't for a moment think we are ANYTHING alike. Hodge, baby, this one's for you.

I was also amused to note how thoroughly the birds had enjoyed this urban American Poke's fruit.

Stripped nekkid, it is. A fine bird food, makes for lovely purple poops to swoop down and put on cars. I tell anyone who will listen that American Poke is valued as a specimen plant in fine English gardens. And in not-so-fine Ohio gardens as well. I do pull it out of the main border when it tries to start, as it has a little problem with scale. It leans toward gigantism, then it leans toward the ground and flops all over smaller, weaker plants.

Just a few things I noticed and enjoyed on my Pennsylvania strolls.