I'm giving a cemetery talk April 21! "Before the San Francisco Public Library, Asian Art Museum and UN Plaza rose in the heart of San Francisco, this area was home to San Francisco’s first city-run burial ground, Yerba Buena Cemetery. Join journalist Beth Winegarner, historian Woody LaBounty and cemetery researcher Alex Ryder as they reveal the history of this Gold Rush graveyard and the burials that remain beneath our feet."
Register here: https://sfpl-org.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_4uZZ1w4kRSimXDwL2SZGsQ#/registration
So I was recently looking up info on the indigenous people's name for Islais creek, and it turns out they called it "slay" or "islay," which comes from their word for the holly-leaf cherries that grew along it. This seems to solve the riddle of how to pronounce the name. Is-lay or I-slay.
By the mid-19th Century it was illegal to advertise abortion services directly and "astrologer" was one of the code words that abortionists would use. I can't tell if the newspaper knew this (you'd think so). SF, 1871.
You could hardly find a more on-brand October event: Me, Amy Shea and @morbidloren at the SF Columbarium on Oct. 16. Registration link below!
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-book-tour-of-cemeteries-tickets-1633080851789?aff=oddtdtcreator
I came across my .sig file from sometime in 2001, and I'm back to being more like this person than I've been in a long time.
How about a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke? I just finished an essay and used a line from this piece for the title.
1894, San Francisco, the rantings of San Francisco City Physician J. W. Keeney:
I've been researching the town of Bethany (Al-Eizariya) in Palestine, for which I'm named. I looked at Google Street View images of the area between Jerusalem and Al-Eizariya and discovered this large border wall with spray-painted messages on it. Just look at it.
