Saturday, August 25, 2007
The weather seemed pretty crummy today, so we decided to give the mountains a miss. Tim wanted to visit a few cemeteries, as one of his photography groups is having a Graveyard theme contest. That was okay by me, as I quite like strolling amidst the tombstones and imagining what sort of lives some of the folks underneath them had.
Three Seattle Icons
Princess Angeline - Lakeview Cemetery

Photo credit: Seattle Times.

When we'd visited Lakeview Cemetery recently, we were unaware that it held the grave of Princess Angeline, oldest daughter of Chief Sealth, otherwise known as Chief Seattle.

"The eldest daughter of Seattle and his first wife, she was named Kikisoblu Seattle.

When pioneer Catherine Maynard (1816-1906) heard the name, she announced, "You are too good-looking a woman to carry around such a name as that, and I now christen you Angeline."

Angeline worked as a laundress for Seattle residents and eventually came to reside in a shack on the waterfront along with other Native Americans.

At her request, she was buried near her old friend, pioneer Henry Yesler (1810-1892) in Lake View Cemetery.
from HistoryLink.org


photo credit: University of Washington Library


The Denny Family - Lakeview Cemetery

Also buried at Lakeview Cemetery are many of the Denny family. "The city founders who landed at Alki Point 150 years ago completed their demanding journey thanks to the hard work and physical suffering of one young man, David Denny. " begins an article in the Seattle PI [link]


photo credit: Seattle Historical Society

I can only imagine how rough the trip must have been. One article quoted 'some of the party's women responded to the wet, unfamiliar landscape by weeping.' and another said 'It was a gloomy rainy time and the prospect for comfort was so poor that the women sat down on a log on the beach and wept bitter tears of discouragement.'

But the settlers persevered, and Seattle was born..


Kurt Cobain - Viretta Park

Whassup with this grungy looking old park bench?

That's what we wondered, as we'd been driving around looking for the Kurt Cobain Memorial Bench in Viretta Park.

Lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter of the Seattle-based rock band Nirvana, he died by his own hand in 1994. I dunno, somehow I expected a memorial marker of some sort for this well-known musician.

It's an unofficial memorial site, apparently, just an old bench covered with graffiti. Somehow it fits.


photo credit: unknown


Déjà Vu

Recognize this? As we headed towards Lakeview Cemetery, we decided to drive through Volunteer Park again.

This time I managed to get a picture of the Space Needle through the Black Sun sculpture.

The lighting conditions were unbelievably different today, and I loved watching the beautiful Koi in the ponds.

It was almost as if they were performing an Underwater Ballet just for us.
Here's the reason we came back to Volunteer Park. Last week we didn't realize that an allegedly fantastic view could be seen from the observation deck of the Water Tower.

Tim counted the steps of the first flight and multiplied by the 3 flights, telling me that there were 105 stairs.

I dunno. Felt more like 501 steps to me. :)



Sure enough, despite the fact that we had to try to poke our camera lenses through little gaps in the chain link over the windows, the views were spectacular, even on a cloudy day.

I bet on a clear day you can see forever. ;-)

While Tim was off in search of the Perfect Graveyard Picture, I wandered among the headstones.

I wondered whatever happened to Mother on the left of this one. There was no umm death date, yet she would be 127 if she still lived.
Some of the headstones were quite new, such as this one with the words to a song written by a relative.
Others made me feel a little bit sad. When I looked at this one, I remembered the incident mentioned on the stone.
It was Alaska flight 261 which, crashed into the ocean off California after a terrifying nosedive.
This stone made me curious too, after I read the inscription.
Sounds as if they must have had a pretty miserable life, doesn't it? And now it's immortalized.
And lastly, this one was simplicity personified.

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