Greenwood

It was overcast most of today and looked like rain. Perhaps it was the mild temperatures or clouds massing over the Harbor but I kept having the feeling of being in a lake cottage, the morning after a storm.

As part of a task to fulfil a Brownie badge about learning from the past, Stacy, Logan and I accompanied Carly to Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. It was beautiful and still and peaceful, and the only sounds (besides the kids) were birds in the tall trees.

I learned that Greenwood is the nation's third largest cemetery, as well as the information below:

"...Founded in 1838 as one of America’s first rural cemeteries, the Green-Wood Cemetery soon developed an international reputation for its magnificent beauty and became the fashionable place to be buried. By 1860, Green-Wood was attracting 500,000 visitors a year, rivaling Niagara Falls as the country’s greatest tourist attraction....Green-Wood’s popularity helped inspire the creation of public parks, including New York City’s Central and Prospect Parks. Today Green-Wood is 478 spectacular acres of hills, valleys, glacial ponds and paths, throughout which exists one of the largest outdoor collections of 19th- and 20th-century statuary and mausoleums. Four seasons of beauty from century-and-a-half-old trees offer a peaceful oasis to visitors, as well as its 560,000 permanent residents, including Leonard Bernstein, Boss Tweed, Charles Ebbets, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Horace Greeley, Civil War generals, baseball legends, politicians, artists, entertainers and inventors...."

Stacy and I tried to find Henry Ward Beecher's grave, but we never found it. Here are some photos from our afternoon.

"You and I do not see things as they are. We see things as we are."

- Henry Ward Beecher