My friend Diana was kind enough to go to Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum in Cincinnati and pick up their 2011 calendar. (The calendar is free, but a $5 donation is suggested. I need to drop a check in the mail to them.) The concept behind the calendar was kind of interesting – the photographs were chosen from a competition pool created by the cemetery’s Facebook fans. A lot of the photos are visually well-composed and striking.
On the other hand, the overall effect is more like a calendar of photographs that just happened to be taken in a cemetery rather than a calendar about the cemetery. Monuments are rather static or at least very slow to erode, so the decision about which photos to include for which months seemed motivated more by what was happening with the grounds around the monuments – the photos for the winter months feature snow and ice, spring and summer have explosions of floral blossoms, and fall has the dramatic reds, oranges and yellows of changing leaves. In some photos, you almost can’t tell you are looking at a cemetery.
The calendar does include dates of planned events for the whole year, which would be great for a cemetery enthusiast in the local area. I don’t know if I will make a special trip down to southwest Ohio just for one of those events but who knows?
thanks for the kudos on the calendar, Ashley! I shall pass them along to our marketing director, Debbie Budke, who spearheaded the calendar project.
We’re gearing up for an exciting 2011 tour season and have some new tours that you may be interested in so make sure to check our website, http://www.springgrove.org, for the 2011 tours and events calendar. We just sent the new calendar of events to the printer and it should be on the website soon.
regards,
Phil Nuxhall
Historian and Docent Trainer for the Spring Grove Heritage Foundation
Thank you for visiting! I certainly want to make it to Spring Grove again this year – we had a lovely first visit in early December.