For some reason, this small, rural cemetery was once known as “Paddy Lincoln Cemetery.” Now it’s just “West Cemetery.”

Enoch Chamberlain — Revolutionary War soldier (♂) [1]
Capt. Staples Chamberlain — Revolutionary War soldier (♂) [1]
Enoch Chamberlain (♂ - †1841 Æ63) [1]
Mrs. Submit, Wife of Enoch Chamberlain (♀ - †1831 Æ84)
Appleton Adams — Co. D 1st […]

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I’ve been reading a lot. That’s the benefit, I guess, of only having one class last semester. And I want to share with you some recommendations.
But before that, here’s a simple request. Currently I’m between books and having a hard time figuring out what to read next. Classes don’t start for […]

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If you can believe it, I once made a serious go at becoming a historian. I wanted to go to history grad school, but I hadn’t taken any coursework as an undergrad. Feeling extremely self-conscious and very far behind, I set out to get caught up. I took classes, first at U.Mass […]

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This is a wonderful, little cemetery just north of Sherborn Centre on Route 27. There are many interesting stones, including a couple unique designs and one of the best urn motifs that I’ve yet seen. (See some of them in the Miscellany.) For a small burying ground — which often indicates […]

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What better way to take advantage of the first beautiful weekend of spring than to go for ice cream after visiting some cemeteries with Lisa? I drive by these smallish cemeteries every Friday evening when I take back roads to avoid the traffic delays on the Masspike, but I’d never visited. Today we […]

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I added a dozen new photographs of headstones and memorial markers to A Miscellany of New England Iconography, a sort of online primer of the styles of 17th - 21st century gravestones.
Today’s additions mostly fit into the existing categories:

Skulls, Angels, and Heads
Urns
Other Hand-carved Things
Modern Graven Images

I’ll keep adding images as I come across really interesting […]

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I have a serious fascination with South and Central Asia. You know, the -stans — Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan — plus Iran and India. This interest is part of my infatuation with the Silk Road, so I also throw in Turkey, the Levant, Mongolia, Tibet, Xinjiang, and eastern China for […]

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This dispatch is a bit of a valediction for me. Since early 2000, I’ve been one of the software engineers on the Image and Scientific Data Formats team at The MathWorks. I’ve learned a lot about an area of technical computing that rarely gets the limelight, which is too bad since file format […]

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One of my colleagues frequently needs relationship advice. We do our best and give generously, but we’re a diverse lot so the quality varies. As for myself, most of what I’ve learned about “going steady” I learned from a short pamphlet from the 1950s that I found in the Kelly Walsh High School […]

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The other day my boss needed a happy thought, so I told him about one of my favorite advertisements. Thanks to YouTube, I can now share it with the whole world.

If you enjoyed that, try the sequel.

And then there’s this gem, which I only saw once on TV. Apparently guinea pigs have a […]

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