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What's New at Arcadia

Historic Burial Grounds of the New Hampshire Seacoast By Glenn A. Knoblock

Arcadia Publishing has releases a new title in the Images of America series, the historic account of the cemeteries along the New Hampshire Seacoast. This collection is a must for anyone interested in local history, genealogy, or colonial-era art. Please visit Arcadia Publishing to purchase your copy of Historic Burial Grounds of the New Hampshire Seacoast and browse other cemetery books!

Green-Wood Cemetery By Alexandra Mosca

Arcadia Publishing announces the release of the historic account of one of New York's most famous cemeteries. Aracdia Publishing's Images of America series has an extensive catalog of many cemetery publications! Please visit Arcadia Publishing to purchase your copy of Green-Wood Cemetery.

Announcements

Quoting Death in Early Modern England: The Poetics of Epitaphs Beyond the Tomb By Scott L. Newstok

An innovative study of the Renaissance practice of making epitaphic gestures within other English genres. A poetics of quotation uncovers the ways in which writers including Shakespeare, Marlowe, Holinshed, Sidney, Jonson, Donne, and Elizabeth I have recited these texts within new contexts. Visit Palgrave Macmillan and purchase your copy today!

Living by the Dead By Ellen Ashdown with illustrations by Mary Liz Moody.

A memoir about living beside a cemetery--and about the members of my family who came to rest at Roselawn Cemetery in Tallahassee, Florida. Please visit Kitsune Books for more information.

Graveyards of Chicago: The People, History, Art, and Lore of Cook County Cemeteries By Matt Hucke And Ursula Bielski.

Discover a Chicago That Exists Just Beneath the Surface - About Six Feet Under! Take a tour of Chicago's permanent residents! Please visit the Lake Claremont Press website to purchase your copy of Graveyards of Chicago today!

Epitaphs: The Magazine for Cemetery Lovers By Cemetery Lovers

For information regarding subscriptions, single issues, submission guidelines, deadlines, classifieds or advertising for future issues, please visit The Cemetery Club.

Guardians of the Soul: Angels and Innocents, Mourners and Saints with photography by John Bower and foreword by Claude Cookman

Indiana's remarkable cemetery sculpture is now available. Please visit Studio Indiana for more information.

West Springfield Massachusetts: Stories Carved in Stone by Rusty Clark

Features information on early New England gravestone carvers with more than two hundred photos and illustrations. Please visit the Dog Pond Press website.

Stone carver feels honored to work on Reagans tomb PDF Print E-mail
Written by DeadGirl   
Friday, 11 June 2004
June 11, 2004

The artisan uses simple tools to inscribe walls at final resting spot

DARYL KELLEY

The morning after Ronald Reagan died, 82-year-old stone carver Nathen Blackwell got a wake-up call from the presidential library near Simi Valley, Calif. Library officials were scrambling to prepare the hilltop burial site personally chosen by the nation's 40th president as his final resting place. They wanted to know how to replace a discolored bronze presidential seal mounted on a limestone wall with a black granite one Blackwell had carved.

"They wanted it up by Friday," said Blackwell, an English-born craftsman who lives in Ventura, Calif., and who has painstakingly cut large letters into the stone walls of the presidential library for years. "This seal will not color or change for 10,000 years. I guarantee it."

Sunday's task was the first in a series of assignments the stone carver expects in coming weeks as he helps complete the Reagan memorial.

"I'm just looking forward to doing this for such an important person," said Blackwell as he held with muscular hands a 3-pound silver-headed hammer with which he executes his most precise cuts. "Ronald Reagan was a wonderful person. I just wish we could have another president like him."

At the top of Blackwell's agenda is the carving of inscriptions on Reagan's headstone, the centerpiece of a 20-foot-wide, horseshoe-shaped memorial site where a crypt will hold the remains of Reagan and eventually his wife, Nancy.

The headstone, a Georgian gray granite, is stored in a library basement and will not be set until after today's burial, Blackwell said. At a minimum, the Reagans' names and dates of their births and deaths will be inscribed on it.

Then, sometime in the future, the curved limestone wall that defines the memorial and blocks the public's view of it, may be encased with a granite of tans and browns to protect against deterioration, said library Executive Director R. Duke Blackwood.

It will require an expert stone carver to inscribe on the new wall the quotation already cut into the old one, an excerpt from Reagan's comments when he opened the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in 1991:

"I know in my heart that man is good

That what is right will always eventually triumph

And there is purpose and worth to each and every life."

http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/local/8894655.htm
 
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