Take your children to a cemetary - cougarguard.com — unofficial BYU Cougars / LDS sports, football, basketball forum and message board

SeattleUte · 01-11-2008, 04:00 PM

I like to take my kids to cemetaries. They are catalysts for such wonderful discussions. For example, we have a small military cemetary close to our house, surrounded by woods and the sea. We have walked through it from time to time in their different stages of development, and I have noticed how they approach the place with wonderfully appropriate reverence (my kids tend to be hell raisers). They are always eager to go there.

Last time I was there with the 7 year old we talked about the symbolism of the cross, the various wars, mathematics (as he puzzled through the dates), and of course death and the cosmos. There are graves of an Italian POW and a German POW who died at the nearby base (now mostly state park, and closing, about to be wound up). The Italian was lynched in a locally infamous event, and we have discussed that, including that WWII was a lot about our enemies torturing and killing their POW's and Americans treating them decently, this being one of the exceptions. Hence, the Italian has the biggest headstone of all, as we honor his martyrdom.

There is a large cemetary on Capital Hill (Seattle) that seems to be a favored resting place for wealthy immigrants and their descendants. It is teeming with buddist shrines, Russian Orthodox crosses, and so on. There are graves dating back to the mid-19th century, and Confederate and Union civil war veterans interred. There are actually family mausoleums with Classical motifs and huge monuments for individual graves. I like to take them there in the summers.

Try it sometime. It's a nice contrast to Chuck-E-Cheeze's.

01-11-2008, 04:00 PM	#1
SeattleUte fairlds.org Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Seattle, WA Posts: 10,665	Take your children to a cemetary I like to take my kids to cemetaries. They are catalysts for such wonderful discussions. For example, we have a small military cemetary close to our house, surrounded by woods and the sea. We have walked through it from time to time in their different stages of development, and I have noticed how they approach the place with wonderfully appropriate reverence (my kids tend to be hell raisers). They are always eager to go there. Last time I was there with the 7 year old we talked about the symbolism of the cross, the various wars, mathematics (as he puzzled through the dates), and of course death and the cosmos. There are graves of an Italian POW and a German POW who died at the nearby base (now mostly state park, and closing, about to be wound up). The Italian was lynched in a locally infamous event, and we have discussed that, including that WWII was a lot about our enemies torturing and killing their POW's and Americans treating them decently, this being one of the exceptions. Hence, the Italian has the biggest headstone of all, as we honor his martyrdom. There is a large cemetary on Capital Hill (Seattle) that seems to be a favored resting place for wealthy immigrants and their descendants. It is teeming with buddist shrines, Russian Orthodox crosses, and so on. There are graves dating back to the mid-19th century, and Confederate and Union civil war veterans interred. There are actually family mausoleums with Classical motifs and huge monuments for individual graves. I like to take them there in the summers. Try it sometime. It's a nice contrast to Chuck-E-Cheeze's. __________________ Interrupt all you like. We're involved in a complicated story here, and not everything is quite what it seems to be. —Paul Auster Last edited by SeattleUte; 01-11-2008 at 04:08 PM.