DAY 48 11/01/2012 What Next

My optimism has me wondering; What next?  We planned to follow fall down the Eastern Appalachians…you know, Skyline Drive, Blue Ridge Parkway to NC, TN etc.  Well Fall is passing us in our standstill.  Still we’ll venture that way to Bob and Jo in NC, Zealen in Deland, FL into the Gulf and towards TX to see Jean-Philippe.  I realize that someone out there, (maybe you?) has great suggestions of places we should see along the way.  (We are nearly afraid to visit the Coastal areas recovering after the storm).

One of our strategies remains that each day we ask one of the local People we meet: “Where should we go tomorrow?”

–David

What next?

Hi, it’s Jane. I forgot to include an interesting photo that we took yesterday. I didn’t think it needed a whole blog post of it’s own so I glommed onto David’s post.

We found this tombstone in the Colonel Jacob Rutsen Ground. It’s a tiny, abandoned cemetery in Rosendale. We saw the term “Consort” describing Margaret and wondered. What was the term “consort” doing on a 17th-century grave in New England? We moderns think of the term as something vaguely racy.

But, as it turns out (from my quick and limited “research” online) that Margaret and James were married. Referring to Margaret as his consort, appears to be, for the bereaved James, an affectionate way to refer to his wife forevermore.

Margaret was buried next to her son, Franklin, who died at age 4.

The poem at the bottom reads:

“Soft are the mercies of the just

While angels watch their sleeping dust

Death is to them in mercy given

The tomb is but the gate of heaven”

– Jane