Headstone Restoration 1

By Joe Byrne

I decided, as a Lenten project, that I would restore some of the headstones at St. Peter’s Cemetery. The hardest part was deciding where to start. So many of the headstones here are in need of help.

Rather randomly I chose to start with headstones that are (I think) in the so-called “Potter’s Field” section of the cemetery, on the western perimeter.

This was the first stone I worked with. It’s the headstone of Rachel Moulder, who died and was buried in 1935. The work here consisted of moving and straightening the stone.

Then I attended to a stone nearby.

At first I thought it was just a pediment (the base of the headstone), without a headstone. But then I started digging…

Yes, I had to dig up Joseph Digg’s stone! The amazing thing here is that, even though the stone was buried for who-knows-how-long, the engraved inscription, and the carved designs, have not been worn away.

Here is the gravestone restored.

Here are the two stones together:

Though, in my mind, a grave-site is not restored until there are some flowering plants planted nearby. So I’ll have to come back, with flowers.

Next was the headstone of Charles Lee, also nearby. It was leaning forward at a 45 degree angle, and I suspected there was some important text, helpful in identifying the grave, buried in the ground.

Here is the restored headstone:

In some ways, the stone looked better before I “fixed” it. It’s dirtier now, with dirt continuing to obscure the text that was buried in the ground. But I figured a few rain storms and it would look a lot better. I should go back and take a picture of the headstone in a couple months and post it here.

Final note, the first two headstones had as the year of death 1936, and Charles Lee’s was 1937. So, at least in the “Potter’s Field,” it appears that people were grouped by the year of death.

Headstone Restoration 0

By Joe Byrne

I entitled this entry headstone restoration 0 because I wanted to mention two other efforts at headstone restoration, done last year.

One is the headstone of Raymond Porter. One day a family came into the cemetery looking for Porter’s headstone (he was the grandfather, or great-grandfather). Since it was summer, and we’d had a lot of rain, it was swampy in this section of the cemetery (Section H) and it hadn’t been mowed in a while. That is, any headstone in that section would be hard to find. The family didn’t find the Porter headstone, even though they had a picture from a genealogy web site showing it intact. (Note those seeking graves of relatives in St. Peter’s Cemetery: come in the winter, before the green stuff takes over, which makes parts of the cemetery inaccessible, and makes many gravestones hard to find).

After they left, I did some sleuthing. I found Raymond Porter’s gravestone! It was at the base of a maple tree, with the stone (and inscription) facing the trunk of the tree, surrounded by tall weeds (mugwort). I removed the weeds and turned the stone around so it could be read.

Like the other gravestones, one other step is needed: some nice, native, colorful plants around the headstone.

And now the first headstone at St. Peter’s I ever restored: that of Greta Storm. All I did was level the pediment and place the stone (which was a few fee away, lying flat on the ground), on top of it. I used no cement.

A few weeks after my simple restoration, a leaning locust tree fell upon the gravestone. The un-cemented stone didn’t budge! Pretty good for my first time out.

And the locust tree is still alive! Here is another angle of the headstone holding up the tree, now flowering.

So not only did I restore a headstone, without the use of cement, but I also helped save a tree!

Headstone Restoration 2

By Joe Byrne

Flush with the success of my previous headstone restoration, I went ahead with round 2. I found a headstone in the same line as the others I had restored.

It was the headstone of Emma Carter:

First a quick note on how/why I choose a particular headstone for fixing. My first criteria is the legibility of the inscription. For many of the headstones–particularly those carved of soapstone, limestone, and marble–the inscription has long since been worn away by the elements. That is rarely the case with stones, like this one, made of granite. So granite stones are more likely to get my attention, in regards to restoration, than non-granite stones. In my mind, it doesn’t make sense to spend a couple hours and quite of bit of muscular energy to restore a stone that is blank!

In my previous installment, I showed how I accidentally found a buried headstone that, once unearthed, was remarkably intact (Joseph Digg’s headstone). Well, sometimes you find something underground which is an unpleasant surprise (and I don’t mean skeletons!). Such was the case with Emma Carter’s headstone.

In order to fix the headstone, I had to fix the pediment (the bottom block on which the headstone sits). I did a little digging and tried to use a crow bar. It wouldn’t budge. I dug some more, and then more. That’s when I discovered that underneath the pediment (which was about 2 and half feet tall) was a skirt of cement that went down into the ground another two feet.

Not all pediments have such a skirt. Having one makes it much harder to fix. I’m guessing that a hole was dug, cement was poured into it, and the pediment lowered into the pool of wet cement. If so, they lowered it crooked, so that the headstone had to be placed upon the pediment at an angle (and the ground shifted perhaps). Eventually and inevitably the headstone fell off.

I don’t know if the cement skirt was originally part of the grave. I haven’t dug up enough headstones to know if that’s common or rare. It might have been part of a previous restoration effort. If so, as in some cases, in the name of stability and longevity, the “restoration” made things worse. That is why I am loathe to use cement when I fix headstones. If I set them up straight, and they’re heavy enough, that should be enough. And if they get knocked down, I can pretty easily put them back up. Not so with stone with a crooked pediment set in cement.

That’s why I gave up on Emma Carter’s stone for the moment. I will have to come back and do a lot more digging. In the meantime, I set Emma Carter’s stone upright, nearby.

Memorial Day at Jonah House

Phil Berrigan’s grave in St. Peter’s Cemetery.

Remembering Phil Berrigan on Memorial Day. Phil experienced the horror and futility of war, and spent the rest of his life working for peace, and attempting to end war.

Free the Kings Bay Plowshares 7

Today is the one year anniversary of the Kings Bay Plowshares action. Liz McAlister, a member of Jonah House, along with Fr. Steve Kelly, SJ and Mark Colville, remain incarcerated. The other four members of the group are at large but wearing ankle monitors. After one year, the trial date has yet to be set.

Please sign the petition for the Kingsbay Plowshares 7. It asks that charges be dropped against our seven friends, so that they can return to doing good works in the world.

https://www.kingsbayplowshares7.org/global-petition?link_id=2&can_id=a9df644640c4c1c9b09fb9bcd0cb2d59&source=email-press-release-tutu-nobel-winners-support-protesters-in-jail-one-year&email_referrer=email_522630___subject_674228&email_subject=press-release-tutu-supports-new-petition-for-anti-nuclear-protesters

Mark Colville’s Prison Reflections

Mark Colville is one of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, along with Jonah House member Liz McAlister and five others. He’s been in jail exactly one year today. The following is a prison epistle that powerfully shows the injustice of the so-called justice system.

March 2019

Dear Friends,

Greetings and hugs all around! With a grateful heart I commend all who continue to make the sacrifices necessary to keep our doors at the Amistad Catholic Worker open, the kitchen warm, and the table set, especially during these harsh months and under the added strain of my extended absence. For some time now, I’ve hesitated to check in from here in Georgia before being able to offer a bit of clarity with regard to the legal situation of the Kings Bay Plowshares in Brunswick Federal Court. But with delays encroaching now into Spring, and still no action being taken by the magistrate judge on our pretrial motions, a brief update has become increasingly overdue.

Actually, what has been most on my heart these past three months is a deep sense of responsibility to speak about this jail where I’ve been warehoused now for the better part of a year. It is labeled a “detention center,” so-called because the people being kept here have been arrested but have not yet had their cases adjudicated. Considered a temporary holding facility, its conditions and amenities are suited to accommodate the accused for a a few weeks or a month at most, irrespective of the reality that – for reasons I’ll explain in a moment – half a year or more is closer to the average length of stay. This means that all the detained, most of whom are suspected of low-level or nonviolent offenses, are held in maximum security conditions for months, and in some cases years, on end. We are locked down on crowded cellblocks, essentially for 24 hours a day. The diet is heavy on starch, sugar and sodium, which rapidly foster obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease when combined with a sedentary lifestyle.(I’ve witnessed three people having strokes, and one man I knew died of heart failure in his cell late last summer). There is no access to the outdoors nor to physical recreation of any kind; no exercise permitted outside of one’s cell; no visits with loved ones except by video monitor; no use of a library, computer or internet. It also seems to be common knowledge that we are sitting on top of a toxic waste dump, but I have neither the means nor the fortitude to investigate that particular report.

As for the 400 to 500 detainees here, most are in the same predicament as Liz, Steve and I, being held indefinitely with their cases pending. Several systemic factors conspire to make this so.Bail is generally set extremely high, unaffordably so for many, although this can sometimes be remedied at a bail reduction hearing after at least six weeks have passed. The bigger issue, though, is what’s referred to as the “probation hold.” In Glynn County, persons arrested for any reason while on probation can be jailed for renewable terms of up to 60 days, and simply forced to wait until a probation violation hearing is scheduled. As anyone who’s had the experience knows, virtually any encounter with a police officer on probation can result in an arrest, regardless of probable cause or the likelihood of an infraction being provable in court . Merely being on probation is reason enough.

Practically speaking, lengthy probation terms usually have little to do with supervision, rehabilitation or public safety. They have plenty to do with funneling people back through the criminal justice industrial complex, which seems to be a significant source of revenue and employment in municipalities like this one. Convictions in the Brunswick court, 90 percent of which are obtained by plea bargain, commonly bring sentences which include probation terms of between 3 and 20 years! The prisoners here call it being “on paper.” Once they are on a probation hold, an investigation of the newly-alleged crime can proceed, or not, at the leisure of the D.A.’s office. Of course, whether or not they find evidence, the living conditions at the detention center will usually provide ample coercive power to secure another conviction. Obviously, after 60 or 120 or 180 days of 24-hour lockdown, almost anyone is well-disposed to accept whatever plea will result in an immediate release, even if it means being on paper for another decade. Thus, there is ensured an endless supply of indefinite detainees at the Glynn County Detention Center, and their demographic won’t surprise anyone; at present, I am one of three white people in a cell block of thirty-four.

From the inside, I find the real horror of all this in its utter normalcy. Sometimes it takes a rigorous act of the will to maintain a personal relationship with reality. I’m living in a place where hundreds of people accused of low-level and/or nonviolent crimes are being held indefinitely, under maximum security conditions, having neither been granted due process, nor convicted nor sentenced. The presumption of innocence is, quite literally, a punchline. The totalitarian culture of coercion that dictates every aspect of life in a maximum security jail has essentially chewed up and swallowed the “justice system” here, such that it is not honestly possible to even use that term without the disclaimer of quotation marks. Broken families bear a terrible burden, some driven from poverty into destitution. The racial bias could hardly be more obvious. Yet it all seems to function beyond significant public notice, and has nothing to do with questions of morality, necessity, or service to the public good.

Of late, I’ve grown convinced that it couldn’t be more fitting for the Kings Bay Plowshares to have been swept up and tossed into a human dumpster such as this. The racket they run here gives real substance, on the neighborhood level, to what U.S. nuclear policy – our national religion – has been preaching to every child born on the planet for the last seventy-five years: No Lives Matter. However long it might draw out, I hope that my incarceration here will in some way speak this truth. The idols we named at Kings Bay are not sleeping. They demand sacrifice. The god of the national security state feasts on the blood of the poor.

“The ultimate logic of racism is genocide.” – Martin Luther King, Jr., March, 1968. Yes, indeed.

– Mark Colville

[As of this writing, the Kings Bay Plowshares have been waiting many months for a ruling from magistrate judge Benjamin Cheesbro on a pre-trial argument they have placed before the court. The essence of their position is that a jury should be allowed to hear and consider the principles of faith and conscience that informed their action at Kings Bay, and that the government has acted improperly by filing criminal charges against them. The seven were arrested on April 5, 2018.]

Imprisoned Liz McAlister on the Radio

This Martin Luther King Day (January 21, 2019), Tom Hall, a radio personality at WYPR in Baltimore, aired a story on Liz McAlister and the King’s Bay Plowshares action, which occurred on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination, on April 4, 2018.

Since that date, Liz has been in jail in Georgia, where the King’s Bay Trident Sub base is located. The trial date has yet to be set, but it will likely be sometime this winter.

The segment includes a short interview with Liz from prison.

Here is the link:

http://www.wypr.org/post/mlks-legacy-pt-2-power-non-violent-protest

Snowy Day at St. Peter’s Cemetery

Last week we had a bit of snow in the cemetery. It always makes for a picturesque scene. Here are some pics.

The first three pics were of headstones. This is a snow covered pile of branches. Eventually the branches will be put through a chipper for mulch. But right now it’s a lodge for small animals!

Xavier University Visits Jonah House

Once again, a group from Xavier University graced us with a visit! They came for dinner on Wednesday, which was followed by a reflection session. Paul talked about the history of Jonah House and resistance to war and nuclear weapons, and the fact that community member and co-founder Liz McAlister remains in jail for her participation in the King’s Bay Plowshares action last April. Ausar and Naomi talked about the Jonah House Food Pantry and our partnership with Tubman House, in West Baltimore. And Joe talked about our work on the land in St. Peter’s Cemetery, including gardens, orchards, and forest, describing it as a work of mercy for the Earth.

The group returned on Thursday morning. Joe took them on a tour of the cemetery, after which Ausar took them to Tubman House, to visit some folks who live nearby and to lay mulch on the fruit trees at the urban garden that is attached to Tubman House.

They’ll be headed back to Cincinnati tomorrow. We look forward to their visit next year!