Gazing long into the abyss in the snow at Mount Auburn Cemetery

By adamg on Sat, 12/21/2024 - 11:40pm

Orb in the snow at Mount Auburn Cemetery

Our own Swirlygrrl attended Solstice, an annual winter show at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge last night.

Neighborhoods:

Cambridge

Free tagging:

Mount Auburn Cemetery

Trees

Snow

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Comments

Gorgeous Shots!

By APB
Sat, 12/21/2024 - 11:59pm

Almost enough to make me want to spend a few hours freezing in the snow at Mt. Auburn!

Magoo sez

By MisterMagooForYoo
Sun, 12/22/2024 - 7:44am

That’s cwazeeeee! Uhub’s own Magoo was there too!!!! Magoo.

Swirly meets Magoo in a cemetery.

By jmeltzer
Sun, 12/22/2024 - 11:13am

All this, and Emily Rooney, tonight on 60 Minutes.

Please dispatch Magoo to the

By anon
Sun, 12/22/2024 - 11:59am

Please dispatch Magoo to the abyss.

During an "eclipse"

By SwirlyGrrl
Sun, 12/22/2024 - 12:21pm

At the crossroads ...

It’s beautiful and all, but I

By Frelmont
Sun, 12/22/2024 - 8:45am

It’s beautiful and all, but I heard it cost money and now I see it has sponsors and such… that’s totally whack.

It’s a cemetery for goodness sake. I had to get over guilt for enjoying the tower and taking strolls and not having a loved one interred, but accepted the nature of the place is to allow all to gently and respectfully enjoy its design. But this is a bridge too far. Mt. At least they probably didn’t crassly have vendors at the event. Auburn Cemetery is not a commercial space and having an external art/light show exhibit, which honors and promotes commercial sponsors lessens and desecrates the cemetery and the culture. (Look at the family of public radio where the underwriters (face it advertisers) become the de facto editorial board.)

The purpose of this beautiful cemetery is to be a beautiful cemetery to inter loved ones and honor them by being a place for all people to enjoy its peaceful, natural design. A space safe from degenerating into base commercialism and spectacle. Look to the cautionary tale of public radio turning to essentially a commercial model and chasing maximum numbers of earballs. Its very nature has flipped from serving the public to serving its existence in maintaining underwriters and being a springboard for podcasts that exist in a commercial space and is in a positive feedback loop driving it further and further from its purpose. Now, it serves its underwriters its own jealous existence by an at-all-costs mission of not offending a uniform and single minded audience so they may be delivered to the underwriters who so nobly support the programming that buttresses our egos. So, I don't like the idea of sing cemeteries for that.

Somehow

By Polybius
Sun, 12/22/2024 - 9:16am

I doubt the dead mind terribly

That dog

By Sock_Puppet
Sun, 12/22/2024 - 9:31am

Won't haunt.

Ha!

By Frelmont
Sun, 12/22/2024 - 5:28pm

Ha!

Nothing we ever do is truly

By Frelmont
Sun, 12/22/2024 - 5:35pm

Nothing we ever do is truly for the dead; that is why the Nobel Prize only given to the living. But, in another way we honor the dead and the living by honoring the dead.

I don’t have any known relatives (six degrees aside) in MAC, but when I go there I feel connected to my relatives buried in cemeteries in other states. We don’t bury people in malls, so why have a commercial spectacle in a cemetery?

If the sponsors were anonymous and the food and drinks were free and unbranded…maybe the art would be unsullied l, respectful and honorable.

That's an awful lot of words

By brianjdamico
Sun, 12/22/2024 - 12:08pm

Just to say that you do not approve of the decisions of the management of Mount Auburn Cemetery.

It is a cemetery, but it is also an arboretum.
It is a cemetery, but it also a historic site.
It is a cemetery, but it is also a tourist attraction and has been since before the Civil War.

It is going to operate differently than many other cemeteries, because it always has done so over its nearly 200 year existence.

None of those things are

By Frelmont
Sun, 12/22/2024 - 5:44pm

None of those things are inherently commercial, antithetical, or disrespectful. Yes, an attraction like MAC floats all boats, but quint/essence of MAC is a far cry from this event.

This is a tasteful and respectful event

By Ron Newman
Sun, 12/22/2024 - 12:33pm

fully in keeping with the Cemetery's purpose. It is not Zoolights.

Yes, it costs money to attend. It costs money to make it happen.

Yes, there was a food vendor and a drink vendor. Visitors appreciated having them here.

It doesn't detract from the experience of seeing the cemetery during the day because it happens only during hours when the cemetery would otherwise be closed.

I've been going to this for three years and hope to continue for many years more.

This cemetery is not a

By Frelmont
Sun, 12/22/2024 - 5:20pm

This cemetery is not a commercial space. For capitalism to be successful there must be moral boundaries and commercializing the sanctity of a cemetery is base behavior.

Who says they're making money off of this?

By mg
Sun, 12/22/2024 - 9:45pm

Events like this cost money to create. Since they sold out, I can't see what they charged, but I doubt it did much more than cover the costs and help support MAC so they can continue to do the work they do year round, including providing what looks like a wonderful experience.

What they charged

By Iralith
Sun, 12/22/2024 - 11:50pm

My ticket cost me a breathtaking $15.

Ticket price was $35 for adults

By Ron Newman
Mon, 12/23/2024 - 5:25am

$35 for adults
$25 for Friends of Mount Auburn Cemetery members
$5 for ages 6-12 (free for under 6)

There were also a few Pay What You Want nights that offered a choice of $15, $25, or $35 for adult tickets.

(Source of info: Eventbrite; click on "View all event details" button)

Who on earth...

By Michael Kerpan
Sun, 12/22/2024 - 2:18pm

...recs this sort of insipid driveling?

Mount Auburn Cemetery is a

By CuteUsername
Mon, 12/23/2024 - 12:11am

Mount Auburn Cemetery is a commercial space. They charge money for people to hold burials there, and it's not a cheap option for a burial either.

When people talk about keeping commerce out of things it's often not really the money that upsets them but some arbitrary sense of decorum, and the money is just something that seems like a better excuse to be mad.

Solstice is a deeply moving experience

By sittingstill
Sun, 12/22/2024 - 3:48pm

I am grateful that Mount Auburn offers this opportunity to experience the cemetery at night around the time of the winter solstice, and I think they have found truly extraordinary artists to participate.

This year I wrote a message of hope on a tag in Story Chapel, and read many others’ words of love and peace, and of pain and grief. In Stillness turned Hazel Dell into a meditation on light and darkness, on the familiar and the unexpected, watched over by the beautiful Celtic cross and the many tombs. Eclipse takes this even further with light and sound, darkness and smoke, and reminded me what a wonder nature can be. The Lantern Walk is my favorite part; cemetery staff did a stellar job illuminating not merely individual memorials (including two of the most well known canine figures) but individual trees, with dramatic lighting alongside groups of candles along the path. I felt more grounded thinking about each of us lighting our own way, sharing a common path but each at our own pace. I thought the two animations projected onto Bigelow Chapel were magnificent, especially the space-themed Cosmic Breath; standing in the dark and cold watching something so wonderful was worth the visit on its own. And while I am not religious, I find the candle-lighting in the chapel to be incredibly moving—the feeling of adding my one candle to the sea of others’ tributes doesn’t require a religious text.

There’s nothing I look forward to as fall turns to winter more than this.

The effect was pretty amazing for such a simple setup.