October 28/365 Weeping Angels

On a whim, we went looking for Weeping Angels* in the Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, on a perfect autumn afternoon. We didn’t find any. We made our pilgrimage to stand at Susan B. Anthony’s grave and then Frederick Douglass’s. I was ashamed that I arrived with no tokens, seeing their graves thoroughly bedecked.

The grounds were hilly, with paths curving up in wide arcs and huge shade trees everywhere. You could not detect the scale of the whole, only the little hollow you were caught in, so the grand scope of the dead** interred here was minimized. The lovely day, the golden light, a afternoon spent with my youngest son – we laughed among the gravestones and watchful mausoleums. Among the grand Victorians buried there in their stiff patriarchal lines, were shades of disapproval, I’m sure.

* If you don’t know about Weeping Angels, then you aren’t a Doctor Who fan. All you need to know about them is this: don’t blink when you are around statues that look like angels crying. I can’t begin to explain what a “quantum-locked humanoid” is, but these are pretty nasty creatures.

**Over 350,000 dead, and climbing.