This Memorial Day, Viv and I walked up to the least-known military cemetery in central Seattle, the Grand Army of the Republic cemetery just beyond the north end of Lakeview Cemetery, to the north of Volunteer Park, overlooking Montlake and Portage Bay.

The small cemetery went through a period of extreme neglect, which it’s recovering from. RootsWeb offers a database of the interred, although it’s noted to be a work in progress. A community group, the Friends of the Grand Army of the Republic Cemetery Park, has spearheaded the restoration effort.

The first time we stumbled into the park, several years ago, walking among the graves was a deeply puzzling experience. Many stones were practically illegible, and many bore severe scars from hurried, clumsy power mowing, blades lopping off large chunks of blackened, acidified marble. The gaping scars revealed the original beauty of the stones, gleaming white contrasting with the dark, mottled greys and blacks of the aged and neglected monuments. Walking along the rows of closely spaced graves was unsettling in many ways, because it was apparent that the coffins below the soil had largely rotted away, and as one stepped upon a grave, it was quite spooky to feel the soil shift and collapse downward.

Most of the stones were obscured though weathering and overgrowth. Today, the overgrowth is gone, and there are clear signs of regular visitors. The inscriptions remain difficult to make out. There are four clear periods of design visible among the stones. The earliest are elaborate monuments now laid into the soil, often obelisks in form. The next period is represented by low, marble stones carrying a shield embossing dating between 1880 and 1920, more or less. Following that are small, simple concrete stones carrying a name below the letters G. A. R., generally dating between 1920 and 1950. After that time, a mix of flat stones, some in a contemporary military style and some in the style of flat family headstones from any contemporary cemetery are apparent.

When we first wandered into the cemetery, I was quite puzzled. This was clearly a military cemetery that had nearly been abandoned, something which surprised me. What war did it commemorate? Perhaps the Spanish American War, given the provenance of Volunteer Park’s name?

The dominant obelisk in the small cemetery answered my question. GAR Cemetery Park is a Civil War veterans cemetery.

Among the flat, contemporary headstones is that of a Medal of Honor winner (page search that link for Frank E. Bois). Interestingly, Bois was an emigrant from Canada. His grave was rededicated in late May, 2001.

On this Memorial Day, I found two other interred who had served in Indiana companies. While we were there, a woman was intensively gardening near the large obelisk. Three other people came and wandered around as we were there, one leaving several freshly cut roses on many graves throughout the cemetery.

We’d brought no flowers, but the cemetery is shaded by towering white oaks, the golden leaves of which have been used as garlands to symbolize honor, wisdom and valor in both American military decorations and elsewhere. I found one or two stems of these leaves and placed them on graves. In other parts of the cemetery, the stones are partially covered with crushed acorns and acorn caps. The tree was widely planted in the parts of Indiana I lived in as a child and being near them, smelling them, is a deep-seated sensory experience for me which increases the reflective experience of visiting a cemetery.

Viv and I attended the soiree for Donnie Darko at Consolidated Works on Saturday night. Free drinks, nibbles, etcetera. We ran into Karla and her husband Diego, and Gillian and Kristopher. I saw Brad go by but didn’t run into him again, which is too bad. At any rate I had gallons to drink.

At one point I overheard two people, possibly writers, discussing the coverage of the festival they were doing. I’ll describe it in greater detail at the Siffblog, but the highlight of the conversation was when one described Gillian’s “great gig.” As he understood it this constituted of writing about the SIFF-related parties on “some blog for Tablet.”

I hadn’t considered the blog a ‘gig,’ exactly, but I suppose that’ll work.

We adjourned from the party to close down the Lobo in the company of a batch of punk rockers who were singing drunkenly along to what I think was Iron Maiden, and noticed a rave in a back yard across the street. They wanted money to get in though, so we skipped it. Walking down the hill to Kris’s house, we went by yet another loud party, this one filled with eary twenties yutes sporting all the variety of pot smoking fashion this year. Kris adamantly desired that we should not go into the party, even though a band was just getting set up to play.

Naturally, Karla dives right in to the scrum, Diego close behind. In the kitchen, Diego saw a refigerator sporting the charming sign “Do not even think of opening this unless you own it, bee-yotch.” Naturally, he grabbed the last can of Pabst and we split.

I spent today recuperating.

I spent much of the day to day viciously malleting slot-and-stem industrial shelving together, only to find that I had done so, for all six shelving units, upside down and backwards.

My arm is quite sore. It’s heavy work for a keyboard jockey, I assure you.

Yesterday was a record day for rainfall in the region, and we discovered that our 2000-square-foot basement warehouse space is unsealed. My friend Dave, who works for the city in environmental affairs and consequently has an encyclopedic knowledge of City of Seattle watersheds and flow patterns, tells me that there is an underground stream that runs parallel to Airport Way, in the shadow of I-5 as it runs south of downtown.

That stream was once a surface tributary of the Duwamish, but when the mudflats were raised to create today’s near south Seattle industrial district, the stream was filled and covered. In certain residential sections of Georgetown, houses that were originally built along the banks of the river can be identified by their considerably lower floor lines. In some locations, I have seen side-by-side houses with a lawn elevation difference of about seven feet.

What we found yesterday was that that stream runs close enough to our warehouse that a trickle of water entered the room in one corner, and pooled before running down the very slight slope of the floor to the rest room. Careful inspection revealed salt-like stains around every crack in the floor of the entire space – meaning that the floor level is probably only inches above the water table.

So, you know, the shelving is important. Eventually, we’ll have to build a rasied floor for the work area as well. Thankfully, one thing that exists in abundance just north of Georgetown is pallets. Fourteen pallets will fill a bay; we can build a work floor with little expense. Does plywood come sized in multiples of four feet?