Let it Snow

Back from Florida and enjoying a rather large snowstorm here in Colorado. If you're still holiday shopping, I just wanted to let customers know that my Etsy store is open for business, I can send art gifts directly to recipients (be sure you email me first to go over details before you buy), and a few items are up on ebay, too. Unfortunately, technical issues (that I'll try and fix after the holidays) have forced me to temporarily close my ecrater store.

A bounty of seashells gathered on the beaches of Sanibel

Off to Birdwatch and Collect Shells

Just a quick note--I'm going to be in lovely Sanibel, Florida for a few days, relaxing, visiting "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge, and walking America's foremost shelling beach, searching for treasures. While my ecrater web site/store is closed for the week, my Etsy web site/store is open for holiday shopping, and I've just restocked the shelves with art. Please note that all orders placed from 5 PM (Mountain Time) today, Saturday, December 8, through Friday, December 14, will be processed and shipped on Saturday, December 15. Shipments from my studio to the lower 48 states generally take a maximum of three days to arrive. If your order is being sent directly to someone else as a gift, please be sure to use the "Notes" field when you place the order to let me know what message you'd like me to write to the recipient.

Best wishes of the season! Will soon be hanging out with the manatees and the gators.

Westwood Cemetery Graves, Los Angeles, California.

"Caddyshack"--"Now I know why tigers eat their young!"

Creepy epitaph, and no one is sure who paid for the stone or chose this particular passage. Taken from a Hemingway piece. How weird is it, that years later,  Mariel Hemingway (granddaughter of Ernest H.) would play Dorothy in the movie "Star 80?" Dorothy Stratten--discovered at a Dairy Queen in Canada, became a Playboy Model before she hit 20. Dead the same year. Sad.

"Charlie's Angel." As a teenager growing up in the late 70s, I always appreciated her tonsentorial  hegemony.

"When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's AMORE!"

My favorite storyteller of all time. I had no idea I was going to run into you.  All your "Americana" stories were about Indiana. To find you in the middle of LA. Wow.

"Family Affair." I still have creepy dreams about the "Mrs. Beasley" doll.

I must admit, in the early 70s, I had a crush on Freddie in "Chico and the Man," and  continue this crush with Freddie Prinze Jr. Good for you, Sarah Michelle Gellar. Let's hope the apple falls way, way far from that tree. The tree that says it's okay to mix loaded firearms with coke.

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Half of the original "Odd Couple." Had a face like a bloodhound, but we loved him.

The most famous Hollywood grave of all--Marilyn Monroe. Of all the  memorials I visited, hers was the only one with fresh flowers (and many lipstick kisses on the stone.)

Heather O'Rourke, the little blonde girl/actress ("they're baaack!")  in "Poltergeist." Died at the age of 13 from a congenital intestinal deformity. And the other actress in the film, who played the oldest sibling, Dominique Dunne, was murdered by her boyfriend the year before Heather died, leading to speculation that all the actors in these films were cursed. Last time I checked, Craig T. Nelson is still alive.)

Hollywood Graves--Forest Lawn, (Hollywood Hills) & Westwood Cemeteries

"Tru"

"The Velvet Fog." (One of my favorite Seinfeld episodes ever. Kramer had Novocaine and bad shoes.)

Sandra Dee

Liberace's grave, with his signature incorporating a piano cartoon. Did you know his first name was Wladziu?

Statue of George Washington, facing (not seen in this pic) a reconstruction of Boston's Old North Church. Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills, California.

No, this post has little to do with wildlife, unless you count the squirrels and pigeons I saw hanging out in these Los Angeles landmarks. But at the request of two friends and blog readers, I am posting photos from the two cemeteries I visited when in LA in September.

It was very hot that day, when we had five hours to kill before meeting family for dinner in Malibu. Extremely hot--100+ degrees. Hot for LA. And the first cemetery we visited, Forest Lawn, Hollywood, had little shade. It's one thing to go somewhere in the hot sun, and at least know your destination, it's another to be in an unfamiliar city, worse still to be trying to find a grave you've never visited. I can attest that going to find a loved one's grave--one I've seen before--can be difficult. And here I was with a few crude maps from the web, trying to find graves of some famous people I'd admired. (I never did find Andy Gibb's grave, BTW.)

As many of my friends and colleagues know, I have always been intrigued by graveyards, cemeteries, crypts, mausoleums, etc. Having never been to a Hollywood cemetery, I was thrilled to find lots of people with cameras, wandering around like I was. One couple I met in Westwood had given up a trip to Disneyland to hit cemeteries instead. We all commiserated over our out-of-date maps, trying to figure out where Roy Orbison was buried, until another cemetery buff came up to us. "I couldn't help overhearing, " he said, "but you're right, here's buried under that tree. But the grave is unmarked."

Anyway, life is short, enjoy it while you can. A visit to any cemetery will remind you of this, but in addition to the philosophical implications of a grave visit, it was nice to be as close to some of these celebrities as I'll ever get to celebrity. None of the monuments were especially artistic, like those in Europe, or in Victorian US graveyards, but many had touching, sometimes enigmatic inscriptions. Enjoy. More photos to come, as soon as I get some work done around here.

(Laurel was the skinny one in Laurel & Hardy movies)

Bette Davis

Grave of Clyde Beatty, circus performer and "the greatest wild animal trainer ever."

"You are my wife! Good-bye city life! Green Acres. (Coincidentally, saw Eddie Albert's grave the same day.)

Will always remember Marty Feldman as "Igor" in "Young Frankenstein."