24 May 2011

Three other interesting gravestones

Posted by Callan Bentley

While exploring the Rock Creek Cemetery last week, I noticed a couple of other interesting graves. This one, made of limestone, shows nice “reverse” cross-bedding:

Here; I dialed up the contrast a bit to highlight these cool primary structures:

It’s “reverse” because the tilting direction of the cross-beds switches from left (at the bottom) to right (for the bulk of the section). Ergo, the current started off flowing towards the left, and then it switched and flowed towards the right. No distinct cross-beds can be seen in the upper third of this face of the stone, so maybe the current was flowing towards or away from our perspective when those grains were laid down. Also, it’s worth noting from the concave-up position of the curved cross-beds that the limestone strata in this grave are in fact right-side-up.

Another gravestone appears to be made of Morton gneiss, and shows a nice “normal” / left-lateral shear band on the right side.

The other side of the stone shows the same shear band, now at lower left, and with the opposite sense of shear from this new perspective. There’s another subparallel shear band in the upper right, with the same sense of kinematics:

Beautiful, yes? I could be jazzed about having this rock above my final resting place. It’s interesting. It’s seen some action. It’s got flow and strain, two of life’s big themes that aren’t captured by the relative sterility of a granite or marble slab. The Bayntons chose well, in my opinion.

This last one… well I guess I could let it speak for itself. It’s not geological, just… interesting:

A short distance away, a plaque proudly listed Ms. Davis‘ four divorces and other key biographical events. This lady appeared to have a tough-as-nails attitude, and a self-deprecating sense of humor. Very cool.

All of this got me thinking about what sort of marker I would want for my final resting place. Any thoughts?