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Here's another more creepy story for ya...

Mount Sinai Cemetery is right next to Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills. (by the way...there are five Forest Lawn cemeteries scattered about the LA area. The one in Glendale is awesome!)

Anyway, I was poking around Mount Sinai, of course looking for more dead celebs. The out door mausoleums are quite different from those at Forest Lawn. More somber and reverent I'd say. Not much statuary and there is Hebrew as well as English on all of the markers. It was a cloudy and rather cool day and I was wearing a light jacket. As I walked, I felt something on my upper left arm, almost as if someone lightly grabbed it. I thought it was my jacket laying funny or a muscle twitch. I rubbed it and continued on. A moment later it happened again. This time it really felt like someone grabbed my arm. I was completely alone! Eeek! I immediately went back to my car and scurried out of there! "Someone" figured that I was there for the wrong reasons. I'm such an irreverent Gentile. Some of my best freinds have been Jewish...but I guess that didn't count. Overall, it was creepy but kinda cool at the same time.

I've heard of such things. When you enter Forest Lawn, there is a little booth with a grumpy fella in it. The first time I visited with a friend of mine, we stopped at the booth and the man snidely said, "Tourists?" (with a heavily sybillant "s") He reluctantly gave us a pamphlet which had a map as well as a list of rules. One rule being "NO PICNICS". I'll have to dig out that pamphlet again. Forest Lawn Glendale has, besides countless mausoleums, a museum and...gift shop. The gift shop is hilarious. They offer small reproductions of most of their statuary...which are also reproductions on their own...they also have the requisite postcards and my favorite...souvenir rulers with photos of different areas of the cemeteries. These rulers are lovingly crafted in China where they have little concept of proof reading. The typos on these things are priceless. I'll try to show you one.

He was just a big ol' crybaby!

Howdy Tenor!

Technically it's gravestone rubbing. I just shortened the term because I'm so lazy.

Here's how you do it:

First you need supplies:

1. charcoal, pastels, or crayon (I chose crayon for the anti-smear factor...and because it was handy at the time)

2. clean paper large enough to cover the image you wish to copy.

3. scotch tape

Tape the paper to the stone and rub until you get all of the image you need. Gently remove the paper. Run away.

As I've said before...I have a morbid sense of humor. Besides that, I think cemeteries are very interesting. When I was a kid my grandparents used to take me to a few where my grandfather grew up. Very old cemeteries that were not kept up too well. Some of the stones at the time were over 100 some years old with German written on them. Unfortunately a lot were so weathered that you couldn't make out much of the writing. I guess that stuck with me over the years. I'd also considered being a mortician a few years back...but in thinking about it, I realized that not everyone just dies in their sleep. One must be a very special person to take on that occupation. I'm not quite that special.

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Back to the original subject of this thread...I can ship world wide so tell all your friends there in Singapore to buy stuff from squidtoaster on Ebay!!! Please!! My mortgage is killing me...amongst other financial crap.

Hi Maryellen!

The pleasure was all mine. I love sharing my strange preoccupations with other. The rubbings are kind of neat in that they're physical proof that you were there. Nicer than just getting a picture. (now THOSE I have plenty of!)

If I remember correctly, you're a Philly gal right? Plenty of old cemeteries there if you're into the Revolutionary war kid of thing. (I grew up in King of Prussia...but have I EVER seen the Liberty Bell...no. Wasn't very interested. I'd love to see the Mutter Museum though. Now there's a ghastly place!)

Greetings Cody and m.e........

I'm still in Pennsy. I'm in Red Hill, about ten miles west of Quakertown.

Yep. I've definitely been to Valley Forge park. Really couldn't avoid it as a kid! Definitely a beautiful place. Had many picnics there. Used to go fishing with my grandfather at some creek way back in the park many many moons ago. My father is buried back behind the Washington Memorial Chapel as a matter of fact. My mother's a little peeved at the deer. They continually eat any sort of plant life she puts at his stone. Anyway, I can't recall going to Washington's headquarters. I might have during a school field trip or something. ( have no interest whatsoever in the revolutionary war...I always found it boring. Anything to do with ancient Egypt, Now that's fascinating!) When I was in the high school choir (Upper Merion) we sang at the Chapel once. That was pretty cool.

Anyway, the Mutter museum...eerie and bizarre? Try outright disturbing! But that's what makes it fun!

Toodles, Squidnik