ASPCA DAY IN GREEN-WOOD CEMETERY in Brooklyn.

[Die Fledermaus]

If you are in the NYC area, May 6th will be ASPCA Day at famous and beautiful Green-Wood Cemetery, the home of that group's founder, Henry Bergh, and first benefactor, Louis Bonard.

There will be ceremonies and dedications and lots of stuff. Details will follow. The cemetery itself is like a botanic garder and will be filled with flowers.

More on that later.

[Die Fledermaus]

>> Please come everyone and celebrate animals and the founder of the ASPCA, Henry Bergh. He was the true pioneer of compassion in America, founding both the first animal protection organization in the United States, and the first child protection organization anywhere in the world! And his final resting place is, of course, the beautiful Green-Wood so hope to see you all there! <<

-Valerie
Sr. Director, Public Information and Special Projects
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) NY, NY


"MERCY to ANIMALS MEANS MERCY TO MANKIND!"
--Henry Bergh, Founder and First President of The ASPCA, 1866-1888

HELP US HELP ANIMALS!
Promote Animal Welfare and Fight Animal Cruelty:


The ASPCA EnLIGHTens America For Animals on April 10th, 2006! Watch buildings and icons illuminate in ASPCA orange for the ASPCA's 140th Anniversary! Check out photos and info on how you can participate in this upcoming tribute to animals at: www.aspca.org/140

>> May 6 opening of the ASPCA exhibit in the Historic Chapel. That should be a very exciting event (right, Valerie?)--dogs, horses, a cat, bag pipes, accordions, champagne, cheese, gifts, ribbon cutting for the exhibit, speeches, an honor walk to the grave of Henry Bergh (the ASPCA's founder), dedication of a new sculpture, etc. But, if it rains on Saturday, May 6, and we postpone that event, we will have to cancel the May 7 Research Day. If that's the case, I will e-mail all of you with the cancellation.

So, I hope to see all of you at the May 6 ASPCA event.

Green-Wood Cemetery Historian <<

[Hamsters82]

That sounds like it would be really neat to go.

[megs]

Wish I could go.... but I'm on the other side of the continent. No plans for a vacation that week. But perhaps another time. I've always wanted to visit NY!

[Die Fledermaus]

Yes, too far away for you.

But I am trying to get the word out here. I will post photos in due course.

[jeannie]

This sounds nice, but Eli already has a birthday party that afternoon at 1PM - it's a formal ball, and BBC will be there filming. The birthday girl is arriving in a limo. His life has become really over the top.

We are doing the ASPCA walk in Central Park on 6/3 though, and we went to the 140th anniversary in Union Square Park a few weeks ago. He got an autographed picture of all the Animal Precinct officers, 4 of whom he met! I can't believe how much fun stuff there is for dogs in NYC. Tonight we are going to a party at Crash Mansion. It's just endless, all his social engagements...


Please do post pictures - I'd like to see!

[Die Fledermaus]

>> The birthday girl is arriving in a limo. <<

I wonder if that surpasses me being more upset when Princess died of a stroke than when my father died? Maybe!

Copy and pass around the GREEN-WOOD ASPCA DAY FLYER if you can't make it.

One day you really should go to G-W, a gorgeous fascinating place - and right now it is RESPLENDENT in more flowering trees including cherry blossoms than the Brooklyn or NY Botanic Gardens!! Truly. And even better is the solitude - no crowds.

If you know anyone who wants tours of the place I can get them in (free) on the ten dollar official tours, or do it myself almost anytime. I am an expert on the place. That offer applies to anyone interested - and hopefully there may be a few after ASPCA Day. So pass the word to your doggie minions.

Every Memorial Day I leave decorations et al at Bergh's mausoleum.


P.S.
Keep an eye peeled for any off-leash dogs in Central Park. Or do you need to hear THAT story again about the Jack Russells, the squirrel, and near fisticuffs. Nah.

[Die Fledermaus]

The City Life
Prestigious Ever-Aftering in Brooklyn

By FRANCIS X. CLINES
Published: April 20, 2006

The modern era of McMansions and grossly luxurious S.U.V.'s has now been extended to sales of single-family mausoleums across the nation. Prices are $250,000 and up, way up, depending on extras like a meditation room, a granite patio and gilded marquee lettering. Can talk of a mausoleum bubble be far behind?

The most restful spot for contemplating this new development is Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, the verdant 168-year-old burial ground that made an art form of nouveau-mort flamboyance for Victorian New Yorkers with a yen to overlook Manhattan from eternity.

Green-Wood is a pastoral 500-acre village of the dead with a hilltop view of ongoing life that sweeps from the Statue of Liberty to the Empire State Building, from tenement to townhouse, ever vivid with cyclically teeming masses. But the plainly morbid attraction is the presence of the residents, the formerly fabled and wealthy New Yorkers who still stir curiosity from the grave. (If Boss Tweed, the great plunderer of City Hall, suffered prison and ruin, how come he had enough left over to afford perpetual care at Green-Wood?)

In the mausoleum boom, one Florida dealer stressed the ultimate buyer's lure to the Times reporter Guy Trebay: "I'm really significant in this world." Make that "was." No edifice short of the Taj Mahal is elegant enough to make an occupant important for eternity. A wanderer among the ivied tombs at Green-Wood can draw a blank at the resting places of the once-so-famous. Ponder the elegant, expansively staircased tomb of William Niblo. Who? (The impresario who created Niblo's Garden, a vibrant drink and entertainment antecedent to modern Broadway theater-going.)

In an earlier age, a sense of success at life was indulged in by families who picnicked at their Green-Wood tombs even before death. Others detailed grief by depicting a boat-drowning or a runaway trolley approaching the heedless victim. (No such gritty tableaux at the grave of Joey Gallo, the mobster gunned down at Umberto's Clam House.)

Modern interment dealers have little hope of duplicating Green-Wood's lush splendor, soaring and hulking architecture, serene birdsong (even including escapee parakeets from an airport warehouse), and panoply of historic figures (Horace Greeley went east after he died). There's no buyer's remorse at Green-Wood.

Thinking of that chandelier extra to signal prestige at your new Florida McMausoleum? Think again: a mogul resting for decades in Green-Wood has had his mausoleum perpetually heated. And you like that California ultratomb with space for 32? The soaring Steinway duplex at Green-Wood has room for 256. No, there's no grand piano. FRANCIS X. CLINES

[megs]

Interesting! If I'm ever in the NYC area, I will have to check it out. I do have plans to visit NYC one of these days.. maybe after graduation next year? I'll let you know. Both my mother and I would like to go. And see a Broadway show.

My grandparents (on my father's side) are in a Mausoleum, in Vancouver. Not a single family one, there are alot of um... remains in there. And there's many Mausoleums, including smaller ones for canisters of ashes.

I only got to go there for my grandfather's service. 7 years later, my father did not even tell me my grandmother was sick (so I would have a chance to at least phone her again, or visit her and tell her I loved her one more time before she had to go), and he didn't even tell me that she had passed until after the whole service was over! I was SO MAD. (Probably part of the reason I don't speak to my father anymore. Actually, the last time I spoke to him was THAT time, which was more than a year ago now.)

I will go there again, when I have some time to myself and have a means of getting out to "Forest Lawn" in Burnaby (suburb of Vancouver), to pay my respects to her myself. RIP Grandma. I'm sorry that Craig insists on doing things the way he does.

Green-Wood does sound lovely, DF!

[Die Fledermaus]

What MY father did to me during my mother's invalidism and slow death tops what yours did to you. And he was a horrid patient after she died when he got cancer. No, he was AlWAYS like that; he just got worse.

What I was more upset when Princess my hamster died than when he died. And that is sad, but the way it was.

[megs]

I still may be able to work things out with my father but it's not looking good. A very long story. I won't get into details right now. There are more reasons than the one above that I dont' speak to him anymore... actually it seems that the problem is that he doesn't speak to ME.

Last I spoke to him (when he gave me the news about Grandma being gone and everything already being taken care of), I told him how I felt about "our" relationship and that it needed work. He told me he'd call me the following week. I'm still waiting. I don't even know his phone number anymore.

I understand that you too had a bad relationship with your father, probably much worse than the relationship I [still attempt to] have with mine. It must have been very hard for you.

I know how much you loved Princess and upset you were and how difficult her passing was for you. If you can, take comfort in remembering how sweet she was, how lucky you were to have her come into your life, and that she rests peacefully now.

[Die Fledermaus]

Actually, she is still in the freezer, in tissue paper, a couple of nice wooden boxes. I can't bury her.

[Die Fledermaus]

I will add more soon, but for now people should know that for the first time ever DOGS will be permitted in Green-Wood!!

Call the cemetery first and make a reservation (for the sake of order!).

green-wood.com

[Hamsters82]

That's sad about your families guys. I'm just saying I think you should make up cause you can miss a lot. On my mother's side, a little misunderstanding took place and bing bang boom, we didn't see them for eight years. I barely got to know my grandmother before she passed away. So I would definilty try to make up.

[Die Fledermaus]

Getting back to the ASPCA, at Green-Wood Cemetery all the animal monuments are decorated with the ASPCA's ribbons, and that includes Fannie the Dog who is buried there.