It has been an exciting week for our cemeteries project.  The team is coming together: we have a GC Commons forum that we are using to collaborate and are well on the way to defining the goals of the project and its central conceit.  We have had to rethink the original idea in part because it was too closely tied to the work of one scholar and so might be seen only as an unoriginal derivative.  I am relieved to have been confronted by that lens.  Now we have the opportunity to craft something that is unique.  We are considering timelines and walking tours.  Tonight is our next team meeting and I am looking forward to discussing our options and learning where everyone is landing.

My primary role for this project is design and testing, with documentation and research as my secondary role.  Since we are still deciding on the technology, I have spent most of my time engaging in our forum and researching possible technologies.  Today I did a test of GPS photography.  The photo below taken with my smartphone with GPS enabled was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.  It maps beautifully to the protocols they use, see https://geohack.toolforge.org/geohack.php?pagename=File:General_William_Jenkins_Worth_Monument.jpg&params=040.742770_N_-073.989128_E_globe:Earth_type:camera__&language=en.

There is an actual person buried in that massive monument: General William Jenkins Worth (1794–1849).  This site is the second oldest major monument in the parks of New York City.  I have probably walked by it a thousand times and never understood that.  According to the NYC Parks website, ” A relic box was placed in the cornerstone” (source: https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/worth-square/monuments/1734).  I suspect I will be learning a lot more about General Worth, given this is likely to be the location I will focus on.

I’ll close this entry on a colloquial note: I have discovered that people are putting QR codes on gravestones which then link back to webpages about the person.  The Twitter thread about one academic’s exercise in one gravestone was well-worth the read, especially the comments about academics and citations.  Sadly, the tweet has been taken down!  [A good reminder to always screenshoot and, when possible, cache helpful pages to the WayBackMachine.]  In short, the academic found this gravestone with a QC embedded and did a post on it, but obscured the QC so the wider-web could not access the dead person’s CV.  One Twitter quip: “You have denied him his citations!”