Funeral Practices in Upper Northeast Adams

In 1994 in upper north-east Adams county, local people relate thoughts of death with advanced age, hospitals, and nursing homes. Occasionally, there is an accident or irreversible medical problem involving a younger person. These infrequent occurrences receive much attention from the community. Widespread fear of infant mortality is not manifest. However, in this same area, from colonial times until about 1920 death occurred in a more widely dispersed fashion: far from being merely the prospect of the elderly, death\u27s inevitability was the unseen companion of young and old alike. Death could occur at random. Mortality was a distinct possibility for every child. The cultural effects of the ensuing, profoundly different perspective are evidenced in the area\u27s music, art, and folk beliefs. [excerpt

Adams County Grave-Stonecutters, 1770-1918

Stonecutting in Adams county followed all the general developmental trends and stages exhibited by the craft in other parts of Pennsylvania. Adams county, nonetheless, evolved its unique approach to gravestone art, for rural early American stonecutters were by and large highly unique artistic individuals. The earliest prominent stonecutters maintained high artistic standards as well as exhibiting a high degree of creativity. These were craftsmen of the Scots-Irish Bigham family of Marsh Creek and the Pennsylvania-German Meals family, centered at Bender\u27s Cemetery, Butler township. A third outstanding Adams county stonecutter was the predecessor of Barnet Hildebrand of East Berlin. This artist carved both in German script and in English and possessed a fine flowing style with an unusual German eye for proportion and spacing. In 1805, most Adams county residents were still being buried with rough red fieldstone to mark head and foot. Yet by 1805, members of these three prominent stonecutting groups had established a standard for Adams county stone-craving excellence. Their influence continued to shape the character of the county\u27s gravestones until granite became the medium of choice. [excerpt

Parmenides, Plato, and Μίμησις.

Evidence for a Parmenidean influence on Plato’s Republic typically focuses on content from Bks. V-VI, and the development of Plato’s Theory of Forms. This essay aims to suggest that Plato’s censorship of poetic content in Bks. II-III—particularly the rules for portraying divine nature (376e-383c)—also draw heavily upon the Eleatic tradition, particularly Parmenides’s. Identifying this further Eleatic influence will be enhanced by my own reading of Parmenides. This reading advocates understanding Parmenides in a more Xenophanean-vein—i.e. by taking What-Is to be an explication of the essential qualities of divine nature, and the overall poem as rejecting traditional, mythopoetic accounts of divinity. Recognizing this Eleatic influence on the censorship of poetic content, a tension arises. For Plato infamously censors poetic styles next, concluding that mimetic dialogue may only be rarely employed, and only then in imitation of virtuous persons and actions (392c-398b). This would entail banning all poetic works relying exclusively on mimetic dialogue. Yet, not only do Plato’s own dialogues entirely consist of mimetic dialogue, so does Parmenides’s proto-dialogue. Furthermore, by so closely imitating Parmenides’s thought and language in Republic, has not Plato himself engaged in a type of intellectual and compositional mίμησις? Just as it would be strange to ban the very dialogue (Republic) which outlines and justifies Kallipolis in the first place, it would also be troubling to ban a philosophical work (i.e. Parmenides’s poem) which Republic is so heavily indebted to. Such a ban would also seem strongly at odds with Plato’s general reverence for Parmenides. In an attempt to address these tensions, I suggest that in Republic II-III, Plato’s lack of concern for banning philosophical works along with mimetic poetry should further suggest that he intends the ban to be far narrower than it first appears: as a rejection of performative, rather than compositional, mίμησις