Your City USA visits Zena

For all of our technology, we can do no better than etch our names, our dates of birth and death as deeply into stone as we can.

Salem-News.com

(Zena, Oregon) - It lies about ten miles northwest of Salem. There are those who call it a ghost town, and I'd have to agree since there are few remaining inhabitants in Zena.

The Spring Valley Presbyterian Church graveyard remains, however, but to my knowledge it isn't a place of ghosts or horrors of any kind. It's not really about death either. It is a place of memory.

Here is memory recorded in the only technology these people knew: chisel and granite. The body dies, they knew, but if you could at least scratch your name deeply enough into a chunk of polished stone you can continue a presence.

I got that feeling when I visited the graveyard this last Memorial Day weekend. These people have a story. It may be brief. It may consist of no more than their name, the dates of their birth and death and perhaps a notation as to whom they were espoused to.

I was here, is the only message they've really left. You can't get more determined than that.

I'd like to expand their presence. Their marble headstones endure, but I would like to introduce them to the digital world where they may join the rest of us on the internet with their message of previous existence.

Look on these photos with kindness in your heart. I don't have to tell you that we, too, one day will want echo their message.

I WAS HERE!

For all of our technology, we can do no better than etch our names, our dates of birth and death as deeply into stone as we can.

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Leonardo (Glen L. Bledsoe), Salem-News.com cartoonist, was born and raised in Indiana. He graduated from Indiana University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine Arts and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago for several years. Glen made his home in Oregon in the early 80's where he continues to enjoy the mild climate and lack of sales tax.

He and his wife Karen have published seventeen books together for the school library market. Glen has written extensively on the issues of technology and education for the National Education Association and other Leonardo (Glen L. Bledsoe) publications. When he is not creating this unique cartoon series, Glen is either teaching, writing a novel, composing music, or reading.