GUEST POST: Neil Dailey lives in the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts, where his family has deep roots. He enjoys caring for and cooking for his family. He also enjoys gardening and collecting ephemera. An eclectic range of books fill his home. Henry Van Dyke’s “Poems of Tennyson,” “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” Michael Connolly, Nikos Kazantzakis, Robert Wilson, Martin Limón, Anthony Everitt’s biography of Hadrian, J.T. Maxwell’s “Red Brick Road,” Faulkner, and Joseph O’Callahan’s “A History of Medieval Spain” all find space. His battered copy of “Candide,” alas, crumbled. He is also a lawyer, and practices criminal defense law full time.
Here’s a peek at the latest creation from my “art studio.” I’ve been trying my hand at oil on canvas again. The image is a place I knew as a child as “Desmond Farm.”
Fragments of stone wall and the granite outcroppings scarred the land. Each stone seemed to appear from nowhere without logic or purpose. Even so, the stones appeared with insistent determination. When I heard the old New England farmer’s joke, it made sense. “This is the best land to farm, if you want to harvest stones.” The rocks and stones jostled and interrupted an uneven landscape. In summer, the land bristled brown and gold with grasses and dry prickly weeds which waved and shimmered in the bright summer sun.
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One of my walking buddies is a genealogist, and she reminded me that cemeteries are favorite haunts for those who are pursuing information about their family histories. Besides the documentation of births and births, cemeteries hold so many hidden, untold stories that may never be known.
Marjorie Turner Hollman 