Episodes

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Lane Gresham and Brooks Garcia join Jennie to tell the stories of those buried in the Old Clarkesville Cemetery in Clarkesville, Georgia. They will introduce us to "the meanest man in Georgia", one of the first great photographers, a young man who lost his life in a tragic farming accident, and many others. They also talk about their many restoration efforts from repairing and preserving tombston...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie, Dianne and special guest Lara Maerz explore Act 3 of Thornton Wilder's play "Our Town". The entire act takes place in the town cemetery. Find out how the fictional cemetery of Grovers Corner, New Hampshire compares to many small town cemeteries across America and around the world. We talk about the importance of sharing and remembering the ordinary, extraordinary people who make up the co...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Love is in the air! OR buried beneath the soil! Join Jennie and Dianne as they visit Layton Cemetery in the town of Blackpool in Lancashire, England and Oakwood Cemetery in Raleigh, North Carolina. Both of these cemeteries hold the remains of star-crossed lovers and their stories are retold in this episode. We are very grateful to Deborah Contessa Hargreaves and Jennifer Aaron for allowing us to ...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne talk with special guest Deborah Andres. Deborah has dedicated two decades of her life to the funeral profession with an enduring mission to elevate death care to serve grieving families with empathy and professionalism. She spent 5 years at Ang Chin Moh Group, one of the most established funeral services providers in Singapore. Prior to her stint in Asia, Deborah spent over 14 y...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. In this episode Jennie and Dianne travel back in time to experience June 25, 1914 in Salem, Massachusetts. On that day the worst fire Salem has ever known swept through much of the city destroying homes, churches, businesses and even part of its first and oldest cemetery, The Old Burying Point. They also "stop by" the grave site of one of the three victims who died as a direct result of the devas...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne virtually visit the gravesites of the first 10 presidents of the United States of America. They also share a bit of each of their inaugural addresses based on what was happening at the time each of these men took the oath of office. By examining each of these addresses, we learn a little about each of these men and how they helped to shape America from it's infancy as a brand ne...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne are joined by Ryan Seidemann and Christine Halling of the Louisiana Cemetery Task Force to discuss what happens to cemeteries and their permanent residents when natural disasters such as floods and hurricanes strike. They share their experience and expertise on planning strategies once they know a storm is about to hit and how they handle recovery and restoration in the aftermat...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. In this episode Jennie and Dianne pay a visit to the Old Burying Ground, also called the First Congregational Church Cemetery, in Kittery Point, Maine where lie the bodies of six sailors who lost their lives in a wintery sea accident in 1876. It is a tale of woe and one of a community joining together to do what they could to see to it that these men were not forgotten after their tragic deaths.

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Join Jennie and Dianne as they read select and rather juicy poems from The Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. These poems are written from the perspective of those buried in the cemetery of the fictional town of Spoon River. Meet husbands and wives who drive each other crazy, the madam of a brothel who must pay regularly to support the public school, the tragic story of a young woman who...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Merry Christmas! In this episode Jennie and Dianne make a brief stop at the graveside of Louisa May Alcott and then retell one of her Christmas short stories, Tilly's Christmas. We wish you a very merry Christmas!

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne travel back in time to explore the Arctic and the North Pole with three explorers who are buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia. Will they meet up with the jolly man in red on their journey? They also tell the story of how Wreaths Across America began and how you can become a part of something that has become an annual tradition for many American families....

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Dianne and Jennie learn the story of Hanukkah and how it parallels to the American Revolution through the war heroes buried in Chatham Square Jewish Cemetery in New York City, New York. They will share the stories of Gershom Mendes Seixas, Jonas Phillips, Haym Salomon, and several others who felt that their desire to be free to live as their laws and religion dictated were worth fighting for in 1...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. It's December and that means for many people a month long celebration of winter festivities as we approach the end of another year. One of those celebrations is, of course, Christmas! In this episode Jennie and Dianne will begin with a visit to the grave of Hetty Green, often called "The Witch of Wall Street". As they tell her story they also share snippets of Charles Dickens's famous Christmas t...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne discuss the founding of the oldest cemetery in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Evergreen Cemetery as well as Colorado Springs will be celebrating their 150th anniversary in 2021! It is a cemetery that is near and dear to Dianne's heart as she has spent the past 20 years volunteering there to help keep it maintained and preserve its history. They will talk about some of the notable p...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne begin this episode in Oak Grove Cemetery in Saint Marys, Georgia, but to tell the story of the Tomb of Acadians which can be found in this charming cemetery, they must travel back to 1755 and the settlement of Acadie in what is now Nova Scotia, Canada. With a little help from the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the long memory of the French-Acadian descendants, Jennie and Di...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Diane speak with Ryan M. Seidemann, lawyer, archeologist, anthropologist, professor, and cemeterian as he tells the true story of the U.S. Marshalls and Judge Issac Parker (often known as the Hangin' Judge) at Fort Smith, Arkansas from the 1870's through the 1890's. He takes us through Oak Cemetery and explains how they chose to be remembered vs. how the generations of the mid-late 20t...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Did you know that to be buried facing West is symbolic for facing freedom? When is it appropriate to cry for a deceased loved one in Irish tradition? What does it mean when stones and coins are left on gravesites? Find out the answers to these questions along with Jennie and Dianne as they explore ordinary, extraordinary burial customs and cemetery traditions throughout America and the world on t...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Join Dianne and Jennie as they "road trip" from the West coast to the East coast of the United States seeking out ordinary, extraordinary cemeteries that may or may not be haunted. They will be visiting the graves sites in Oregon, California, Idaho, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey and lastly Massachus...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne return to Central City, CO to explore the hidden mountain gem that is Bald Mountain Cemetery. They also find out what happened to Central City and Gilpin County in the years after the 1859 Gold Rush through the eyes and poetry of local miner Pete Redmond. Come with us to the Ordinary, Extraordinary Cemetery!

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Join Dianne and Jennie as they tell the story of Hugh and Levinia Champion, a couple who married, had children, and died in Central City, CO during the Colorado gold rush that began in 1859. This is the story of ordinary people living in an extraordinary time and place. You will visit their home of Central City and their final resting place in The Knights of Pythias Cemetery in the glorious Rocky...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Meet taphophiles (cemetery lovers) Jennie and Dianne as they discuss their love for cemeteries, talk cemetery history, and even share a bit of classic literature from Nathaniel Hawthorne. It's the Ordinary, Extraordinary Cemetery! Where every death had a life, and every life had a story.