Titles | deadmantalking

More than 1100 epitaphs in 320 pages, Hey Darlin’ is an excursion into the parting thoughts of people from all walks of life. They could be your uncle, your neighbor, your best friend. You, someday.

Drawn from over 400 cemeteries in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho (with a smattering from elsewhere), they lead the reader on a fanciful, imaginative, graceful, and emotional journey. It’s a loving look at how people want to be remembered: haiku for the dead.

Chapters include:

     Stop, You’re Killing Me
     Death Is Always Out of Season
     Love Me Do
     Because the Bible Told Me So

Epitaphs are indexed by first line, name of the interred, and cemetery where found. We encourage you to go read your cemetery.

Hey Darlin'

Epitaphs of the Oregon Territory

ISBN 9780615724225

$22

Lone Fir: The Cemetery

A Guide & History

ISBN 9780615644943

$12

Mad as the Mist and Snow

Exploring Oregon

Through It's Cemeteries

ISBN 9780979647550

$22.50

The pride of Portland’s cemeteries, smack in the middle of the east side, Lone Fir is the city’s flagship pioneer resting place. Begun in the 1850s by one James B. Stevens who was “awaiting nature’s immutable laws to return us back to the elements of the universe, of which we were first composed,” he set the tone for, not only the cemetery, but for a freethinkers’ haven: Portland.

Through the years, the graveyard-cum-park has acquired a veritable arboretum and a panoply of individualistic stones and monuments, as well as the state’s most impressive mausoleum. It gets used all day long by strollers, joggers, mothers with baby carriages, musicians, readers, people watering the flowers, and most often, a Metro employee tending to the grounds. The Lone Fir still stands.

Lone Fir provides, not only a guide to the most interesting stones along with their locations on maps, but details the origins of the cemetery, including special attention to the intertwined history of the cemetery and the Portland Chinese community which is one of the sponsors of a memorial garden being planned for the southwest corner.

Monuments emphasized are, not only those of notable design, but those with interesting epitaphs, or cameos of the deceased. With nearly a photo on every page, the book is a visual tease of the riches found within Lone Fir. Don’t visit Portland without it.

The museums may be nonexistent, the county historical society may be closed, and the movie theater shut in 1986, but there’s always the cemetery. Thank God for the dead folk; they don’t leave town, so much.

Mad As the Mist and Snow is a leisurely tour of some of Oregon’s more expressive cemeteries filtered through the lens of Oregon’s most indefatigable graveyard hound. Compelling, if obscure, cemeteries are brought to the reader’s attention with wit and compassion. The text, for the most part, is drawn from the author’s Flickr site: Dead Man Talking, where more than 750 cemeteries are profiled.

Mad As the Mist and Snow is not about dead people; it’s about the cemeteries themselves, what they look like, how they’re used, and where they fit into their communities. It leads into the farthest corners of the state, as well as the urban areas of today. The cemeteries function as open-air history museums for their surroundings by detailing the art and customs of bygone eras. They invite you to come visit. They’ll wait.

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