The Ordinary, Extraordinary Cemetery

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Just in time for Memorial Day, Jennie and Dianne are joined by special guest Andrew Bell, a former Sergeant-Major in the US Army and a veteran of both the Korean and Vietnam wars and a former Buffalo Soldier reenactor. Andrew shares not only the history of the Buffalo Soldiers and who they were...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Dianne and Jennie explore Chicago's Mount Carmel Catholic Cemetery and learn about its inception due to Chicago's growing immigrant population at the turn of the 20th century. This cemetery is the final resting place for many who took vows of holy orders including several bishops, arc...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne chat about cemeteries in the spring and summer time! This is the time of year when many cemeteries offer tours and other events and they suggest ways to get involved with your local cemetery. They also talk about some of the appropriate ways to help care for grave sites and wh...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Henry David Thoreau wrote, "You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.” that is exactly what Dan Fischer, founder of the One Last Wave Project has done. Dan sits down with Dianne and Jennie to share how he turned his devastating heartach...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne explore the Harvard Shaker "Lollipop" Cemetery located in Harvard, Massachusetts. The "lollipops" in the cemetery refer to the shape of more than 300 markers marking graves that date back to late 1700s belonging to members of 'The United Society of Bel...

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 learn about the April 25th tradition of ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand.  ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army corps. ANZAC Day is a day that was originally begun to honor those soldiers who served during the first world war and specifically...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. What do a toothpick, a  scarf and a banana peel have in common? This might sound like the beginning to a bad joke, but in this episode Jennie and Dianne share the stories of three artists who died under unusual circumstances. You will be introduced to writer and poet Sherwood Anderson, the moth...

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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 are joined by special guest Laurilea McDaniel to discuss three exceptional women who helped tame the wild west. All three were married to men whose names are well-known to history: Davy Crockett, Kit Carson and Horace Tabor; but we only hear the names of their...

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 David Moffat, a Visitor Services Specialist & researcher at The House of the Seven Gables. David has done a lot of research into the life and work of Caroline Emmerton, the woman who saved the House of the Seven Gables by turning it into the museum we know to...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Happy St. Patrick's Day! In this episode Dianne and Jennie explore the traditions and customs that have made Irish wakes world famous. Why must a dead body not be left unattended until the funeral? Why would Irish families hire professional mourners? And what in the world is a sin eater? C...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne continue their discussion with Sharon Pajka, PhD about the 44 ordinary extraordinary women writers covered in her book 'Women Writers Buried in Virginia'. In this episode we are introduced to Ella Howard Bryan who wrote westerns under the nom de plume Clinton Dangerf...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne welcome writer and professor of English Sharon Pajka, PhD back to the show to discuss her latest book, "Women Writers Buried in Virginia". What started out as a summer visit to the grave of acclaimed Gothic horror writer VC Andrews, soon became a trek across Virginia...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne visit the gravesite of Bill Pickett a black man who was born just after the American Civil War. He spent his early life working as a ranch hand, but in his adult life he performed in wild west shows around the world! He wowed audiences with his steer wrestling skills and later...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne visit the gravesites of two heros of the American west, Bose Ikard and Nat Love. Both men were born into slavery, but became cowboys after the end of the American Civil War. They faced the dangers of cattle drives and life on the frontier proving themselves to be the best of t...

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 visit the gravesites of three couples who were truly in love in life and are buried side by side in death. The first is a story of young love that had barely started when it was nearly lost during the American Civil War. Second, is the true love story that sank...

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Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Alvin “Creepy” Karpis once said, “Of all the midwest cities the one I knew best was St. Paul and it was a crook’s haven." In this episode Jennie and Dianne visit the mausoleum of Police Chief John J. O'Connor in Calvary Cemetery in St. Paul, Minnesota. They delve into O'Connor&ap...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne interview their first guest of the new year! Dr. Thomas Edge is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at Bowling Green State University. Tom recently took a sabbatical to research looking at the history of lynching in a different way: specifically...

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Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne visit the Land of Enchantment, specifically Mount Calvary Cemetery in Albuquerque, New Mexico where every Christmas Eve the cemetery is full of of candlelit luminarias. What are luminarias and how did this tradition start? Find out in this episode of the Ordinary Extraordinary...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Dianne and Jennie explore one of the world's largest Gothic cathedrals, Winchester Cathedral in Winchester, England. This cathedral is the final resting place to kings, bishops, and many other famous persons including legendary English author Jane Austen. They also discuss how Christmas wa...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne sit down with BloomBridge founder Kristen Allen for an update on how the flower delivery service has been going since it launched in spring of 2021. This is a follow-up to episode number 28 when we met Kristen for the first time. BloomBridge believes there is something to be s...