After running disk utilities to recover from my corrupted disk drive on Monday, I tried once again to open the rest of the digital images I had taken with my Handspring at the Rogers Buchanan burial ground. On the first attempt, my disk siezed momentarily. I reset my system quickly, let it run through its disk check, and then tried again.

And here's the image, as it opened.

I haven't resized it or done any image correction it because I was afraid I'd lose the distortion in the image. It looks like some bytes got whacked, because at a certain point there's a strange pixilation, and the left boundary of the photo seems to be remapped in part on the right.

I can't figure this out. And I'm just a little bit creeped out by the whole thing right now. But it's probably just the result of radio frequency radiation from TV Hill or something (the broadcast towers for most of Baltimore's radio and television stations are parked atop towers on the next hill, which I pass on my way home).

But it makes my imagination race just a little. I mean, what if the dead could push electrons around?

Let me be clear–I don't buy this “Crossing Over” crap. I somehow doubt they whisper in John Edward's ear; I'm sure that his namesake probably has better connections to dead people (since the dead can vote, sometimes).

But what if there were some way for the dead to make their presence felt digitally?

Imagine having Edgar Allen Poe on your AIM buddy list.

In Druid Hill Park, wedged between the disc golf course and the drive that runs downhill past it, there's an overgrown cemetery with a twisted wrought-iron fence.
I'd long wondered whom its occupants were, so I decided to take a look today on my morning bike ride.

As it turns out, this is the Rogers-Buchanan Burial Ground, a family plot that belonged to the family that once owned the park's grounds.

A 100-foot pine was blown across the grave of Edmund Law Rogers, a founder of the Kappa Sigma fraternity and a prominent actor of the late 1800's. It must have blown down during Hurricane Isabel, but the tree is certainly not the only affront to this mostly untended plot.

The Rogers family's roots run deep, so to speak, in Baltimore; the land that is now the park was bought by Nicholas Rogers (II) in 1710.

His grandson, Col. Nicholas Rogers was an officer of the Baltimore Militia that routed the invading British at what is now Patterson Park.

And he's still here, though not exactly lying in glory.

If there's one thing Baltimore has plenty of, it's dead people. But only a few, like Edgar Allen Poe, are remembered with regularity. We've let the history of this city fade.

When we forget the dead, we forget the past, and as George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”.

The dead are trying to tell us something. If we don't listen, we'll be joining them sooner than we'd like.

[update]

Maybe they're speaking a little louder than I thought.

Not that I'm superstitious or anything, but after I downloaded the photos of the Rogers-Buchanan Burial Ground to my Mac this morning, the system locked up. When I restarted it, the hard disk's startup information had been corrupted. It tool multiple attempts with a disk utility and some tech sleight-of-hand to get it restored to normal.

Translation: my Mac was possessed. Hopefully, I've exorsised any remaining software demons.