Central Park's Adventure-Style Playgrounds: Renewal of a Midcentury Legacy by Marie Warsh (review)

Asian, and Hispanic communities— each of which deserves much more attention, given that there is as much geographical diversity among these communities in America as there is cultural diversity in their practices, rituals, physical representations, and connections to areas such as food, music, and design. “Public mourning” is discussed with examination of “everyday memorials as spaces of public mourning,” including “vinyl decals, ghost bikes, Internet cemeteries . . . as objects of mourning” (115). This is one of the high points of Sloane’s investigation because it catalogs these expressions, including those in social media platforms, and explores their meanings. This section’s last chapter, “Reintroducing the Cemetery,” explores how cemeteries have become places where activities happen other than those associated with death. In creative efforts to remain relevant (or, more accurately, visible to new audiences), privately managed cemeteries have morphed into quasipublic spaces with events such as tours related to historical or celebrity occupants, funerary sculpture, and natural features; fundraising events for maintenance costs; theatrical productions, “ghost walks,” evening movies, touring bands, and comedy shows; and even 5K races. In doing so, the “paradox is that cemeteries are trying so hard to make themselves part of the public realm through the development of traditional (and innovative) tours and events,” rather than devoting time and attention to those for whom the cemetery exists— the families whose loved ones are buried there (156– 57). The final section examines “Memorials” and how such representations have evolved from gravestones incised with basic personal information, or perhaps a brief quotation about the deceased with an iconic symbol, to representations far removed from cemeteries that reflect contemporary social and cultural values, public “RIP” murals, roadside memorials, ghost bicycles, tattoos, and even digital platforms. Particularly insightful is Table 8.1, “Types of everyday memorials organized from personal to public” that lists eight “Types/ Focus” examples from “More Personal” to “More Public” with notations of locations, descriptions, decorative motifs, purposes, and origins (193). This chart, together with an earlier one, “Types and characteristics of digital memorial sites, categorized by personal to public” should certainly be the genesis of further academic explorations, from contemporary inclass discussions to future theses and dissertations (118). Sloane closes with speculations on how ongoing changes in attitudes about ethnic, racial, cultural, and sexual identities are represented in contemporary attitudes about death and cemeteries. Particularly poignant is his inclusion of the inscription on the grave marker of Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich, a gay Vietnam veteran, located in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C.: “When I was in the military/They gave me a medal for killing two men/And a discharge for loving one.” Ironically, his grave is “down the row” from those of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, a noted homophobe, and Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s longtime “associate director, heir, and possible lover” (231). Finally, the author poses provocative questions: How will technology change our traditions related to death? “Will we be sitting at home looking at a computer, standing next to a gravestone, or doing a little of both?” (232). After all, next to Matlovich’s grave, barely legible, is a small card with a QR code that generates a story about Matlovich. “In a digital age,” the author notes, “we should not be surprised that grief has moved to the Internet, and digital images are offering new venues for mourning” (232– 33). So, what is the future of death and how will we mourn in the future? Sloane’s answer, fittingly, confirms the value of his Januslike approach to his subject: “the best way is to imagine the future as the past and the present.” As the author notes, we all want to leave behind something as evidence of our having been here, and in so doing, we likely will “bring along elements of our traditions and rituals to comfort us” (242). This book provides context, even if not encyclopedic, for understanding many American traditions and rituals associated with death, mourning, memorializing, and cemeteries, and proposes provocative questions about how we might think about these subjects in the future.