By Jason Church

Cemetery care and maintenance is undergoing a surge in popularity that hasn’t been seen since the Victorian era. It’s little wonder. Cemetery gravemarkers are at once memorials to those we’ve loved and pieces of art. Caring for them provides a connection to a world before the internet absorbed all of our attention.

Cleaning these monuments properly is the best thing one can do to ensure that they will last for generations to come. And it’s easily done too!

Cleaning stones should always be done by the gentlest means possible. For chemical cleaning, acceptable products are detergents, solvents, surfactants, biocides, and intermittent water misting.  When choosing a cleaner it should be gentle, non-ionic, and have a neutral pH of 7 or one close to the pH of the stone. For example, the pH for marble is around pH10, thus the cleaner may be a pH of 9-10. Never use bleach or salt laden cleaners nor any strong acids or bases.

Soft bristle brushes are required when cleaning stones. They can have natural or synthetic bristles. Vegetable brushes or soft grooming brushes for large   animals are a few that can be found in chain or farm supply stores. All rough or metal edges must be covered with tape to reduce the chance of scratching the stone. Do not use any harsh mechanical devices such as sand blasting, high-pressure power washers, or power tools such as sanders or drills equipped with a wire brush.

After you have chosen your cleaner, make small test strips to try out the cleaner and make sure we’re not going to damage the stone. Select your preferred cleaner. To make the task easier, it is a good idea to bring it in spray bottles or small containers.

Soak the stone liberally with water before applying the cleaner. Stone is a very porous material and will absorb the cleaner. By soaking it beforehand, the cleaner will stay on the surface of the stone and minimize possible unwanted effects of the cleaner. Spray the cleaner on a manageable area and work from the bottom up in small, circular motions. This will allow the cleaner to get into all the crevices. Working from the bottom up minimizes streaking on the stone surface. If streaking occurs, it would be a good idea to contact a professional.

One scrubbing over the area might not be enough and it may take more repetitions, but remember not to scrub so hard that you damage the surface. You may also want to use different brush sizes for different areas. Keep the stone wet while cleaning. Remember to rinse with clean water after cleaning each area and to thoroughly rinse the stone at the end to make sure that no cleaner is left behind.

Cleaning cemetery monuments doesn’t take a lot of time, but the benefits could last for decades. It’s a great family activity to undertake on a nice day this spring. Pack a picnic lunch, some cleaning supplies and share stories of your ancestors with the next generation.

Related links:

NCPTT Flickr Stream

NCPTT YouTube Channel

Jason Church on Linkedin

D2 Eco-Friendly Cleaner

Prosoco Biowash Cleaner

By Jeff Guin

A lot has happened in the three months since the U.S. National Historic Landmark Kate Chopin House was destroyed by fire. Much goes into a salvage effort of this scale, and you may be surprised that how much care has been taken with the remains of the building and of its surviving contents. Voices of the Past recently spoke with Dustin Fuqua of the heritage research organization Cultural Lore about his experience leading the rescue operation. Here are some of his insights on the topic.

Any salvage operation is stressful, but cases where the structure defines the community are especially difficult. Rescue workers are faced with the challenges of limiting access to the site while being sensitive to the grief of the community. All the while, they must also be mindful that the structure and the heritage resources it contains are degrading by the minute.

The situation is inherently unsafe from the get-go and will likely remain that way until the structure is taken down completely. Fires can reignite days after the initial event. Charred walls of brick or bousillage may crumble at any time. Rescuers use personal safety equipment like masks and gloves–and good sense as well–when approaching any salvage operation.

The case of the Kate Chopin House was especially dire, with perhaps only 10 to 15 percent of the Bayou Folk Museum contents surviving in any recognizable condition. For those precious few objects that survive the fire, other environmental threats immediately arise.

For paper objects soaked with water from fire trucks and lying amid the smoldering warmth of embers, mold blooms immediately and degrades the fibers. As the home of a famous writer, this structure had some very valuable paper items. So what to do? Believe it or not, rescuers wrapped the books in acid-free paper and put them in a freezer until they can be properly conserved. Freezing the items inhibits the growth of mold and prevents further environmental damage to the paper.

Metal objects are affected by the warm, wet environment of a fire scene as well. Oxidation starts immediately, resulting in rust on metal objects that may have already been weakened by extreme heat. A quick, but careful removal operation is necessary to keep these objects from becoming further casualties of the disaster.

As with many disasters, the path of destruction can take unexpected turns. For example, Dusty reports finding a stack of Confederate currency in good condition while huge pieces of 19th century furnishings were incinerated without a trace. The wooden objects that survive are also cared for, potentially for reintegration into a rebuilt structure or as a memorial.

Thanks to the first response efforts of the Cultural Lore team, the NSU Masters of Heritage Resources program and the National Park Service, we will have some remnant by which to remember the Kate Chopin House and Bayou Folk Museum. But what’s happening now? I’ll tell you next week. In the meantime, you can read more about this project or contact Dusty through the Natchitoches Preservation Network website.

Related images:

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Do you believe social media is a fad? Be honest with yourself.

What if you knew that in the time it takes to read to this sentence, seven new blogs will be created?

Yes, some will be “spam” blogs, conceived of evil intent to steal your time or money. And some will be the stillborn attempt of a person who had a great idea but found a blank composition screen too intimidating or the prospect of criticism unbearable. For the one or two that eventually sport worthwhile content, their chances for surviving more than a month are slim, never mind their chances for making a difference in the world. But still, there is a chance. It’s happening more and more.

In that same small span of time, hundreds of posts went up on other blogs. Tens of thousands of blog posts were commented on and hundreds of thousands of connections were made through some form of social media. The printing press, radio, television and even the web’s first iteration fundamentally changed the world we live in. But each had the weakness of needing gatekeepers … People with specialized training or a lot of money determined what came out of those devices. And nobody likes being fenced in.

As a result, you’ve now read long enough to allow the creation of 203 more blogs. They’re right there, waiting in your web browser. More than 200 soapboxes, each containing the promise of infinite combinations of things to say—for all of humanity, forever. Chances are getting better that one may be a keeper. In far less time than it takes you to finish this chapter, one could even be yours.
What are you still doing here?

Yes, the potential is huge but social media doesn’t begin as some theoretical “Big Bang” event that creates a universe that eventually leads to a sun and an earth and an atmosphere all the way down to you reading this post. It begins with a simple question, or a need. Often the answer is short and sweet and a conversation begins. Two people connecting—maybe from opposite sides of the planet—and drawing inspiration from one another to accomplish their dreams. That’s how it begins. Get to talking with enough of those folks; that’s where your Big Bang happens.

In “The Future of Communications – A Manifesto for Integrating Social Media into Marketing,” Brian Solis, blogger at PR 2.0 and principal of FutureWorks PR, puts it this way: “Social media has created a new layer of influencers. It is the understanding of the role people play in the process of not only reading and disseminating information, but also how they in turn, share and also create content for others to participate. This, and only this, allows us to truly grasp the future of communications.”

The democratization of information transcends national boundaries, giving new meaning to the term “global citizen.” Social media provides a voice. No longer are people powerless when faced with a bad customer service experience. Rate it. Blog about it. Post to a forum. Review it. Only the world will know. Someone, somewhere is sure to relate to your experience and together you will likely be able to rectify the situation.

Social media came a long way in 2007, but it’s still a toddler in terms of potential. Scores of new tools and “mashups” of others arrive each week. So many blog posts and news stories are written about it that it’s virtually impossible for one person to keep up with. You may as well try to come up with a pithy one-liner about how the world works. No field has undergone more fundamental change by social media than Public Relations.

Social media are a group of tools to help people interact online. Social media is about people interacting on a deep level, supported by online tools. Got that?

The distinction is subtle enough that most folks have to ruminate on it for a moment. The first sentence is how you would have stated it a couple of years ago when the I.T. people started with the term Web 2.0. The second sentence is what happened when the communicators moved in and took over.

Social media has a way of bringing big jobs down to size. With a lot of focused effort—evangelization, even—it won’t take much time for social media to ignite within each and every stakeholder group you are trying to reach. Who will they thank for this time-saving, life-changing knowledge? The bringers of the fire, of course.

It starts as a PR game but everyone wins.

So grab your racket, or gloves or bat. You can’t lose with the tools at your disposal: blogs, social networks, wikis, lifestreams, Twitter, video, livecasts, news aggregators, social media releases, videos, and podcasts. Or move your game to Second Life or other virtual worlds.

Social media is about people interacting on a deep level, supported by online tools.