The 2009 Barbara Bull Memorial Cemetery Walk: A Rousing Success!

(Above: A guide leads one of the first audience groups to the next vignette at the Barbara Bull Memorial Cemetery Walk in Sebastopol, CA.)

For those of you not familiar with the Cemetery Walk, it is a yearly fundraiser for the Western Sonoma County Historical Society in which I serve as the present President.

Conceived and implemented by then Vice-President Barbara Bull -- along with a small, tight group of fellow historical society members -- 2009 is our 7th year. Tragically, Barbara passed away the January following that first Walk, so, in her honor, we (of the organizing committee) named it "The Barbara Bull Memorial Cemetery Walk" forevermore.

Even though the rest of the six (5 or so minute) "vignettes" presented at the Walk are centered around actual, noteworthy, historic events in the lives of the cemetery "residents", knowing I had several stories about ghosts and hauntings published in books and that I was a theater arts major in college, I was chartered by Barbara herself to present a "ghost story", she said, "as sort of a break" for the audiences from the strictly historic (and occasionally "dry") material of the others.

Friday afternoon before the first performance, the actors and some of the crew were treated to the antics of a male and female red-shouldered hawks -- flying right over our heads several times. Evidently, the hawks live either on the cemetery grounds or nearby...

As I watched them, I could tell that the male (the much smaller of the two) was a juvenile and it appeared to me as though he was being chased off by the female -- a fully grown adult. At one point, the little male alighted in the top of a fir tree in the middle of the cemetery, calling out over and over again as he sat there. This allowed me to take several clear photos of him:

I spoke to one of the Burbank's Farm Committee members, a retired veterinarian, who donates the use of his RV as a "greenroom" for the actors during the two nights of performances about the behavior of the hawks and he seemed to think that the female was probably the younger male's mother -- telling him it was time to leave the nest.

There were many birds flying around the cemetery -- mostly transient groups of migrating songbirds like this Western Bluebird:

The sunset on Friday night was gorgeous!

And we couldn't have asked for better than Saturday night's full moon:

The first vignette was about a daughter writing the memoirs of her Irish mother. Both are buried at the cemetery:

The next vignette was about an early saloon owner and a relative of the locally famous Carillo family. During Saturday performances, the actress playing a Temperance Union member in the vignette that followed this one, picketed the saloon:

The next vignette was a scene from an early Sebastopol City Council meeting -- members of which are buried at the cemetery:

The next vignette was mine and, since I haven't received any photos from anyone who might have taken some, I'm afraid I don't have any to show you... But I will be posting my script -- all about a ghost named "Harold" who haunted a local B and B -- soon! Look for it! :o)

The next vignette I wrote but didn't appear in. It was about a woman named Orpha McChristian who is buried in the cemetery and was the widow of one of the members of the "Bear Flag Revolt" in Sonoma which ended Mexican rule of California :

Lastly, a terrifically-acted vignette about two brothers who were members of a family of early funeral directors in Sebastopol:

The actor on the left is the curator at Luther Burbank's Farm and a landscaper who owns his own local business. He is also an actor par excellence with a local playhouse and a member of a local men's chorus.

All 8 of our performances were sold out (some as early as this last APRIL) and I can't wait 'til the meeting of the Historical Society's Board of Directors tomorrow to see what the bottom line was! All proceeds went to support the Historical Society's projects.

'Til next time, precious Gatherers!

From the ole singlewide here in the wild hinterlands --

luv,

jean

For more information about the Western Sonoma County Historical Society and/or Luther Burbank's Gold Ridge Farm in Sebastopol, Northern California, see our website HERE.