Emporers of the Empire State

Ended up in Brooklyn again today, at the Green-Wood Cemetery in search of the emperors of the empires and I was not disappointed. First of all, this place is beautiful and anyone can get to it by taking the R train to 25th street and walking a couple of blocks up the hill towards the trees. It’s so lovely actually, that in the 1850’s it rivaled Niagara Falls as the main tourist attraction in the country and over half a million people visited annually to have picnics with the departed.

Green-Wood is bursting with famous “permanent residents” and I was humbled to pay my respects to them and thank them in a small way for their mighty contributions to this earthly life.

First stop, Leonard Bernstein, Emperor of Broadway and the New York Philharmonic.



Next I found Peter Cooper.



19th century industrialist who built the first steam locomotive, made a fortune in glue and iron production, laid the first transatlantic telegraph cable and invented, with the help of his wife Sarah, what we now know as Jell-O. He had little formal education and could not spell, and because of this created the Cooper Union for Science and Art which still confers degrees in engineering, art and architecture, free of cost. Cooper was the emperor of philanthropy, setting the standard for successful industrialists that give back to the community. We miss you, Pete.

I was wandering around looking for the grave of prematurely departed artist Jean Michel Basquiat



When a cemetery security car rolled by and the driver asked if I was “off to see the wizard”. He directed me to a grave nearby.


Occupied permanently by Frank Morgan, the actor who played the wizard in the movie, along with four other characters.

The security officer, Tommy
was taking pictures of the various monuments to note any damage for the maintenance records of Green-Wood. He has been working there for only a few months but spent his whole life in the neighborhood, and was raised in a house that overlooked the cemetery. He started playing there when he was four years old and clearly loves the place. It’s nice to work here, I said and he replied that he never wants to leave. I asked the next logical question: will you spend eternity here?

Tommy answered happily that he had already got that settled and that he owned two plots in the place but he wasn’t sure which one he’d be buried in. I gotta see who moves in around me, you know. Yeah, you don’t want noisy neighbors for the afterlife, I said. That’s right, Tommy smiled.

This is Tommy’s favorite monument in the place, the lady on the stairs, as he called her:



She was murdered and she’s just beautiful, he said.

Of course this got me thinking about my own memorial and what that should look like. First of all, granite or bronze or a combo is a must. Marble just does not hold up over time. I cannot claim to be the Emperor of the nanny empire, not yet anyway. I have my aspirations. My fellow nannies of this city are ripe and ready to recognize their status as caretakers to the future, so maybe that’s my calling. A little community organizing can get you far these days so who knows.

Deb in the City, contemplating eternity but trying to stay in the moment, saying so long.