West Lawn: Death and Commerce in the American Landscape

[Note: This is an essay I wrote for my Contemporary American Landscapes class, in which we were assigned to take the bus to a random place in Eugene and write about what we found. It turned out a bit more morbid than I would have expected, but the results were interesting nonetheless.]


Any landscape architect wishing to achieve the stately, respectable, American appearance of West Lawn Memorial Park on Danebo Road can easily do so by mimicking the following design strategies. First, plant Douglas fir in a long, neat line near the busy road and wait sixty years for them to fatten. Clear the rest of the land and put in rows uniform headstones, and throw in a couple of American flags and a fake waterfall for ambiance. Then, be sure the cemetery is situated in a sprawling, industrial end of town, across the street from such barbed-wired establishments as Bad Bitch Choppers and Pacific Metals. It will easily be the most attractive enterprise in the area by simple process of elimination.
West Lawn’s unexpectedly dignified appearance is what first drew me in as I wandered up Danebo from West 11th last weekend. West Eugene is notorious for its sketchiness, and I’d arrived at its most distant fringe: the bus stop just past Wal-Mart, realm of speeding semis and disaffected young men in black hoodies. In this setting, West Lawn Memorial Park appeared a peaceful refuge. I paused for a moment on the narrow shoulder to appreciate the neat daffodil bed around the large sign at the entrance. Looking down, I noticed something misshapen and feathery by my feet. A dead bird. I didn’t know it yet, but that’s the closest encounter I would have with my own mortality at this thoroughly modern American cemetery.
“Cemetery,” of course, isn’t the term the West Lawn proprietors would prefer. The sign out front advertises “funerals, cremations, and memorial park,” dignifiedly refusing to allude to the unpleasantness of death with more descriptive words. This is a safe place, it seems to announce. We’re sorry you have to come here, but we do welcome your business.
It’s a Sunday – prime grave-visiting day – but there are only two cars in the West Lawn parking lot and they might as well belong to the former drivers belowground. The place is deserted. However, it’s not entirely unpleasant, either: The “park” lives up to its promise of shady trees, green lawns and inviting benches. Only a sign warning of a security camera in the parking lot reminds me that this is not a public space. At the top of the upward-sloping pavement is a red brick building with a slanted roof and generic stained-glass window. Though it at first appears to be a church, this is in fact a non-religious “Chapel of Memories” attached to the West Lawn office, part of the one-stop-shopping funeral package offered by the business.
I wander toward the waterfall nestled in a grove of trees between the parking lot and the grassy hillside of burial plots. Another sign tells me I’ve entered the Memorial Garden. A walkway meanders among shrubbery and shiny granite markers, most of which are blank, unwritten pages in the West Lawn death ledger. One is freshly engraved: “Teresa Morales, 1940-2009. Mamá siempre estarás en nuestro corazón,” it reads, the inscription accented by carved roses. I move on, drawn to the sound of the waterfall, which almost manages to drown out the hum of traffic on Danebo. Peering inside the water, I spot a plastic koi fish on a pole, disfigured by a healthy growth of algae.
The Memorial Garden is not disorderly but lacks cohesion, its elements holding in common only their newness, like displays at a home and garden show. Next to the small pool is a wood gazebo with a bench inside, and next to that a stone box that looks like a chest of drawers (I later learn its name: "columbarium". The units inside are known as "niches" and can store the ashes of one to two people.) A little farther down the circular path is another stone box and cardboard sign: Private Mausoleum. Available for purchase.
Memory and sales just became too closely tied for my tastes. I exit the garden for the wide open space of the cemetery proper. A cold wind sweeps over the grass, fluttering plastic flowers and miniature flags. In the distance, I can make out the roof of a Target store. Stenciled wooden signs demarcate sections of the graveyard in a fashion reminiscent of a Disneyland parking lot. Only here, instead of leaving your car in "Goofy," you can abandon your carcass in "David" or "Peace." For children, there's "Baby Circle," watched over by a statue of a marble angel kissing a fawn. One segment has bushes cut into a strange funnel shape; another is shaped into a mound with a single tree growing in the center. Is it the tree of life? A symbol of the lone individual reaching toward heaven?
I’m stirred from my ponderings by a blue Pontiac that drives up suddenly, a white-haired woman at the wheel. Disregarding the parking lot, she takes advantage of the cemetery's paved lanes and pulls up to a point near the headstone of her choice. It takes her less than three minutes to exchange the flowers and get back in her car.

What does the landscape of West Lawn reveal about Eugenians, living and dead? As J.B. Jackson, the great American landscape critic, has pointed out, Americans – and Europeans before us – have a long tradition of collecting populations of the deceased and placing them under the ground. Traditionally, those with higher social status were buried closer to the church, but in general we prefer to hide away these groupings of bodies, behind a glade of trees or outside of town somewhere. In these locations, plots tend to be rectangular, like the squared-off spaces – houses, fields – in which their occupants spent their lives.
Landscape truly is history made visible, as Jackson said, and this modern graveyard reflects changes in American habits and values over the past hundred or so years. It’s egalitarian, yes – now everyone can be buried near a church. Of course, that church can’t be a real one in the sense of being affiliated with a religious institution. That would narrow the customer base.
So religion, which once was integral to culture, has been reduced to a representation in this landscape. Death is a business here, made abstract by the mingling of cash with the respectable facade of the cemetery. Walking through, I don’t feel morbid, just curious. Who would want to be buried in this place? My best theory is that few actually chose this end. Perhaps these dead are all relations of the country’s transitory class, people who came here to seek their fortune and moved on long ago, choosing an economical site on cheap West Eugene land for a quick and easy burial. The lack of family plots may be evidence of this theory. Or maybe these discrete, nearly identical units are simply indicators of a society that simultaneously values individuality and conformity, where a membership to any community is a burden but standing out comes at a cost. By becoming conspicuous consumers – of fancy caskets, a “niche” near the waterfall, dozens of flowers – even in death, we make that passing less threatening for ourselves and easier for loved ones to bear.
Judging by the abundance of blank plots and markers in West Lawn, its owners are at least subconsciously counting on the next generation of dead sharing the values of those already in the ground. They’re not the only ones, though; we all depend on the eventuality of these slots becoming filled. Babies are born each day, newcomers fill apartment complexes and suburbs. We always need more space.
I watch the lady in the Pontiac drive off and turn to leave as well. As I do, I notice a backhoe in the next field over, pouring out a cloud of black smoke that stands out against the grey sky. It doesn’t take long for me to figure out what it’s doing over there in that far corner of the hedged-in lawn. Shovelful after shovelful, a new grave is quietly being dug.

Food in Washington: Two important new developments

John Adams did it. Eleanor Roosevelt did it. The Clintons even had a few pots of it on the White House roof. Now, though, the Obamas are promoting the plants in a bigger way than ever before: a 1100 square foot vegetable garden just outside their back door.

A class of third-graders helped Michelle Obama break ground for the new garden on March 20th, creating an oasis of potential food in the otherwise immaculate house lawn (I commend her budget-minded use of free child labor). The entire Obama family plans on pitching in to keep the organic garden going through the growing season.
Why vegetables and why now? The plan didn't come from thin air - food policy activists have lobbied the president for months to set this example for Americans, although Ms. Obama has cites her motivations as desire to increase the freshness of the produce her family consumes. Of course, there' s more to it than that. Home gardens like this one are a simple, direct way to localize the food system and have the added benefit of educating the neighbors about diet and maybe even food politics. Although the idea is gaining momentum among the general public, it still has elite and/or west-coast-hippie-weirdo connotations, fears that will likely be alleviated by the sight of the Obamas getting their hands dirty and eating arugula.
The plan is not without historical precedent. Sixty years ago, Victory Gardens – as popularized by Eleanor Roosevelt – were incredibly successful in alleviating hunger and freeing up cash to fight a war. Today, hunger is still a concern, the underlying cause being that suddenly none of us have any more cash. The article about the presidential garden in the New York Times noted that the total cost of seeds, mulch and other supplies was $200 – a start-up cost that will be greatly reduced in future years.

This development demonstrates that the Obamas and others in Washington clearly have food system sustainability on their minds, even if they may not point directly to it for political reasons. That’s why I was surprised to get an email this week that cried out alarmingly from my inbox with the subject heading “Government may forbid organic farming!”
Well, it grabs your attention way more than “A House bill that is still in committee proposes reorganizing the FDA and placing greater surveillance on food production and processing,” but that’s really what the email was about. The scare was focused on H.R. 875, which is similar to another proposed bill, H.R. 759. The bills were written in response to the peanut scare and other recent food safety problems. H.R. 875, the “Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009” seems to be overkill, creating a Food Safety Administration under the Department of Health and allowing the FDA to mandate recalls (currently they can only “recommend” them, which they recently did for the salmonella-tainted peanuts). However, it says nothing specific about organics and in no way bans private vegetable gardens or seed saving, as the Ron Paul diehards who probably inspired the email I received are proclaiming.
Still, any legislation that requires small, organic farmers to undergo more inspections and fill out more paperwork will certainly hurt those businesses. Here’s what Oregon Representative Peter Defazio has to say on the matter:
“I am certainly mindful of the impact on small farmers this bill could have. My district is home to many wonderful specialty crops with small-scale producers, and I have been a backyard gardener for years. Routine inspections of farms would still remain under the jurisdiction of states. FDA officials will not be showing up on farms to inspect it on a regular basis. There is no language in the bill that would penalize or shut down backyard farmers.” (From a form email response to one I sent him.)

That pretty much resolved my qualms, though I still question why there is no legislation, at least none that I’ve heard of, that actually addresses the underlying problem of our industrialized food system that led to the peanut problem and countless other food safety issues over the years. One need only recall the name “Peanut Corporation of America” to be reminded of the enormous scale and complexity of the processing pathways that typically lead from the peanut field to a package of Nut Butters at the corner store. It wasn’t the “Peanut Company of Alabama” or the “Nut Processing Cooperative of Skippy County” that was running the rat-infested, leaky factory. We should know by now that having a huge, centralized processing facility run by a single entity makes it impossible to track and monitor food processing - be it for tomatoes, beef, spinach or Mr. Peanut. The system is simply too vast humans to control it. And the Ron Paulians, of all people, should recognize that.

Despite the false starts, there are good signs here that food policy is moving in the right direction in this country at last. If the Obamas have a vegetable garden and people are at least recognizing that the FDA is dysfunctional, it’s a good start. Get out there and play in the dirt, lawmakers, and let’s see what else we can uproot and change.