Script:

Hi everyone, welcome to Day 2 of my flexible 30-day microcast challenge, where I’m planning to post a short recording daily while I have time for it for the rest of this year.

I can’t remember if I mentioned this here previously.

But I took part in October’s #31DaysofGraves photo challenge on Bluesky!

It was started by Anna Fairley Nielsson (here’s her Linktree and Bluesky accounts).

In this embedded post, you can see the photo theme for each day of October.

I jumped in on the challenge a little late at close to the halfway mark, but I still had a great time.

I especially liked topics such as Day 2: Nautical, which I contributed to retroactively.

Here’s a photo I took when there was lots of autumn foliage.

One thing led to another and I ended up creating an account on Find A Grave, to upload some tombstone or cemetery pictures that I took.

Photo Essay

I also ended up joining the Maine Old Cemetery Association for a year.

It’s an organization that’s “dedicated to the preservation of Maine’s neglected cemeteries.”

They accept member contributions to their quarterly newsletter, and the team was kind enough to feature my short photo essay in the Winter 2025 newsletter.

Here’s what I wrote in my short photo essay—

Names Beneath the Leaves

This autumn, I walked through cemeteries across my region, Washington County in Maine.

I was drawn first by the light and color, then by the names beneath the leaves.

I began visiting cemeteries during the October #31DaysofGraves photo challenge on Bluesky, where I was fascinated by the visual details in old tombstone images shared by others. What started as an aesthetic practice soon became something more layered.

As I slowed down to read the names and epitaphs, I found myself drawn into the stories. Some legible, others softened by time and lichen.

These photos are quiet offerings: each one a moment of presence, history, and a glimpse into lives once lived.

These walks have become a quiet (and sometimes very active) ritual of remembrance and curiosity. Through photography and genealogy, I’m learning to listen to what the stones still want to say.

YouTube

Because of this challenge, I started taking short videos of my hiking and cemetery walks.

Here are a couple that I recently uploaded onto YouTube.

One is a short video filmed from the top of Round Pond Cemetery in Charlotte, Maine, while the other is a slide deck presentation on some of the things I learned during this #31DaysofGraves photo challenge.

Since I’ve been running my dragon website Dragonsinn.net for over 25 years, I posted an offshoot blog post over there too on Dragon Tombstones 🐉.

Thanks for dropping by today and I’ll see you tomorrow for Microcast Challenge Day 3 (weekdays edition).