Thursday, August 21, 2008

Caleb Pink


I have no idea who Caleb Pink was, but he has a lovely gravestone.
I took this photo in London's Highgate Cemetary in 2003. I highly recommend it should you ever visit London. It is a little out of the way and hard to find for someone not familiar with the city, but it's beautiful and well worth finding.

There are a several notable people buried in Highgate Cemetery. Karl Marx is buried there, as is Douglas Adams (although he was still living when I was there back in 2003). There's been a bit of a controversy-Douglas Adams' family would like his tombstone to be shaped like the number 42 (people who know his work will understand why), but Highgate has strict rules about the tombstones there, and doesn't allow shaped ones. I'd like to see them make one exception.

EDIT:
I Googled Caleb Pink after posting this. Turns out he was a pioneer American Socialist. So there's at least two old lefties buried in Highgate. We've got Emma Goldman here, buried in Forest Home Cemetery in suburban Chicago. There's apparently a small group of anarchists and labor organizers buried there, in remembrance of the Haymarket riot.

Also, Douglas Adams died in 2001, so his grave should have been in Highgate. I don't recall seeing it, however.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hi. I came across this because I was looking for information on Caleb Pink myself. He was a mystic as well as a socialist. There is a reference to him in Richard Maurice Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness, where he is referred to as C.P. in Part V. He is also mentioned in the Wikipedia article on Bucke. He wrote The Angel of the Mental Orient (London, 1895). Simon