“Pretty much every day of the year [a few blocks from The Community Library in Ketchum] a person walks up to the grave and remembers by leaving a token: a coin, a bottle of drink, a letter, a business card, a tube of lipstick”
One of the [virtual] presentations at the recent annual seminar in Idaho was introduction to a new exhibit at The Community Library called “Hemingway’s Grave: A Year of Offerings,” which grew out of playwright David Cale’s monthlong residency and a followup workshop one year later with stage director Les Waters. The off-Broadway debut of Blue Cowboy, set in modern day Ketchum, is anticipated for next November 2025.
A separate project, the exhibit, was inspired by Les Waters’ gravesite visit while workshopping with Cale. Previously he had very little familiarity with Hemingway (one novel for A-levels long ago), and when visiting a grave he customarily offers flowers. The memorabilia at Hemingway’s stands out for expressing the unconventional. As the library’s executive director explained, the heart of the project of weekly cataloging these items for one year:
“…can raise larger questions of how do we remember generally and why and to what end. How do we memorialize the people we have lost and what do the tokens we leave signify.”
In North Carolina our memory care social worker last week left on a trip to return by the end of September and signed off with final goodbyes, anticipating my mother passing in hospice before then. Her longtime client is a woman whose own mother and daughter share Hemingway’s birthday and who was born on a day when the asteroid named for memory, Mnemosyne, was at that very July 21st location in the sky.
Countdown: 35/287