Curiously neutral nabe

Our Northeastern base of operations has shifted from Larchmont, in lower Westchester, to North White Plains, about 15 miles upcounty, in the welcoming home of Mary's brother George. The area is less swank, but still plenty comfy and with much of its own interest. We have been exploring on foot and trying to figure out good paths by which we can get out and get some exercise. The best way leads through the graveyard out behind George's subdivision.

It was hard to figure out how to get back there, but we eventually determined that we had to go through the side and back yard of a guy named Kevin, who has a very nice 1957 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud in his garage which used to belong to the drummer of Bon Jovi, for whom Kevin used to run the soundboard.

The graveyard is an interesting one. We couldn't find any gravestones much older than 1918, which makes it seem like it only really became a commercial burial place around the time of World War I. A large plurality if not outright majority of the gravestones are of Italians, many of them with very rarely encountered names like "Kresenzia" and "Emanuella." Some of the stones tell pretty eloquent stories in very few words, something like:

Antonio 1882-1928
Antonia 1888-1974
Luigi 1922-1942
Fiorello 1916-1998

Not a whole lot of commentary needed there. 46 years is a long time to survive a spouse.

Alongside the Italians there are a bunch of clearly German and Irish ones, but very little of your milquetoast WASP variety, and not a lot of Jews.

There are a couple of plaques commemorating a "Home for the Poor" here which presumably predates the cemetery. I should have taken a picture so I could look it up.

The neighborhoods up behind George's subdivision probably were built from the 1940s and 50s forward, so post WWII. Solid little houses, with some torn down and larger houses built in the 70s-80s but not much since then. Interestingly, very few bumper stickers, no yard signs, very few visible signs of political affiliations, though some houses had driveways full of Toyotas and Hondas and sported solar panels, while others had big American trucks. But even those houses lacked the American flags we often see in patriotic households.

That said, spent some time in the local public library this morning working. A nice modern facility, where one of the librarians sported a knit pancho and spent a long time on the phone with an apparently elderly patron explaining the difference between looking a book up on the library's catalog vs. Amazon. Out in front of the library flew an American flag, and below that a black POW MIA flag. Just before I left for lunch, an enormous American truck was backed into a parking space. Out of it climbed a skinny hasidic kid. I wasn't expecting that.