Our Lady Of The Strong Shoulders
I know Forest Hills pretty well, to put it mildly. The older sections of it, anyway. I've taken pictures (many of which, unfortunately, now look terrible to me compared with the images my D40 produces) of my favorite bits a hundred times, but my interest continues because the monuments are always changing. Winter storms cause damage; wings break off; fingers and whole limbs snap and their former owners never flinch. For a place meant to be eternal, the changes are multitudinous.
There are certain monuments I always return to, though. Some to document their progressive decay, and others to document their immutable solidness while monuments around them crack and break and are endlessly mended.
Our Lady Of The Strong Shoulders is one of those that doesn't change.
She's probably one of my favorite statues in the whole joint; certainly one of my favorite to photograph (see also the picture on the wall behind me here). There's a lot of redundancy amongst the statuary at Forest Hills, like some of the figures were stamped out by a factory; one can almost imagine the grieving Victorians crowded round a table, choosing a relative's memorial from the stonecarver's illustrated catalog. Our Lady here is in my experience unique, and possessed of a particularly memorable expression (not unlike The Key Holder). It's mostly the shape of her arms, and her blunt stare, that get me. She's one of those statues where, walking away from her, I half expect to look back and see she's turned her head to watch me go.
The family she memorializes is called Hammer - the patriarch's name is Thorvald.
I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.
