Finally, inevitably, with the turn of a page comes the terse entry: "Amelia died at 8 o'clock this morning." That entry is followed by the even bleaker notation: "I didn't go to church today."

When artist and playwright Nancy Hasty read those words in the darkened seclusion of the Historical Society's archives, it was as if Susan Hopkins had been summoned, fully human, to live again. The diary created for Hasty a powerful image of a real woman who had lived, breathed and grieved and should not be treated as a historical footnote in a forgotten section of the library.

This belief is the driving force behind Hasty's historical musical, "Under the Lackawanna Moon," written in collaboration with Nancy's sister, songwriter and musician, Cyndie Hasty. The production, to be presented this Saturday and Sunday, June 12 and 13, in the Dunmore Cemetery, delves into the fully human cast of characters who once lived in Lackawanna County and who now occupy tombs in the cemetery.

Lackawanna County's history abounds with fascinating characters whom the Hastys present exhibiting the full range of human emotion and human nature: courage, compassion, fear, anguish, grief, greed. In short, the Hastys' thesis is that, past or present, we are all alike. In these stories, they hope we will recognize ourselves and, in so doing, perhaps get a glimpse of immortality.

Lenni Lenape
"Under the Lackawanna Moon" begins with the voices of the region's first inhabitants, the Lenni Lenape, the tribe of Delaware Indians known to have roamed the Lackawanna Valley before European settlement. Hasty's production pays meticulous attention to historical accuracy, and so the segment begins with a chanted song accompanied by drums and a "turtle rattle," a tortoise shell into which a few pebbles or corn has been inserted.

The audience will be seated in the cemetery in a low valley facing a great hill (the oldest part of the cemetery). The hill is flanked by roads on either side, forming a "stage left" and a "stage right" for the actors to come and go. The hillside, in the twilight, will make the actors seem to appear and disappear for their scenes like wraiths -- or to use Hasty's phrase, borrowed from Shakespeare, "these, our actors, are all spirits and are melted into air."

Hasty, who has Native American ancestors, wanted to pay homage to the Lenni Lenape, saying, "I found a prayer online, a blessing from the Lenape, some of whom might, indeed, be buried here." Part of the blessing being chanted says, "We thank the angels who guide us night and day. We believe in spirits too." And henceforth throughout the production the spirits will appear at will.

John B. Smith, Captain of Industry, the Ilk of a Scranton Man
Like a character from a page of Dickens, a well-dressed man in a top hat appears. He is there, he proclaims, to "bury all that was mortal of the late John B. Smith." As every student of local history knows, John B. Smith was late, great superintendent of the Pennsylvania Coal Company who died in 1895. Smith was a coal baron whose land-holdings traversed the Lackawanna Valley. He was also the quintessential 19th century man of means: morally upright, devoted to the rawest form of capitalism and given to an ornate turn of phrase.

His elaborate Victorian funeral featured not one, but three eulogies, delivered by ministers, one of whom called him, "the ilk of a Scranton man." Hasty comments, "They don't bury them like they used to," and adds that the "florid terms" are perfectly indicative of an entire class of men who had lived in Scranton during John B. Smith's time. Smith and his brilliantly orated eulogies stand in for them all: captains of industry, temperance society members, self-made men in a free market.

As the music swells and the oration dies, a different "ilk" from two centuries past appears.

The Friendless
As pitiful as it may seem to a modern audience, there was a time when society consigned its most vulnerable members to institutions for "the friendless," for "the wayward," or "for the poor." The Dunmore Cemetery has a section, marked merely by numbers, not names. Beneath the numbers lie the 19th and early 20th century's "friendless," mostly women and children who were unable to fend for themselves in an era marked by its appalling lack of concern for the poor.

As the convoluted oratory of the Smith funeral fades, children start to filter down the sides of the hill, described by Hasty to appear like "spirits, wraiths." As they stream down the hillside, they tell the audience what life was like for them. Two of them are angry spirits who declare, "I had a name!" A song written by Cyndie, entitled, "Mate Lu," punctuates the scene, described by Nancy as reminiscent of "Our Town."

The Hastys' very own sister, a child who died very young, inspired Cyndie's song. Nancy says that when she and Cyndie visited the grave of Mate Lu (pronounced Mattie Lou), no one in the family remembered much about her. It made Nancy wonder, "Whatever happened to Mate Lu?" and is the basis for Cyndie's song of mourning for the "friendless" buried in Dunmore.

However, the late 19th century in America is most remembered - not for Dickens, but for Horatio Alger, the dime-store novelist who penned a plethora of "strive and success" tales about "undaunted lads" who, through sheer pluck, went from the gutter straight to the top. And to think a Horatio Alger-lad lived in Scranton.

From Breaker Boy to President
James L. Crawford, late of Scranton, began life poor - a breaker boy sifting through coal with his bare hands to separate it from the slag. Crawford ended his life a renowned businessman, president of People's Coal Company. The Hastys tell his tale by depicting his younger self speaking to his elder self. The elder exhorts the younger to display all of Horatio Alger's most prized virtues, including "an indomitable work ethic." The scene ends with Cyndie's song, "Breaker Boy."

Boys weren't the only youth that suffered in the days before child labor laws. The Hastys pay due tribute to the young girls who toiled in the lace factories of Scranton with a song, "Dressed in Lace." The young girls dream of a day when they might actually wear some of the beautiful lace their fingers weave. Their reverie, however, is broken by the sharp clap and harsh words of their mistress, who snaps, "Back to work!"

Although the self-made Crawford is a sympathetic figure, his story is followed by an even more noteworthy entry into the "triumph of the human spirit" category.

Dancing at the Deadline
Many Civil War era soldiers are buried in the Dunmore Cemetery, but none has such a powerful tale of survival as Col. Ezra Ripple, Andersonville survivor, author and a mayor of Scranton.

Col. Ezra Ripple was captured by Confederates and sent to Andersonville in 1864. The horrors of that prison camp are well know and have been immortalized in several books and movies. However, Ripple himself wrote memoirs of his ordeal in a book entitled, "Dancing at the Deadline," available from the Lackawanna Historical Society.

The book gets its name from the thin line in the dirt surrounding the camp. The guards would shoot any prisoner who dared put a foot on the line, hence the prisoners fittingly christened it "the dead line."

Ripple recalls an evening when he played a fiddle, cobbled together by the prisoners from stray item s around the camp, and the other gaunt, skeletal prisoners danced. Ripple survived the inhumanity of Andersonville and returned to Scranton to become its mayor from 1886 to 1890. When Ripple died in 1910, his obituary identified him as Scranton's "most beloved citizen."

In Hasty's production, Ripple's Civil War experience is told amid snatches of letters and readings from diaries of other Scranton-area Civil War soldiers that Hasty culled from the Lackawanna Historical Society's archives.

The scene includes a rendition of Cyndie Hasty's song, "Lackawanna Moon," which dramatizes the longing of the soldiers to be back home again with their loved ones.

Ripple's tale, though moving, is also very heavy. Hasty wisely realized that this dark scene was best followed by some comic relief.

The second Mrs. Catlin

Every town has its upper crust whose members are very much aware of their lofty position in local society and eager to protect it. No one attacks the foibles of others with as much glee as a gaggle of these society matrons, whom Hasty presents in all of their tongue-wagging glory in a scene entitled, "The second Mrs. Catlin."

Mr. George Catlin was upstanding member of Scranton society, a bank president whose palatial home is now the office of the Lackawanna Historical Society. Following the death of his first wife, the aging Mr. Catlin did something most shocking. He wed his much-younger, much-too-attractive Irish maid. And the ladies of polite society never forgave HER for it. Their gossipy disapproval and her defiant pain are captured in a scene that includes a "who's who" of noteworthy people buried in the Dunmore Cemetery.

The diary of Susan Hopkins
The scene Nancy Hasty describes as the most poignant in the production follows the sly humor of the vignette involving the second Mrs. Catlin. Hasty describes the Hopkins scene as "an affluent version of Mate Lu." Hopkins' story moves Hasty to tears as she recalls a diary entry that reads, "God has shown He is a jealous God."

The production has followed the true stories of fascinating people who once lived in the Scranton-area. But it ends on a note that ties the past to the future and shows us how the lives of people past affect us yet today.

Underground Railroad
Northeast Pennsylvania housed many stops on the underground railroad. On North Main Avenue, Hasty notes, a library that still stands was one such stop. There was another stop in Waverly. People fleeing slavery in the South had several places to turn to in the Scranton area. And some railroad travelers chose to stay here instead of continuing on to Canada. Hasty notes that some of the children who appear in her production are the descendants of one such family of travelers who stayed on in Waverly.

"The wonderful Bea Ferguson Murphy, who sounds like (noted Gospel singer) Mahalia Jackson," says Nancy, will appear singing Cyndie Hasty's song, "Travelin' by Night (on angel's wings). Murphy is joined by a group of children dressed as angels. Amongst the angels are the four Miller sisters, whose ancestors fled on the underground railroad and disembarked in Waverly.

We Are Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On
The production ends with Nancy reciting a verse from Shakespeare as the actors melt away again up the hillside. The verse is from "The Tempest," and Hasty says it embodies the essence of what she and Cyndie wished to accomplish in "Under the Lackawanna Moon."

The verse reads in part, "Our revels are now ended. These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits, and are melted into air, into thin air. . . We are such stuff as dreams are made on; And our little life is rounded with a sleep."

With this, the theater-goers are invited to take their leave of those sleeping in the Dunmore Cemetery, people who lived again in the Hastys' production and will continue to live in the minds of those who see it.