Fatboy grim
Another gangster funeral story. Why another? Because gangster funerals are the other side of the coin of state or royal funerals. They offer spectacle. Freshly interred in Australia is Carl ‘Fat Boy’ Williams. The convicted drug smuggler and murderer was just six years into a minimum 35-year sentence when he was beaten to death with […]
Glarin’ or hollerin’?
Since most progressive developments in funerals are reinventions of or reversions to past practice, it’s always a good idea, now and then, to peer into the mists of history and see if there’s anything that can be plucked out, dusted down and dressed up for the 21st century. The funeral mute, for example. Men dressed […]
Fast track to eternity
Clever guy, that Shakespeare. He foresaw the viral capability of the internet long before the invention of the penny post. Here’s Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “I’ll put a girdle around the Earth in 40 minutes!” Which is as long as it took young gunshot victim David Morales Colón to travel around the world […]
Blessed are the wicked
We all acknowledge the link between sex and death – but what is it that links crime with death? A really good gangster funeral is a sight to see. These guys do not go incognito into that good night. Having shunned any sort of limelight all their lives, this is when they step out from […]
Tidying up our dead
Very nice piece in the Washington Post by Tracy Grant: Closets are odd creatures … In starter homes, newlywed husbands tease their brides that all their clothes will never fit in that closet. When the homebuyers are upscale, the closets can boast more square footage than some Manhattan apartments. But talk to any adult child […]
Resurrection!
Thanks to the supernatural genius of Ian ‘Harry’ Harris (no, he’s not a gangster, he’s a web wizard) at Carron Media, this blog has, by dint of main force, gentle coaxing and the application of recondite algorithms, been migrated from Blogger, which is pulling the plug on it, to WordPress, which has pronounced itself humbled, […]
Burying Jed Kesey
Here’s an extract from an account of the funeral of Ken Kesey: It was the least maudlin memorial service and funeral I’ve ever been to—his family and community loved him and shared his disinterest in sentimentality. At the burial at his farm his corpse was right there in front of us. People filed by and […]
Life Ain’t Always Beautiful
Here’s an unusually well-written blog: THE MY WIFE HAS CANCER BLOG. Had. She died on 29 March, and its author will shortly be wrapping it up. It’s a very good, if sometimes difficult, read. And there’s an interesting post on funeral costs. We’d find it hard to do anything like that so cheaply in this […]
Quickie Wednesday
Interesting piece from Canada on home funerals in which a ‘death midwife’ (gotta find a better term than that!) acknowledges that funeral directors can, in the right circumstances, do the job as well as her. She’s right, of course. Good funeral directors are not the enemy. Read it From Pam Vetter’s newsletter, this tragic account […]
Cash for corpses
You can tell how developed a society is by the price it puts on life. Could, rather. In the most developed societies there’s a re-evaluation going on. The Office of National Statistics calculates that death is now preceded by the unendurable prospect of an average 10 years’ chronic illness or dementia. It scares the hell […]
