November 2011
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weadude asked: Saw you said that you spent your childhood in New Milford. I spent mine in Sherman! Fun fact about Sherman: Arshile Gorky (famous painter) had a house in Sherman and hung himself in his home. He's buried in the North Cemetery. But as for my question: do you know anything about decapitated heads retaining sight after separation from the body?
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Exquisite Corpses: The Art of the Cadaver Tomb →
From the ever-great Atlas Obscura:
Something strange happened to funeral monuments in the 15th century. Across France, Italy and England the long standing practice of carving recumbant effigies in poses of gentle rest was replaced by depictions of rotting corpses.
Read more.
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Updates
So, I’m clearly feeling like sitting around in my jammies this weekend and not burning calories: I’ve made some updates to the site. Made things more personal, perhaps.
New category:
Personal Details & Opinions
And two new pages:
About Me, About This Sites I Love
The “Sites I Love” page I’ve been meaning to add for forever. For folks who are looking for...
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Grief and Solemnity
“I ventured to look into the coffin.” I live for details like this.
Also: An entire book about exhumations? Must have.
lareviewofbooks:
COLIN DICKEY on the American way of death. Flea © Greg Colson 2010 Elliptical Models Courtesy of the artist and Kayne Griffin Corcoran
Michael Kammen Digging Up the Dead: A History of Notable American Reburials University of Chicago Press, 2010....
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Me and Death
This blog belies my real relationship with its subject matter. Despite all you’ve seen here, I don’t like death.
It’s probably time for me come out about a few things:
I’ve never seen a dead body. (That’s not counting bog bodies and mummies in museums.)
I have been fascinated with death — particularly its physical aspect — since childhood. Before I...
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WWI Grave Find Tells Story Germans Want To Forget →
The tomb, poignant and grisly, sheds light on the lives of the soldiers who died in explosions from heavy shells that penetrated the tunnel.
“It’s a bit like Pompeii,” Michaël Landolt, the French archaeologist leading the dig, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “Everything collapsed in seconds and is just the way it was at the time. This is an extraordinary find.”
...
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Speaking to the Dead
mariasmemo:
No, the curator has not gone completely mad. But when you are working on a stone monument at the cemetery, you feel compelled to talk to Maria and her family. You see, I am cleaning their grave markers. Back in 2005, with funding from the Community Preservation Act, I worked with a stone conservator to clean the stone monuments of the Mitchell family correctly. Unfortunately,...
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Can You Excavate Love? →
Another great article from Bones Don’t Lie.
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As 9/11 Remains Are Identified, Grief Is Renewed →
As human remains are linked to people killed at the World Trade Center, family members continue to receive a series of unpredictable and heart-rending notifications.
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“I am going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual. Call it...”
– Jerzy Kosiński’s Suicide Note (via ellamorte)
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WatchReposting because of the brief discussion of suicide at the beginning: “Get in a tub. Don’t be a dick. Because it’s not about you anymore. As of now, it’s about who finds your stupid on-purpose dead body. Don’t ruin a rug. Get into a tub, close the curtain, point at the wall.”
I love Louis CK. Also: “Everything that’s available to do isn’t a...
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Russian Man Stole 26 Corpses And Dressed Them Up... →
Uh. You’re gonna wanna check out these two pictures and also read the article Buzzfeed links to.
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An Undertaker With Purple Nails →
Doris V. Amen, the director of the Jurek-Park Slope Funeral Home in Brooklyn, says many customers appreciate her starting price of $1,999 for a wake.
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Archaeological News: Medieval Graves Disturbed For... →
archaeologicalnews:
Once laid to rest, the remains of many who died in medieval Europe were not left in peace. As much as 40 percent of graves from the mid-fifth to mid-eighth centuries appear to have been disturbed after burial.
Grave robbers, searching for wealth buried along with the dead, have frequently born…
This article is fascinating. Click through to read the whole thing.
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Death is not what it used to be →
xmorbidcuriosityx:
The boundary between life and death has become blurred by new medical treatments, writes Roger Highfield.
Recently, I found myself discussing what makes for a great literary death with my fellow judges of the 2011 Wellcome Trust book prize for medicine in literature, ahead of a debate we’re having at Waterstone’s next month. The contenders ranged from the last moments of...
