Coming Up for Air

This except is taken from the George Orwell book 'Coming Up for Air.' The context is that a man grows disillusioned with what his life has become and travels, or escapes, back to his hometown to revisit his youth only to discover that things have changed. He is just arriving to his old town when he stumbles upon a new grave yard and has these thoughts:

It was enormous, twenty acres, I should think. There's always a kind of jumped-up unhomelike look about a new cemetery, with its raw gravel paths and its rough green sods, and the machine-made marble angels that look like something off a wedding-cake. But what chiefly struck me at the moment was that in the old days this place hadn't existed. There was no separate cemetery then, only the churchyard. I could vaguely remember the farmer these fields used to belong to - Blackett, his name was, and he was a dairy -farmer. And somehow the raw look of the place brought it home to me how things have changed. It wasn't only that the town had grown so vast that they needed twenty acres to dump their corpses in. It was their putting the cemetery out here, on the edge of town. Have you noticed that they always do that nowadays? Every new town puts its cemetery on the outskirts. Shove it away-keep it out of sight! Can't bear to be reminded of death. Even the tombstones tell you the same story. They never say that the chap underneath them "died", it's always "passed away" or "fell asleep." It wasn't so in the old days. We had our churchyard plumb in the middle of the town, you passed it everyday, you saw the spot where your grandfather was lying and where some day you were going to lie yourself. We didn't mind looking at the dead. In hot weather, I admit, we also had to smell them because some of the family vaults weren't too well sealed.

George Orwell

Coming up for Air

I think this passage address some of the questions that have been raised about how we remove ourselves from death in our modern culture. How we satanize death in our language and space so we don't have to address it directly. Raising the question. How does shielding ourselves from death affect our attitudes about death? and for that matter, how does shielding ourselves from death affect our appreciation of life? 

Here today, canned tomorrow...

Caught this article in the Guardian today...click and enjoy!

"Ashes of man who designed Pringles packaging buried in crisp can."


"(Fredric) Baur requested the burial arrangement because he was proud of his design of the Pringles container, a son, Lawrence Baur, of Michigan, said on Monday."


As well as this being a novel idea - it made me wonder about other people that were so proud of their accomplishments that they either chose to be buried along with something they created, or in this case, buried inside of something they created. I'm sure there's more examples that I just can't think of at the moment...perhaps the Kiss Koffin?

Ghost Bike

NPR is virtually a gold mine of death-related information. Yesterday, Eight Forty-Eight reported on Ghost Bikes, a "junker bike that has been painted stark white and afixed to the site where a cyclist has been hit or killed by a car driver. Ghostbikes are intended to be memorials for the fallen and reminders to everyone to SHARE THE ROAD with one another."



To listen to the story, click here.

I've never seen a Ghost Bike. I think I would know if I had: it's bright white frame, like a ghost itself, would have inevitably caught my eye. I also think it's unfortunate that I never knew about them until now. It's a fitting, wonderful memorial to those fallen, and a reminder to all how important it is to be safe.

This is a prime example of the evolution of death practices. As more and more people ride, more get hit, and as they get hit, they are memorialized for what they were: cyclists.

More info in Ghost Bikes:

www.ghostbike.org

And in Chicago:

www.bikechicago.info/ghostbikes/

There is also an annual Ride of Silence that occurs across the country to honor those injured or killed while riding a bike. We just missed this year's ride, it happened on Wednesday night.

capsula mundi

I luh-HUUUUUUVE this idea for an alterna-coffin. (I never thought I'd type that sentence.) Seriously, if I didn't think cremation was pretty much the way to go, I'd totes do this:

The Capsula Mundi is an egg-shaped container made of bioplastic. The body of the deceased rests in a fetal position within this capsule, which gets planted in the earth like a bulb. A shallow circular depression is dug above the capsule to symbolize the presence of the body, in the center of which a tree is planted. Over time, the groups of burial sites become a sacred memorial grove. (via Inhabitat.)

Hidden Truths: Chicago City Cemetery and Lincoln Park

I have been interested in exploring the history of Chicago's City Cemetery, the city's first major cemetery located in what is today Lincoln Park. It was difficult to find much of anything about City Cemetery--until this website launched. It's creator, Pamela Bannos, was interviewed on 848 this morning.

An entire website dedicated to the history of Chicago's city cemetery in 19th century Lincoln Park. Check it out. It's awesome. From the website:

From 1843 through 1859, the only graveyards in the city of Chicago were in the area of the southern edge of Lincoln Park and the neighborhood now known as the Gold Coast. This cemetery cluster consisted of the City Cemetery, the Potter’s Field, the Jewish Cemetery and the Catholic Cemetery. During these sixteen years of exclusive use, there were more than 20,000 interments.

In 1859, with the opening of Rosehill Cemetery, followed the next year by the Graceland and Calvary Cemeteries, there became additional options for burials of the deceased in the fast-growing city. In 1866, further burials in the cemeteries by the lake were prohibited. From 1860 through that time, an additional 15,000 interments had taken place in those locations.

(Burial by the lake was prohibited because graves were filling with water--as graves were dug, the water would start coming in after about 4 feet.)

In 1866, it was determined that city officials had illegally acquired a 12-acre parcel of land within the cemetery grounds, known as the Milliman Tract. For the next two years, the remains within the graves in this area were relocated to other cemeteries and the land was returned to its rightful owners. The two-year disinterment period of this section of the 57-acre City Cemetery seems to be where the history of the cemeteries’ removals becomes confused.

In 1869, the city officials passed control of the cemetery grounds, along with the northern 50-acres of unused area of the cemetery property, already used as a park, to the Lincoln Park Commissioners. The Commissioners spent the next few years landscaping the park grounds north of the City Cemetery.

In 1871, the Chicago Fire ravaged the City and Catholic Cemeteries’ grounds, effectively destroying and eliminating grave markers.

In 1872, the potter’s field disinterments commenced. The Chicago Tribune claimed the potter’s field disinterments occurred in 25 days, even though by their own calculations at the rate they estimated, it should have taken more than a year. (The ten assigned gravediggers were estimated to be able to disinter 20 bodies per day.) There were also nearly 4,000 Confederate prisoners buried in the potter’s field. In his 1999 book, To Die In Chicago, George Levy writes that many Confederate soldiers were likely left buried in what are today’s baseball fields.

In 1874, The Lincoln Park Commissioners condemned the grounds of the unclaimed cemetery lots, incorporating that area into the park. Fewer than 1,000 disinterments occurred after this point, leaving thousands buried in the park grounds.

In 1875, The Lincoln Park Commissioners removed the 150 remaining headstones with their graves to a one-acre fenced area within the park. In 1883, the stones were removed, leaving those graves in the park.

In 1877, the Chicago Tribune reported that all remaining vestiges of the City Cemetery had been removed except for the Couch Tomb, which was deemed too expensive to move. The newspaper wrote, "....the Commissioners have determined to let it remain, and plant trees thickly around it" to hide it from view.

In 1884, A.T. Andreas published the second volume of his three-volume History of Chicago. In addressing the closing of the City Cemetery, he misrepresented the 12-acre Milliman Tract disinterments, stating that those exhumations represented the entire 57-acre City Cemetery.

In 1899, the Chicago Tribune published the first story about unexpectedly finding skeletal remains in Lincoln Park. By this time, it appears that the presumption that the cemeteries had been totally vacated was incorrect.

The Dead Still Walk

The dead still walk
This city,
I dreamt once that
Children burnt in a fire,
With only their arms for blankets,
Sang in the frozen night
Outside a church
While angels wept down upon them.
92 children howled and screamed
Like dying animals,
Singing for God
To let them in
Back in.

The dead still talk
In this city.
My Dad drove an ambulance
For Thompson Funeral Parlor
At 79th and Ellis
And sometimes the dead
Spoke to him through
The radio
Or called him on the phone
But when he turned
On the TV
They'd only
Stare back
Waving silently
In black and white.

The Irish dead still talk
A lot in this city.
The fog is like cigar smoke
At the foot of the lake,
And Richard J. Daley
Could always see through
The smoke.
Every wink, every nod,
Every smirk
Turned into highways,
Skyscrapers and bridges.
"I'm a kid from the stockyards--
I'll stand with you."
And he did.

Then the Irish
Licked the frosting,
Ate the cake
And sold the
Plate.

Who built the pyramids?
Mayor Daley built the pyramids.

--Tony Fitzpatrick, Bum Town

The Death Test

Since I was invited to join this blog, I've been reluctant to post or to dwell too long reading these entries. Not because they're not fascinating -- but because I'm realizing that I'm sick to death of death.

I don't like to pick it apart as an academic subject, I can't stomach most artistic takes on it (movies, books, TV, theater -- but especially movies); in general, I can't treat it impartially, as if it were somehow separate from me, as a thing to dissect and ponder.

And I'm wondering, is this because of my personal experiences with death? Am I less objective, less impartially curious, because I've just been too close (as a witness, not a participant) to the dying process? Can I ever connect to it again in a way that is observational -- and somewhat aesthetically enjoyable?

So, I'm interested to know the personal death histories of this particular Death Squad. A sort of Death Purity test, if you will. Who has:

...had an acquaintance (not-close friend) or distant relative die?

...had a close friend or relative die?

...had someone in their immediate family (sibling, parent, grandparent) die?

...been to a funeral or funerals? If so, how many?

...watched somebody die?

...been on the verge of death themselves?

Thanks in advance for your answers.