Day out for the family skulls
From Wikipedia: Dia de los ñatitas (“Day of the Skulls”) is a festival celebrated in La Paz, Bolivia, on May 5. In pre–Columbian times, indigenous Andeans had a tradition of sharing a day with the bones of their ancestors on the third year after burial; however, only the skulls are used today. Traditionally, the skulls of family members are kept at […]
Graveland
Carla Conte is holding an exhibition in late January 2013. The title is Graveland. The venue is the Crypt Gallery, London. Graveland takes a curious look at cemeteries and tributes from around the world, exploring ways we remember, through photography & art. Photography, stories, objects and decorations will show some of the many different ways […]
Diagonal Daze in St Mary’s Churchyard, Twyford
Posted by Eleanor Whitby I was wandering around a churchyard on that one sunny summer’s day, as you do, and came upon a few really lovely headstones. The first was surrounded by a burst of colour in a green area of flat memorials in the council owned section – I loved the smooth, pebble like […]
Double standards?
There’s a very characteristic Daily Mail story in, of all places, today’s Daily Mail. It describes outrage in the environs of Wisbech concerning the ‘floral tributes’ which adorned the funeral of a notably industrious armed robber, Thomas Curtis. One of the tributes, above, took the form of an ATM machine of the sort that Mr […]
Tattoo – A friend in death?
The Rise of the Maori Tribal Tattoo By Ngahuia Te Awekotuku University of Waikato, New Zealand Body adornment – swirling curves of black on shoulders, thighs, lower back, arms, upper feet, rear calves – has become an opportunity for storytelling as well. Some symbols represent children born, targets reached, places visited, and increasingly, memories of […]
RIP Browny
Two years ago, Billy Jenkins was interviewed by Ian Brown for his ‘ultimate wasting time’ website Planet Browny. The guitarist instinctively plucked and strummed this 1936 classic from his huge repertoire…. Browny suddenly just passed away in his sleep in the early hours of Saturday the 22nd September 2012. He was 49 years old…..
Crookback dug up?
Posted by Richard Rawlinson A skeleton, a skeleton, my kingdom for a skeleton! Might we soon discover if Richard III is the hunchbacked tyrant with a withered arm depicted in Shakespeare or if his physical disability was merely Tudor propaganda? The king was buried in the church of a Franciscan friary in Leicester after being slain at […]
A neglected grave
Posted by Richard Rawlinson To Clergy House for a council meeting of the Friends of Westminster Cathedral. It’s the council’s job to organise fundraising events from concerts to barbecues for the upkeep of said cathedral, and to plan the best ways to spend the money raised. There are separate charitable initiatives that support the London homeless […]
Memorials of shame
Posted by Richard Rawlinson The world is full of memorials to those who have left it, from the Pyramids of Egypt and India’s Taj Mahal to benches on the Promenade in Brighton and central Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The latter, by architect Peter Eisenman, has been criticised for being too abstract and […]
The seaside memorial bench
Ken West thinks the seaside memorial bench a peculiarly English thing. Is it? The GFG simply doesn’t get out enough to know. Do our continental friends and neighbours commemorate their LOs in this way? Ken also observes that seaside promenades are becoming very popular for the strewing of mortal cremains — often so thickly it […]
