An Indiana funeral director said he was fired for refusing to use random body parts to create fake cadavers for three his funeral home lost.
David Eckert said his employer, Alpha Funeral Service of Indianapolis, routinely loaned cadavers to Indiana University’s School of Medicine, Courthouse News Service reported.
When three cadavers went missing, Eckert said he was ordered to “get this handled and taken care of” it by his boss, owner Anthony Edwards.
More here
There’s a very nice piece in the New York Times about a brother and sister who devised an ingenious way of keeping tabs on their ageing and determinedly independent father. Here are some extracts to whet your appetite:
My brother and I created a shared Google calendar — an online calendar in which we could both make entries from wherever we happened to be. Each time either of us spoke to our father, we marked it in the calendar — what time of day it was, how he sounded, what we spoke about.
The upshot was that we had an excellent record of how he was — whether he was getting out, if he was cheerful or feeling low, changes to his medicines, any falls he said he had had. The calendar also allowed us to make sure that one of us spoke to him just about every day.
At the time, I was glad we kept the calendar because it helped us to cope with a difficult situation. Now I’m glad for a different reason: it helps me remember small details about him, the little things that slip out of memory, that fade with time. Laughs, tears, worries, frustrations, joy and love — it’s all in the calendar.
Do read it all here.
“Nice guys”, they say, “don’t win ball games.” Well, maybe they don’t – but they certainly make nice coffins. Here’re two of them.
First, come with me to Scotland to the tiny fishing village of Johnshaven (above) and meet Robert Lawrence and his wife, Charlotte. In his workshop Robert, artist and lover of wood, makes the Honest Coffin. It’s a plain, pine box. It’s made from Scottish larch. No chemicals, no polish, no stain. No screws, either: Robert uses oak dowels. And it’s strong – strong as can be. Robert describes the making process as creative, not production line.
What got him into coffins? He went to some funerals, didn’t much like what he saw and decided to do better. We rather think he has.
Robert sells only through the trade except to families acting as their own funeral director, to whom he will sell direct.
Come with me now to Woodbridge in Suffolk and meet Martin Wenyon, another lovely person. He’s a naval architect who’s had an eventful life which, recently, entailed looking after forests and castles in Bohemia. He makes his coffins from imported timber, but he’s soon switching over to native timber. They’re almost, possibly just not quite, as eco-friendly as Honest Coffins. Martin’s are painted, and lend themselves to decoration, which is why he is currently forming partnerships with artists and marketing a range of Coffins by Artists.
Martin sells his coffins direct to the public. £485 + free delivery within 100 miles of Woodbridge.
(An account of his mother’s suicide when he was in his teens, written in the third person.)
Forty-eight years ago—
Can it be forty-eight
Since then?—they forced the door
Which she had barricaded
With a full bureau’s weight
Lest anyone find, as they did,
What she had blocked it for.
She had blocked the doorway so,
To keep the children out.
In her red dressing-gown
She wrote notes, all night busy
Pushing the things about,
Thinking till she was dizzy,
Before she had lain down.
The children went to and fro
On the harsh winter lawn
Repeating their lament,
A burden, to each other
In the December dawn,
Elder and younger brother,
Till they knew what it meant.
Knew all there was to know.
Coming back off the grass
To the room of her release,
They who had been her treasures
Knew to turn off the gas,
Take the appropriate measures,
Telephone the police.
One image from the flow
Sticks in the stubborn mind:
A sort of backwards flute.
The poker that she held up
Breathed from the holes aligned
Into her mouth till, filled up
By its music, she was mute.