This American Life
In this show, we return to people who’ve been on This American Life in the last ten years, whose lives were drastically altered by 9/11, including Hyder Akbar, an Afghan-American teen who moved to Afghanistan after his father was tapped to become governor of Kunar province there.
On the Media
Ten years after 9/11, a look at the state of American civil liberties, growing up after the attack, and the evolution of 9/11 humor.
The Death Reference Desk is a website about death, dying, the dead body, memorialization, funerals, and then some. As such, it would seem that Death Ref would have a lot to say about the events on September 11, 2011 to commemorate September 11, 2001.
But what more could possibly be said?
Even now, a week later, on September 18, 2011 I am pulling this post together only because I came across two different radio broadcasts which caught my attention.
It’s telling, I think, that a non-visual medium produced these stories. Both of the broadcasts, by WBEZ’s This American Life and WNYC’s On the Media captured images from the last ten years in a far more evocative manner than any of the television coverage.
In a nutshell, you have to see these radio programs in your head and that takes more work than anything by CNN, FOX, NBC, CBS, or ABC.
There is not much new to say about the events of September 11, 2001 that has not already been said during the last decade.
Check back with the Death Reference Desk in fifty years.
Yes, He Sold Fakes. They Are Supposed to Be Fake.
Jeffrey E. Singer and Corey Kilgannon, The New York Times (August 24, 2011)
Paper imitations of luxury items are traditional at Chinese funerals as gifts for the dead, but a seller of cardboard handbags was arrested on copyright-infringement charges on Tuesday.
Ok ok. So the the Fook On Sing Funeral Supplies store on Mulberry Street wasn’t raided, per se, but one of its workers (Wing Su Mak) was arrested by the New York police for offering to sell cardboard reproductions of high-end consumer goods, including authentic cardboard Burberry and Louis Vuitton handbags.
Two things.
The use of cardboard replicas in Chinese funerals, which go in the casket with the deceased and then are incinerated during cremation, is a long-standing funereal custom. And since this is a long-time tradition it means that the objects people want in the casket also change with the times. Ergo, the cardboard swag.
I have been in the Fook On Sing Funeral Supplies store on Mulberry street and purchased cardboard replicas of items which I proudly display in my office. One of my favorite purchases was the cardboard laptop computer with the Apple computer apple on it.
Fook On Sing Funeral Supplies Laptop. photo by John Troyer in his office
Come and get me Coppers!!!
The people at Fook On Sing are also really nice and when I visited the store in April 2011, Wing Su Mak took time to explain why people wanted the newer kinds of objects.
So here is what will hopefully happen in the coming days: The NYPD will say sorry for making a mistake and all charges will be dropped. I can only hope that this entire situation becomes the proverbial ‘teachable moment.’
If not, then look out NYPD. You’re going to have the world of Death Studies Scholars leaping to Fook On Sing Funeral Supplies’ legal defense.
And that, my friends, will be no joke.
Fook On Sing Funeral Supplies Inc photo at top by Adam Elmquist
In Pictures: Frozen in Time
Photographer Murray Ballard catalogues the world of cryonics, which involves freezing a dead person’s body in liquid nitrogen until technology has advanced enough to bring them back to life.
Photographer Murray Ballard’s Best Shot
‘This is a cryonics lab. Four whole bodies can be frozen in each vat. But just getting your head done is cheaper’
Kate Abbott, The Guardian (August 15, 2011)
One day, in the future, the people who chose to have either their heads or their whole bodies cryogenically preserved will look back at these photos as the in-between-time in their lives.
So the theory of cryopreservation and eventual reanimation suggests.
I’m still not sold on the idea that cryopreservation will work but I am fascinated by the people who opt for the procedure.
I am also curious what happens when people who died a century (or more) ago find themselves in a world which has moved on without them. That specific problem fascinates me the most.
But we are not here today to discuss the practicalities of cryopreservation. No no. We’re here to discuss photography. It just so happens that a new photography exhibition by Murray Ballard has opened in Bradford, England and it captures how the cryopreservation process appears to the non-cryogenically preserved individual.
Ballard’s images, which can be seen in the articles at the top, show how industrially heavy the cryopreservation process becomes. I was also struck by how low-tech the entire process looks in these photographs.
Robert Ettinger, the man considered to be the ‘father of modern cryogenics,’ recently died and you can read his obituary here. His body was cryopreserved after he died.
And here is a little 1990’s era cryopreservation humor….
Every once in a while I come across a new-dead-body-disposal-concept which I really like. Indeed, I really wish that I had tons of excess cash so that I could start my own dead body technology R&D company which would then develop innovative and exciting new ways to handle human corpses. We would be the Venture Capital worlds Death Angels. Or, if YOU happen to be a Venture Capital investor reading the Death Reference Desk (it could happen…) then drop me a line because I’ve got lots of great final disposition ideas!
Until that happens, I’ll confine myself to ye olde Death Ref.
Back in July, I came across this short Gizmag post on artist Jae Rhim Lee and her cultivation of flesh eating mushrooms. Actually she’s working with run-of-the-mill shiitake and oyster mushrooms and isn’t bioengineering some new kind of flesh eating fungus. Too bad, really.
Anyway, Jae Rihm Lee’s project taps into the burgeoning world of green burial technologies, a topic which Meg, Kim, and I have covered in depth on the Death Reference Desk (I strongly suggest reading Kim’s excellent Green Burial: A Review post).
Here is how Gizmag’s Paul Ridden explains Jae Rihm Lee’s mushroom idea:
The Infinity Burial Suit prototype is made of organic cotton and covered with an embroidered net of thread which resembles the growth pattern of mushroom mycelium, and that has been infused with mushroom spores. A special cocktail of minerals and spores will also be introduced into the corpse itself, that will encourage mushroom growth from the inside. Special make-up based on the spore slurry is also being considered that will quickly break down and assist the decomposition process.
The project is aiming towards the development of a natural burial system which will facilitate decomposition of the body, remediate accumulated body toxins, and deliver nutrients to plants in the surrounding area. Lee also hopes that the Infinity Burial Project will help raise awareness of the concept of death acceptance, rather than continuing to try and detach ourselves from our inevitable end.
In a nutshell, what Jae Rhim Lee is proposing would work. I’m not sure that it is any more cost-effective than just leaving a dead body to decompose in a forest but that’s a tricky legal situation. Besides, if a dead body, um, dies in a forest and is then devoured by mushrooms and no one sees it, then what fun is that? Besides torturing an already over used metaphor.
So I absolutely support the Infinity Burial Suit project, mostly because I can now embed the trailer for the BEST 1970s dystopian future film of all time: Soylent Green!
Holy Smoke
Planning a loved ones final arrangements can be a challenging responsibility, one you want to do with care and consideration. Allow Holy Smoke to help you create a tribute to your outdoorsman or woman like no other.
So yeah. I had heard about people loading ammunition with human cremated remains and then shooting the ammo but I did not know, until this week, that a company would do it for you.
And based on the reaction of my British friends (I live in England), many people still do not believe it is possible. And/or, the loading of live gun ammunition with human cremated remains is a distinctly American form of memorialization. Not unlike spelling memorialization with a ‘z’ instead of an ‘s’.
Take that Red Coats!
But I digress.
Here at the Death Reference Desk we believe in presenting the full monty when it comes to contemporary forms of postmortem memorials. So a company such as Holy Smoke is due some respect for combining two of America’s great past times: shooting bullets and capitalism. Not necessarily in that order.
But lo, what might you receive when purchasing Holy Smoke’s ammo? Well, their website explains:
Once the caliber, gauge and other ammunition parameters have been selected, we will ask you (by way of your funeral service provider) to send approximately one pound of the decedents ash to us. Upon receiving the ashes our professional and reverent staff will place a measured portion of ash into each shotshell or cartridge. (Please note that our process uses only a portion of the ash from a typical cremation.)
Example: 1 Pound of ash is enough to produce 250 shotshells (one case).
Now, I’m not a gun person (even though I grew up in the great state of Wisconsin) so 250 shotgun shells sounds like a lot of ammo. I can’t imagine firing a gun 250 times to remember a person I loved.
Unless, of course, you’re using the Holy Smoke ammunition to defend the human race against the imminent Zombie Apocalypse!
Death and Budgets
David Brooks, New York Times (July 15, 2011)
Much of the budget mess may stem from a deep cultural antipathy toward recognizing our own mortality.
Since the American political system (read: mostly the Republican party) seems hell bent on watching the federal government go into default I thought that I would revisit a recent column by David Brooks in the New York Times. Earlier in July, Brooks wrote about spending on End-of-Life care and Medicare. For those who don’t understand the idiosyncrasies of the American health care system, Medicare is the medical insurance all US citizens receive at age 65. It’s a good program. Both my parents use it.
One of the financial issues that Medicare faces is that more and more people are living to be older than before. Well into their 80s. The extension of age, by itself, isn’t an issue. Where the problems begin are with medical costs soaring in the last few months of life.
The second article at the top, by Daniel Callahan and Sherwin B. Nuland (which Brooks references), explains the costs this way:
In a 2006 article, Harvard economist David Cutler and colleagues wrote, “Analyses focused on spending and on the increase in life expectancy beginning at 65 years of age showed that the incremental cost of an additional year of life rose from $46,800 in the 1970s to $145,000 in the 1990s. … If this trend continues in the elderly, the cost-effectiveness of medical care will continue to decrease at older ages.” Emory professor Kenneth Thorpe and colleagues, summing up some Medicare data, note that “more than half of beneficiaries are treated for five or more chronic conditions each year.” Among the elderly, the struggle against disease has begun to look like the trench warfare of World War I: little real progress in taking enemy territory but enormous economic and human cost in trying to do so.
One of the most important ways to address these cost issues is by talking about death and dying. The crux of David Brooks article is that:
…we think the budget mess is a squabble between partisans in Washington. But in large measure it’s about our inability to face death and our willingness as a nation to spend whatever it takes to push it just slightly over the horizon.
In fact, most of the death with dignity posts on Death Ref deal with the question of death acceptance in one way or another.
So, what’s to be done. Until the US budget issues are sorted, not much. The first step, which isn’t easy by any means, is telling people that death is ok. Especially at the end of life, when compassionate care will go a long ways towards extending quality of life instead of fixating on the quantity of days.
Callahan and Nulland make a quick reference to the “…war against death” in their essay.
They are absolutely correct. A war is being fought against death, particularly in America.
And we modern humans will lose that war. Every single time.
Arlington Cemetery’s Mishandling of Remains Prompts FBI Criminal Probe
Jerry Markon and Christian Davenport, The Washington Post (June 29, 2011)
The Justice Department is investigating the mishandling of remains at Arlington National Cemetery in a broad criminal inquiry that is also seeking evidence of possible contracting fraud and falsification of records, people familiar with the investigation said Tuesday
I have no idea who is going to make the documentary film about the rise and fall of Arlington National Cemetery but it is going to be a long and complicated movie. Twists and turns will emerge from nowhere and then suddenly it will turn out that the FBI was investigating the whole situation.
At this point, nothing which emerges from the ongoing and unstoppable Arlington cemetery train wreck surprises me. Nothing. The Washington Post has been singlehandedly leading the charge on this case. Now we have FBI Agents, a federal grand jury handing out subpoenas, and increasingly obvious cases of multi-million dollar fraud.
Here’s the rub: it’s only going to get worse. That’s my guess after following this case since day one.
Earlier this week, NPR ran an interview with Jess Goodell, author of the new memoir Shade it Black: Death and After in Iraq. The new book is Goodell’s account of her time as a Marine working in the Mortuary Affairs Unit in Iraq in 2004. Terry Gross interviewed Goodell in a segment entitled Death and After in Iraq: Memoir of a Mortuary, which you can listen to here.
The Mortuary Affairs Unit is the platoon tasked with recovering and processing the remains of fallen troops. Out in the field, Goodell and her unit would recover bodies and body parts and bring them back to base for further processing. Then they would prepare the remains for shipping back home. Back at base, Goodell’s job was to document identifying marks on the body like scars or tattoos, etc. The next step involved going through pockets of the dead soldiers to recover anything that could be given back to the family. In an excerpt from the book, Goodell writes:
He gave us step-by-step instructions. “Roll him over to document his wounds.” We may have known that a Marine was hit by bullets or a grenade, but we may not have known where. But when we tried to turn him over, we couldn’t. Rigor mortis was setting in and he was already beginning to stiffen, except for his waist, which was like a pivot point. Even when we strained to turn him over, we could not. It was awkward and we were silent except for The Sir’s slow, calm, firm instructions. “C’mon guys, you were trained on this and you know what to do,” he reassured us. And so, eventually, we did it. “Okay,” The Sir said, “now write down any distinguishing marks, any tattoos.” So we did. “Now, write down which body parts are missing and shade the missing parts black on the outline of the body.” So we did. We followed The Sir’s directions, marking the wounds, drawing the tattoos, shading the missing parts black. We had to be told throughout what to do next and how to do it.
We don’t yet have a copy of the book at my library, so I have not had a chance to read it. Publisher’s Weekly’s review is here. However, it looks like an interesting read not only for Goodell’s account of her time in the Mortuary Affairs Unit, but her experiences with the brutal and sexist culture of the U.S. Marine Corps. The NPR interview touches a bit upon this aspect of Goodell’s experience as well.
As the author talks about being diagnosed with PTSD, it struck me that perhaps the underlying factors are not only related to the handling of corpses, but the objectification and degradation of her own body as well. In the interview, her measured, almost dispassionate voice made me wonder if parts of her own body and mind had died in Iraq, not unlike the soldiers she was tasked with recovering. The coping mechanisms that the soldiers employ without even really knowing that they are doing so—the turning inward, the antisocial behavior—mask this pain quite well, at least for a while it seems.
At the end of the NPR interview, Goodell talks about her decision to study psychology and her desire to help other soldiers with PTSD, citing the need for more counselors who had personally experienced serving in Iraq.
TV Review: Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die
When life is finally squeezed of all its juice, Terry Pratchett finds there’s tea on tap
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian (June 13, 2011)
I cried and cried towards the end of Terry Pratchett’s documentary on Assisted Dying. My tears arrived not at the end of the documentary, where Pratchett watches UK citizen Peter Smedley die in Switzerland at the Dignitas Clinic. Rather, I began to cry when the various individuals involved in this documentary started traveling to Switzerland. I can only explain my emotional response as tears of respect for Peter Smedley and his wife as he chose death over a physical life increasingly controlled by motor neurone disease.
The documentary, Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die, was shown on BBC 2 Monday night and it created a week’s worth of commentary. Most of it predictably either for or against everything in the documentary.
I do not know what to say any longer about the UK’s debate on Assisted Dying. Indeed, the Death Reference Desk has a number of pieces on Assisted Dying debates in both the UK and the United States. You can review all of those previous posts here. It’s worth noting, I think, that when Death Ref started in July 2009 some of the first posts were on the UK’s Assisted Dying debates.
Some pieces of that debate have changed but not significantly. The only anti-Assisted Dying argument that I will flag up as incorrect is the assertion that the deaths which people choose somehow diminish the value of hospice care. That is not true. Many many people choose hospice care at the End-of-Life and I wholeheartedly support that choice. But hospice care and End-of-Life care are different than choosing an Assisted Death. These things are related but they are not co-terminus. Advocates for both hospice care and assisted death often find themselves in televised debates but these same individuals are involved in entirely different kinds of conversations.
Most importantly, neither ‘side’ will ever agree. They just won’t. The best that anyone can work towards, I think, is a well regulated, extremely stringent law which both increases funding for hospice care and allows Assisted Dying. The model law is Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act.
Every year, the state of Oregon publishes an array of statistics which explain how the law was used the previous year. Here is the 2010 statistic that I think most people would benefit from knowing:
Most (96.9%) patients died at home; and most (92.6%) were enrolled in hospice care at time of death.
In fact, you can read all of the 2010 statistics here.
If you are in the UK, then you can still watch the documentary until Monday night for free on the BBC iPlayer.
If you are in the United States then I would suggest that you watch the Frontline documentary The Suicide Tourist. I discussed that documentary earlier this year and it is extremely good. It also follows a person to Dignitas who chooses to die.
Barring either of these options, I have embedded a short clip from Terry Pratchett’s documentary.
Rest assured, these conversations about Assisted Dying in the UK will continue.
Life After Kevorkian
He fought for the right to assisted suicide. Now what should we do with it?
William Saletan, Slate (June 3, 2011)
I am a member of the Kevorkian generation. Those of us in our mid-to-late thirties and onwards into our forties are usually called Generation X (for those who still remember the 1990s…) but I really think that we are Kevorkian’s kids.
Jack Kevorkian, who died last week, began assisting suicides in 1990. As soon as he started this work, debates began about the legality and ethics of assisted dying. I have distinct memories of these debates, which started during my high school years and carried on into college.
I and my peers came of age and entered adulthood surrounded by End-of-Life debates. Most people have mixed feelings about what Kevorkian did but at least he made people talk about death and dying. And those conversations have had an impact over the years.
So say what you will about Jack Kevorkian but he really contributed to a debate that informed an entire generation’s future. And as we all begin looking towards the End-of-Life for our own parents, I know that Jack Kevorkian’s influence will be felt.
The Slate article by William Saletan at the top is the best essay/article that I found after Kevorkian died.
Here is how Saletan concluded his piece and I wholeheartedly agreed with him point by point:
Kevorkian didn’t have the answers. But he raised the right questions. We can’t criticize his flaws, temper his ideas, and praise the hospice movement without acknowledging what he did. He forced an open conversation about the right to take your own life. Under what conditions, and within what limits, should that right be exercised? Even if it’s legal, is it moral? What do you do when a loved one wants to die? Kevorkian didn’t take those questions with him. He has left them to us.
Just this past week, the Personal Health columnist for the New York Times, Jane Brody, wrote a compelling column about New York Doctors who are not comfortable discussing End-of-Life decisions with their patients. Doctors in the state of New York are now required by law to discuss End-of-Life planning and some MD’s do not want to do it. The copy title for Brody’s column sums up the situation: Law on End-of-Life Care Rankles Doctors
And then last weekend, WNYC’s radio program On the Media ran a story on how the ‘Death Panels’ allegation used by opponents to President Obama’s health care law received press coverage which seemed to validate the absurdity of that claim.
I could go on and on with the examples. Indeed, a version of each of these stories has been previously covered by Meg, Kim, and myself since the Death Reference Desk began in 2009.
Here, then, is my point: Jack Kevorkian got an entire generation of young people, now in their mid-to-late thirties and soon to be in their late forties, thinking about dying, and in such a way that I can only hope it helps End-of-Life conversations with aging parents and elderly grandparents.
Jack Kevorkian didn’t inspire my generation, per se, but he played a much bigger role in our development than most people realize.
I will wrap everything up with a video obituary by the NewsHour on Public Television.
PBS NewsHour: Jack Kevorkian, Doctor who Brought Assisted Suicide to National Spotlight, Dies
What’s the next best thing to placing flowers on your loved one’s grave marker? Teddy bears? Mylar balloons? Thanks to technology, those items are now passe. The latest way for you to pay your respects is via the QR code. The what??
A recent article in the St. Paul Pioneer Press discusses how Rochester (MN)-based Funeral Innovations is helping to spur the trend of this newly popular technology and hoping it will catch on with funeral directors and the general public.
For the uninitiated—or perhaps those without a smartphone—a QR code is a two-dimensional code readable by dedicated QR code readers and camera phones. In use in Japan since 1994, QR (or quick response) codes are now being used by various individuals, groups and businesses to promote all sorts of things. Advertising, music and business execs are using the codes to give people a value-added experience; scan the QR code and you are transported to a new layer of information about the product, artist or in the case of the funeral industry—the dearly departed.
So how does it work? Well, say Aunt Sally’s family puts one on her headstone. If your smartphone has a barcode reader app installed, you can point the camera on your phone towards the code. The camera then scans the code and relays information to your phone by taking you to a website where more information is available. Maybe it brings up Aunt Sally’s memorial service posted on YouTube or maybe it takes you to an online photo album or a page on the funeral home’s website that includes her obituary or tribute. Snazzy, huh?
QR codes have become the latest topic of discussion where I work. Ever since they made a big splash at SXSW this past year, there’s been a lot of chatter about how libraries can capitalize on this admittedly geeky but cool tech tool. At my library, we’re bandying about the idea of putting them near some of the art and architecture in our historic building. Click the code and voila—access to way more info than we can possibly squeeze onto a tiny plaque placed near the art or architectural feature. At the University of Bath for example (where Death Ref colleague John resides), they are experimenting with using the QR code to “to join up library services with the technology and equipment students use.”
While we must remain vigilant about not alienating those who cannot afford or who have no desire to own a smart phone or barcode scanner, I can see how a technology like this has the potential to be a game changer—a new way of conceiving and consuming information for the masses. But what do you think? Are QR codes the wave of the future or a gimmick best left in the digital dustbin? Let us know your thoughts.
I do not know what to say any longer about the UK’s debate on Assisted Dying. Indeed, the Death Reference Desk has a number of pieces on Assisted Dying debates in both the UK and the United States. You can review all of those previous posts 
