Categories
Death + Popular Culture

John Troyer Performs: 150 Years of the Human Corpse in American History

Bristol Live Open Platform (BLOP Festival)
The Arnolfini, Bristol (UK)
Saturday 25 February, 2012 11.00am – 8.00pm
£6.00 / £5.00 concessions

 

Full BLOP Festival Schedule
John Erik Troyer, Ph.D. performs at 2:45pm on February 25

We here at the Death Reference Desk are always full of surprises. So it should come as no shock that I, John Erik Troyer, Ph.D., will perform a short theatrical piece for the upcoming Blop Festival in Bristol, England on Saturday, February 25. The festival is being held at the Arnolfini arts centre.

I hit the stage at 2:45pm sharp!

The performance’s full title more or less sums up what happens on stage:

150 Years of the Human Corpse in American History in Under 15 Minutes with Jaunty Background Music

Not much else to say, really.

Here, however, is a more robust show description:

In 1851 American chemist Thomas Holmes invented the first reliable method for mechanically embalming dead human bodies. Holmes put his embalmed bodies on display in cities across America. Those human corpses attracted so many spectators that riots often erupted near the viewing areas.

 

Death, as nineteenth century humans understood it, would never be the same.

 

In 1972 John Erik Troyer was born, son of a funeral director and an early student of mortuary science. His life-long study of the dead body would eventually help him write a doctoral thesis entitled Technologies of the Human Corpse and assist his becoming a Doctor of Philosophy. This one-man show is a combination of all these things: a meditation on the human corpse, the untimely demise of a self-absorbed thanatologist, and it is all done in under 15 minutes. With jaunty background music.

The story of John Erik Troyer, Ph.D. is a cautionary tale of intellectual labor run amok and a hilarious comedy of necrophilic proportions.

 

Death, as we twenty-first century humans understand it, will never be the same.

That’s that. If you have any questions or would like to, say, book me a national tour (we can start small, you know, just the West Country at first) then here is my contact information:

John Erik Troyer, Ph.D.:
Telephone: 01225 383585
E-mail: john@deathreferencedesk.org
Twitter: @deathref

Finally, here is a video of me doing Modern Dance. The video doesn’t have anything to do with the show on February 25. Per se. But it could. If I get that National Tour! Right now, this is just shameless self-promotion. Straight up.

Categories
Death + Technology Death + the Law Death + the Web Grief + Mourning

19,000 Facebook Users Die Each Day. Here is How FB’s Memorialization Mode Works

Living Online After Death Faces Nebraska Legal Battle
BBC News (January 31, 2012)

WNYC’s On the Media radio program dedicated this entire week’s show to Facebook and its users. Per usual, it was an excellent set of stories. I was a little surprised, however, that the program didn’t discuss what happens when Facebook users die.

So let me pick-up that storyline.

Let’s roll out some numbers. The current number of Facebook users is somewhere near 845 million. The rough annual mortality rate across the planet is 8.37 deaths per 1000 individuals (this number is gleaned from the CIA World Factbook on global mortality statistics and is far from exact, so we’re dealing in broad approximations). After doing a little math, this means that over 7 million Facebook users die each year. Divide that by 365 days and you’re looking at over 19,000 Facebook users dying every day.

By comparison, 1500 people die every day across England, Scotland and Wales. In America, over 6,000 people die a day. I could go on and on.

I was already thinking this week about death and Facebook since a handful of American states are either drafting legislation to enable next-of-kin access to social media accounts, and/or the laws have already been enacted. The BBC story at the top of the page discusses proposed legislation in Nebraska. You can see short summaries of both proposed and passed legislation here and here.

Facebook anticipated this situation a few years ago and the Death Reference Desk has been covering this situation since day one. You can see of all our posts on Facebook and Death here.

In 2009 (October 26, 2009 at 4:48pm to be exact) Facebook announced that it was now using something called Memorialization Mode for dead account holders. This Facebook blog post, Memories of Friends Departed Endure on Facebook by Max Kelly, explained how Memorialization Mode worked. Here are the key sections from the post:

We understand how difficult it can be for people to be reminded of those who are no longer with them, which is why it’s important when someone passes away that their friends or family contact Facebook to request that a profile be memorialized. For instance, just last week, we introduced new types of Suggestions that appear on the right-hand side of the home page and remind people to take actions with friends who need help on Facebook. By memorializing the account of someone who has passed away, people will no longer see that person appear in their Suggestions.

 

When an account is memorialized, we also set privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in search. We try to protect the deceased’s privacy by removing sensitive information such as contact information and status updates. Memorializing an account also prevents anyone from logging into it in the future, while still enabling friends and family to leave posts on the profile Wall in remembrance.

So when Facebook is notified of someone’s death via the Report a Deceased Person’s Profile page then the account will be changed.

Now, I’ve never had to report a deceased person’s account (which is nice) so I don’t have any direct experience with how it works. I also can’t tell if Facebook has modified what happens to dead user accounts since the initial 2009 announcement.

Here’s the rub — at some point Facebook will require an entire department dedicated to User Mortality. At approximately 19,000 deaths a day, the situation can only be left to its own devices for so long.

If for any reason, to prevent false death notifications like this one.

Indeed, what Facebook needs is a Senior Vice President for User Mortality Affairs and the DRD Team is more than happy to take on that job, should FB’s headhunters be tooling around the Death Reference Desk.

But until that job offer arrives, we at Death Ref will continue to track how over 7 million deceased Facebook accounts are turned into ad hoc digital memorials.

Categories
Cemeteries Death + the Web

The Kindness of Strangers and the Internet: Finding William’s Grave at Mountain View

For all our morbid bent and grave humor, plenty warms our hearts at the Death Reference Desk. Personally I (Meg) am a stickler for serendipity and random acts of stranger kindness, especially when it involves the internet and otherwise impossible interactions. This week the cardiac warm fuzzies involve… hey! us! all starting with a post I wrote in 2010.

I used to live in Vancouver, British Columbia, and had been keeping tabs on Mountain View Cemetery—in this particular post, their quirky signage. Over a year later, in October 2011, Edward Millan of Wales commented on the post. He was looking for information about the grave of his uncle, William Millan. Born in Scotland in 1901, as a teenager William served in the Kings Own Scottish Borderers during World War I. Later a farmhand, William sought a better life and immigrated to Canada in 1927. He settled in Vancouver but in 1934 died of tuberculosis. He was buried at Mountain View Cemetery.

Unfortunately there wasn’t much I could offer Edward, the curious nephew half the world away. After hunting around the Mountain View website, I found the interment directory and cemetery maps, and made some screenshots that pinpoint the section and exact plot of William’s grave.

This was something but left much to be desired. Then, out of nowhere in December, another random visitor to this random, old blog post offered to take pictures of the grave. Neville McClure of Vancouver figured it a “fun, little self-imposed errand” for a brisk afternoon and this week sent me photos that I forwarded to a very surprised, very grateful Edward.

MVCemetery_Millan1 MVCemetery_Millan2

I love this for a lot of reasons. It’s obviously a touching gesture (go Neville!), made the more interesting with the three of us being complete strangers (in separate countries, at that). But I also enjoy the motivation—less good deed than having a mission, a goal and grail if only for an afternoon, a treasure hunt when the real gold is simply getting outside and enjoying nature. As Neville writes, “In a city increasingly jammed with condo towers, it’s a rare Big Open Space these days.”

As a librarian and all-around internet fiend, I’m also fascinated by the role of technology in this effort. Instantaneous information and real-time communication get all the glory. Bombarded by the hype of social media networking and on-the-spot everything, we forget that the internet has a long memory and still works splendidly for asynchronous discovery and collaboration.

As such, this post was years in the making. Thanks, Edward and Neville! 🙂

Categories
Death + Popular Culture Death + the Law Death + the Web

Poor Dead Steve Jobs May Not Own His Dead Image

Who Owns Your Image After You Die?
On the Media (January 13, 2012)

Here’s a really interesting radio story by WNYC’s On the Media about what happens to an individual’s image after he or she dies. A Chinese toy manufacturer wants to create a Steve Jobs action figure. Apple successfully blocked a similar product in 2010 but may not be so lucky now that Jobs is deceased–with his “personality rights” with him.

steve1Add these concerns to the long list of postmortem digital media ownership rights. It also turns out that each state across America has different laws for handling these situations. The main interviewee for the story, Jeff Roberts, does a good job explaining how the state-by-state laws work.

Keep an eye on this story. As more and more of everything shifts to a digital format then the very idea of an “owned image” will be challenged.

Indeed, it’s a situation Steve Jobs helped create.

Categories
Death + Crime Death + the Economy Death + the Law

Prisoner Cemetery for the Unclaimed Dead in Texas

Texas Prisoner Burials Are a Gentle Touch in a Punitive System
Manny Fernandez, New York Times (January 05, 2012)
At a cemetery in Texas, murderers and other convicts whose bodies are unclaimed can be interred and, for a few moments, remembered.

Here’s a really interesting article on the cemetery used by Texas prison officials. These are for the unclaimed dead bodies of convicted prisoners, who are given a burial more respectful than you might expect out of this tough-on-crime state.

It reminds me of the post on Hart Island, where New York’s unclaimed dead bodies are buried.

I’d like to create an entire map of all unclaimed dead body cemeteries/repositories around the world. Welcome to 2012’s big project.

Captain Joe Byrd Cemetery TX DOC photo by Cranky Amy on Flickr

Categories
Death + Humor

Happy Holidays from the Death Reference Desk…don’t tell the kids.

Ho Ho Ho.

Categories
cremation Death + the Economy

More Americans Choosing Cremation to Save Money

In Tough Times, a Boom in Cremations as a Way to Save Money
Kevin Sack, The New York Times (December 09, 2011)
If current American trends hold, in 2017, more bodies will be cremated than buried, and funeral directors say the cost is a major factor in the decision.

When the Death Reference Desk started in July 2009, we immediately began discussing death, dying, the dead body and the economy. You can read all of those posts in the Death + the Economy section. I mention these pieces on the postmortem economy (for lack of a better term) since most of the articles tell, and then eventually re-tell, the same story. The New York Times, as one example, has repeatedly run articles with the same basic lead: overall funeral costs have gotten so high that many Americans are choosing cremation instead of burial to save money.

 

The wider socio-economic picture is complicated but on the whole this analysis is correct. What makes this particular New York Times article slightly different than its progenitors is the focus on how different communities make funeral choices based on costs. The article discusses how African-Americans in parts of Virginia historically resisted cremation since it suggested poverty. There are some significant religious reasons involved too, i.e., a long tradition of the Black Church funeral complete with a burial.

The shift towards cremation for American funerals will not change. Indeed, it appears that more Americans than not will be choosing cremation in the very near future.

Categories
Death + Crime Death + Popular Culture

Unexplained Dollhouse Deaths in LONDON

Of Dolls and Murder UK Premier
Horse Hospital in London (November 30, 2011)

 

“Of Dolls & Murder”: The World’s First True Crime Puppet Show
Colin Covert, Star Tribune (September 27, 2011)

 

Of Dolls and Murder
Bruce Goldfarb, Welcome to Baltimore, Hon! (September 25, 2010)

This is a Death Reference Desk post which begins in December 2007.

At that time, I was contacted by Minneapolis based filmmaker and writer Susan Marks about her new documentary film. She was working on a film about the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, located in Baltimore, Maryland. I had never heard of the “Nutshells” (as they’re called by those in the know) but once Susan brought me up to speed on the project, I wanted in.

The Nutshells are an astoundingly detailed set of miniature dollhouse dioramas, some 18 in total, and each of them represents an unexplained death. All of the dioramas were painstakingly created by Frances Glessner Lee, a wealthy woman who went a long ways in founding the field of modern forensic science. All of this during the first half of the twentieth century. Harvard University (where Frances Glessner Lee was based) originally kept the Nutshells but then sold them to the Maryland Department of Health in Baltimore.

Of Dolls and Murder

Here’s the rub: the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death are so exquisitely detailed that police departments still use them today for crime scene investigation training. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, nothing beats a well built diorama!

This all brings me back to 2007. Susan wanted to interview me about representations of death, dying, and dead bodies in popular culture, film, art, and science. Making a documentary film about the Nutshells was pretty straightforward (more or less) but what Susan wanted to ponder was a bigger question. She wanted to understand how the Nutshells might shed light on the current fascination with all things dead, dying, and CSI.

I have never seen the Nutshells, only photographs, but in those images I was struck by the following thought: We humans aren’t looking at the dead dolls for crime scene clues. No. We humans look at those dead dolls (and the dolls look back) in order to find some kind meaning, if that’s even possible, in death.

The Nutshells aren’t about unsolved deaths. They’re about the human imagination grappling with the postmortem insecurities which surround the dead self.

The finished documentary, Of Dolls and Murder, will premiere in the UK on Wednesday, November 30, 2011 at the Horse Hospital in London.

John Waters narrates the documentary (he’s from Baltimore too…).

I’ll be conducting a Q and A after the Horse Hospital screening.

Keep an eye out for Of Dolls and Murder. I have a hunch that it is going to be much discussed this year and next. It’s already won audience awards all over the world.

Here’s another trailer to sample of the darkness.

 

Categories
Cemeteries Death + Technology Monuments + Memorials

Virtual Graves for Armistice Day

How to visit a Virtual Grave
Alison Winward, The Guardian (November 10, 2010)

 

Armistice Day Marked Around the World – In Pictures
The Guardian (November 11, 2011)

 

The War Graves Photographic Project
Commonwealth War Graves Commission

A quick post for Armistice Day (in the UK), Veterans Day (in the US) and Remembrance Day (in Canada). A few years ago, volunteers began amassing online photos for The War Graves Photographic Project. People can search online for graves all over the world and see images of the gravestones. The Guardian article at the top discusses the project and how it got started.

As of right now, it looks like the graves are only for the UK and Commonwealth Nations. That said, it seems like something which will catch on in America.

Thanks Veterans, one and all.

— The Death Reference Desk.

Categories
Grief + Mourning

Juanita Garciagodoy (March 10, 1952 – October 27, 2011)

My good friend Juanita Garciagodoy died on Thursday, October 27, 2011. She was 59.

In July 2009, Juanita told me via e-mail that she had breast cancer and that it had metastasized. This was at the same time that the Death Reference Desk launched. I had sent Juanita a rather silly message about why she should check out the Death Reference Desk since she was a Meso-American studies scholar who had written about the Day of Dead (Día de los Muertos). She responded with her usual strong support and the fact that she was dying.

Suffice it to say that I felt like an idiot. A big one.

I promised Juanita that after she died, I would write about her for the Death Reference Desk. She reminded me of this promise over the years, most recently in our very last e-mail communication at the end of September 2011:

John,
Thank you for your sweet note.
Remember? You owe me an obituary, my friend. No pressure, of course.
Love,
Juanita

Juanita-in-Holly-Wilmeth-Photo-2Que Si, Juanita Garciagodoy. I do remember. And with tears streaming from my eyes while I type these words, I am honored to remember our friendship in writing.

I first met Juanita in October 2001 at an academic conference in Puebla, Mexico. It was the first time that I presented my Ph.D. research on the dead body and Juanita was unbelievably enthusiastic about my studies. Without any question, Juanita was the first academic from outside my own institution who expressed deep interest and support for my work. That we met in Mexico was a little ironic since she was a Professor at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota and I was at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Juanita and I stayed in touch over the years, mostly by e-mail. From time to time she would send me news articles about a dead body topic. And by send, I mean she would physically cut them out and put the articles in the mail. I was particularly fond of the article on beetles that strip away cadaveric flesh. In 2005 she attended my Ph.D. defense (which is true sign of selfless friendship, let me just say) and in 2006 she brought an entire crowd of people to watch my one-man show On The Untimely Death of John Erik Troyer, Ph.D. at the Bryant-Lake Bowl Theatre. In a nutshell, Juanita showed herself to be a wonderful friend during important moments in my adult life.

In June 2010, I gave a keynote lecture on Memorial Tattoos for the Death, Commemoration, and Memory conference in Edinburgh, Scotland. Over the last few years, I’ve begun researching the history of tattooing and its relationship to human mortality. A central figure in that talk was Juanita. Indeed, Juanita has become (and will remain) a key figure in any talk that I give on tattooing.

After Juanita lost her hair due to radiation treatments, she decided to cover her head with tattoos. It is important to note, I think, that prior to this moment Juanita had never gotten a tattoo of any kind before. So not only did she choose to get a tattoo, she chose to tattoo her head – the most visible (and next to the face) hardest part of the tattooed human body to hide. Over a course of months, Juanita went from zero tattoos to a head full of colorful ink. She had her tattoos done at Leviticus Tattoos in Minneapolis, which I know she would want people to know.

It is Juanita’s tattoos that I want to discuss and remember the most. To the end of her days she defied conventional wisdom about how a person should live her life while dying from breast cancer. Her tattoos were, for me, a brilliant and moving outward expression of that defiance.

Juanita also had some seriously bad ass ink and the stories that her tattoos tell/told bear retelling here.

When Juanita first lost her hair she experimented with painting her head, but the paint rubbed off so she decided that tattoos were the logical solution. She and I spoke at length about the deeper reasons for the tattoos; the reasons that turned her tattoos into a profound choice about confronting death.

Henna-Ink-DesignsShe saw the tattoos as part of her identity and she felt that the visual collage on her head helped her assert the inevitability of her own death. On more than one occasion, Juanita told me that her tattoos were both a confrontation with life and a liberatory act in the face of death.

A great irony attached itself to her tattoos: Juanita wanted the tattoos so that people would talk about something, anything, other than her cancer. I always admired this particular reason – instead of waiting for the other person to think of a conversation topic, just give that person a bunch of tattoos staring them in the face as a tour de force kind of ice breaker. Sadly, and on many occasions, people would go to great lengths to avoid discussing the tattoos. She and I laughed about this situation, since her tattooed head was an obvious discussion topic. Alas, many people were either afraid to ask or couldn’t be bothered and it was their loss.

Singing-Jaguar

Here, then, are the stories that Juanita’s tattoos tell (as told to me by Juanita) and in no particular order:

The Singing Jaguar: a Meso-American poet symbol. Juanita wanted a representation of an ancient poet symbol to reflect her own writing.

MonkeyOzomahtli the Monkey: Mexican seal used to imprint objects. Juanita always felt that it was a beautiful design. Ozomahtli is also associated with spring, with song, with poetry, and with fertility in other contexts.

Grasshopper on Mountain: Pre-Spanish design from an Aztec art book. This was also the symbol for Juanita’s favorite park in Mexico City.

Rabbit in the Moon: In Meso-American story telling, Rabbit is said to have previously been a god, a humble god, who agreed to illuminate the night. As a result, Meso-American storytellers described seeing a rabbit in the moon. The rabbit was designed by friend from a prehistoric pot image. The moon image is taken from NASA, complete with craters. Juanita told me that she felt close to the moon. For her the moon was poetic and mysterious.

Owl-Jaguar-Rabbit-Moon-ColoredOwl hovering over a Book: The owl represented wisdom and it showed Juanita’s commitment to knowledge by reading the book. The peacock on the book’s cover is taken from the cover of a novel by her husband George. Juanita also explained to me that there is an old Mexican saying: When the owl sings the Indian dies. She believed that this saying described a confrontation with mortality that she, herself, was going through.

Cheshire-CatCheshire Cat: Juanita wanted a cat tattoo and she loved Alice in Wonderland. This was also a tattoo to remember all the dead pets.

Heart with jjjj: This was a code for “Juanita’s Handsome Husband Jorge.” I can’t replicate the accent that Juanita used to say those words, but it was very funny. The heart was also for love since Juanita and George loved each other very deeply.

Tree: The tree of knowledge which surrounded her head.

Snake-and-Humming-BirdSnake: A symbol of knowledge and transgression, as when Eve eats the apple in the Garden of Eden.

Humming Bird sipping out of a Star: Juanita loved the beauty of this image. The Hummingbird is also featured in ancient Meso-American stories. Three groups of people turned into hummingbirds or butterflies when they died: warriors who died in battle, people who were sacrificed, and women who died in childbirth. Juanita told me that at times she felt like her own body was sacrificing itself and betraying her. She often felt that she was battling cancer as a warrior.

El Don Quixote: Last but not least. Don Quixote was her first tattoo. Initially, Juanita was only going to get Don Quixote because she was told that the process might hurt. As is totally obvious, Juanita had the exact opposite reaction to the pain from that first tattoo. The image is by the artist Posada. Juanita told me that Posada was the kind of artist who pulled death into life with a great sense of humor. El Don Quixote also reminded her of the Day of the Dead, which was an area of her own research. Her 2000 book, Digging the Days of the Dead: A Reading of Mexico’s Dias de Muertos, had three Don Quixote’s on its cover.

First-Don-Quixote

One other important detail: all of the creatures have green-blue eyes, like Juanita’s eyes.

Even after it was possible for Juanita to grow her hair back, she decided to keep her head shaved. It was important to her that the tattoos be visible. Juanita explained to me that her tattoos were producing stories about her and her life.

Those tattooed stories, which live on today and will thrive for some time to come, are the narrative traces of Juanita Garciagodoy’s life.

These stories are also Juanita’s permanently inked memorial.

Categories
Grief + Mourning

On the Death of Animals

At-Home Pet Euthanasia Grows in Popularity
Steve Hendrix, Washington Post (September 26, 2011)

 

National Public Radio: Do Animals Grieve?
Barbara J. King, National Public Radio (October 20, 2011)

This past week I spent some time thinking about animals and death. As the bengal tigers, brown bears and lions were shot to death in Zanesville, Ohio this week because their former owner let them loose and then committed suicide, I thought about the visceral, emotional responses many people had to the animals’ deaths.

Brown-bear-C-Ivan-Seryodkin-copy

Over the past few weeks, a handful of stories on animals, pets, and death have popped up. The Death Reference Desk has an entire section dedicated to Pets, and it’s worth reading through.

I kept coming back to an essay by John Berger, which I first read about five years ago. His essay, Why Look at Animals?, mulls over a key question: Why do we humans look at other animals? What do we hope to gain from staring at these creatures related but separate from us on the taxonomic tree of life?

In the case of pets, I think that we look at these animals out of love. That’s why it’s so difficult when a pet either dies naturally or is euthanized. A pet’s death is the loss of both a non-human companion and love. Both articles at the top of the page touch on this area.

As for the animals in Ohio, we look at so-called wild animals for some sign of unhindered wilderness and freedom. The tragic irony is that once those animals were set free they were killed.

By humans.

Looking at them through rifle scopes.

Categories
Death + Crime Death + the Economy Death + the Law Death Ethics

Cook County Gives Unclaimed Dead Bodies a Two Week Notice (sort of…)

Under Recent Policy, Cook County Begins Donating Unclaimed Bodies after 2 Weeks
Cadavers that are left in morgue are given to medical research
Becky Schlikerman, William Lee and Ronnie Reese, Chicago Tribune (October 04, 2011)

 

Medical Examiner: Families Who Object to Body Donation Can Opt for Burial
Becky Schlikerman, Chicago Tribune (October 05, 2011)

There was a bit of a dead body tug-of-war this week in Chicago. According to an October 4 article in the Chicago Tribune, any dead body left unclaimed for two weeks in the Medical Examiner’s office will be handed over to the Illinois Anatomical Gift Association.

But wait, that’s not totally true.

According to an October 5 article in the Chicago Tribune, the Medical Examiner’s office will not donate any unclaimed body to the Anatomical Gift Association when the ME’s office knows that the next-of-kin cannot afford to have the dead body claimed and the next-of-kin want a burial.

Here is the bigger issue in this story: the overall costs for retrieving a body from a Medical Examiner’s office have become too expensive for many families.

We started covering this situation in 2009, when the Death Reference Desk launched. You can look over all those previous posts in the Death + the Economy section.

More and more county morgues across America are dealing with not only unclaimed dead bodies, but unclaimed dead bodies and families who know exactly where said dead body is located but can’t afford to do anything about it.

As a result, the Cook County story is hardly surprising.

Given the economic difficulties more and more American families face, this story represents not an anomaly but the future.

For more on Medical Examiners and their work, watch the fantastic Frontline documentary Post Mortem: Death Investigation in America