Posts Tagged ‘Death’
“You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocket ship underpants don’t help”*…
Horseshoe charm made from a fragment of German shell by a wounded Belgian soldier.
During (and after) World War I, British folklorist Edward Lovett made a point of collecting examples of lucky charms and amulets that soldiers had carried to war. Some of these—included in a new book about the Imperial War Museum’s World War I collections, The First World War Galleries, by Paul Cornish—are below.
Lovett was a contemporary folklorist, collecting and analyzing material from his own city of London instead of working with archives or in other countries. Most active during the 1910s and 1920s, Lovett worked at a bank by day, gathering examples of amulets, charms, and talismans in his free time.Lovett was interested in seeing how country folklore lived on in working-class parts of London. He investigated the use of such charms to cure illnesses, wish ill upon enemies, or attract good luck. You can see some of his larger collection online through this Wellcome Library digital exhibition.
The charms Lovett collected from soldiers were sometimes fashioned from materials with some significance to their owners: bog oak or Connemara marble, carried by Irishmen as mementos of home; [or as in the photo above] bits of armaments that could have killed the bearer, but didn’t.
Take in more talismans at “The Lucky Charms Soldiers Carried Into WWI.”
* Calvin (Bill Watterson)
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As we rub our rabbit’s feet, we might spare a thought for George Frederick Ernest Albert, George V, King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India; he died on this date in 1936. In a statement, the King’s physician, Lord Dawson of Penn, reported that the King’s last words were “How stands the Empire?” But in his diary, uncovered much later, Dawson recalls a less elegant end: The physician confessed in his memoir that he prescribed the fast-failing King a fatal sedative so that his death would be announced in the Tory morning papers (and opposed to the afternoon tabloids). George’s actual last words, as a nurse approached with the morphine- and cocaine-filled syringe, were “God damn you, you’re going to kill me!”
George V
“I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens”*…
From Sunbelt seekers and snowbird retirees to economic immigrants and political refugees, folks flock to southern Florida. And many of them chose to return home– if not during their lives, then afterwards… So it’s no surprise that the Miami area is the U.S. capital of corpse repatriation:
The transnational city is a place to die for. Ironically, however, once established in the transnational city, few envision staying there until their last breath. For many, it is a temporary venue, whether as a place of exile, a springboard for upward mobility, or a playground until new opportunities beckon. Few imagine dying there and, as the moment draws near, many make plans to go home.
In the transnational city, which is home to a disproportionate number of the foreign-born and expatriates, death and repatriation are a steady business. The bodies of an estimated 20 percent of South Florida’s deceased are shipped out, more than from any other region in the USA. Most of the HRs (industry shorthand for human remains) going abroad depart from Miami International Airport. According to the CEO of Pierson, a leader in this business since 1964, around 80 percent of business is international, with the company shipping to a range of foreign destinations across Central and South America and a number of European countries as well…
Read more about this last arc in the circle of life (and find out what it costs) at “Miami Is the #1 Airport in America for Shipping Dead Foreigners.”
[TotH to friend PH for the pointer]
* Woody Allen
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As we wonder if there’s a discount fare, we might recall that it was on this date in 1914 that “Little Willie,” the first prototype of the British Mark I tank– thus, the first completed tank prototype in the world– rolled out of the shop. It weighed 14 tons, required rear steering wheels (so got stuck in trenches), and managed only two miles per hour; still, it was the first step toward a technology that revolutionized battlefields.
“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague”*…
In order to see the appeal of the forthcoming Morbid Anatomy Museum, you have to understand the death-centric collection—think skeletons, taxidermy, medical oddities— as neither kitschy nor creepy.
“I like to think about how our attitudes about things have changed; and in particular our attitudes about death, because I think that is the most fertile thing to examine,” says Joanna Ebenstein, the founder of the Morbid Anatomy Library, which is the basis of the museum. “The way we think about death now, these images seem completely inappropriate. It seems voyeuristic and wrong and horrible. But I would argue, in some ways, that they were dealing with grief in ways that we don’t really have a capability with any longer because we think it’s so inappropriate.”…
“It really speaks to how much we’ve changed as people that this could become exotic and other. It never was before; there was never a period in history where death was so other than now.” Confronting that chasm is, in part, the purpose of the museum…
The Morbid Anatomy Museum opens in Brooklyn next month, when it will feature its permanent collection (sampled in the photo above), a 2500-volume library, a lecture series, classes (e.g., taxidermy), and special exhibits (like Water Potter’s “Kitten Wedding,” from the 1890s, pictured below).
Read more at “Coming Soon to Brooklyn: The Morbid Anatomy Museum.”
* Edgar Allan Poe
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As we memento mori, we might we might send rebellious birthday greetings to Jean Vigo; he was born on this date in 1905. The son of Catalan anarchists, Vigo migrated to Paris and became a film maker. A founder (with Jean Renoir) of “poetic realism” in film, Vigo is best remembered for two films, both hugely impactful on French and world cinema: Zéro de conduite (1933) and L’Atalante (1934). The former– a tale of rebellious school boys– was the inspiration for Lindsay Anderson’s marvelous If…; the latter– the story of a marriage falling apart, then healing– was chosen as the 10th-greatest film of all time in Sight & Sound’s 1962 poll, and as the 6th-best in its 1992 poll. He’s widely considered the “grandfather” of the French New Wave, on whom he had an enormous influence.
Writing of Vigo’s death in The New York Times, film critic Andrew Johnston judged: “The ranks of the great film directors are short on Keatses and Shelleys, young artists cut off in their prime, leaving behind a handful of great works that suggest what might have been. But one who qualifies is Jean Vigo, the French director who died of tuberculosis at age 29 in 1934.”
“Where’s Papa going with that ax?”*…
From the Grimms and Mother Goose to Edward Gorey, children’s literature can be… well, pretty chilling. But for pure shock value, it’s possible that Don’t Make Me Go Back, Mommy
The words of the text and the objects and situations illustrated are based on months of intensive research into the nature and practice of satanic ritual abuse. Any child who has been ritually abused will recognize the validity of this story.
The book was apparently marketed to school counselors, mental health professionals and support groups, as well as to concerned parent, to help identify signs of Satanic Ritual Abuse (or “SRA”).
Amazon reviewers weighed in with reactions including these:
– One HELL of a good read. Devilishly funny. My son, Damian, thought it was the funniest book he’s ever read. An all around great book to read around the sulfur pit with the family. They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but honestly, LOOK AT IT.
– 4 year old saw this book and she is begging parents to send her to this school, where on earth are we going find a satanist school for the brat.
– You have to be a detective to follow the “story.” The book forces you to deduce the storyline from the progression of settings, because the book never tells you what is happening or why, or even who is talking. The child in the “story” just materializes in new contexts without explanation. The reader’s reactions are constantly along the lines of, “Where is she now? What is happening? Who is this person? Who is talking?” Each page introduces a new disjointed scenario and a new unattributed quotation, and it’s up to the reader to try to figure out what’s going on.
Via the ever-illuminating Dangerous Minds.
* Fern, to her mother, as they were setting the table for breakfast. –E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
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As we make the sign of the cross, we might wish a grateful Happy Birthday to the greatest poet and playwright in the English canon, William Shakespeare; he was born (tradition holds, and reason suggests) on this date in 1564. In fact, there is no way to know with certainty the Bard’s birth date. But his baptism was recorded at Stratford-on-Avon on April 26, 1564; and three days was the then-customary wait before baptism.
In any case, we do know with some certainty that Shakespeare died on this date in 1616.
The Chandos Portrait
Memento Mori…
It’s reassuring to know that one is only one-tenth as likely to die of bee/hornet/wasp sting as of air/space accident, but mildly chilling to know that a fatal tumble down stairs is five times more likely than electrocution…
From Daily Infographic, How Will You Die?
click here (and again) for full chart, enlarged
As we remember poor Yorick, we might also recall that it was on this date in 1776 that 21-year-old Connecticut school teacher and Continental Army Captain Nathan Hale was executed by the British for spying. While Hale is credited with saying “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country,” the story descends from an eyewitness account by John Montresor, a British soldier who spoke soon after the execution with the American officer William Hull about Hale’s comportment. Some scholars believe that the now-famous mot is a burnishing of the less-well-measured “I am so satisfied with the cause in which I have engaged that my only regret is that I have not more lives than one to offer in its service.”
In any case, executed for spying: what are the odds?
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