Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Myrtle Young

David Weidman

Ann Rowan

Actress -- via rte.ie.


Tommy Gill

Jazz pianist -- via the Charlestown Post and Courier.


Shree Krishna Shrestha

Actor -- via My Republica.

Arlene Martel aka Arline Sax aka Arlene Sax aka Tasha Martel aka The Chameleon

Actress --via treknews.com. Best remembered for her role as T'Pring in an episode of Star Trek-the Original Series, she also had a prominent role in one of the best episodes of "The Outer Limits" -- "Demon with a Glass Hand."






Ed Nelson

Actor -- via the New York Times. Best known for his lead role in TV's "Peyton Place" in the 1906s, he appeared in hundreds of B-movies and TV episodes.







Robert "Red" Wilson

Former MLB player -- via madison.com.

Jim Commnad

Former MLB player -- via Michigan Live.

Bob Wiesler

Former MLB player -- via baseball-fever.com.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Lauren Bacall aka Betty Joan Perske

Actress -- via TMZ. One of the last great performers from the Golden Age of Hollywood, Bacall started as a model, then got cast in "To Have and Have Not," which sparked both her career and her romance and eventual marriage with Humphrey Bogart. Since then, she did great work in film, on radio and stage, and on TV. Some other highlights: "The Big Sleep," "Key Largo," "Written on the Wind," "Applause," "Murder on the Orient Express," "Misery," and "Dogville." She even made fun appearances on such shows as "The Sopranos" and "Family Guy." She could act, she was funny, and she was smokin' hot.





















JJ Murphy

Actor -- via the Independent.

Scott Ciencin

Yvette Giraud

Singer -- via Liberation.





Craig Whittaker

Saxophonist -- via the Greensboro News & Record.

Luis Fernando Muñoz Castro

Musician -- via the Latin Post.





JT Edson

Johnny Ray Allen

Chapman Pincher

Journalist -- via the New York Times.

Gunnel Linde

Writer -- via Aftonbladet.

Marianne Edwards Provencio

Child actress -- via voy.com.

Monday, August 11, 2014

Robin Williams

Actor and comedian -- via Fox.

WEEKLY READER: Roundup of stories on death, mourning, and more

Photo courtesy Ding Rui/CNN
TOP STORIES

New “death simulator” is a new escape-room game due to open in September, per Maggie Hiufu Wong on CNN

In the pages of Cracked, Himanshu Sharma outlines “The 5 Creepiest Death Rituals from Around the World (Part 2)”

Corpse stolen from mortuary after four months reveals family feud: via Nkem Ikeke of naji.com.

DEATH


From Confessions of a Funeral Director, “5 Fantastic TED Talks on Death”

Richard Harris of the Wall Street Journal reports on the growing momentum of the aid-in-dying movement

Brittany Goodin writes about death and Beat literature in the Artifice

Daniel McConnell of Ireland’s Herald on the Irish government’s implementation of a “short-form” death certificate that omits the cause of death

Death in Gaza, from AP via Fox

Peter Dominiczak and Dan Hyde in the Telegraph meld the two inevitables – death and taxes

In The Nation, Nicholas Tufnell describes digital methods of dealing with death

Michel Koh on Thought Catalog, on the death of friends

‘Lethal neglect’? A nursing home nightmare

Mary Awad in The Artifice analyzes anime and childhood death

In the Ernest Becker Foundation, H. Talat Halman reviews “Beyond Death Anxiety”

Oh dear. Taxidermy as a “creative hobby,” from Laura Secorun Palet on NPR.

MOURNING


In the Guardian, Laura Barnett writes about Hannah Moss, who performs a silent play about her father’s death

Elon Gilad of Haaretz discusses Tisha B’Av, a Jewish day of mourning

Fear of death and the silence of life, from Daniel Coffeen in Thought Catalog

OBITS


Esteban Parra, in the News Journal, on more kooky obituaries

FUNERALS

Church cancels funeral ceremony for gay man – from Shannon Behnken of WFLA


Crowdfunding funerals, from Kayleigh Kulp of Fox Business

Want to spend summer vacation interning as a mortician? – from Lin Hui-chin and Jake Chung of the Taipei Times.

The Sun Herald relates the death of funeral director Jesse Richmond, Jr., a pioneer of the drive-through funeral home

Wrong body. Via EURWeb.

Better late than never: remains of nine Jonestown victims found in abandoned funeral home after 35 years: Randall Chase, AP, via ABC

From the Better Business Bureau via the Topeka Capital-Journal, “planning funerals saves stress”
Tampa funeral home robs clients, per Elizabeth Behrman of the Tampa Tribune

MISC



Charles Keating

Actor -- via the L.A. Times.



Bari "Bea" Silvern

Philip Hurlic

Child actor -- via ourgang.wikia.com.

Dennis Lipscomb

Actor -- via legacy.com.

J.W. Hastings

Biochemist -- via the New York Times.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Henry Stone

Music producer and label owner -- via Billboard. First recorded Ray Charles, signed James Brown, and later became a big wheel in the disco scene.

Norman Skaggs

Actor -- via legacy.com.

Ruth Sacks Caplin

Writer and screenwriter -- via the Washington Post.

Jim Frederick

Journalist and writer -- via the New York Times.

Li Hu

AIDS activist -- via the New York Times.

Friday, August 8, 2014

Menahem Golan

Director and producer -- via Haaretz. Hey, remember the oft-seen logo for Cannon Films, or the credit that read "a Golan/Globus Production"? He's Golan. Directed 44 films, and produced more than 200, including "New Year's Evil," "Death Wish II," "Love Streams," "Breakin'," "Missing in Action," "Runaway Train," "The Delta Force," "Superman IV," "Barfly," "Bloodsport," any and every thing.







Here's a recent presentation of a documentary on Golan/Globus, at Cannes

Danny Murphy

Actor and activist -- via TMZ.

Cristina Deutekom

Soprano -- via Dutch News.





Alan Wills

Record-label founder and drummer -- via the Guardian.

Lindy Jones

Writer and teacher -- via the Guardian.

Ken Tickell

Organ builder -- via the Telegraph.

FRIDAY BOOK REVIEW: 'American Afterlife'

By BRAD WEISMANN

American Afterlife: Encounters in the Customs of Mourning
By Kate Sweeney
2014
University of Georgia Press

What is the landscape of death and mourning in America? Given our potpourri of cultural traditions, the general ebb of religious impulses, and the uniquely American terror of aging and mortality, it’s difficult at best to sketch an outline of it. However, if anyone can delineate its dimensions, it is Kate Sweeney.

“In a sense, death in today’s America is always unexpected. Even when it’s not a literal surprise, it has a power, when first encountered, to deeply jar people who have come of age bathed in the deep unspoken conviction: This is not what is supposed to happen to us. To me. Like those strange dreams in which we find ourselves pushing open the door of a wing of our house we didn’t know existed but now realize was there all along . . . “

Combining the thoroughness of a beat reporter with the skill of an eminently readable social historian, she sets out a clear and densely factual assessment of mourning practices, punctuated with vibrant portraits of such industry-related individuals as a memorial tattoo artist, a funeral chaplain, an obituary writer, an online baroness of crematory appliances, and a photographer who has made memorial portraits of deceased newborns.

Sweeney’s ability to listen and judiciously present leads to a plethora of diverse voices coming through, loud and clear – but it does not exempt an appropriate and apt amount of personal statements by the author in relation to the subject.

Sweeney’s abundance of historical detail contextualizes the state of the art today. The Puritans had no funeral ceremonies – they buried their dead in silence. (They did, however, love to compose funeral elegies.) The double sweep of the evangelical Second Great Awakening and the rise of gloomy, death-obsessed Romanticism led to a revolution in the consideration of death and in the commemoration of the dead. Graveyards became cemeteries; undertakers became funeral directors. In Christendom, at least, the rituals of mourning, the length of the mourning period, and sumptuary customs as rigid as though regulated by law.

Another shift Sweeney clocks is that of the casting aside of Victorian era’s thanatological obsessions in response to the wholesale slaughters of World War I. Multigenerational families, long the norm in American life, began to fragment. Old people were a newly segregated underclass. The aged no longer died at home but in rest homes, nursing homes, retirement homes, old folks’ homes, senior centers . . . Likewise, the body didn’t sit up all night on sawhorses in the front parlor.

Sweeney’s travels lead her to folks who can shoot your remains into space, on put some of you into a necklace or brooch (the Victorian-era funeral jewelry making a comeback!), or bury you in a nature preserve in a wicker basket, or do it “right,” the old-fashioned way, complete with a top-line casket (aka coffin), makeup and fine clothes for the deceased, a viewing, a funeral, a burial. (Thanks to Sweeney, I finally understand the transition from funeral chapel to funeral parlor to funeral home to funeral service. Did you ever wonder why your childhood funeral homes always seemed to be Victorian mansions? “The large houses provided social prominence, expansive living areas upstairs for the directors’ families, and large basements that were ideal for embalming.” Shiver.)

The stats point to a marked increase in cremations and a decline in funeral ceremonies. All aspects of the American death industry are in flux. Like many others, it has undergone a radical consolidation in recent years, one largely overlooked. The old-school family businesses are falling to corporate protocol. [NOTE: A note from Sweeney herself, just in, clarifies that this last supposition is incorrect. After inroads in the 1990s and 2000s, the preponderance of independently-owned and -run funeral services is restored.] Meanwhile, the market fragmentation has led to a lot of non-standard, cut-out-the-middleman approaches toward the care and deposition of the dead, and the observances and needs of the mourning. Even a seeming firefight between obituary writers and their enthusiasts fades to nothing as market realities destroy the beat. Death is certain, but a business model never is.

Sweeney describes funerals as “intricate events involving emotional people.” The daunting, morbid territories she has explored were no less challenging, and she brought us back an eloquent and sharply limned map of them.

Peter Sculthorpe


Composer -- via ABC News.



Ronnie Wilson

Director and actor -- via the Telegraph.

Dharmesh Tiwari

Actor -- via the Times of India.

Imre Bajor

Actor and comedian -- via index.hu.

James Thompson

Crime writer -- via Helsingen Sanomat.

Thursday, August 7, 2014

David Holgate

Sculptor -- via the Guardian.

Gorge Freese

Former MLB player -- via legacy.com.

Karen X. Gaylord aka Jane Goerner

Actress. Her death is asserted but unsubstantiated on IMDb; still searching for third-party confirmation. However, here is an excellent page of information on her, courtesy obscureactresses.wordpress.com.

Kenny Drew Jr.