How do you educate people about one of the most horrific disasters of our time? When is something too gruesome to show in a museum exhibit? And why are the most powerful images sometimes the least gruesome?
Funeral director’s forgotten role in the civil rights movement, an interview with Suzanne Smith
Slave getaways were plotted at funeral homes, civil rights leaders were shuttled to safety in hearses, and after writing his famous letter from the Birmingham jail it was a prominent local funeral director that bailed out Martin Luther King Jr.
Interview with the world’s very first funeographer
Priscilla Etienne runs a London-based company called Funeography that takes professional photos at funerals.
Interview with the country’s oldest funeral officiant, a 93-year-old Freemason named Norman
Norman Miller fought in World War II then Korea and has been leading Freemason funeral services ever since.
A Victorian death expert explains what Amy Winehouse took from John Keats
Deborah Lutz has written about Gothic villains, Victorian sex rebels and the Cannibal Club; her latest book is on Victorian death culture. She is an assistant professor at Long Island University.
An Iraq War Widow Speaks Out, and Starts a Project
Taryn Davis married the love of her life and was about to finish college, then she got the worst news of her life. Her husband Michael had been killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq.
Inside death row with Werner Herzog’s new film, an exclusive interview
Imagine, you’re rotting in jail with an execution date looming, what are you thinking? Werner Herzog’s new documentary film, Into the Abyss, which premiered Friday at the Toronto Film Festival, tackles this question.
Interview with a man who cleans up blood and brains for a living
Where do the blood and guts go after a horrific suicide or grisly accidental death? Often it is scrubbed away by Aftermath Inc., a crime scene cleanup company that began in a Chicago basement in 1996 and now has offices in 45 states.
Will Osama bin Laden get 72 Virgins? A talk with an Islam death expert
Osama bin Laden’s body was placed on a flat board and slid into the sea, was that the proper thing to do? Will he attain bliss on the seabed or rot in purgatory? And what of those 72 virgins promised to all martyrs, will bin Laden get them?
Interview with playwright Eric Coble, whose boobytrapped Brooklyn mother teaches a lesson on dying with grace
Eric Coble has written and produced plays on Edgar Allen Poe, Pinocchio and Pecos Bill; his latest, Velocity of Autumn, is about an elderly Brooklyn woman who boobytraps her apartment with firebombs to prevent her children from sending her to a nursing home.
