For my book club, I'm reading the book "The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries" by Marilyn Johnson. It looks at obits of all kinds - from those of celebs, "ordinary Joe's" and even the new type of obit created as a result of 9/11 and the desire to honor so many deaths at once.
I realized I've never really sat down and read the obituaries, so today I did.
I went online and read some in the LA and NY Times. It was fascinating! I read about Pavarotti -who was the big name I recognize recently - but then also about Werner Von Trapp (one of the sons in the Von Trapp family that inspired The Sound of Music), a stunt cyclist, a minister known for her hip-hop Friday night service, a crossword puzzle writer, an American Indian who protested the use of Indian names for sports teams, a haiku poet who survived WWII internment camps...and even Robert E. Lee.
I can see how people get hooked on reading these. There's a bit of history, some trivia...and even a tear-jerker here and there.
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3 comments:
This may seem rather morbid but it can also be very informative and interesting to walk thru a cemetery and observe the writings on grave markers, Germany for example has the most amazing cemeteries!
It's true that the dead sometimes tell the best stories.
Such a nice blog. I hope you will create another post like this.
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