MUMMY STASH FOUND IN ITALIAN CHURCH: PHOTOS

From Discovery News:
http://news.discovery.com/history/mummy-discovery-italian-church-110628.html

A remarkable mass burial of 281 bodies from the late Middle Ages, as well as a few mummified mice and a letter to God, no kidding.

MUMMY STASH FOUND IN ITALIAN CHURCH: PHOTOS
by Rossella Lorenzi

June 28, 2011 -- Hundreds of bodies stacked one of top of the other emerged during restoration work in the church of Roccapelago, a remote mountain village in north-central Italy.

About one-third of the mass grave, consisting of 281 bodies of adults, infants and children, turned out to be mummies...

The day I became a widow

From Salon:
http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/06/29/becoming_a_widow/index.html

The day I became a widow

After my husband died, I couldn't shake my guilt -- or a feeling that I'd lost a crucial part of myself
BY LILLIAN RUBIN



The author and her late husband.

Yesterday I was a wife; today I'm a widow. A 4 a.m. phone call, a voice penetrating the fog of sleep, and just like that, I'm a widow.

I sit on the edge of the bed, shivering; the window is open and the night chill has invaded the bedroom. I pull the comforter around me as I try to make sense of what I just heard. "Are you there, ma'am?" the voice asks. "Yes," I reply. But I am, and I'm not. Instead, I retreat to another place, a familiar one -- my therapist mode where I've spent decades as the one who listens, interprets, analyzes, comforts, cajoles -- and I ask myself: Is it really so cold in this room, or is this what shock feels like? I've read about it, heard patients and friends describe it, offered words I thought were wise, comforting, helpful. But until the moment I sat in that dark room, teeth chattering uncontrollably, unable to bring mind and tongue together to speak coherently, I had no idea what shock really feels like...

Corpse Flower Is Making a Big Stink

From:
http://www.comozooconservatory.org/news/corpse-flower-will-soon-make-a-big-stink-check-out-the-webcam/

Here's what they have to say about this unusual plant. Sorry, can't resize the image.

Corpse Flower Is Making a Big Stink-Check out the Webcam!

A Rare Bloom of a Corpse Flower Is Happening at the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory

You’re looking LIVE at the Corpse Flower! Sorry, this is NOT in Smell-O-Vision.

6/29/11 UPDATE: Click Here For The Time Lapse Video!

6/29/11 UPDATE: It is time!!! BOB,too started to open yesterday afternoon starting about 3pm! Over the course of the next 5 hours, the spathe (the skirt) opened and the tell tale smell of rotten meat started to permeate the parlor! This type of plant tends to open in the mid to late afternoon and send it’s noteworthy aroma out into the world for the next 24-36 hours. When the Conservatory opens at 10am today, we will have already passed the 19 hour mark in the event. The smell at this moment is still strong but will decline as we pass the noon mark. We will stay open until 9:00PM tonight and reopen at 7:00am tomorrow morning just for you fans to view this remarkable flower! By closing time tonight, there is the possibility that the smell will have disappeared and the spathe will have started to close up and again cover the base of the spadix. This is a very short and not sweet event that is not to be missed!

Hidden lives of Baltimore's Irish immigrants unearthed for first time

Not death-related per se but a fascinating glimpse into the not so distant past revealed by archeology:

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-hidden-baltimore-irish-immigrants-unearthed.html#audio

June 24, 2011

 

Enlarge

This is a tiny 19th century doll head found in Baltimore County. Credit: Brighton/UMD

An archaeological team from the University of Maryland is unearthing a unique picture of the Baltimore-area's early Irish immigrants - of city children taught to read and write at home before widespread public education and child labor laws, as well as insular rural residents who resisted assimilation for one hundred years.

The excavation in the city represents the first formal archaeological research to focus on Baltimore's early Irish settlement and labor force.

"Behind the closed doors of their modest Baltimore homes, beyond the view of their bosses, these unskilled railroad workers maintained a rich social, religious and family life," says University of Maryland archaeologist Stephen Brighton, whose students just finished digging in the backyards of 19th century Baltimore immigrants...

Tiny camera reveals inside of ancient Mayan tomb

Tiny camera reveals inside of ancient Mayan tomb



Reuters – The inside of a tomb of a Mayan ruler, that has been sealed for 1,500 years, is seen in southern Mexico, …

Slideshow:Inside an ancient Mayan tomb
– Thu Jun 23, 9:25 pm ET

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A tiny remote-controlled camera peered inside the tomb of a Mayan ruler that has been sealed for 1,500 years, revealing red frescoes, pottery and pieces of a funerary shroud made of jade and mother of pearl...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110624/sc_nm/us_mexico_tomb;_ylt=An0d6vMYC13G.90CLKNS9IKs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTJianBnNzhuBGFzc2V0A25tLzIwMTEwNjI0L3VzX21leGljb190b21iBHBvcwM3BHNlYwN5bl9tb3N0X3BvcHVsYXIEc2xrA3RpbnljYW1lcmFyZQ--

DIG FOR PHARAOH'S BOAT BEGINS

DIG FOR PHARAOH'S BOAT BEGINS

Analysis by Rossella Lorenzi
Thu Jun 23, 2011 02:31 PM ET



Lifting one of the limestone slabs which sealed the pit. Photo courtesy Rania Galal.credit: Rania Galal

Today archaeologists began excavating a pharaonic boat hidden for 4,500 years in an underground chamber on the southern side of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Consisting of disassembled beams and planks, the boat is one of two which were buried near the pyramid to follow the dead Khufu, also known as Cheops, in his journey into the afterlife...

see Discovery News for full story:

http://news.discovery.com/history/buried-pharaonic-boat-110623.html

Video: Cemetery grounds keepers

Very well done video from the LA times, see it:

http://framework.latimes.com/2011/06/20/cemetery-grounds-keepers-video/

Video: Cemetery grounds keepers



Posted By: Bryan Chan
Posted On: 8:49 p.m. | June 20, 2011

Cemetery grounds keepers Willie Roberts and Sammy Treto put care into providing a beautiful final resting place for people’s loved ones as members of the grounds and interment crews at Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena...

Negro Leagues Players Honored With Gravestones

Negro Leagues Players Honored With Gravestones

by GREG ECHLIN

June 18, 2011

Dink Mothell played in the Negro Leagues for 15 years. He died in 1980, and his gravesite has been just a patch of grass, no nameplate, marker or anything. On Saturday, a ceremony will at last grant Mothell's gravesite a tombstone, the result of efforts by two men to locate the remains of former Negro Leaguers. Greg Echlin reports...

The stars of Negro League baseball often amassed statistics that rivaled and sometimes surpassed those of their white counterparts in baseball segregation. But records of those achievements can be spotty. So, too, can be records of the final resting places of many of those players...

Story and MP3 at NPR web site:

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/18/137265793/negro-leagues-players-honored-with-gravestones

Archaeologists Unscramble Ancient Graffiti In Israel

Some excerpts from:
Archaeologists Unscramble Ancient Graffiti In Israel

by JACKI LYDEN

...An expedition to the Southern Galilee a few hours north ends at the site of one of the country's richest burial sites: Beit She'arim. It is both national park and necropolis; a city of the dead dating back to the first century. There are more than 30 excavated tombs here...

...There are magical spells in Greek. There are also curses in Aramaic that threaten a bad fate to the tomb robber. Those seem to have been ignored, as only the graffiti and heavy stone coffins are left.

In the dark, the effect — particularly in these tiny messages — is to hear the dead speaking. It's peaceful, but lively. One gets the sense of a giant Facebook page of the ancient world....

Whole story here:
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/19/137257434/archaeologists-unscramble-ancient-graffiti-in-israel&sc=nl&cc=nh-20110619

Women Arrested After Cop Busts Baby Funeral Scam

People Are No Good Dept.:

http://www.newser.com/story/121473/women-arrested-after-cop-busts-baby-funeral-scam.html

PAIR PULLED IN $700 IN JUST A FEW HOURS

By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff

Posted Jun 20, 2011 12:31 PM CDT

(NEWSER) – Two women in Modesto allegedly came up with a decidedly heartless way to score some easy money: They solicited “funeral donations” for a six-month-old who supposedly died of a heart condition while they were on vacation, racking up $700 in just a few hours on Saturday. A police officer spotted Chasity Doll and Tiffany Lyon darting in and out of traffic to ask motorists for donations, and initially only asked them to stay on the sidewalk. But when he started asking basic questions they couldn’t answer, he got suspicious...

Roman Gladiator's Gravestone Describes Fatal Foul

From LiveScience, link:

http://www.livescience.com/14650-roman-gladiator-tombstone-epitaph.html

Note the link to "Top 10 Ways We Deal With The Dead".

Interesting story about how things could go wrong in gladiatorial games.

Roman Gladiator's Gravestone Describes Fatal Foul

Owen Jarus, LiveScience ContributorDate: 17 June 2011 Time: 07:13 AM ET

An enigmatic message on a Roman gladiator's 1,800-year-old tombstone has finally been decoded, telling a treacherous tale.

The epitaph and art on the tombstone suggest the gladiator, named Diodorus, lost the battle (and his life) due to a referee's error, according to Michael Carter, a professor at Brock University in St. Catharines, Canada. Carter studies gladiator contests and other spectacles in the eastern part of the Roman Empire.

He examined the stone, which was discovered a century ago in Turkey, trying to determine what the drawing and inscription meant. [Top 10 Weird Ways We Deal With the Dead]...

Rotters

Review on BoingBoing. Cory Doctorow likes it. I haven't read it but it might appeal to the mortuary crowd.

Rotters: YA horror novel about grave-robbing chills, thrills, delights

Cory Doctorow at 6:25 AM Wed

Daniel Kraus's young adult novel Rotters tells the unlikely story of Joey Crouch, a 16 year old boy from Chicago whose mother is killed by a bus; Joey is sent to live with his mysterious father in small-town Iowa, and that's when things get weird. Joey's father is taciturn, he smells bad, he lives in a shack, and he doesn't seem interested in being any sort of father (or even roommate) with his long-lost son. Joey is an instant pariah at high-school, subjected to tortures and humiliations thanks in part to his father's reputation as the town weirdo, and in part to the fact that Joey's home has no facility for washing clothes and its unique smell clings to him and all his possessions.
Thus far, it sounds like a story about a kid who's dad is mentally unbalanced, or neglectful, or sadistic, but when Joey stows away in the bed of his father's truck to see where the old man goes on his long absences, he learns the truth: his father is a grave robber...

German man who typed ‘Schindler’s List’ dies at 91

Notable funerals department: thanks to Christine Prater for drawing my attention to this on Facebook.  Link to full story:

http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=224583

German man who typed ‘Schindler’s List’ dies at 91

By JTA 
06/11/2011 23:41

Mietek Pemper was responsible for typing famous list that saved 1,000 Jews during Holocaust; will be buried in Jewish cemetery in Germany.

 Mietek Pemper, the man responsible for typing Oskar Schindler’s famous list that saved more than 1,000 Jews during the Holocaust, died Tuesday in Augsburg, Germany, at age 91.

Pemper is to be buried in the city’s Jewish cemetery, and local officials plan to order flags to be lowered to halfmast, the Agence France-Presse reported...