Victorian death

Coping Mechanisms, Dark Pragmatism and More Postmortem Pics

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hearts and flowers

I did draw hatchets, skulls and heavy metal band logos in my extensive high school boredom doodlings. This is why I know not to do it now.

When I get bored, I scribble and doodle.  Sometimes I do it in a more figurative sense- typing is so much faster than writing long hand, at least for me- but drawing can only really be done the old fashioned way, with pens and pencils and markers.

The psychologists and guidance counselors had a field day with me in middle school and high school because of my rather dark themed scribblings and doodlings. When your primary emotion is “terror,” the secondary is almost always “rage.”  (Repressed anger, anyone?- and this was decades before Columbine.)  I would buy plain notebooks (even better if they had a canvas finish) and then I would draw macabre scenes all over them in a variety of colors.  If the discussion went too slow or I got bored in class (pretty much every day) then I would write little snippets of prose or poetry along with whatever notes I was pretending to take inside the notebook.  I didn’t have the advantage of having a laptop or a tablet or a smart phone in school. I graduated in 1986, when the entire school had three computers, all of which had a cassette player serving as a hard drive.  By comparison, the Note 3 smart phone I have today would have been a supercomputer.

I should have learned my lesson regarding concealing incriminating evidence of my twisted thought life when I was in 8th grade. One of the boys decided to appropriate one of my more risqué notebooks and share its contents with the other boys.  This was Not a Good Thing.  The notebook got confiscated by a nosy teacher who wondered what the boys were laughing about.  I ended up in an extremely awkward and embarrassing meeting with the guidance counselor that led to  several months of camping out in the psychologist’s office every Tuesday afternoon.  Since my mother worked for the school system and knew every single one of the teachers and staff, the repercussions of that indiscretion really sucked.

I still kept my funky notebooks with the outlandish scribbles on them, but I was more careful about what I wrote in them in high school, just in case someone would dare to screw with them.  No one ever dared to.  In high school, I found that when I ended up with large friends, who took a special delight in beating the daylights out of people who screwed with me, that my confidential items remained that way.   I didn’t receive any unauthorized touching, spindling or mutilation to my person either, not after one unfortunate thug got her head shaved for spitting Skoal in my hair.  The Skoal Incident- which took place toward the end of my freshman year in high school- marked the end of many years of harassment and beatings from my cohorts in school.

cat fight

Some of my friends liked to fight.  I didn’t.  But by the time I had a car and smokes, I didn’t have to fight.

Granted, I was probably buying friends, (often with cigarettes) which isn’t a healthy thing to do, but it did save me from more than one ass-thumping, I’m sure.   I was in survival mode back then, and it was refreshing to be able to go to school without being dumped head-first into garbage cans, having my hair set on fire, or being shoved up the stairs.  The thought of being shoved up the stairs (concrete stairs with metal caps on the edges) makes my knee caps hurt even now.

Survival is what it is.

I probably shouldn’t have such a fascination for postmortem pics and/or the plight of the unfortunates of Walmart, but I do.

dead family

Pictures are expensive- sooooo- jump right on in there with the stiff!

really creepy dead kid

She doesn’t look terribly fresh, but then again, she’s DEAD.  How fast can the photographer get there on a horse?

The Victorians did pathos and high drama in a way that we just can’t stomach today, but as I’ve said before, back in the times before flush toilets and Clorox, death was in your living room.  Death was your bunkie in more ways than one.

Maybe I should consider it an improvement in my emotional health that my primary emotion is “fear” opposed to “terror.”  That might just be the mitigating effect of Prozac.  I’ve noticed that my secondary emotion- “rage” – has sort of settled into a pragmatic anger.  I try not to get angry unless that anger will do some good, but there are times when I just plain get pissed for no apparent reason.

I actually have some ivory tower time scheduled, although it seems sort of shitty that I have to schedule it in advance rather than just being able to drop off the planet for awhile, unannounced.  This time I hope Jerry leaves me alone for at least a day or two.  I could really use some peace and quiet with just Clara as company for a few days (months…yeah right) but I know Jerry too well.  If I go to the campground he will feel compelled to follow me so I can fetch beer and make trips into town for KFC and so forth.

chicken bucket

Man, that sounds good.

Wandering Through the Graveyard, Yeah, the Bell Tolls for Me

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They say, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls.”  I used to be able to hear various church bell cotillions growing up, but today the only things I hear from my surroundings are the various airport noises, police and fire sirens, and the tornado siren that goes off every Wednesday at noon.  Perhaps the church bell cotillions have gone out of style, in much the same way as we try to distance ourselves from the natural rhythm of death and dying.  In Victorian times, death was up close and personal and in your face.  There were no nursing homes to warehouse the elderly, and for the most part, when one got seriously ill or injured, death came quickly, usually either on the spot or at home.  There were no fire squads or life-flights or trauma units to tend to the catastrophically injured.  People didn’t linger on in cancer wards or on machines in intensive care units, sequestered off to die, far away from prying eyes.  You just bit the big one wherever you happened to be.

nursing_homes

Maybe some Metallica, cranked up, would help.  I doubt it.

Infants and children died at an alarming rate as well, which begs the question, how emotionally invested were parents in their children?  I could see the temptation in those days to keep loved ones at arm’s length rather than to dare to get too close, but I’m emotionally distant to begin with.  I don’t like getting too close to anyone even if I am somewhat confident of their continued longevity.

Wallie

I do think that this mother was very close to her departed six-year old Wallie.  This headstone is both unique, and to me, rather sad.

Maybe wandering through a graveyard is macabre, and certain graveyards have a sort of a creepy vibe to them, but others are pleasant to wander through.  I’ve always found the Marion Cemetery to be a fascinating and aesthetically pleasant place to wander about, at least in the daytime.  I’d like to go back again with an empty memory card and several hours to simply take pics and read the headstones and try to visualize the people whose lives were behind them.

There are graveyards closer to my house, but there’s something intriguing knowing that I have relatives buried in the ones up in Marion County.  Some of my relatives’ graves are marked, but some aren’t, and most, I’d have fun finding.  I have yet to find the numerous relatives of mine that are buried in Marion Cemetery, but I also have to remember that place is massive- it covers hundreds of acres and goes back to before the Civil War.   When I took this batch of pics I was mostly wandering through the Civil War era sections of the cemetery.  It was cold that day and after about two hours I’d pretty much gone through my memory card (I have a bigger memory card now) and my joints’ tolerance for cold and damp. I’ve not done much traipsing about in other parts of it.  Yet.

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Amos Kling was Florence Harding’s father. His obelisk is rather impressive, but I didn’t step back and get a pic of the whole thing.

I’m still amazed at how much money people had to have spent on some of these monuments.  Either Marion County was a far more opulent place back in the 19th and early 20th centuries (I’m guessing this one) or people spent a lot more scratch on the dead than they do now.  Maybe it was both.

I do know there are a good number of unmarked graves even in the Marion Cemetery which is the largest (and highest dollar real estate) cemetery in Marion County.  Whether poverty is the main reason behind that. or indifference, I don’t know.  I know some people die and nobody really cares too much about remembering them, but in the end how many people really are remembered for long, and how long do those stone monuments last?  Many of them from the 1880’s and earlier are almost beyond deciphering.

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This one always intrigued me- is it an idealized image of the deceased or a heavenly specter, or both?

erectiondie

I think they were referring to the building being built.  Still funny though.

A Moral Quandary, Humor in Unlikely Places, and Victorian Ways to Die

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  I do not like him, Sam I Am.  I’d rather vote for green eggs and ham.

Alright, here lately my emotional (yes I do have some) and thought lives have been a bit of turmoil lately.  Yesterday, I discovered, to my disbelief and disappointment that not only is Obama going to be sliming around in Ohio yet again, he’s also showing up at Capital University.  For those not familiar with the Columbus area, Capital is a Lutheran university (that gets some of its funding from the Lutheran church) and also the home of Trinity Lutheran Seminary.

Capital is known for its prestigious law school and its high academic standards, so it would stand to reason that they would want the opportunity to host a sitting president (though it’s a shame that the president they’re hosting is the Worst Ever.)  But when I got wind of who was promoting the event- Obama for America (what an oxymoron there, but I digress) I was truly disturbed.  This is not going to be a chance for Christians to ask Obama the hard questions regarding defending life, the economy, foreign policy and national defense.  It’s going to be another KoolAid swilling Obama-love fest- otherwise he would never have agreed to show up.  Now I know how the people at Notre Dame must have felt when Obama invaded their campus.  But no matter how much I loathe his policies and how deeply I believe he is evil and wrong, after much soul searching, prayer and thinking it through, it’s probably good that he is speaking there even though he will be spouting off the same rhetoric and lies as always, and the “other side” will not be represented.

Romney visited the Capital campus back in February and spoke (though he didn’t call it a “rally” necessarily, he didn’t travel to what most people consider to be Cow Town for leisure.)  So at least I know that both “sides” are getting an opportunity to speak, which tempered my response quite a bit.  After all, law is all about debate, and even if one “side” is fatally flawed they do deserve to be heard.  What grieves my heart (and yes, I do actually sort of have one) is that political rhetoric from either “side” requires people to engage critical thought.  A critical thinker is very likely to see the techniques Obama uses to deceive people and to call him out.  I know I’m tired of the blame game and the race baiting and class warfare that Obama relies upon, because I see it for what it is.  He has no vision other than failed socialism, and nothing to offer except the promise of being Santa Claus to the entitlement crowd.  My fear is that there are still too many people who have not engaged critical thought and who still believe the lies even though the evidence is clear that Obama’s policies are failed.

Why not try thanking God that Americans were never really into the guillotine?

Yet, as we’ve seen with Obama’s court jester, Joe Biden, he’s becoming his own worst enemy.  Biden is simply a dull buffoon whose singular talent is making an ass of himself, which is funny.  At least Biden provides some comic relief.  Obama is humorless even when he screws up, but the more frustrated he gets and the more threatened he feels, the more he says stupid things- stupid things that he knows better than to say, but that he actually believes, such as the “you didn’t build that” epithet directed at small business.  The more pandering, strident and vicious Obama gets, the more his true colors shine forth.  This venomous snake is going to grow some longer fangs.  Obama will get nasty, and he will go ad hominem even more than he already has.  Maybe for the first time some people will wake up- but not until Obama offends their emotions.  Some people are going to need to move beyond the myriad logical arguments against Obama, because some people don’t rely on logic before emotion.  The emotionally oriented people out there might just need to see his frustration and experience that red fire of hate for this country and what it stands for as it shines in his eyes.  It will come to that point as “Emperor” Barry sinks lower and lower in the polls and more and more people aren’t afraid to stand on the roof top and scream, “The ‘Emperor’ is NAKED!”

Obama’s going to self-implode.  And he’s going to do it to himself.  As much as I detest him sliming around Ohio, especially at a Lutheran seminary, the more he opens his mouth, the more he’s going to incriminate himself and alienate the electorate.

Let him keep on spewing his tired rhetoric and hot air.  He’s standing in his little boat, shooting holes in the bottom, and wondering why it’s sinking.

On a lighter note, I think Obama might want to consider a new frontier:

(It’s OK if you want to leave early, as long as you take Joe and Hillary with you.)

I am more fascinated with postmortem photography and other creepy stuff from the Victorian era than I should be.  I’m not the only one though, because there are positively tons of this stuff all over the internet.  Actual prints (rather than the .jpg scans that I troll for) of people who died 150 years ago go for big money, even if you have no clue who the dead people are.  Most of the people in my family were too poor to even afford taking pictures of dead people, so I don’t have too many pictures taken before 1960 or so of my actual relatives available to me.  Dad has a box of Grandma’s old pics, but he’s not had time to go through them to identify the ones he can so I can scan them.  Most of those pics are from the 50’s and 60’s.

Probably the worst things about the Victorian era were the daily presence of death, and the really nasty ways people died.  Today most people don’t die from a case of Montezuma’s Revenge, but in those times crapping yourself to death was a very common way to die.  Cholera, typhoid and typhus were all common mechanisms of death brought on by ignorance of hygiene and squalid living conditions.  Infant mortality was sky-high because if a child developed any type of dysentery it usually led to death, as well as scarlet fever, rheumatic fever and measles were common, and deadly.  Antibiotics were not discovered until the 1940’s.

If a person were injured in an industrial or farm accident their chances of dying were pretty good as well.  The only treatment for a mangled limb was amputation- if the shock of the amputation wasn’t enough to kill you, the infection that set in your stump usually did.  Sepsis and communicable disease killed more soldiers in the Civil War than were killed in combat.

It’s all going to be OK…well maybe not so much…grab that rusty saw, Dave!

I would wonder how many people got tetanus from having a limb chopped off with a rusty saw.  People died from tetanus back then, as well as from rabies, tuberculosis, syphilis, you name it.  And worst of all, they only bathed three or four times a year.

Brains! Brains! Brains!

Victorian Death, Memento Mori, and the Stop and Gawk Factor

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I don’t know about “useful” or “reliable,” at least not today, but I’m sure fascinating would be an appropriate adjective.

I know that I’ve more than a passing interest in history- especially the Victorian era and the 1940’s- but as I was watching (yet another) documentary on Abraham Lincoln I learned where some of America’s most bizarre funerary traditions come from.  Being the curious sort that I can be (especially on the macabre or just plain weird) I decided to research a bit more.

Embalming is not a new science, and wasn’t a new science in Victorian times either.  The ancient Egyptians and some other desert cultures were into embalming due to their beliefs concerning the afterlife, but until the 19th century it was seldom practiced in European cultures.  In the US, embalming was a common practice during the Civil War (a whole industry sprung up around preserving dead soldiers so they could be sent home and buried) and even President Lincoln   was embalmed (the only way he would have survived the train ride back to Springfield in sort of one piece) but it fell out of favor here in the US until the early 20th century, when open casket funerals became popular.  Some of the chemicals used in 19th century embalming would certainly not be looked upon favorably by today’s regulatory agencies.  Arsenic was one of the more popular preservatives.

The Victorians were big on postmortem pictures too, which if nothing else, to the modern eye are nice little reminders of the concept of memento mori (remember your own mortality.)  It’s hard enough for us today to grasp the concept of mortality because most people die shoved off into a hospital or nursing home.  It would offend most modern sensibilities to go around taking pics of dead people.  Why the open casket funeral – a custom I find distasteful- is so popular in a culture that denies the reality of death, I’ll never know.  Jessica Mitford offered her insight on the subject in the book, The American Way of Death, which I highly recommend.

Most of us find the idea of taking pics of dead people to be creepy, but if you couldn’t afford to take a pic of your loved one when he/she was alive, you’d find the scratch to have someone take the pic when your loved one died, because that would be the only tangible memory left.  Hopefully the photographer would make it before the loved one started to rot.  Some photographers were very skillful in the art of “restoration”- retouching the pictures to make the subject look a little less dead, while others weren’t so good.

The eyes!!!!  Zombie Baby’s gonna eat me!

I think some photographers tried to feign “life likeness” by the angle of the shot, etc.  I can’t tell if this little girl is dead or not:

If she is alive, she’s not too thrilled about having her pic taken.

For me these kind of visuals are in the same category as the impulse to stop and gawk when driving by an accident on the freeway.  Everyone does it.  It’s not a phenomenon reserved for Central Ohio during rush hour.

I live just down the road from a Moose club, a VFW and two bars.  I get to witness DWI busts every freaking weekend (and sometimes during the week) from the comfort of my front porch.  Last week the cops nabbed some poor dude in a Chevy Cobalt who had gotten stuck in the small ditch just a few yards from my house.  Cobalt Dude was so blitzed he couldn’t touch his nose with his finger, (let alone walk the line) and upon inspection he had a pocket full of drug paraphenalia that was splayed across the decklid of the cruiser and photographed.  It was the same cop who, a few years ago, had dragged Steve-o in at 2AM- the one who’s about 6’8″, and I’d say a good 300#, and has a bit of an attitude.  So it was no surprise when Officer Titan asked this unfortunate lush and/or stoner to lean up against the cruiser, then to hold out his right hand (promptly cuffed) and then his left hand (brought together with the right and also promptly cuffed.)  Cobalt Dude not only got to ride in a police car, he got to go to jail too.

Arguing with Officer Titan is a Bad Idea.

I need a video camera, though I’ve not bothered to acquire one. The temptation to film Jerry in his oft-performed role as Tipsy Mc NumbNuts is irresistable, and if I had the camera I would do it.  Cruel and inhumane as it may sound, it would be a blast to record his incidents for posterity, as well as the DWI busts I get to witness right in front of my house.  My life is surrounded by YouTube gold.

Which reminds me, I need to try to find a replacement for the magazine tube for his .22 that he lost whilst attempting to clean it while completely effed up.   I tried to tell him that it’s not appropriate to attempt to clean one’s gun after chugging the better part of a NattyPack (30 twelve ounce beers) but what the hell do I know?

Drunks-n-guns: It never turns out good.