Before I Die Walls-Bucket List Public Art

Philadelphia Inquirer, Wednesday, April 29, 2015, Page B2, LOCAL NEWS section

Bucket list as art

   The artist Candy Chang, who will speak Thursday on “Better Cities: Transforming Public Spaces Through Art and Design” at Drexel University’s Mandell Theater, is known for her “Before IDie ...” walls. She created one on an 80-foot wall surrounding the construction site at the former University City High School at North 38th Street and Powelton Avenue. Hundreds of people have shared their personal wishes on the wall since. About 500 of the walls have been created in over 70 countries. Chang, a Taiwanese American, lives in New Orleans. She has done work with Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program.

   CLEM MURRAY / Staff Photographer

How To Achieve Immortality, & Grow Big Leaves FUNNY!!

How to achieve immortality — and also grow big leaves

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Contributor

by Mike Todd

“Some men pursue greatness, and some men have greatness thrust upon them while they’re in the bathroom.” This quote, from an old episode of the The Wonder Years (1988 to 1993, ABC-TV), in which Kevin Arnold inadvertently starts a walk-out at his junior high school when he gets up to go to the bathroom, has stuck with me for over 25 years, largely because it always seemed like my best hope for achieving greatness. Each time I’ve emerged from the bathroom since that episode, I’ve looked left, then right, then gave a little shrug. Greatness was thrusting elsewhere.

That is, until last week. While on vacation with my wife’s family in Florida, I went to the bathroom during the end-of-the-night living room chit-chat and returned to find greatness had indeed been thrust upon me. Everyone decided, in my absence, that I would be the one to keep my wife’s sister, Sarah, alive.

“Whoa, hey, that’s a big responsibility. I’m not sure I’m the right person for that,” I said, doing my best to deflect greatness’ thrusts.

“It won’t be that hard to keep me alive once I’m a magnolia tree. We nominated you because you’ve kept your bonsai tree alive for so many years,” Sarah said.

At this point, a little context might be in order.

Earlier in the conversation, Sarah had said, “Did you know that when you die, you can pay this company to bring you back as a tree? They mix your ashes with a seed, so that the tree uses you to grow. Then people can come see the tree and feel better, because it’s you. Kind of.”

Nobody in the family is currently, to our knowledge, in mortal peril, but we were still interested in the idea of immortality through botany.

“I’d choose to come back as a banyan tree. They have those beautiful woven roots,” my mother-in-law said.

“I’d be an apple tree. They’re useful, and everybody loves apples,” my brother-in-law Kris said.

I didn’t say it then, but I’d definitely choose to come back as some sort of evergreen. That way, at least in death, I wouldn’t go bald.

By Googling “come back as a tree,” you can verify that Sarah wasn’t making it up. For $145, a company called Bios will put you and a seed of your choice into a biodegradable urn that looks like a Starbucks cup. It’s actually not a bad deal, considering it’s about the same price as a venti cappuccino.

“Or maybe I’d come back as something less obvious, like a shrub,” Kris said.

“There’s Kris, providing privacy from the neighbors,” his wife, Jill, replied.

Sarah looked at her mom and said, “Got it, mom. Banyan tree.”

“Wait a minute. I didn’t say to actually do it. We’re clear on that; right?” my mother-in-law said.

While it’s an interesting idea, I can understand having reservations. For one thing, you’re not genetically mixing with the tree. You’re just its food. It’s basically the same as having your remains fed to a tiger, then telling everyone, “Think of me when you’re at the zoo, tapping on the glass, trying to get that tiger to do something. Because it will really be me in that enclosure, ignoring you. Or more accurately, it will be me in the bottom of the giant litter box. Be sure to wave at me!”

Anyway, after being nominated to care for the hypothetical magnolia tree that may one day devour Sarah, I had to confess.

“Dude, that bonsai tree died last fall. I left it out on the deck during a freeze. It never recovered,” I said.

“Oh, OK. We can find somebody else, then,” Sarah replied.

Some men have greatness thrust upon them while they’re in the bathroom. And some men have it taken away before they get back to the couch.

Ed. Note: Last month Mike Todd won a Keystone Press Award second place for “Best Column” among all of the hundreds of newspapers in the state under 10,000 circulation. Jim Harris, also of the Local, won first place.

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Chestnut Hill Local, April 23, 2015    (Northwest Philadelphia)

No Peace For The Bereaved?! Cemetery/Funeral Home Antics.

Most "counselors" in cemetery offices are really commission-only (or mostly) salespeople.  What they really want to do is sell products so that they make money.  Top management pushes these people relentlessly to sell sell sell for the benefit of the company's revenue, earnings, stock price and management's exorbitant salaries and stock options.  Salespeople/counselors are TOLD that they MUST visit with families in their homes very soon after a loved one is buried.  These visits go by many different names.  Essentially really they are sales calls/visits but company management will never say so or admit to this; they claim they're an essential part of the burial process.  And don't get me started with funeral homes/directors.  They are not so innocent themselves.


Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday, April 26, 2015, Front Page, Page A1:

Bette Dalton at the grave of her husband, Michael, in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery. She says she got a sales pitch by StoneMor while trying to get amarker fixed.

   DAVID SWANSON / Staff Photographer

Vicky Stackhouse of Norwood with husband, Steve, and a photo of her late father, Thomas Barrett, who died in February. Over the winter, her father asked a StoneMor representative to leave his house after feeling uncomfortable during a sales visit, she says. LAURENCE KESTERSON / For The Inquirer

Bette Dalton at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery. She says she faced a sales pitch for a casket and burial while trying to fix a damaged marker, which StoneMor agreed to replace at no charge. DAVID SWANSON / Staff Photographer

No peace for the bereaved?

The Bucks firm running Catholic cemeteries denies allegations of high-pressure sales tactics.

By Chris Palmer and Laura McCrystal INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

   On her late husband Michael’s birthday in March, Bette Dalton visited his grave at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Cheltenham Township and found a chipped headstone and muddy tire tracks.

   She trekked to the cemetery office to complain, and was surprised to get a sales pitch: A worker asked Dalton, 76, to consider buying her own casket.

   After Denise Caramenico inquired about a plot at Conshohocken’s Calvary Cemetery, she got e-mails for months from a man who said he was from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and Catholic Cemeteries. Then a salesman tracked her down at work and called.

   “I’ve never experienced that,” said Caramenico, of East Norriton. “Not even with purchasing a car.”

   For decades, area Catholics have buried their dead at one of the 13 cemeteries owned by the archdiocese.

   But since the church leased them last year to StoneMor, aBucks County company, some people say they have noticed drastic changes in the handling of a sacred Catholic responsibility.

   In two dozen interviews with families and funeral directors, similar themes emerged: complaints that StoneMor had harassed and misled mourners and customers, upsetting or bewildering some when they may be most fragile.

   StoneMor officials vigorously deny the allegations and say local funeral directors have for months tried to smear their company because both sell many of the same products.

   “Their attacks have been relentless,” said Larry Miller, the company’s chief executive.

   Jonathan Ger, aStoneMor regional sales executive, said, “We do not and will not employ people who have an aggressive sales approach.”

   Both sides have waged a public-relations war, with dueling ads on radio and in newspapers. The funeral directors also are pushing legislation they say will protect customers of funeral homes and cemeteries.

   As the battle rages, widows such as Dalton have been caught in the middle.

   The day before Easter, she said, she returned to Holy Sepulchre to discuss her husband’s new gravestone, which StoneMor had agreed to replace at no charge.

   Again, a sales representative asked Dalton whether she was interested in making arrangements for her own burial. He told her there was a special 20 percent discount available, but said she had to act fast — it would expire the next day.

   Disagreement in Detroit

   StoneMor, based in Levittown, is one of the largest death-services companies in the country.

   Publicly traded since 2004, it now owns more than 300 cemeteries and 90 funeral homes in 28 states, and specializes in selling funeral-related products, such as burial vaults and caskets, on both a “pre-need” basis and after a death.

   Its growth has not been without bumps.

   In 2010, StoneMor entered an agreement with the Detroit Archdiocese to operate its three cemeteries. Less than two years later, church officials in Detroit ended the deal.

   The Rev. Timothy Babcock, cemetery liaison for the Detroit Archdiocese, said it ultimately disagreed with StoneMor about management practices, though he would not elaborate.

   “It was just simply a philosophical difference of how Catholic Church cemeteries should be operated,” Babcock said.

   Miller said those disagreements were over logistical questions, such as how to arrange grave sites. Sales philosophieswere not an issue, he said.

   In interviews this month, Detroit-area funeral directors said they heard complaints similar to those expressed around Philadelphia about cold calls and unsolicited sales pitches to mourning families. But they say they never received an official explanation of why the church terminated the agreement.

   “Nobody asked a lot of questions,” said Pat Lynch of Lynch & Sons Funeral Directors.

   Miller said it was because the archdiocese had recovered financially and no longer needed the deal with StoneMor.

   ‘Economic battleground’

   Church officials in Philadelphia said they spoke with their Detroit counterparts before signing the deal with StoneMor.

   Finalized last May, the lease cost the company $53 million up front, plus $36 million in future payments.

   The archdiocese said that the transaction could help with its financial problems and that a large chunk of the initial payment was to be put toward an $80 million shortfall in its trust and loan fund.

   In return, StoneMor will manage and maintain the 13 cemeteries for 60 years.

   Those properties, in Philadelphia and its four surrounding Pennsylvania counties, cover 2,375 acres, enough room for 3.5 million traditional, side-by-side graves.

   It was not clear how much space was already used, though Miller said some cemeteries were more crowded than others. One in Newtown, Bucks County, he said, is virtually unused.

   When it managed the properties, the archdiocese had three salespeople on staff. StoneMor, which also secured the right to sell its products to church members, has hired 60, Miller said.

   That change is where much of the tension with funeral homes has developed.

   Funeral directors, who, like StoneMor, sell caskets and vaults, have accused the company of misleading customers.

   They say the company’s sales force has falsely cast itself as representatives of the church and has been overly aggressive in trying to close deals.

   “My main concern is the misleading and misrepresentation of who is running the cemetery,” said David Peake, who runs Robert L. Mannal Funeral Home in Mayfair and is president of the Philadelphia Funeral Directors Association.

   Others say they have received complaints from families about high-pressure home visits, unclear pricing, and a mandate to meet a sales representative at the grave before a burial.

   “They’re educating the consumer to their satisfaction, to their benefit,” said Frank Galante, who has run a funeral home in Northeast Philadelphia for five decades. “They’re not educating the consumer with all of the facts.”

   State Sen. Tommy Tomlinson (R., Bucks), a funeral director by trade who represents the district where StoneMor is headquartered, said the company had “turned a very peaceful and solemn place into an economic battleground.”

   Miller denies the funeral directors’ complaints, saying they stem from fear of competition.

   “It’s all about vaults and caskets,” he said.

   Miller said that StoneMor sales representatives were trained to build trust with customers above all else, and that many of their interactions — such as pre-burial visits — were guided by established procedures that reduce the likelihood of an unwelcome approach.

   Pressuring families would not be an effective sales tactic, he said, particularly with a 60-year lease in a close-knit community.

   “The message is loud and clear,” Miller said. “We are there to provide service.”

   Vicky Stackhouse said the service was lacking.

   Over the winter, Stackhouse’s father, Thomas Barrett, asked a StoneMor representative to leave his house after feeling uncomfortable during a sales visit, she said.

   A few weeks later, he died in a freak accident.

   He was buried at SS. Peter and Paul Cemetery in Springfield, Delaware County.

   Two days later, Stackhouse, who lives in Norwood, received a call from a salesman asking whether she had bought a grave marker, she said.

   Miller said he did not believe that call came from one of his employees. He said he had heard about similar calls to SS. Peter and Paul families from a monument seller in the area.

   Stackhouse said she did not know who was on the other end of the line. She just told him not to call back.

   “I just buried my dad … and you’ve got someone calling, trying to push me into doing something that I wasn’t ready to do,” she said. “I was mad.”

   Sporadic complaints

   Ken Gavin, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, said that the church had received sporadic complaints about cemeteries since StoneMor took over but that most related to the properties’ condition. Similar calls came in when the church managed the properties, Gavin said.

   Miller said not one Catholic family in the area had complained to him about his company’s sales force. He also said StoneMor had signed 3,500 contracts with parishioners since the deal took effect.

   “From the community’s perspective, it’s been great,” he said.

   John Eirkson, president of the Pennsylvania Funeral Directors Association, a Harrisburg group that lobbies for its members, said he believed the company was focused on driving quick sales, not helping consumers.

   The state legislation he and others hope to get introduced would regulate how cemetery companies entrust their funds and would require them to provide customers with clear price sheets — as funeral homes must. Some customers, including Dalton, had no clue about the ongoing clash between the cemetery operators and funeral home directors. When she went to complain about the condition of her husband’s grave site at Holy Sepulchre and got the unexpected sales pitch, she said, she dismissed it with a simple message: “I just said, ‘Let me know when the stone comes.’ ” Then she left.cpalmer@phillynews.com  

   609-217-8305 @cs_palmer

"Settler's Creek"-Ashes Memorial Service at River Poem by Kyle Harvey

Platte River, Nebraska Mounted Print

Description

Half a million sandhill cranes roosting on the Platte River. Photographer: Joel Sartore.

American Life in Poetry: Column 526 BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE I once attended a memorial service at which a friend’s ashes were put in the Platte River at first light, just as thousands of Sandhill Cranes were lifting off the water, crying. Flowing water has just what it takes to carry someone away in fine style. Here’s a poem by Kyle Harvey, who lives in Colorado. Settler's Creek  You’d been gone four months by then, but we brought you along anyway. On my back, you rested riding inside a wooden box. The idea was to lay you gently at the water’s surface, but our clumsy hands spilled you, and it was hard to tell whether you went head or feet first, but it didn’t much matter anyway, I suppose. You would float on down the creek until you had reached the next and so on. My father gave a little wave and joked, “We’ll see you back on down in Denver, Dad.” We stood there in silence listening to you chuckle under the bridge and over the first set of riffles downstream. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2013 by Kyle Harvey, “Settler’s Creek,” from Hyacinth (Lithic Press, 2013). Poem reprinted by permission of Kyle Harvey and Lithic Press. Introduction copyright © 2015 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

As Lincoln Lay Dying - Pic of Him In Coffin WOW!!

Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday, April 12, 2015, Page A1, Front Page:

President Lincoln lying in state on April 24, 1865, in New York. The photograph, taken by Jeremiah Gurney Jr., is the only known image of the president in an open coffin.

AS HE LAY DYING

A Union League volume contains the testimony of witnesses to Lincoln’s assassination, compiled just feet from where he breathed his last.

By Edward Colimore INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

   Through an open door came the sound of labored, heavy breathing and groans as President Abraham Lincoln lay dying from a gunshot wound to the head.

   First lady Mary Todd Lincoln passed from the room into a hallway, moaning with inconsolable grief, “O, my God, and have I given my husband to die?”

   The long death vigil at the Petersen House in Washington unfolded before James Tanner, who’d been summoned to record the testimony of witnesses to the assassination at Ford’s Theatre.

   Though not widely known, Tanner’s shorthand and transcribed cursive from the night of April 14, 1865, and morning of April 15, 1865, survived and are kept in an acid-free box in a vault at the Union League of Philadelphia.

   In his notes are the fresh, raw emotions and shock of the time. One playgoer was struck by the ferocious look of the attacker — John Wilkes Booth — and the “glare in his eye.” Another remembered Booth leaping from the box, brandishing a knife and exclaiming “Sic semper tyrannis ,” or “Thus always to tyrants.”

   “This is Booth playing his greatest Shakespearean role, his Brutus to Lincoln’s Caesar,” James G. Mundy Jr., director of education and programming, said as he laid Tanner’s notes on a cabinet. “This is a remarkable piece of American history.”

   The treasured volume “is probably the single most important piece we have related to the assassination,” said John Meko, executive director of the League’s Abraham Lincoln Foundation. “It’s Tanner sitting next to Lincoln while he’s dying.”

   Tanner, later elected commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, a fraternal organization of Union veterans, appeared at the Union League several times, knew of its support of the Union, and gave his notes to the club in 1917.

   He said he believed “that they are of considerable interest to the general public owing to the circumstances surrounding their creation and believing they will become more so as the years pass. …”

   The notes are the only direct record taken by Tanner at the Petersen House during the hours immediately after the assassination, as a second copy he created for the War Department was lost. The original sheets of testimony were later glued to linen and bound in leather by the Tanner family.

   A facsimile is on display at the League as part of a sesquicentennial Civil War exhibit called “1865: Triumph and Tragedy,” which includes a bottled medical specimen, fleshy tissue taken from Booth after he was fatally shot; a lock of Lincoln’s hair; a piece of the shirt worn by the president the night he was shot; a life mask of Lincoln; and a small section of the bunting from the theater box. The display is open to the public from 3 to 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays and from 1 to 4p.m. on the second Saturday of the month through February.

   Last week, the League unveiled a statue by Pennsylvania sculptor Chad Fisher, depicting George Henry Boker, aleading poet and playwright who helped form the Union League to support Lincoln and the Union cause.

   But 150 years after Lincoln’s death, the Tanner volume remains one of the most poignant reminders of that time.

   Tanner, of Richmondville, N.Y., was 17 years old when the war broke out. He enlisted and was soon promoted to corporal — a title that became his nickname the rest of his life.

   The young Union soldier fought in several battles, including the Peninsula Campaign, and lost both legs when fragments of a Confederate artillery shell struck him at the Second Battle of Bull Run in 1862.

   He later learned to walk with artificial limbs and held various jobs, eventually winning an appointment as a clerk and stenographer in the Ordnance Department in Washington. His shorthand abilities — at the time referred to as phonography — made him valuable after the assassination.

   That night, Tanner and a friend were taking in a play called Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp when a man burst in and announced news of the attack. The veteran left for his boarding home next to the Petersen House.

   About midnight, the general in command of the troops in Washington came to the front steps of the Petersen House, and asked if anyone knew shorthand.

   Tanner was ushered into a parlor between the bedroom where Lincoln’s 6-foot-4 frame lay diagonally across a bed, and a front room where the first lady was “weeping as though her heart would break.”

   He took notes during the interrogation of six witnesses: Henry Phillips, an actor-singer from Philadelphia; Lt. A.M.S. Crawford of the Volunteer Reserve Corps; Harry Hawk, the only actor on the stage when Booth jumped from the box; James Ferguson, a local saloon keeper; Alfred Cloughly, aclerk in the Second Auditor’s Office; and Col. George V. Rutherford of the Quartermaster Corps.

   Some of the most striking testimony came from Crawford, who was sitting in the dress circle at Ford’s Theatre when he saw a suspicious man with a “dark slouch hat, a dark coat, jet black hair, dark eyes,” and “a heavy black mustache.”

   “There was a glare in [his] eye,” Crawford said. “… He left very suddenly and stepped into the box where the President was.”

   Then came a shot and the assassin jumped from the box with a knife in hand. “I saw him as he ran across the stage,” Crawford said. “… What attracted my attention was the glare in his eye.”

   On the stage was actor Harry Hawk. “He was rushing towards me with a dagger & I turned and run & after I run up a flight of stairs I turned and exclaimed ‘My God thats John Booth,’ ” Hawk said.

   At the time the shot rang out, Ferguson, another audience member, said he saw the first lady “catch him [the president] around the neck,” then Booth land on the stage, where he “exclaimed ‘Sic Semper Tyrannis.’

   “As he came across the stage facing me[,] he looked me right up in the face and it alarmed me,” he recalled. “… He said, ‘I have done it,’ and shook the knife.”

   Tanner finished transcribing his shorthand at 6:45 a.m., then went into the room where Lincoln had only minutes to live.

   The president’s son Robert sobbed on the shoulder of Sen. Charles Sumner, and the gruff Secretary of War Edwin Stanton teared up as Lincoln’s chest gently rose, fell, then did not rise again. Death came at 7:22 a.m.

   Looking at Tanner’s record of the time, Mundy said: “This is the only one of its kind and that makes it an extraordinary piece of American history.” ecolimore@phillynews.com  

   856-779-3833 InkyEBC

James G. Mundy, Union League director of education and programming, shows the eyewitness account of Lincoln’s death.

Dean McGowan surveys the exhibit at the Union League of Philadelphia detailing the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, which includes a life mask of the president and a lock of his hair. MEAGHAN POGUE / Staff Photographer

James G. Mundy Jr., director of education and programming at the Union League, holds James Tanner’s notes, which were later glued to linen and bound in leather.

   MEAGHAN POGUE / Staff Photographer

John Wilkes Booth jumped to the stage of Ford’s Theatre shouting “Sic semper tyrannis,” or “Thus always to tyrants,” after shooting President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865. Lincoln died hours later on April 15.

   Headlines from the April 15, 1865, edition of The Inquirer proclaim the “Murder of President Lincoln.” Lincoln died at 7:22 a.m. that day.

President Lincoln lying in state on April 24, 1865, in New York. The photograph, taken by Jeremiah Gurney Jr., is the only known image of the president in an open coffin.

   Illinois State Historical Society Library, Springfield, Ill.

Lincoln in his last photo, taken by Alexander Gardner on Feb. 5, 1865, in Washington. The original surviving print is at the National Portrait Gallery. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division