Debby Waldman writes for the Washington Post on the emerging trend towards home-owners facilitating comfortable, homey venues for MAID patients traveling to states in which death with dignity is legal: In a pastoral Vermont valley, a former hospice chaplain named Suzanne runs a retreat center for artists, health-care workers and educators — and, since mid-2023, … Read more“Hospitality at the End of Life”
Chelsea Edgar writes for Seven Days on the traditions and legacies of the Bread and Puppet Theater, a mainstay of the East Coast (and particularly Vermont) counterculture: A short distance into the pine forest above the circus field, just beyond the remnants of a Baldwin piano that has been left to molder in the elements, … Read moreBread and Puppet Theater Memorial Shrines
Elaina Plott Calobro write for The Atlantic on the state of play in Canada, ten years after legalizing medical aid in dying: The details of the assisted-death experience have become a preoccupation of Canadian life. Patients meticulously orchestrate their final moments, planning celebrations around them: weekend house parties before a Sunday-night euthanasia in the garden; … Read more“Canada is Killing Itself”
Sophie Brickman writes for The Atlantic on the transformative power of The Muppets as she grieves her father: That changed after my father got sick last year, when my daily life became not just a logistical mire—managing therapy appointments, speaking with doctors—but also one of constant dread: about which Dad I’d find when I walked … Read more“Grief Counseling With Kermit”
Sam Dresser writes for Aeon: Two puny words shoulder a substantial, if diffuse, philosophical outlook: as if. Epicurus was perhaps the first to put this unexceptional construction to good use. He felt that life was about attaining whatever passing happiness we might find, while avoiding as much pain and suffering as we can. In neither … Read more“As If”
Michael Cholbi writes for Aeon: Freedom is a notoriously complex and contested philosophical notion, and I won’t pretend to settle any of the big controversies it raises. But I believe that a type of freedom we can call freedom over death – that is, a freedom in which we shape the timing and circumstances of … Read more“Freedom over death”
Poetic graffiti found on a bridge railing in Chicago’s Humboldt Park.
If I die young, Without having been able to publish a book, Without having seen how my verses look in print, I ask those who would protest on my account That they not protest. If so it will have happened, then so it should be. Even if my verses are never published, They will have … Read more“If I die young”, by Fernando Pessoa
Ashley Belanger writes for Ars Technica: As artificial intelligence has advanced, AI tools have emerged to make it possible to easily create digital replicas of lost loved ones, which can be generated without the knowledge or consent of the person who died. Trained on the data of the dead, these tools, sometimes called grief bots … Read more“How to draft a will to avoid becoming an AI ghost—it’s not easy”