The skeleton puppet handed out around $50 worth of candy in about 45 minutes on Halloween Eve. The younger kids tend to thank the puppet, while most of the older kids conscientiously thank the humble operator; adults think that the puppet is cool, awesome and creative. One assured me that I’d won Halloween. This was … Read moreMemoria 2026 (Part 2)
Yet another “unseasonably” warm Autumn, with temperatures averaging in the high 50s-low 70s. I’m not complaining, but it does make the seasonal markers for Memoria somewhat less overt. Balmy weather notwithstanding, the grasshoppers have been making their collective presence felt along the river path, the black-crested night herons have departed, the ground is crunchy with … Read moreMemoria 2026 (Part 1)
The Cobblestone Society: 1409 W Morse Ave, Chicago, IL 60626-3481, United States Date: Wednesday November 11th Duration: 6.30 pm – 8.30 pm, with an artist/curator’s presentation at 7.00 pm Join us for a pop-up gallery exhibition and book launch of Tony Wolf’s Make Believe project, a collection of assemblage artworks representing the shrines, altars and … Read moreMake Believe: The Material Culture of Imaginal Religions pop-up exhibition and book launch
Layman Pascal and Brendan Graham Dempsey discuss their upcoming thanatocentric Metamodern Spirituality Lab at the Sky Meadow retreat center in northeastern Vermont.
Click here to listen to episodes of Memento Morbid, a new podcast series from our friends at Morbid Anatomy: Fascinating, poignant, and surprisingly life-affirming conversations about death, the human condition, and life’s great mysteries.Join Joanna Ebenstein, founder of Morbid Anatomy, for Memento Morbid, a series of surprisingly life-affirming conversations around topics that tend to be deemed morbid. Meet … Read more“Memento Morbid”: new podcast series from Morbid Anatomy
Based on the bestselling novel by Max Porter, Grief is the Thing with Feathers.
Rage against the dying of the light with Fall Out Boy’s memento mori/carpe diem anthem; a worthy addition to the canon.
‘Let it be like a lullaby that holds you.’ Threshold Choir is an international charity that provides people who are dying with soothing, non-religious songs of peace and comfort, sung by three-person volunteer groups. This short documentary profiles one Threshold Choir chapter in Devon in south-west England.
I can’t recall the first time I saw the countercultural classic movie Harold and Maude, but I’m sure that I was too young then to pick up on the film’s bittersweet, positive existentialist message except in very broad strokes. Sometime around 2020 – peak pandemic – I became aware that English author Lucy Coleman Talbot … Read more“The Little Book of Maudism” (2016)
Living in the future … the first wildflowers are appearing in the park and along the riverbanks, trees are budding or starting to leaf, and so another Floralia has arrived. I’ve repositioned the skull on my vanitas shrine – facing to the right, symbolizing “looking forward” – and re-dressed the flowered caplet in honor of … Read moreFloralia 2026