In the weeks leading up to the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, National Public Radio set up a vintage telephone booth across the river from the new World Trade Center and invited people to leave a voicemail for the people they’d lost that day.
Co-founded by Karen Elizabeth Bishop and David Sherman, The Elegy Project: The Project also includes a curriculum of courses on Modern Elegy, Ode and Elegy and Inventing Farewell: A Practicum on Elegy.
Petals fell recently in memory of Grandmaster Jung Nam Lee, former trainer of American and South Vietnamese Special Forces commandos, the pioneer of Tae Kwon Do and Hapkido in New Zealand and my first martial arts instructor. He was 86 years of age. My favorite memory of Master Lee is a moment – probably in … Read moreIn Memoriam: Grandmaster Jung Nam Lee
I’ve just returned from the first annual Sacred Harvest event at Sky Meadow, an idyllic 115-acre spiritual retreat in the mountainous Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. The Harvest was a wonderful three days of wholesome work, exploration and soul-talk, and provided me with the opportunity to fulfil my long-term ambition of creating and installing a wind … Read moreThe Sky Meadow Wind Phone
In this article for the BBC, Becca Warner explores a variety of ecologically sustainable funeral options: “In the face of death, we seek consolation. And it’s been really interesting seeing how there’s been a conflict, in some cases, between what is sustainable and what people find consoling,” she says. Bags of bone ash and compost … Read more“How to plan a sustainable funeral”
YouTube documentarian Tom Scott presents this item on the revival of long barrows; Neolithic constructions that might have been churches, graveyards or landmarks, but which are now used as commercial columbaria and as ritual spaces. More at The Soulton Long Barrow and via the Sacred Stones website.
I ducked out of the annual Glenwood Avenue Arts Fair in our old Chicago neighborhood of Rogers Park today to visit the Black Lives Matter shrine, which I had started to document back in July of 2020, when it was brand new. By April, 2021 the simple shrine area had been elaborated with the addition … Read moreThe Rogers Park Black Lives Matter Shrine, revisited
Kate Lindsay writes for The Atlantic on digital afterlives: As the author Marisa Renee Lee noted in this magazine last year, “Grief is the repeated experience of learning to live after loss.” Today, with our ever-expanding digital and technological reach, loved ones left behind must encounter more reminders of that loss than ever before. Memory endures through … Read more“The Experience of Grief Is Changing”
I came across this small vernacular shrine dedicated to those lost to the Covid pandemic on my riverside walk this evening. The shrine features simple dedication messages in English and Spanish as well as bouquets of flowers, scatterings of flower petals and some candle jars.
As part of my annual Memoria activity during late October and early November, I enjoy attending the Día de Muertos exhibition, staged each year by the National Museum of Mexican Art in Pilsen. Here’s a gallery of some of the 2022 displays: