Life in the Garden

Matters of Life and Death

abandoned buildings

Prime California Real Estate For Sale

The crypt directly above Marilyn Monroe’s final resting place is available.  Bidding starts at $500,000 on Ebay for one of the most expensive pieces of real estate on the market, based on a per-square-foot basis.

Currently occupied by Richard Poncher, his widow said that when he was dying, Poncher approached her with a request. “He said, ‘If I croak, if you don’t put me upside down over Marilyn, I’ll haunt you the rest of my life.’ ”

Right after the funeral, Mrs. Poncher told the funeral director of her husband’s wish. “I was standing right there, and he turned him over,” she said.

Source: LA Times

The Have and the Have Nots

SHE WAS GOOD FOR THE ECONOMY:

A spinster who obsessively hoarded clothes died in her home after a mountain of suitcases fell on her, burying her alive.

BAD FENG-SHUI:

An eccentric loner is believed to have died of thirst after becoming trapped in a bizarre and intricate network of tunnels built from rubbish in his home.

Canned Soul

Politicians had been talking for years about the need to replace the Oregon State Hospital, but didn’t get serious about it until a group of legislators made a grim discovery during a 2004 tour: the cremated remains of 3,600 mental patients in corroding copper canisters in a storage room. The lawmakers were stunned.

“Nobody said anything to anybody,” said Oregon Senate President Peter Courtney, who dubbed the chamber “the room of lost souls.”

The remains belonged to patients who died at the hospital from the late 1880s to the mid-1970s, when mental illness was considered so shameful that many patients were all but abandoned by their families in institutions.

After doing some research into the story, Photographer David Maisel got in touch with the hospital administrators – the same hospital, it turns out, where they once filmed One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – and he was granted access to the room in which the canisters were stored.

Maisel set up a temporary photography studio inside the hospital itself. There, he began photographing the canisters one by one.

His book, Library of Dust, will be released later this summer.

Tip of the Hat to: Cleanser

The Softer Side of Sears

For Funeral Directors that worry about competition from Costco, internet retailers, and maybe even Wal-Mart. Remember, it’s all been done before.

Vintage Sears Catalog:

vintage sears funeral advertising

At the turn of the 19th century, budding retailers Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck breathed new life into a stagnant funeral industry by introducing mail order funeral products. Before this time, extravagant monuments, gravestones and similar goods were only afforded to the affluent and wealthy.

But they had a plan. Since their regular merchandise catalog was growing in popularity, they wanted to expand into a market that everyday working people would need. Sears, Roebuck & Co started selling marble tombstones, monuments, tablets and markers at half the cost of traditional funeral parlors and monument makers.

Sears tombstone

At its inception, Sears’ “Monuments & Tombstones” catalog offered markers starting at $4.88 and tombstones at $7.40, making them extremely affordable. The products were manufactured and shipped from Vermont in about four to six weeks.

What’s amazing about these funeral products is the craftsmanship. Though these were obviously designed by hand, the graphics are so meticulous. Customers had several varieties from which to choose including hearts, shamrocks, religious symbols and even Heaven’s gates. The block lettering was simple and elegant.

Speaking of craftsmanship they appealed to the Woodmen of the World members to honor the brotherhood with a Sears Monument. You may have seen the tree trunk style stones at the cemetery.

wood man of the world grave stones

Unfortunately, just as the regular Sears catalog went defunct, so did the “Monuments & Tombstones” publication. By the early 1900s, Montgomery Ward also started selling funeral products via mail order too, but with a better payment plan than Sears.

Montgomery Wards Tombstones

Within a few years, as the United States entered World War I and subsequently World War II, mail order sales dropped significantly. In 1952, the catalog ceased publication.

Nonetheless, the advent of the Internet gave rebirth to mail order funeral products. Today, there are an endless number of websites that have urns for sale, headstones, caskets, funeral keepsakes, and memorial jewelry at a fraction of the cost at local funeral suppliers.