Here is this week’s list of blog posts, charts and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.
Functional. Imagine an entire television channel devoted to emotionally healthy, loving and accepting families. It might look a little something like this.
Kittens and Death. How to say hello knowing you will one day say goodbye. Thanks to Daphne for sharing this link!
Success. Most of us think of it as a straight line. Start here, end there. This picture shows how it actually happens.
Texas Drought Exposes African American Burial Site. This article is a few weeks old but I just recently stumbled across it. Once again I’m torn – while I completely understand why archeologists and historians would want to study the bodies buried in this long-forgotten cemetery I would be pretty angry if these were my ancestors being dug up (unless I was contacted first and had final say in how they were treated.)
The World’s Rudest Hand Gestures. I accept no responsibility for how you use this information. 😛
The Stoning of Soraya M is the sobering true story of an innocent woman’s death in Iran in the early 1980s.
What have you been reading?
A follow-up to your post on the African American burying ground discovered in Texas:
I understand entirely about wanting archaeologists to seek permission from family members in this. But archaeologists don’t generally excavate known, identified gravesites; this was a lost burying ground, with no known records of who’s buried there. To be blunt, there isn’t anyone to ask.
The work is being coordinated with teh Texas Historical Commission and other professional groups, and I expect that the remains will be re-interred in another location, probably a nearby cemetery. Although it seems unlikely at this point that any of the remains will be positively identified, they will at least be given a permanent, marked resting place.
Finally, the public photography and handling of the remains for the media by the local sheriff’s office was, IMO, inappropriate.
Thanks for stopping by, Andy! I’m glad to hear that the remains will be given a respectful burial.
The other thing to keep in mind is that leaving them wasn’t really tenable, either — the graves had eroded out, so the remains were lying out, scattered in the open. That’s how they were discovered in the first place.