No, No, I'll Put the Leftovers Away!

This is a little macabre, but maybe I’ve become a little hardened after working with hospice. The Associated Press this morning is reporting on a story from Verviers, Belgium. It seems that Didier Charron was hosting a dinner party. He is known for his temper and a few weeks earlier his wife had asked for a divorce. After dinner was over one of the guests went downstairs to put the leftovers in the freezer and found the body of his wife and stepson there. For me this raises a few questions:

      What exactly did he serve for dinner? I hope it wasn’t meatloaf.
      Why did he let someone else help with the cleanup?
      Didn’t anyone notice that the rest of his family wasn’t there?
      And finally, what exactly is the proper thing to do when you find two bodies in somoene else’s freezer?

At this point I think Mr. Charron needs to plead guilty and throw himself on the mercy of the court. The next owner of the house should also get a new freezer.

Happy 231st Birthday America

I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday, and if you have a chance take a look at the Declaration of Independence. It’s really a remarkable document for a few reasons. The first of these is the simple boldness of a group of colonists who declared that they could declare this. Political philosophers of the time were beginning to talk about how rights of men (and women we can say now) came not from the king, but from God, and that these rights are “self evident.” That’s fine to write about in the abstract, but the group in Philadelphia that summer were putting their lives on the line for this. The second is that the grievances against George III are listed. In light of President Bush it would be good to review a few of these:

  • He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
  • He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
  • For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury
  • For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

Enough said.

Walking the Family Roots

In May when I was in Gardner for Aunt Aldea’s funeral I spent part of a day at the old cemetery photographing family tombstones for my genealogy research. Several of Nancy’s ancestors are buried in Los Angeles and yesterday I wandered around Calvary Cemetery. I was able to find the graves of her paternal grandparents as well as an aunt, an uncle, a great uncle and aunt. Alas I was not able to find the grave of her great grandfather who died in 1920. He is in the records but there was no stone; I assume it was either destroyed or never there. The one stone I did find that I didn’t expect was the grave of her uncle Joseph Graner who died in 1923 at the age of 3 months.