Furthermore: Where the Headlines Take You

Death and a Mystery in Amber

When I think of amber, I usually think of the first grown-up piece of jewelry I bought with my own money, a crab brooch with a Baltic amber body. I remember knowing it was a frivolous purchase, especially considering how empty my pockets were, but also being thrilled that I owned something so beautiful and prehistoric. My amber crab doesn't have any "inclusions," the insects, plants, and other creatures trapped in wood resin before it fossilizes into amber. The addition of an insect in a piece of amber can dramatically increase its value, but some people are interested in these inclusions for more than their aesthetic value. Scientists in India recently discovered a large cache of 50-million-year-old amber that includes over 700 species of insects similar to those found in Europe and Asia from the same period. "So what?" you say? Well, what they had been expecting were unique species that evolved over the 100 million years that the Indian subcontinent was floating around, unconnected to any other landmass. What they got does not indicate that the subcontinent was as isolated as previously thought. And they also got lots and lots of bugs in their little amber coffins.

One of the reasons I don't have amber with inclusions is I can't really stomach having the dying moments of an insect crystallized in yellow fossilized goo bouncing around on a pendant hanging next to my heart. I don't care for insects much, but let me offer you some choice quotes from Amber: The Natural Time Capsule to make my point about the gruesomeness: "Some flies and harvestmen are able to break off their legs to enable their escape. Isolated legs are often seen in amber, as well as flies with some of their legs nearby," and "Other insects are incomplete and their struggle on the surface of the resin may have brought them to the attention of larger animals looking for a meal [emphasis all mine]." My squeamishness aside, if you want amber with inclusions of insects struggling so hard they created concentric circles in the resin pooling over them in their death throes, I won't stop you. And Andrew Ross's slim book would be a great place to start to get the basic facts about amber and the creatures you can find there. It serves as a field guide to identifying the dead insects you might find in your amber. Just don't go plucking the legs off any houseflies in a dramatic reenactment of a slow insect death.

You might remember amber as the source of dinosaur DNA that is used to recreate the fearsome creatures to predictably disastrous effect in the blockbuster movie Jurassic Park. Well, it's not going to happen that way, kids. But if anyone is going to extract the DNA in amber in pursuit of knowledge, it's George Poinar and his colleagues. Though there is some dispute about the ability of scientists to obtain legitimate DNA samples from ancient specimens trapped in amber, Poinar and his wife, Roberta Poinar are experts in identifying specimens encased in amber. In The Amber Forest: A Reconstruction of a Vanished World, they use the specimens from a rich supply of amber from the Dominican Republic to reconstruct the ancient ecosystem that existed there millions of years ago. Don't skip the Prologue--there's a particularly grisly description of the last moments of a small bee: "...death came in seconds as viscous liquid seeped over the breathing pores, wrapping a mantle of gold around its victim." Lots of illustrations, photographs and solid writing make what could be very dry stuff a surprisingly entertaining read.

Nazis, treasure hunters, the mysterious disappearance of an incalculable treasure--aren't these three things enough to sell you on this book before I even describe it? How about Cold War propaganda, Czars and Czarinas, and triumph over bureaucratic gatekeepers? A pair of investigative reporters, Catherine Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy dig deeper in this book than any other previous storytellers to unearth what happened to The Amber Room: The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure. The Amber Room was commissioned by Frederick I of Prussia in 1701. The intricately constructed panels were an unparalleled masterpiece that was sent as a gift to Peter the Great and was later installed in the Catherine Palace. During World War II, an attempt was made to conceal the too-fragile-to-move panels, but the international renown of the spectacular treasure made that impossible. The Nazis looted the palace in 1941, including the Amber Room, and installed the panels in Königsberg as war spoils. They then disappeared in the chaos at the war's end. The authors tell a gripping tale of their quest to discover the truth and the obstacles they encounter on the way. They eventually come to a conclusion that may be the one conclusion the Russian government doesn't want them to draw.

Dying, Quality of Life, and Decision-Making

Have you considered what you would do if you were diagnosed with a terminal illness? Many people choose to fight, seeking the aid of skilled specialists, researching experimental treatments, and looking for any possible avenue that could lead to an unexpected good result. Others prefer to step back from the struggle to win out over disease, and instead ask their doctors to focus on palliative care – controlling their pain, and helping them try to live comfortably and well for however long they have. This second route, it turns out, may actually help people live longer than they would under aggressive treatment, a finding which is contrary to many people's instincts.

Our society has a history of intense debate on end of life issues, and as science and technology advance, new questions arise. Dr. Lewis M. Cohen's new book No Good Deed explores some of this tricky territory, using as a framework the true story of a terminally ill patient, two nurses who treated her, and the nurse's aide who accused them of murder. This is a fast-paced story, and it raises a variety of challenging ethical questions. Cohen does a good job of exploring the conflicts while also clearly explaining the science, and respecting the intelligence of his readers.

What, then, is the role of the physician in caring for terminally ill patients? Dr. Eric J. Cassell argues that the relief of suffering is the central role of medicine. In his book The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine, Cassell lays out a philosophical framework for integrating the science of medicine with the art of caring for the ailing. For example, Cassell explains that classical disease theory considers the patient as essentially a container for the illness: no matter which person is affected by an illness, the result is the same. A more accurate view, he says, takes illness as a process, rather than a discrete event. Illness happens to a person over the course of time, and it affects that particular individual in a specific and personalized way – and doctors must understand this if they are to attend to that individual's actual well-being.

All this begs the question, how do doctors actually manage this work of considering the patient and his or her illness, treating an ailment, and tending to a sick person's suffering? Dr. Jerome Groopman's How Doctors Think sheds some light on these questions, by taking readers through the diagnostic and clinical methodology in which new doctors are trained, and examining how physicians in practice actually make decisions day-to-day. It's an interesting window into a subject that will ultimately be of direct interest to most of us, since sooner or later, nearly everyone needs to see a doctor for something.

If you are eager to read more about health, medicine, and related topics, be sure to take a look at the library's list of Medical Nonfiction That Reads Like Fiction!

Here Comes the Sun...

A solar storm is causing beautiful sky shows the world over and similar activity could wreak havoc as the magnitude of solar activity ramps up in years to come. Though the sun gives life it seems that it is more than capable of taking life as well. In fact, as scientists explore and document our existence we find danger lurking everywhere. Particle accelerators could end the universe in an instant. The city of Berkeley has regulated nanomaterials for fear of the special properties that these building blocks, too small to be seen, have by virtue of their miniscule scale. And it is not just the unseen aspects of nature that we have to be concerned about, here in the PacNW we just acknowledged the 30 year anniversary of the eruption on Mt. St. Helens. Truly, danger is around every corner.

But surely it's not all that bad. We live in a safe world, right? Not according to Robert Brockway, the author of Everything is Going to Kill Everybody: The Terrifyingly Real Ways the World Wants You Dead. Brockway will bring your anxieties to a fever pitch with tales of experiments in green energy that could consume the earth in a massive fireball or robots like EATR, an autonomous device that fuels its prowling by "eating" biomass that it encounters in its travels. It has been said that the horrific and the ridiculous are joined at the hip and Everything is Going to Kill Everybody provides comic evidence to that effect. The casual style Brockway writes in makes this a quick and engaging read and he can be excused for not delving deeply into details from such examples as the company that wanted to harvest the energy from contained tornadoes or the Soviet soldier who saved us from a thermonuclear war by ignoring his superiors. After all, when it comes to death most of us appreciate a light touch.

Yes, the Sun is going to have some big flare ups over the next few years that could disable much of the technology that we rely on. Then there is inescapable fact that it will some day expand, cook and engulf the earth. But how do we make the most of our relationship with this great giver of life in the meantime? Claudio Vita-Finzi's The Sun: A User's Manual describes, in humbling detail, the best and the worst aspects of our nearest star. The same charged particles that, ejected from the Sun in excess, disrupt our communication satellites also shield us from harmful cosmic rays. The Sun is is our primary source of energy and will almost certainly outlast our species but it is carcinogenic. It is tempting to call these paradoxes but Vini-Finzi's expansive text makes it clear that the Sun's nature (like much of the phenomena that we both rely on and cower in fear of) is not dual. It is only the limited bandwidth of our experience of reality that makes it seem so.

And so what if the Sun could wipe out life as we know it, who needs iPhones and air traffic control anyway. Authors Rex Ewing and Doug Pratt take a fearless and practical approach to life under the Sun. Got Sun? Go Solar: Harness Nature's Free Energy to Heat and Power Your Grid-Tied Home gives entertaining and detailed advice for working with solar power both in the civil world (permits, paperwork and contracting insights) and in the potentially post-apocalyptic world (living off the grid). Chapters on wind and geothermal energy have been added since the 2005 edition making Got Sun an even more complete guide to moving forward into an uncertain future.

A final thought- someday the Sun will cook us but until then you might try using the Sun to cook! Solar cookery is a fun way to expand your picnic options. Lighten your load by leaving the camp stove at home on those backpacking excursions this Summer.

The Uncomfortable Dead

There's a continuing problem in journalism – in order for something to be news, it has to be, well, new. This means that anomalous stories about shocking events, celebrities, and scandals get lots of press, while everyday problems languish. Los Angeles Times reporter Jill Levoy bucked this trend when she created the blog Homicide Report as a vehicle to report on the everyday murders that plague Los Angeles.  The blog reports on every Los Angeles County death that is ruled as a homicide by the county coroner, and it acts as an interactive database of homicide deaths since 2007, when it began publication.  The victims of Los Angeles County homicides are overwhelmingly Black or Latino, and overwhelmingly male, and most of their deaths would never make the news otherwise – their deaths are examples of that sort of sincere everyday problem that so often doesn't make the news.

Homicide Report honors the life and humanity of each of L.A.'s homicide victims, marking their passing, and helping to provide Angelenos with a larger set of information about the true map of lethal human conflict in their community. Slide over to the world of comic book fiction, and you'll find a similar theme in Potter's Field, by Mark Waid and Paul Azaceta. The hero, a mystery man who goes by the name John Doe, has developed a whole network of contacts (janitors, cops, morgue workers) who help him in his quest to identify each and every person buried in New York City's graveyard for unclaimed and unidentified bodies. Doe isn't solving crimes or meting out retribution, he's simply honoring forgotten people by giving them back their names. Potter's Field is dark, poignant, and ultimately, compassionate – and Azaceta's drawings are absolutely lovely.

People have always made an effort to mark the deaths of loved ones. One way that this manifests in contemporary culture is the roadside crosses and memorials friends and family erect after someone has died in a traffic accident. Holly Everett made a careful study of roadside crosses in Texas, and published her study of their place in folk culture in Roadside Crosses in Contemporary Memorial Culture. The book has many photographs and descriptions of Texas roadside crosses, but I found Everett's discussion of their symbolism to be the most interesting part of the book.  In that section, she argues that roadside crosses memorialize the dead and help survivors remember them; serve as educational tools, reminding passerby of their mortality and encouraging road safety; mark especially dangerous intersections; and act as expressions of protest and a desire for social change. Roadside Crosses is essentially an academic text, but Everett's writing is clear and her observations and analysis should be interesting to anyone who is intrigued by the use of roadside memorials. And, need I mention, it's really the only book on the topic!

Death customs and rituals often honor change, rebirth, and the cycle of life. And although in most contemporary human cultures, corpses do not decompose gently or physically foster the arrival of new life, dead bodies are used as instruments of new growth through learning, in anatomy laboratories. Every medical student learns the basics of human anatomy through the practice of dissection using real human corpses. And, surprisingly, around a hundred years ago it was typical for groups of medical students to have their photograph taken with their cadavers.  Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine, 1880-1930, by John Harley Warner and James M. Edmonson, collects hundreds of these rare images, and puts them in context with a series of essays about where cadavers came from and how they were used in dissection labs, about the development of medical schools in the U.S., and about the culture of medical students during this period.

(If you're fascinated to learn more about the history of medical dissection, corpses, and the like, I can also recommend Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab, by Christine Montross, and Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach.)

Penalty of Death

The Salem Statesman Journal reported this week that Marion County prosecutors will be seeking the death penalty in their case against Bruce and Joshua Turnridge, who are accused of aggravated murder in the deaths of two police officers in a bomb explosion at a Woodburn bank last December. Aggravated murder is the only crime for which a sentence of death is allowed in Oregon, and though the death penalty and discussion about it are relatively rare in the media here, Oregon does have a long history of executions.

And some of them have fascinating stories behind them, for example:  In 1858, Portland-area settler Danford Balch's teenaged daughter Anna eloped with a hired hand named Mortimer Stump – Balch was so angry about this that two weeks later, when he ran into Stump in a Portland bar, he followed him to the Stark Street Ferry and killed him with a shotgun blast to the head. Balch was convicted of murder and then hanged on October 17, 1859 at a public gallows set up near First and Salmon Streets while 500 people looked on. If this is the kind of grisly tale that suits your tastes, you need to check out Necktie Parties: A History of Legal Executions in Oregon 1851-1905, Diane L. Goeres-Gardner’s history of public executions in the Beaver State. In a series of short, readable chapters, Goeres-Gardner details every legal execution between 1851, when William Kendall was hanged in Salem, and 1905, when Daniel Norman Williams was hanged in The Dalles, the last man to be executed outside of the walls of the state penitentiary. (Or, if you'd rather focus on the political and legal history of executions in Oregon, take a look at A Tortured History: The Story of Capital Punishment in Oregon, by William R. Long. It's a bit more scholarly, and it focuses on the development of the institution rather than on the stories of people who were condemned to death.)

Oregon executes condemned prisoners with lethal injection, as do many other states. But lethal injection has only been widely used by government executioners in the U.S. for about 25 years – historically, prisoners have also been killed by firing squads and in gas chambers, hanged, and electrocuted. In his book Edison and the Electric Chair, Mark Essig explains that electrocution became a truly viable option when Thomas Edison, America's favorite inventor and entrepreneur, threw his weight behind the promotion of the electric chair. Interestingly, Edison was an opponent of the death penalty, but his rivalry with George Westinghouse put him under considerable financial pressure. Edison's company was providing electricity using the direct current method, which was more expensive than Westinghouse's alternating current (the system we still use today). This, Essig argues, led Edison to advocate for an electric execution chair using alternating current. Essig's history examines more than just the interpersonal and political aspects, though – he also provides thorough technical explanations of direct and alternating current, explains how the electric chair works, and describes the experiments that allowed researchers to develop the final model that was actually used for executions.

Not all executions are carried out within the framework of the formal legal system. Eliza Steelwater's The Hangman's Knot chronicles two parallel stories: the history of legal executions in the United States, and the history of lynching. Ultimately, Steelwater is looking to examine why the U.S. still employs the death penalty when most other democracies have long outlawed it. Steelwater is an opponent of the death penalty and it shows in her writing, but anyone interested in this history, regardless of their own political position, should find the book fascinating.

Medical Miracle

Last week, the world learned the identity of the person who received the first successful face transplant performed in the U.S. – Connie Culp of Ohio underwent a 22-hour operation last December during which doctors replaced about 80% of her face with tissue from a donor. Amazing, right?

Connie Culp's groundbreaking procedure sounds like science fiction, but other transplant surgeries have proven so sucessful that they don't get much comment from the public. Curious about how we got this far? Check out Transplant: From Myth to Reality. In a straightforward but engaging style, author Nicholas L. Tilney traces the history of organ transplantation from ancient times to the present, with an especial focus on the development of kidney and heart transplants during the middle of the 20th century.  If you're still curious, you can find more current information and facts about organ transplants at the National Library of Medicine's health information website MedlinePlus.

In order for people to receive organ transplants, someone has to donate their organs. Some organs are donated from living donors – often family members or other loved ones. But there are organs, like the heart and corneas, that no one wants to do without. These are gifts from beyond the grave, given by with the consent of the donor or their family (in Oregon and Washington, you can register as an organ donor at Donate Life Northwest). In her book Body Brokers, Annie Cheney explores a related, but much shadier world, in which "body brokers" buy and sell human remains for medical research and training, commercial use by medical gadget companies, and for use in military bomb tests. Horrific! But fascinating.

Lesley A. Sharp discusses some of the same questions in her book Bodies, Commodities, and Biotechnologies, but she takes more of a sociological angle. What is the value we place on a donor's body, and how do we memorialize the people who donate their organs? What does it mean for human body parts to function as commodities, with monetary value placed on their transfer and use? Can we manage the ethcial challenges of transplants between species? These are lofty questions, and Sharp's analysis is probing and intelligent, but eminently accessible.

On a lighter, more ironic note, transplants, transplant surgery, and transplant patients have always been fodder for fiction, of the human drama sort and the more speculative, science fiction sort. And sometimes these stories are, as they say, ripped from the headlines. When convicted killer Gary Gilmore was executed by the state of Utah in 1977, he asked that his organs be donated for transplant. The British punk rock group the Adverts wrote a hit song, "Gary Gilmore's Eyes," in which the singer wakes up more than a little startled to realize that he's been given the gift of a murderer's sight. Here are the Adverts performing the song on Top of the Pops in August, 1977:

(You can also get "Gary Gilmore's Eyes" on CD at the library. It's on Crossing the Red Sea With The Adverts, and on disc two of No Thanks!: The 70s Punk Rebellion.)

Funeral Rites

For the past 18 years, the Pentagon has carefully kept reporters at bay whenever the bodies of slain service women and men arrived home from war zones. The Obama administration lifted this blanket prohibition on press coverage of returning war dead – the new rule allows the families of fallen soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines to decide whether reporters can be present. Sunday evening, the Pentagon gave the press access to Dover Air Force Base to photograph and report on the arrival of the body of Air Force Staff Sgt. Phillip Myers of Virginia, who was killed in Afghanistan on April 4th. Permission was granted by his family.

The photographs of the ceremony accompanying Sgt. Myers’s body reminded me of the solemn importance we place on tradition and rituals that help us manage the death of our loved ones and neighbors. We humans have crafted a wide array of strategies for tending the dead, celebrating their transition, and mourning their loss. So it’s not a surprise that there are many interesting books about human ways of managing death.  Because it was the photographs of Sgt. Myers's return the the U.S. that got me started on this bibliographic train of thought, the first book I turned to was Soldier Dead, Michael Sledge's thoughtful examination of the United States military's approach to handling the bodies of service people who are killed in action.  Sledge looks at the rituals of military funerals, examines the military's general philosophy about slain personnel, discusses the concerns of families of people who are missing in action, and considers how the military's commitment to locating and recovering bodies affects the United States' relationships with other countries. 

For every culture, indeed for every subculture, there are important elements of a good funeral – the right music, an appropriate remembrance in words or flowers, a ritualized demonstration of the emotion of loss.  But one of the first things many of us think to do when someone we know has died have to do with food. Bake a casserole and bring it to the widow. Plan a memorial lunch. Cook something for the pot luck at the wake. Lisa Rogak’s Death Warmed Over provides a tour of funeral food and the rituals associated with it, from different countries and cultures, for example: raisin pie, traditional at Amish funerals; Norwegian funeral cake, which is given to the head of the mourning family by guests; bowls of rice, placed on top of the coffin at some Vietnamese funerals to weigh down the lid and keep evil spirits out; and kola nuts, which are passed to guests after a traditional Senegalese burial.

For a broader look at human funeral traditions, you might turn to The History of Death: Burial Customs and Funeral Rites, From the Ancient World to Modern Times. Author Michael Kerrigan covers a lot of ground, from the beginning of our ideas of an afterlife to the responsibilities the living have to honor or serve the dead in different cultures. Along the way, he explains funeral rites, mourning traditions, superstitions, and stories about the dying, the dead, and the survivors from many cultures throughout our history.

In the 1960s, Jessica Mitford’s expose of corrupt and confusing practices in the funeral business, The American Way of Death, climbed to the very top of the best seller lists, and inspired new legislation that reformed the funeral industry. In 1996, at the time of her own death, Mitford had just finished a thoroughly revised new edition, The American Way of Death Revisited, expanded with chapters on multinational undertaking and cemetery corporations, grassroots activists who are trying to provide access to low-cost funerals, and many other fascinating developments in the funeral industry. Mitford’s explanations and analysis are wry and thought-provoking, and the book is a surprisingly fast read.

The library has so many materials about funerals, death rituals and traditions, and related topics that it was hard to get to this short list of interesting books! So, I can’t help but tell you: if you’re interested, you can also read about the history of medical cadavers, of cremation, and of roadside memorial crosses. There’s a book about death and burial in the time of Jesus, one recording the details of the funerals of famous people, and another made up entirely of facsimiles of celebrities’ death certificates. There are serveral documentaries about unusual cemeteries.  And in the world of fiction, of course, there are any number of novels about undertakers and pathologists. There’s lots to read.

Death and Politics

Yep, it's elections week (finally) and many of us are waiting with baited breath for the outcome of Tuesday, November 4. I debated about whether to post my own ideas on this crazy election year, but as I was reading an article from OPB about undecided voters, I spied a topic from last week's "Think Out Loud" on Cemetery Life. Perhaps it's because I am eagerly awaiting my hold for Neil Gaiman's newest novel The Graveyard Book, but this story really got me thinking...and about something other than the election, which I think makes it perfect for a blog posting!

I went to school at Lewis and Clark College here in Portland, and if you've ever traveled to or from the Lewis and Clark campus you've probably noticed a large cemetery that butts up right against it. This is the River View Cemetery which has been around since 1882. Back in school, my boyfriend (now husband) and I found the cemetery romantic - lingering teenage angst I suppose - and we would sit amongst the headstones and gaze upon Mt. Hood (they do have a wonderful view). I bring this up because cemeteries can mean different things to different people, romantic to some, scary to many, and a window into the past for cultural historian Marilyn Yalom. Her book The American Resting Place explores America's history as seen through its cemeteries and burial grounds. Most interesting perhaps are the beautiful black and white photographs found in the front of the book, that were taken by the author's son.

For Shannon Applegate, cemeteries mean familial responsibility. Applegate inherited her family's small cemetery in Yoncalla, Oregon back in 1997 and in her book Living Among Headstones: Life in a Country Cemetery she recounts her story of becoming sexton after never having worked in a cemetery before. This includes sorting through decades of small notes written on scraps of paper by caretakers of the past, the stomach wrenching despair of having to bury one's own family and friends, and the day-to-day decisions of what to do with all the dirt you get from digging a burial vault. It all makes for an interesting and poignant memoir. As a side note, in the back of the book Applegate includes an iconography of the most common symbols found on headstones. For instance, corn on the headstone signifies that the dearly departed lived to a ripe old age!

And we mustn't forget that cemeteries aren't just for humans. In what one of my dearest friends describes as the best documentary film ever made, Gates of Heaven explores the world of pet cemeteries. Directed by the famous documentarian Errol Morris, this particular film describes the plight of Floyd "Mac" McClure and his lifelong dream to provide a peaceful place for people to bury their beloved pets. But more than that, it is a brilliant look into the lives of middle-class folks in 1970's America, and the interviews are simply priceless!

But no matter how you view cemeteries, here's hoping the outcome of Tuesday's election is a bit more cheery than your average graveyard!