When I was in Chicago for the Cultural Center death lecture event earlier this month, I met a young artist named Landis Blair. He was all: “I like the idea of the…
May 21, 2012 | Blog
Yosemite Cemetery
Megan Curran is a librarian who works with rare books in the history of medicine and finds herself often musing about mortality as a result. She is also an amateurish photographer and…
May 17, 2012 | Blog // Guest Posts
Physicists at Funerals, and Why I Need Them.
Physicists are turning out to be one of the greatest, most sense-making allies in the new way of looking at death. When you advocate for green, natural burials, as I do (for…
May 16, 2012 | Blog
Roadkill (Poem + A Recipe!)
A poem by Order contributor Bethany Pope on the ways in which people on the fringes make use of death. Scroll down for a recipe for roadmeat stew from the fellow featured…
May 10, 2012 | Blog
A Corpse a Day Keeps the Doctor Away
Apparently, books on the use of human corpses as medicine are all the rage! Which is wonderful because my Facebook feed told me that duck nails are all the rage. Duck nails…
May 9, 2012 | Blog
News You Can (In No Way) Use
Deathlings, far and near. I will admit that I have been distant the past month. The warm, chummy embraces of mortality you have come to expect have been few and far between.…
May 8, 2012 | Blog
First Buddhist Death Rites
Jenn Park-Mustacchio is a funeral director and embalmer, horror movie nerd, and married mother of two in Haddon Township, New Jersey. She studied anthropology and human biology at the University of Pennsylvania,…
May 4, 2012 | Blog // Guest Posts
Tupac Hologram is the Future of Funerals
Order member Sarah Wambold weighs in on holographic mourning. It cost money, but they raised the dead. And so close to Easter, how fitting. Of course, I’m talking about Tupac’s holographic appearance…
April 17, 2012 | Blog
From Witch to Kitsch
Looking through one of my old notebooks from 2007 I found an entry called “FROM WITCH TO KITSCH.” It was trying to explain the timeline of when a horrific instance of mass…
April 15, 2012 | Blog
Boxes of Death: Coffin Art
Boxes of Death is an exhibition put on by Electric Coffin. 50 different artists create 50 unique art coffins that travel as a show to Seattle, Portland, and LA. I went to…
April 13, 2012 | Blog
Decomposing Food Art of Klaus Pichler
Austrian photographer Klaus Pichler, whom I first saw when he released a photoseries on dust (and the problems of an overly sterile society), has photographed rotting food for his series “One Third.”…
April 8, 2012 | Blog
Growing Up In A Funeral Home
Celeste Donohue is a comedian and writer who contacted me because she also happens to have grown up in a funeral home in Philadelphia. As you can imagine, she has lots to…
April 1, 2012 | Blog