There’s at least one blog for everything, and it turns out that the Washinton Post actually has an obituary blog, called ‘Post Mortem‘.
Some interesting ones:
In 1966, Time magazine ran a provocative cover with the bold question, “Is God Dead?” The story led to sharp backlash from social conservatives and sparked a public debate about philosophy and religion. The editor responsible for that story, Otto Fuerbringer, has died at 97, and his obituary is in today’s (Friday’s) Post.
An intriguing report on missing adventurer Steve Fossett, who was legally declared dead in February. But Lt. Col. Cynthia Ryan of the US Civil Air Patrol tells the The London Daily Telegraph Fossett’s body “should have been found. … It’s not like we didn’t have our eyes open. We found six other planes while we were looking for him. We’re pretty good at what we do.”
We’ll have a story in tomorrow’s Washington Post (here it is ) that is yet another example of why people read obits. A man with the obit-worthy surname of Graves wrote in an e-mail “My father was a pre-eminent reader of newspapers, both the Post and numerous Russian newspapers…. In a twist you might find interesting, he actually made a rather prominent intelligence breakthrough by reading Soviet obituaries.”
…Disch was a remarkably versatile writer who had fallen on tragically hard times in recent years. I described some of the circumstances that led to his suicide on the 4th of July, including failing health, financial trouble and the death three years of his partner….
…Because the rent-controlled apartment was in his partner’s name, Disch could not inherit it and was about to be evicted. As I mentioned in the story, his publisher, Jacob Weisman, said Disch told him he would kill himself if he had to leave the apartment.
Disch hadn’t done much writing for several years, but he had a late flowering, and by the end of this year he will have published four new books in a period of 16 months.
That’s an ugly one. I really like some of his Disch’s books. His death reminds me of Philip K. Dick’s who also died shortly before he finally could have looked forward to a measure of success – just months before Blade Runner was released, which was based on his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Anyhow, this would be good companion site to this blog: Find a Grave. Among other things you can look for the locations of famous people’s graves or check who died in any given year, while ‘Interesting Monuments’ lists graves that ‘are notable for their unique, beautiful or artistic grave markers’. The site is good, morbid fun. Recommended.