Two Executions for Washington State?

Washington state is preparing for a March 13 execution of a man named Cal Coburn Brown.

Brown was convicted of aggravated first-degree murder in 1993 for carjacking a 22-year-old woman, holding her hostage in a hotel for 34 hours, and then raping, torturing, and murdering her. 

This would be a different execution from the one that was scheduled for last December and was postponed due to a stay in the court system. 

That execution, of Darold Stenson, was scheduled to take place on December 3rd and was dramatically stopped on December 2, to be delayed for at least 90 days. (The stay had something to do with the state changing processes for lethal injection without properly informing Stenson and his lawyers.) If rescheduled, it could conceivably put the execution around early March. 

Stetson's execution was to be the first in Washington state since 2001. So, after not having a state-sponsored killing for more than seven years, our state could potentially have two within the same month. 

If this does indeed transpire, it will no doubt prove an occasion for activists on both sides to stand up and shout.

Also, I'd like to repoint you to an excellent radio series our local NPR affiliate, KUOW, did on the way execution works in Washington state (both the logistics of it and how the systems in place function). 

January Poll Says "No" to Assisted Suicide on Television

So, my polls are always completely unscientific, being that they're internet polls that simply take the opinion of people who visit my blog and chose to vote. 

I can tell who comments if the posts aren't anonymous, but I do not track who visits. I track numbers of visitors, but that's it. 

Nonetheless, I find it interesting to ask questions, and I like having at least one interactive element on my blog. 

I've never had such a one-sided poll result before this month! 

To the January question: "Should an assisted suicide be aired on television?" the resounding answer is "No." 

1 "Yes", 22 "No," and 2 "I Don't Know." And, I have no way to know this for sure, but I would guess that people who visit this blog are more likely to be interested in talking/reading about death than the average person. So, it seems people do not want to see PAS on TV. 

It makes me wish I remembered better how the country reacted when 60 Minutes aired an assisted suicide enacted by Dr. Kevorkian in 1998. 

Manipulation or Good TV Drama?

Those of you who read this blog regularly will know that one of the few TV shows I follow with any regularity is Lost.

When last year's season came to an end, the fate of one of my favorite characters, Jin, was left up in the air (almost literally). Jin was on an exploded freighter, and under reasonable circumstances could not have survived ...

but Lost does not operate in the realm of the reasonable. And we've all seen enough TV to know, if the show's not reasonable, you can't count the character dead until you see the body.

After an eight-month hiatus, Lost returned last week with two new episodes. We saw what has been happening to the Oceanic 6. What's been happening to the survivors on the island. But no sign of Jin, dead or alive.

So, it seems we will have to wait longer to hear Jin's fate. Maybe we'll find out in tonight's episode. But somehow, I have a feeling this will get drug out for at least a couple more weeks.

I posted at the end of last season that I felt manipulated by these maneuvers. Am I wrong? Is this just good dramatic storytelling? Obviously, there have to be shifts in the story, big changes, surprises, unknowns, titilations to keep us guessing, keep us holding on to some level. I just felt like, intentionally holding one character off to the side, and telling the viewers, "We're not going to let you know whether he's dead or alive," for months and for multiple episodes, went too far. Especially since, they did this to Jin twice in season four.

What do you think?

John Updike Passes

I was sad to read about John Updike's death today.

I first heard of it in an email from a friend who was also upset. He wrote, "Oh man, John Updike died."

I think that expressed my state of mind. Genuine regret, but not real pain. I did not know the man, after all.

Here's what I'm wondering though: Why are we sad when notable, great people pass away?

Updike is a great writer. I have enjoyed his work in the past, but I am nowhere close to having read all of his material. So, I know I'm not upset because he won't be producing new pieces. It's not a personal loss. There seems to just be some general sense of sadness that passes through us all when a larger-than-life figure leaves us.

John Updike on Charlie Rose. Updike interview starts 22:59.

Whisper House

Musician Duncan Sheik has written a new rock opera called Whisper House. Interviewed recently on NPR's All Things Considered, Sheik will release the musical as a solo album tomorrow, January 27th.

Whisper House follows a young boy during WWII whose father has been shot down by a Japanese pilot. The boy is sent to live with his spinster aunt in a haunted lighthouse in Maine.

Throughout the musical, ghosts sing to the "living" characters and the audience and function as a sort of Greek chorus, according to Sheik. In Greek theater, the chorus would often help narrate the play, but also speak the feelings and thoughts that the characters themselves were afraid to name. Making ghosts into the chorus seems to fit the Western idea that ghosts are more connected to the spiritual and somehow more know about emotions and about the unfolding of events than the rest of us do.

The video for one of the songs, "Earthbound Starlight," is at this link (embedding is disabled.) It's a pretty cool video.


And here's a bad-quality video of another song, "It's Better To Be Dead":



Sheik also wrote the hit musical Spring Awakening.

SympathyTree.com, Resources Pages

A follow-up to my recent commentary on SympathyTree.com:

I wanted to point you to their resources pages. The site has excellent links with step-by-step directions for what to do when you're planning a funeral, a cremation, a memorial service, or making business decisions that need to be made after a death.

The logistical details can get overwhelming when someone dies, and it's nice to have a guide.

Would you be buried with your pet? Part 2

Washington State Senator Ken Jacobsen's bill that would make it legal for people to be buried with the cremated remains of their pets has passed through committee. 

This article from the Associated Press implies that the bill is still unlikely to pass ... but it has passed one hurdle. 

Personally, I would not be buried with my pet, but it would also not bother me to be buried nearby someone who was with their pet. 

However, as this article points out, many cemetery owners are opposed to the bill because they must account for all religions, faiths, and beliefs. And some religions, like the Muslim faith, for example, would consider it an insult to be buried near an animal. This is a very good point. 

And with funeral homes, I don't think regulations are quite so simple that a funeral home could chose not to offer a legal option. So, it may not be as easy as saying that some cemeteries can have pets and some can't.