The snark was a boojum, you see.
Frank Bonfiglio was the friendliest and nicest neighbor to me and my parents here in Boca Raton.
He died Saturday of Corona complications.
Frank would've been 100 in July.
This virus is thoroughly dehumanizing.
The last I saw Frank was in his garage woodshop, merrily working on projects.
The last his wife saw of him was being put into the ambulance.
No visitors were permitted in the hospital or hospice.
The hospital cremated the body. No viewing or anything.
And with "social distancing", there is no way to hold any funeral/wake/services.
The widow is denied any proper comfort or procedure :-(
Martin Gardner's annotated version of Lewis Carroll's "Hunting of the Snark"
explores the deep horror of the story: the fear of not just dying but of completely vanishing.
No body, no time to have a proper sendoff.
Kinda like a matter/anti-matter explosion
with the hunter and hunted totally annihilating each other.
The full text without commentary is online:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43909/the-hunting-of-the-snark
Wiki has some discussion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunting_of_the_Snark
referring to existential angst
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism#Angst
Coincidental related reading
I am reading Gre7g Luterman's book "Skeleton Crew".
It starts with a ceremony aboard a generation ship.
A crew member has reached his "retirement age" and is given all proper honors:
a quick painless death and his body is cremated by the ship's recycler.
To learn more about generation ships, see:
- wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_ship
Goddard thought about such things in 1918: 102 years ago!
- Robert A. Heinlein's "Orphans of the Sky"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphans_of_the_Sky
- "Logan's Run"
- "The Starlost"
- Star Trek episodes "A Taste of Armageddon" and "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky"
My point being that death was so institutionalized
that there was little to no sense of loss.
No cemetaries or markers.
Where's the body
As apex predators, we're accustomed to always finding the body.
Mice eaten by owls don't get that courtesy.
[I remember a PBS documentary about a pair of mated mice.
The mate mourned the loss of the other]
One of the horrors of the World Trade Center attack
was the way all the bodies were pulverized into dust as the towers fell.
There was nothing left to identify.
This pandemic has forced this new "procedure" upon us.
It's no longer just an academic discussion.
He died Saturday of Corona complications.
Frank would've been 100 in July.
This virus is thoroughly dehumanizing.
The last I saw Frank was in his garage woodshop, merrily working on projects.
The last his wife saw of him was being put into the ambulance.
No visitors were permitted in the hospital or hospice.
The hospital cremated the body. No viewing or anything.
And with "social distancing", there is no way to hold any funeral/wake/services.
The widow is denied any proper comfort or procedure :-(
Martin Gardner's annotated version of Lewis Carroll's "Hunting of the Snark"
explores the deep horror of the story: the fear of not just dying but of completely vanishing.
No body, no time to have a proper sendoff.
Kinda like a matter/anti-matter explosion
with the hunter and hunted totally annihilating each other.
The full text without commentary is online:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43909/the-hunting-of-the-snark
Wiki has some discussion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunting_of_the_Snark
referring to existential angst
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism#Angst
Coincidental related reading
I am reading Gre7g Luterman's book "Skeleton Crew".
It starts with a ceremony aboard a generation ship.
A crew member has reached his "retirement age" and is given all proper honors:
a quick painless death and his body is cremated by the ship's recycler.
To learn more about generation ships, see:
- wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_ship
Goddard thought about such things in 1918: 102 years ago!
- Robert A. Heinlein's "Orphans of the Sky"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphans_of_the_Sky
- "Logan's Run"
- "The Starlost"
- Star Trek episodes "A Taste of Armageddon" and "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky"
My point being that death was so institutionalized
that there was little to no sense of loss.
No cemetaries or markers.
Where's the body
As apex predators, we're accustomed to always finding the body.
Mice eaten by owls don't get that courtesy.
[I remember a PBS documentary about a pair of mated mice.
The mate mourned the loss of the other]
One of the horrors of the World Trade Center attack
was the way all the bodies were pulverized into dust as the towers fell.
There was nothing left to identify.
This pandemic has forced this new "procedure" upon us.
It's no longer just an academic discussion.