Peterblog

Death, bereavement, mourning

Death is not exactly 'the last taboo' that society faces (at least, our society), but it is something that we are ill-equipped to deal with. It is not exactly taboo, just not spoken about very much, until it happens.

For a bit of homework, I recommend watching some of the early series of 'Six Feet Under' - the TV series based on an undertaker's practice. For non-English speakers, the title refers to the depth (1m80) that bodies are supposed to be buried, and an undertaker (or funeral director) is a term for a professional who arranges and carries out funerals.

Six Feet Under de-mystifies what undertakers do as it goes along. It explains the process of preparing a corpse and deals with the process of bereavement from the point of view of a customer service. Undertakers are generally very good at what they do. A few years ago, I was involved in a fatal climbing accident, and the job of repatriating the corpse fell to me. I had no idea how to begin, so drawing on my Six Feet Under knowledge, I called an undertaker in the dead woman's home town and they told me what to do.

If anyone is interested, the easiest thing is to check if there is travel insurance and call the company up - they take over all responsibility and your problem is solved. Another good thing about undertakers is that there is always someone there to answer the phone - death does not keep office hours.

The other people who have experience of death and skills in its treatment are: religious workers, medical professionals, patient and family groups, such as the Alzheimer's Society, insurances and government authorities, although the last two groups can be spotty - it really depends who you get to talk to.

For the rest of us, we basically feel our way through, as clumsily as we may. Should we mention it to the bereaved? What do we say if we talk about it? It really depends on the person, and your relationship to them, but there are some guidelines you could follow in case you hear of a colleague or friend's bereavement.

Depending on how close that person is to you, geographically or emotionally, your first step would be to call them and offer sympathy. Don't say, 'If there is anything I can do'. Say, 'Can I water your plants while you are away at the funeral'?

Failing that, send a card immediately. Then, as soon as you know when the funeral is, arrange your travel to attend (if this was a friend or member of the family). Send flowers or make a charitable donation, behave quietly while you are there and if possible, go to the meeting after the funeral. Even if you just stand around for half an hour sipping a glass of water, it is a comfort to the bereaved person that so many people came. These things matter.

And the last thing you should do is to make reference to the dead person's suffering being over. There is usually very little comfort to be gained from someone's death. Certainly, that is not what I feel.

My mother died 12 days ago, and to those people who suggested that I should be somehow relieved that she is now at peace after the three years since her Alzheimer's became very severe, I would say no. I would rather have my mother alive for one extra minute for those occasional flashes where she was herself again, and even when she was not herself, I would like to know that I could have booked a flight and hugged her, or even picked up the phone and heard her voice just one more time.

James Lovelock say: 20 years if we are lucky

The Guardian newspaper in Britain published an interesting interview with James Lovelock recently for the publication of his book, the Revenge of Gaia. The tenor is essentially that it is too late to do anything about climate change, and in two decades at the most, our current lifestyle will change irretrievably.

Lovelock has a good track record of getting his predictions right, and further out than 20 years. He has long been a supporter of nuclear energy, and talks of synthesising food to solve the starvation which will face mankind.

He's probably wrong there; we will have accepted gene technology by then - we simply won't have the choice - as we will have had to accept nuclear energy in the same way that the French have. France gets more than three quarters of its electricity from nuclear sources.

Gene technology will increase the yield of drought-ridden crops fighting for life in sour soil and feed us expensively. And with that acceptance of gene techology for food will spill over into other aspects of life. If we have had to cope with deep changes in our existence then we might well consider it acceptable to reward ourselves with controlled consolations such as genetically-enhanced offspring.

In Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond puts forward the hypothesis that homo sapiens has consistently destroyed his habitat and has survived because we - uniquely, rather than homo habilis or homo erectus -  possessed the flexibility, skill and wit to surmount catastrophes, but not of course, to avoid them by being sparing with resources. That skill may well help us survive the eighth of Lovelock's disasters.

It is a shame for those of us who have re-cycled for decades and generally tried to live an environmentally gentle life while others drove gas-guzzlers to super-heated homes disposing of their trash any way they could that Lovelock says this environmental crisis could have been avoided.

I guess my tip, for what it's worth, would be to buy real estate in Canada or Patagonia. They will be crowded but at least the climate will be bearable.

Hanging Lisieskis

After a long gestation period - framing, disliking the frame, getting them framed again, hanging them all together and waiting for inspiration to strike - I have finally hung my Lisieskis.

Ed Lisieski is an artist and graphic designer and lives in Seattle. We worked together a while ago. He is one of the most pure people I know, in all senses of the words, and is enormously talented to boot. Or maybe just 'as well', and I am very lucky to be able to describe him as a friend.

So it is with a great sense of pride that I contemplate the paintings I bought from him - Location! Location! Location!, Home With a View and Bright Open Skies, now hanging where and as they should. I am also happy to report that I may well have the most important collection of Lisieskis in private hands outside North America.

The paintings were made while he and Carrie were looking for a new home, and are based on estate agents' brochures. What attracted me to them is a sort of mixture of moods of the Pacific North-West and New England, which is where Ed is originally from. They are acrylic on plywood, and the plywood was previously used for a series of nudes. And here I reproduce Location! Location! Location!.

Terracotta worriers

The British Museum was also displaying little terracotta warriors made by young visitors to the First Emperor exhibit. They have something, there, don't they?

The world's treasures in London

To London for a few days to celebrate the Neguinha's birthday. We had a fine and cultural time: the Mikado at the English National Opera, Kiki Dee at the Pizza Express jazz club, the Tate Modern, St Paul's, a ride on what must be one of the last Routemaster buses running and the First Emperor Exhibition at the British Museum.

This showed some of the terracota warriors from the Xian burial site in China, and a fine exhibition it was. We were queuing for the headsets, speaking Portuguese, and a young man whose name badge told us was called Paolo informed us that the audio guides were only available in English. *This wouldn't happen in Italy, would it, Paolo?" I asked and he smiled.

Afterwards, we quickly saw the two important sights that the museum holds (for us, anyway): the Rosetta Stone and the Parthenon sculptures.

The British Museum, like most museums and galleries in London, is free. This is an amazing gift to the world, even if the world would have difficulty understanding the signs and labels as well as the audio guides - English only. But the most lasting impression that the museum left on us is the scale and efficiency with which the British Empire looted the world's treasures. Some collections - the work of one man - were breathtaking in scale. And all taken. Stolen, even.

Next to the Parthenon sculptures was an explanation of how they got to the museum, and why it considers London to be their rightful home. and it is worth quoting in full, with apologies to all my Greek friends:

The Parthenon in Athens is a building with a long and complex history. Built nearly 2,500 years ago as a temple dedicated to the Greek goddess Athena, it was for a thousand years the church of the Virgin Mary of the Athenians, then a mosque, and finally an archaeological ruin. The building was altered and the sculptures much damaged over the course of the centuries. The first major loss occurred around AD 500 when the Parthenon was converted into a church. When the city was under siege by the Venetians in 1687, the Parthenon itself was used as a gunpowder store. A huge explosion blew the roof off and destroyed a large portion of the remaining sculptures. The building has been a ruin ever since. Archaeologists worldwide are agreed that the surviving sculptures could never be re-attached to the structure.

By 1800 only about half of the original sculptural decoration remained. Between 1801 and 1805 Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire of which Athens had been a part for some 350 years, acting with the full knowledge and permission of the Ottoman authorities, removed about half of the remaining sculptures from the fallen ruins and from the building itself. Lord Elgin was passionate about ancient Greek culture and transported the sculptures back to Britain. The arrival of the sculptures in London had a profound effect on the European public, regenerating interest in ancient Greek culture and influencing contemporary artistic trends.

These sculptures were acquired from Lord Elgin by the British Museum in 1816 following a Parliamentary Select Committee enquiry which fully investigated and approved the legality of Lord Elgin’s actions. Since then the sculptures have all been on display to the public in the British Museum, free of entry charge.

Switzerland - no safe place for art. True or false

Police in Zurich, Switzerland, have recovered two of the paintings stolen from a gallery in the city on February 10; it was described as the biggest art theft in Switzerland. Four paintings valued at USD 160 million were taken by a group of three masked men from the Bührle Collection.
 

Today, the police announced that two paintings - a van Gogh and a Monet - were found in an unlocked car near a psychiatric hospital only 500 metres from the gallery. The other two, a Cezanne and a Degas are still at large; or just unrecovered, perhaps.

It has not been a good period for art in Switzerland. A few days previously, two Picassos were stolen from a gallery in St Gallen. Following the second theft, a British art expert appeared on Swiss television, stating that the bank vaults of Switzerland were full of stolen art, a claim swiftly denied by bank spokespeople, although exactly how either party knows is a moot point.

A bank is perhaps the best place to keep a stolen painting so famous as those works taken; it is hard to imagine what use they would be to the thief. There is some speculation that they are used in the 'underworld' as collateral for debts, although I am sure that most shady characters would prefer cash, or bearer bonds, if they exist outside the movies.

In any case, the chase is over for two of the pictures. Except that one seems to be less valuable than might have been surmised; according to the German-language Swiss weekly die Weltwoche, the van Gogh, Chestnut in Bloom, was actually painted a few years after the artists' death in 1890. The magazine says it was the brainchild of Dr Paul Gachet, van Gogh's friend and doctor, who was responsible for at least a dozen 'extra' works in collaboration with his son, Paul Jr and Blanche Derousse, a talented painter. In any case, the painting's provenance is evidently less important at the moment than its recovery, and the recovery of the other canvases and - of course - the arrest of the thieves.

Missing the point, Brazilian-style

I have just spent a month in Rio, and very entertaining it was. And also quite frustrating. I opened a newspaper and said to the Neguinha that it was almost as if I had not been away. The same stories were there: political corruption on a grand scale; drug gang violence and murder; spectacular robberies; football; carnival; and a new entrant alongside the usual outbreak of dengue fever: yellow fever spreading from a wildlife reserve near Brasília.

While I was there, two crimes occurred, and the public and media reactions to them were indicative of just how this country has become immune to outrage. In he early hours of New Year's day, Lídio Toledo de Araújo Filho and his wife Silene de Araújo were travelling home from a party through a deserted part of the city when they were attacked by armed robbers on motorbikes. Instead of allowing themselves to be robbed, Lídio rammed the robbers and crashed his car. This was unwise, as they began shooting. Lídio remains paralysed in a Rio hospital, his wife has recovered.

The attack happened in a quiet part of the city called the Alto de Boavista, where the traffic police had installed a speed trap which forces drivers to slow down to 40kph. It was here that the robbers attacked. Lídio Filho is the son of Lídio Toledo, who is an othopaedician like his son, but more than that, was formerly the doctor to the Brazilian football team and therefore a personality.

The initial reaction to this was that, rarely, a member of the Brazilian middle classes had been a victim of Rio's lawlessness, and perhaps now, more than ever, the authorities would take some action. The mood changed quite quickly, however, to focus on the speed trap.

In the past 12 months, the governor of the state of Rio,Sérgio Cabral, has discovered road traffic offences as a source of revenue. All over the state, radar traps and controls have been installed. This is a sure income, as Brazilian drivers make a point of ignoring all regulations. And now, the speed trap was the reason for the attack on Lídio Filho and his wife. After all, if they had not been forced to slow down, the attach would never have happened, and neither would its tragic consequences.

A few days later in São Paulo, a motorcyclist pulled up in traffic next to the car of a businessman. He tapped on the window and allegedly showed the driver a gun and demanded his watch. The businessman pulled out his gun in turn, and shot the motorcyclist 10 times, killing him.

In this case, the thinking went straight to answering one question: was the motorcyclist a thief or not. No, says his family, he was an honest man trying to bring up a family. Yes, says the evidence, that found half a dozen watches, the testimony of other victims, but which did not find his gun or anything like it. The implication is clear. If he was a thief, then he deserved to be shot and killed by a citizen protecting his property.

In both cases, of course, the point has been missed. The fundamental cause of both tragedies is the immunity that allows armed robbers to take to the streets to rob and kill their victims. And in the case of the São Paulo businessman, no-one is asking what he was doing with a gun in his car. Neither should they. The Brazilian police are no help. But as usual, and in Brazilian style, no-one steps up to take responsibility, and no-one points the finger of blame in the right direction.

And in more news, I top the Google rankings

Well - in images anyway. I may never be a Facebook whale, I may never have anyone trying to sell me the URL of my name, but at least, tonight, and for possibly one night only, if you do a Google image search for 'Peter Warne' on the Brazilian Google (I am in Brazil at the moment, this is not an example of extremely recherché googlebation), you get pictures of me in 1st and 2nd place. This is almost as cool as the first time I found my own name in a telephone directory.

My Facebook friend

Over to the Guardian, where a picture jumps out at me from the front page: none other than my old mucker Hugh MacLeod, cartoonist and blogger and one of the faces of web two point-oh. It turns out, the story tells me, that he may be one of Britain's most successful Facebookers, which is not bad for an American.

Apparently, to be a Facebook 'whale' you need 1,000+ 'friends'. Hugh has more than that - 28 people a day want to be his friend. The article says that Facebook has a limit of 5,000 friends. Hugh has (so far) 1,289 friends. I recognised a few faces in the first three pages (Stephanie Booth, Stowe Boyd), so they are not all just random people wanting to connect with someone famous.

Hats off to Hugh. Maybe you can go over there to his page and help him get to 5,000. Hurry while stocks last!

Vignettes from Le Web 3

Religion, France and U.S.

One of the fat American bearded presenters at Le Web 3 was getting his presentation ready, plugging in his laptop. He was following Philippe Starck. "I have slept in hotel rooms designed by Philippe Starck," he said, as if this conferred some sort of special status on his words, "But I have to push back on one thing he said. I do not think that thinking of God is silly or stupid."  There was a silence that at a similar event in the U.S. might have been filled with cheering, whistling, stamping feet, applause and shouts of, 'Ain't that the truth!' But this is France, where church and state and much else are separate.

It's the environment, stupid
Another of the fat bearded American presenters had been talking about a sort of RSS for television, that would go and scour the web for pictures, displaying them endlessly in the user's sitting-room. A British woman stood up and questioned whether this was responsible or not. What she meant was in environmental terms – surely when you were not in the room, the best thing to happen to the TV set was to switch it off? The presenter completely mis-understood. He thought the question was an attack on the social responsibility of seeking and displaying pictures, and 'dissed' her. Two cultures divided by separate understanding of the same problem, I suppose.

June Cohen giggles
June Cohen is the director of TED media. She does a very good job with her agency, as you can see. She spends a lot of time praising the organisation's decision to give away its content for nothing in the form of TED talks. A very good decision it was, too. Millions of people have benefitted from the ideas expressed in them. As she said – "Ted is, erm, a USD6,000 conference ..." and giggled. The implication is clear – you are getting for free each time you download a TED talk what those wealthy élite people have to pay for. Actually, the decision would indeed be courageous and worthwhile if the TED talks were given away live as they happen, not sometimes years after the event.

Andrew Keen is so ... over
Amazingly enough, Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur is even less pleasant in real life than he is on the page. He was invited to the stage of Le Web 3 to spar with Emily Bell of the British Guardian newspaper. Emily Bell is a thoroughly approachable, pleasant and sensible woman on the right side of the web debate. And it turns out, this is not the first time they have sparred together onstage.

I felt a great deal of sympathy for Keen. It is as if he is left defending an indefensible argument that perhaps two years ago seemed to be a good idea, or until he sobered up. Shouldn't it be about time that he admitted he only wrote the book for money and move on, I suggested? Bell said, "Well, it's more or less what he has done. I think the idea for the book came from a publisher in any case."

Keen is writing another book: "I wrote this book to spark an argument." The new one is nothing to do with the internet, he said. "So we can't expect you to be here again next year?" Le Meur asked. "I hope not," Keen retorted and disappeared back to wherever he came from.