Category: general

In the first public performances outside of Japan since Bunraku was registered as a world intangible cultural asset in November of 2003, Bunraku puppeteers will practice their art for Spanish and Hungarian audiences this October. I wonder if they’ll ever come to the US? (I also wonder if Bunraku has been performed outside of Japan before this, and if so, when and where.)

Joi Ito has a post up about his family tombstone (via BoingBoing), and it made me ponder yet again the arrangements I would like when I die. I’ve never written them out anywhere, though I have told a few people. I figure I will leave a record here of what I want, and hopefully also open a dialogue about the various options.

First of all, I would love to be able to donate organs. I would donate everything if I could. However, since I have had cancer, I am not allowed to even donate blood. (Especially not blood, really, since I had leukemia.)

I would like my body to be useful in some way, but I can’t imagine going so far as to donating it to a body farm. While I appreciate the work done on body farms, I don’t like the idea of leaving my body out for weeks and weeks and letting someone watch how it decomposes. It’s just unsettling to me. When I die, I would prefer that my body be disposed of as soon as possible.

In some cultures, the body remains in the family’s house for a few days before the funeral. In American culture we have mostly replaced this tradition with the viewing at the funeral home, which lasts an hour or two. I wouldn’t mind being left in my death bed for a few days so that mourners could come to my house at their convenience. I think that would be better, more communal, than a standard funeral viewing. It’s more natural and comfortable, too.

I would like any funeral to be a celebration of my life, but I would also like it to fulfill the needs of the mourners. I don’t want to put any unreasonable demands on the people who will be taking care of things once I’m gone. Bring things I’ve written and photographs I’ve taken and let everyone look at them. Let the people have time to just sit and talk. And provide food. Those are really the only demands I can think to make.

There were pictures and reminiscing at Grandpa’s funeral, which I thought was lovely. Afterwards quite a few of us went to the Chop House for dinner, and I think that communal meal really helped. Ultimately, everyone has their own way of mourning, and I would want everyone to feel that they could express themselves however they wished at my funeral.

After the period of mourning is finished and it is time to do something with my body, I would like to be cremated. I do not want a stone monument or a grave. I would like my ashes to be scattered somewhere. If someone very close to me feels that they must hold on to some of my ashes, then I suppose I would allow that, but I honestly find the idea of keeping someone’s remains rather grisly. Maybe if I had grown up accustomed to the idea it wouldn’t be such a big deal.

I think what would be nicest would be to have a bit of my ashes scattered in each place that is truly meaningful to me. Part of me would be in Nicholasville. Part of me would be in Augusta. At this point I can’t think of a place in Japan that is meaningful enough to warrant scattering my ashes there, but should I happen to move to a place in Japan at some point in the future, I would like ashes scattered there as well. (If I end up moving a lot, this idea of scattering ashes in places I’ve lived may prove problematic; I will revise these wishes if that is the case.) This is probably the most inconvenient of my last wishes. Should I have any sort of “fortune”, I will dedicate a portion of it to carrying out this task.

I would also like to leave a lasting mark, something useful, a place where people can go and remember me but not a place solely for that purpose. The free space on the planet is rapidly diminishing, and I don’t like the idea of adding to a graveyard. That is why I want to be cremated and scattered. Instead of a grave, I would like the monument to my life to serve the community. It could be a building at the University of Kentucky, or a scholarship fund, or both. (While I have not decided the specifics yet, at this point I believe I would like them to be related to the Office of International Affairs.) Also acceptable would be a library or a community center/park like Augusta’s Riverwalk. (Maybe a community park with a library!)

This is, of course, presuming that I leave an inheritance large enough to create such a monument. Ultimately, my family’s needs should be taken care of first.

In a nutshell, I would like my life to be celebrated, to be cremated and not buried, and to leave a lasting monument that is useful to people. Have you, gentle readers, thought about what you would like to have happen upon your death?

CNN: A moment of silence for A-bomb victims

MSNBC: Hiroshima’s complex legacy re-examined

Japan Today: 82-year-old A-bomb survivor travels globe to promote peace

Editor and Publisher: Hiroshima Film Cover-up Exposed (via Sid)

AtomicArchive.com: Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima

My pictures from Hiroshima in 2001

Look what I did today!

That’s right, children, I finally took one of those Augusta Canal boat tours.

Brooke and I had lunch together yesterday, and we started talking about plans for today, and all of a sudden we randomly decided to take the boat tour. Neither of us had ever been. So today we headed over to Enterprise Mill for the 3:00 tour.

It was really too bright to take good pictures of Sibley Mill (or the other mills and buildings), but I did get a couple decent canal shots.

Also, this is the cutest picture of Brooke I’ve ever taken.

Too bad it’s kinda washed out. And speaking of washed out, here’s the only picture of Sibley Mill that wasn’t.

It was a really fun tour! The Saturday night tour sounds even better: it lasts for three hours and goes all the way to the Savannah Rapids Pavillion, where you can get out and see that museum, and then on your way back it’s dark and all the mills are lit up. Sounds neat and romantic! Whenever I get a job (and we are therefore not poor anymore) I am going to try to get Sean to take me on that one :)

(Technically, I have seen all of this stuff before, as the hiking/biking trail is right there, but it’s different being on the water.)

Also, the lady who sold us our tickets to the tour told us that there is a waterfall somewhere along the canal, near Lake Olmstead. (This is not the mini waterfall thing I saw near the Pavillion; it’s much further southeast.) Apparently there is a pool beneath the waterfall and you can swim in it! And it’s supposedly gorgeous. So, I am going to bike out there and check it out ASAP–maybe this weekend. (Man, it would be so cool to swim in a waterfall pool, like I did in southern Japan in 2001…I’d link to pictures of that, but they’re not uploaded yet ;P)

I promise, I’ll get off this kick eventually…

BoingBoing has linked to the sweetest thing ever! A six year old boy named Thomas has a blog where his father posts his paintings and the things he wants to say. Needless to say, I’ve subscribed!

Two fun things are coming up for me at the internship! The first is going to be a quasi-hands on learning experience/field trip, and the second is going to involve writing. Yes, that’s right, writing! I am going to be working on articles for a quarterly publication. I will finally be able to list technical writing experience on my resume!

Okay, so that was a cliffhanger…

Thanks a lot, Kyou Kara Maou 48!

(Seriously, that was so totally cool…more episodes please…)

Hadn’t heard from the bastard in a zillion years, and he up and calls me :D He seemed to be working from week-old information, as he said he was calling because he’d heard I was bored and that Sean was working until 10. But I was very glad to hear from him, and I got to whine and complain quite satisfactorily for a fair amount of time. (I also went off on a tangent about Danny Kaye, for some reason. Now I want to rent The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.)

The call, and the fact that the Scarywater tracker is working again, and the fact that Kyou Kara Maou 48 is making its steady way onto my hard drive, and the fact that my computer seems to have stopped acting up for the time being (knock on wood) have ultimately lightened my mood. Also, I’ve been getting a kick out of this post, which I absolutely only made for myself, so I could have the joy of scrolling past it several times a day. Just seeing Yuuri’s face makes me giggle. (I even set the knife picture as my backdrop!)

It is not that time of the month, thank you very much, but I feel so bad I want to cry and/or throw up. I’m really not sure why I feel like this, but it is very annoying and I wish it would go away. The remedy is probably sleep.

My foot is still hurting, enough that I figured it was probably best not to go to bellydance class–that and I’m feeling extraordinarily antisocial at the moment. My back hurts if I sit up too straight, and I’ve had a headache for what seems like a week now.

It’s probably all stress about not having a job.

Ampontan at Japundit has written a piece explaining Koizumi’s postal privatization bill and how it is supposed to work. He also goes into the opinions of those for and against privatization; a more in-depth analysis of the opposition is forthcoming.

I personally found the article very enlightening, as I had not previously understood the situation very well. Yet again Ampontan reminds me that Japan’s government is radically different from that of the U.S.

New Scientist: Cosmic rays may prevent long-haul space travel (via Slashdot)

The radiation encountered on a journey to Mars and back could well kill space travellers, experts have warned. Astronauts would be bombarded by so much cosmic radiation that one in 10 of them could die from cancer.

The crew of any mission to Mars would also suffer increased risks of eye cataracts, loss of fertility and genetic defects in their children, according to a study by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Well, that sucks.

(How do you like the title of my post? I was going for “standard news article”, unfettered by helpful things like prepositions. Sometimes it works out okay, and sometimes it doesn’t.)

Steven Vincent, U.S. freelance journalist, has been killed in Iraq. Vincent maintained a blog that I had unfortunately been unaware of before reading of his death on CNN. It sounds like he was a wonderful guy.

Vincent was an eyewitness to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and traveled twice to Iraq afterward, paying his own way and “traveling without security or official connections, living by his wits,” according to the Spence Publishing site.

The result was his book, “In the Red Zone: A Journey into the Soul of Iraq,” published late last year. Vincent dedicated the book to those who lost their lives in the attacks.

“I stood that morning on the roof of my building in lower Manhattan and watched United Airlines Flight 175 strike the south tower of the World Trade Center,” Vincent said in a December 2004 interview with Frontpage Magazine.

“At that moment, I realized my country was at war — because of the 1993 attack on the Trade Center, I figured our enemy was Islamic terrorism — and I wanted to do my part in the conflict. I’m too old to enlist in the armed services, so I decided to put my writing talents to use.”

Please.

God that movie rules. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to watch it without crying at the end.

Seriously, it has everything.