Category Archives: Sparks from Science and Society

Responses to current events, reflections on society, and commentary on readings and ideas from science.

For the record

Handel blog 12*

Grave marker with willow and urn

From Angela:  Forella asked me to send this along to our group.  Fortunately for us, Forella’s townhouse is large enough that our little “family” is sheltering in place pretty comfortably, with me on the lower level, Forella on the main floor, and Annie and Randolph on the upper floor.  We come together for meals and some activities, but the balance of together and alone time is really good.  My heart goes out to those who have no such safe and comfortable place to call home.  Anyway, Forella wanted to raise an issue that came up after she learned of yet another of her friends dying from the coronavirus.  This most recent friend was younger, just in her early seventies, and she hadn’t made any plans for what her family should do if she died.  This was the issue Forella raised:  how do you make a memorial marker or somehow permanently honor someone who dies and is cremated?  How do we celebrate the life of someone who dies during this pandemic?

From Katherine:  Thank you, Angela, for writing this out for us.  Forella told me later that she had especially appreciated a comment you made while you were discussing the issue.  You said, sadly, that both of your parents died young and were buried in a cemetery in your hometown.  You found the knowledge that you could go visit their graves comforting.  She said you didn’t do it often, but knowing that you could was something you treasured.  Some religious traditions find it troubling if there is no actual body to bury, if, for example, the individual is cremated.  But I think another issue really is, as Forella suggested, a matter of where there is a record, a visible sign that someone has died and is honored or remembered by others. It is comforting to those left behind to have this tangible connection.  Even when a family chooses cremation rather than burial, the survivors often want some place or object or marker that will always serve as a connection to the departed person.

From Ross:  I remember that Mother and I talked at some length about grave markers after our trip over to Cincinnati, when Rosie was married in the chapel at Spring Grove cemetery.  Some of the statuary there was very elaborate, probably rather like the statue Roubiliac designed some few years after Handel died and had placed as a memorial in Westminster Abbey.  But I was interested to see, when I visited the Abbey, that Handel’s actual grave was marked with a black marble gravestone on the floor in the south transept of the cathedral.  The statue was above along with other famous people honored in the Poet’s Corner.  You can read a little more about the statue here.

From Rayette:  We did have a discussion about cemeteries back when we were reading the letters.  I remember thinking even then about all the people who died but were never remembered with a headstone or marker of any kind.  (p. 342).  It is good that cremation has become more acceptable, I think.  It isn’t as expensive, and people can ask to have the ashes of their loved one placed in an urn or a necklace.  You can read about some of the alternatives to burial here.  Of course some people still want a specific place, such as a mausoleum or columbarium.  I agree with Angela.  It is comforting to know that you can always go reconnect with people who have died by visiting their graves.  Grave markers offer us little short biographies, sometimes with symbolic figures or biblical verses carved on them.  I don’t think my children would like it if I just wanted to have my ashes scattered to the wind.

From Katherine:  Handel was unusual in having had a wonderful statue made of him well before his dying day.  I saw the statue at the Victoria and Albert Museum.  I’ll attach a photo below.  Normally statues were created after a famous person died, just as the one at Westminster Abbey was some three years after Handel died. But today people often select their gravestones well in advance and decide what they want carved or inscribed on it.  Some of the symbols have long traditions.  You can read about some of them here.  We haven’t really solved the issue of how to keep a remembrance of those who have died, especially if they have chosen to be cremated.  Perhaps that is a topic for another time.  I am sorry, Forella, that you have lost another friend.  May we all stay safe and well.

Handel statue at the Victoria and Albert Museum

*All posts listed as “Handel blog” are texts that use the fictional characters in my book The Handel Letters: A Biographical Conversation.  As in that book, the posts will often reference things from Handel’s life or time period as starting points.  And the post will cite a page or paragraph in the book when it seems relevant.   Find The Handel Letters.

No chance to mourn

Handel blog 11*

Handel’s Memorial at Westminster Abbey

From Katherine:  Several times, in our phone conversations, Forella has expressed her gratitude at having Angela and Annie and Randolph there with her in her roomy townhouse while this pandemic oozes around outside.  Ross has adhered to the advice not to visit her, and she sees the wisdom in that, she admits.  But, Ross, you should know that she worries about you there alone in that big house with no other to keep company.  She knows you have many online friends, but she worries nonetheless, as mothers do.  She said it was ok to share this worry, so, Ross, what say you?

From Ross:  Well, I expect several of us are in the same boat—stuck at home all alone.  It sounds bad, but truthfully, I am glad I have a place to call home, a place I feel safe.  And I’m glad my mother does, too, and especially glad she has people there at her home, glad she isn’t in a retirement home or something.  As for me, I can take a walk on my grounds or along the canal, pick up a garlic chicken dinner at Sahm’s, and go home to my place and watch movies or Zoom with friends.  It’s not so bad.  But I am a “privileged elite” as they say—and they are right.  I feel sorry for those poor souls with no home to go to or a makeshift place with six people to a room.  I feel infinitely more safe than our country’s less fortunate—occasional loneliness or not.

From Wait:  It is good to have someone with you, there’s no denying that.  I would say that even if my wife weren’t looking over my shoulder.  🙂 But here is the thing—it is really something to worry about if you have a relative in a nursing home.  If the virus gets a toehold there—look out!  And if, God forbid, they die—don’t expect to be able to hold a funeral.  Don’t expect to see them before they die.

From Katherine:  Yes, it is true.  One of the many sad consequences of this pandemic is the number of people who die separated from their families and denied the honor of a wake or funeral that brings together the people who loved them.  Often they haven’t had time to write a will or indicate what they would like to have happen should they die suddenly.  They may not have decided on a burial plot or grave marker.  Handel had at least known for some time that he was losing ground.  He had made out a will, and he had his servants there in his last hours. He knew that he would be memorialized in a fine sculpture at Westminster Abbey.  Maybe we will say more about such important markers next time.

*All posts listed as “Handel blog” are texts that use the fictional characters in my book The Handel Letters: A Biographical Conversation.  As in that book, the posts will often reference things from Handel’s life or time period as starting points.  And the post will cite a page or paragraph in the book when it seems relevant.   Find The Handel Letters.

Maybe it’s misinformation

Handel blog 6*

From Katherine: If you watch television, some sources say do wear a mask.  Others say it is unnecessary, just a recommendation.  Some say find that malaria medicine; it will cure the virus.  Doctors say nothing has been proven to work against COVID-19.  Some news sources say things are starting to turn around.  Others say the worst is yet to come.  How do you know which sources to trust?  How did people get accurate news stories in Handel’s day?  Journals, letters, and newspapers were a lot slower than today’s television, Internet, and other media.  Notwithstanding their slowness, were eighteenth-century sources more accurate?  Could you trust them?

Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year was written in 1722, 57 years after the Great Plague of London in 1665.  Critics still debate over what to call Defoe’s work.  Is it history, historical fiction, a novel?  In our discussions of Lydia’s letters to Handel, we, too, wondered about the source of one story she mentioned—a piece of news that reached London before Handel had returned from a 1750 trip to the continent.  There had evidently been a carriage accident near Harlem in the Netherlands in which Handel was injured.  Peter commented: “Actually, as Brad suggested, it was odd that this incident was reported among Handel’s friends in London.  Obviously Handel himself was not the one sharing the information, maybe a newspaper story instead.” (p. 478) How did people in London know?  Was it a rumor?  What did they know?  Handel’s friends must have wondered and worried as they had only vague secondary sources on the incident until Handel himself came home and set the story straight. 

From Ross:  I don’t know much about it, but I know there is a source people can use today to help them decide whether the news we hear is reliable.  In Handel’s day, the sources were fairly limited, but today there are countless sources of varying quality.  You can get an app called Newsguard that is supposed to give an evaluation of news sources derived through a set of criteria and applied by professional journalists.  The idea is simply to give a grade to the source itself, not to dissect any given news item. 

From Angela:  Forella wanted me to mention that we have been watching one of those Great Courses Plus series of lectures, this one titled Fighting Misinformation.  So far, it has been pretty interesting, and I think they did mention that Newsguard app as well.

From Clara:  Well, this is all very interesting, but I was expecting someone to comment on the movie about Farinelli, but since we haven’t moved in that direction, let me suggest a movie you should all watch while you are sheltering in place.  It’s Teacher’s Pet—the 1958 version with Clark Gable and Doris Day, not the newer one.  It’s about journalism, and to me anyway, what we are really trying to grapple with here is a major change in journalism from earlier times.  Watch the movie and let me know what you think.  You can read some info on it here.

From Katherine:  Thanks Clara.  Teacher’s Pet is one of my favorite movies, and you are right.  It raises many questions about the role of journalism then and now.  A good suggestion for something to watch this evening.  Stay safe, everyone.

*All posts listed as “Handel blog” are texts that use the fictional characters in my book The Handel Letters: A Biographical Conversation.  As in that book, the posts will often reference things from Handel’s life or time period as starting points.  And the post will cite a page or paragraph in the book when it seems relevant.   Find The Handel Letters.