My kind of obituary

[BackInTex]

I hope y'all can see it.

[Bob Juch]

Okay, Richard, I'll vote for Bernie.

[TheConfessor]

Why did a guy from Beebe, Arkansas run an obit in the Evansville, Indiana newspaper?

[Ritterskoop]

My favorites are the ones in which the deceased's dog is named before his surviving wife.

Not sure I would approve of the person himself but it gives me a chuckle.

Roomie just found a pic of a tombstone with a cookie recipe on the back, because the deceased always said she would only release it over her dead body.

[silvercamaro]

Why did a guy from Beebe, Arkansas run an obit in the Evansville, Indiana newspaper?

At the top, below his name, is "Evansville, Ind." Perhaps the first draft of the obit originally said something like "who moved here from Beebe, Ark." or "who grew up in Beebe, Ark." until somebody found out that the newspaper would charge by the word or the line. No offense intended to our friends in the newspaper business, but in my limited experience, the charges for obituaries in many publications are astonishingly high.

[Ritterskoop]

I have spent far too long trying to figure out why the obit also ran in the Evansville, Ind., paper ... but I have nothing.

I did learn that he did indeed live in Beebe, Ark., and the funeral home is there. He does have real family members who posted on the funeral home's memory book thingy.

I also learned that he is at least the third person this year to include such a request in his obit - a NJ woman did so three days earlier than his death (maybe where he got the idea), and a man from near me in Concord, N.C., did so also.

I am sorry to say that yes, obit prices are too high. But I saw a mock-up once of what would happen every day if they were too much lower, and it would have put us out of business a while back - though we are almost there now. We offer a one-inch free obit for anyone, and then it is so much per line after that. When I saw the mock-up, I said so this is why we have to ration a scarce resource - unless a funeral home or someone else wanted to sponsor the obit page, we would have 5-6 pages of copy every day at lower prices, and have to hire more people to work them, and archive them, and handle the photos ... It sucks. I'm sorry. Soon enough we will all be out of print and they will be online only anyway, with no space limit.

[Ritterskoop]

Also there is a Richard Buckman who is a rugby player in New Zealand. He came up to the Highlanders in 2011 after a strong season with the Hawkes Bay Magpies. You can't make this stuff up.

Don't be fooled. Accept only the real Richard Buckman.

[SpacemanSpiff]

Why did a guy from Beebe, Arkansas run an obit in the Evansville, Indiana newspaper?

Actually, not unusual if he had lived elsewhere a good chunk of his life.

When my parents died, we had funeral notices here and in two papers in Alabama, where they grew up and where they spent half of their married lives.

[mrkelley23]

Not sure where Beebe is, but a lot of folks who lost their jobs when the last Whirlpool plant here closed got job offers from the Arkansas plant, and moved out there.

What I want to know is why BiT is reading obits in my hometown paper. Hoping to find something?

[BackInTex]

Not sure where Beebe is, but a lot of folks who lost their jobs when the last Whirlpool plant here closed got job offers from the Arkansas plant, and moved out there.

What I want to know is why BiT is reading obits in my hometown paper. Hoping to find something?

Nah, I didn't even notice the town. I saw this on EFB and thought it humorous.

[SportsFan68]

. . .

I am sorry to say that yes, obit prices are too high. But I saw a mock-up once of what would happen every day if they were too much lower, and it would have put us out of business a while back - though we are almost there now. We offer a one-inch free obit for anyone, and then it is so much per line after that. When I saw the mock-up, I said so this is why we have to ration a scarce resource - unless a funeral home or someone else wanted to sponsor the obit page, we would have 5-6 pages of copy every day at lower prices, and have to hire more people to work them, and archive them, and handle the photos ... It sucks. I'm sorry. Soon enough we will all be out of print and they will be online only anyway, with no space limit.

Thanks, Skoop, and I bet you can answer this question. I E-mailed the managing editor of the local fishwrapper (not intended to be a Letter to the Editor) asking how the local Newspaper of Record could ignore deaths in the community, unless someone paid for them, and he ignored me too. Maybe Newspaper of Record is intended to apply only to publication of legal notices?

[Bob Juch]

My favorites are the ones in which the deceased's dog is named before his surviving wife.

Not sure I would approve of the person himself but it gives me a chuckle.

Roomie just found a pic of a tombstone with a cookie recipe on the back, because the deceased always said she would only release it over her dead body.

[Ritterskoop]

Sprots, here are some thoughts that might help. Or not.

News obituaries are a judgment call just like any other news judgment call. The smaller paper where I often help out in Rock Hill almost never runs a headed obituary because they don't have the room. They typically have one page each day for national/international news, while our other two papers have a good deal more. They just don't have the advertising base to run a larger section in which they might run an occasional obit. I don't think they ran Leonard Nimoy back when that happened -- not that he is a measuring stick for who should make the paper, just that I happened to work that story for Charlotte and Raleigh that day.

Local deaths are a little different in our smaller paper - if there's room on the paid obits page, one might make it in. Nowadays, our chain is encouraged to think online first, because if we survive, that will be how.

[SportsFan68]

Thanks, Skoop. Looking at it this way, I'm surprised our paper is surviving. It is literally shrinking in size, and features that are so important to a community are shrinking also because of the cost to have someone write them up, including the obituaries. I cringe when I read them because of bad grammar, fractured syntax, and frequent misspellings, but it's easy to see the publisher collecting pricey fees and moving on without a backward glance.

[smilergrogan]

Wow, cookies made from sugar, margarine, eggs, vanilla, flour, baking powder and salt! Who would ever have guessed that? Must be the alternating cream.

My favorites are the ones in which the deceased's dog is named before his surviving wife.

Not sure I would approve of the person himself but it gives me a chuckle.

Roomie just found a pic of a tombstone with a cookie recipe on the back, because the deceased always said she would only release it over her dead body.

[BackInTex]

Okay, Richard, I'll vote for Bernie.

Talk about your "batshit crazy". Bernie blames the Paris terrorism on global warming.

That's your candidate alright.

[Bob Juch]

Okay, Richard, I'll vote for Bernie.

Talk about your "batshit crazy". Bernie blames the Paris terrorism on global warming.

That's your candidate alright.

I don't know what your source for this is but of course it's not true.

[BackInTex]

Okay, Richard, I'll vote for Bernie.

Talk about your "batshit crazy". Bernie blames the Paris terrorism on global warming.

That's your candidate alright.

I don't know what your source for this is but of course it's not true.

Right wing CBS News

Pressed by moderator John Dickerson over the explicit link between a drought and the Paris attacks this weekend, Sanders took the connection one step further.

"When people migrate into cities and they don't have jobs, there's going to be a lot more instability, a lot more unemployment, and people will be subject to the types of propaganda that al Qaeda and ISIS are using right now," he said.

Another right wing news site, Media Matters

major studies and reports from foreign policy and defense experts support Sanders' assessment that climate change was a significant factor contributing to the rise of ISIL (or ISIS).

[jarnon]

Talk about your "batshit crazy". Bernie blames the Paris terrorism on global warming.

I hadn't heard this about Bernie, so I read up on it. I found research by the DNI on the security risks of climate change. It said climate change would increase civil wars and migration in the Third World. And migrant communities are fertile ground for terrorist recruiters.

The right wing won't like this because it says climate change is real. And the left will be upset at the thought that refugees could turn against their hosts. (Even if a small percentage of refugees go to the dark side, that's still a lot of potential terrorists for governments to find, monitor and deter.) As is often the case, reality isn't as simple as any political extreme.

[BackInTex]

Talk about your "batshit crazy". Bernie blames the Paris terrorism on global warming.

I hadn't heard this about Bernie, so I read up on it. I found research by the DNI on the security risks of climate change. It said climate change would increase civil wars and migration in the Third World. And migrant communities are fertile ground for terrorist recruiters.

The right wing won't like this because it says climate change is real. And the left will be upset at the thought that refugees could turn against their hosts. (Even if a small percentage of refugees go to the dark side, that's still a lot of potential terrorists for governments to find, monitor and deter.) As is often the case, reality isn't as simple as any political extreme.

To be accurate, I don't think the report (I couldn't find the one you read so maybe it does) asserts or supports that climate change is real, but only that it (if it is real) can cause an increase in refugees and population shifts. I don't think anyone would argue that. But has it already done so? There have been famines as long as man has been around. There have been refugees as long as man has been around. They don't always try to consume their hosts. The refugees from Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries came here and assimilated. Most prior to the '70s did regardless of where they came from.

[Bob Juch]

I don't know what your source for this is but of course it's not true.

Right wing CBS News

Pressed by moderator John Dickerson over the explicit link between a drought and the Paris attacks this weekend, Sanders took the connection one step further.

"When people migrate into cities and they don't have jobs, there's going to be a lot more instability, a lot more unemployment, and people will be subject to the types of propaganda that al Qaeda and ISIS are using right now," he said.

Another right wing news site, Media Matters

major studies and reports from foreign policy and defense experts support Sanders' assessment that climate change was a significant factor contributing to the rise of ISIL (or ISIS).

Of course you didn't mention the title of the Media Matters article: Ignoring The Facts, Conservative Media Call Bernie Sanders "Crazy" For Linking Climate Change To Terrorism

[Estonut]

The right wing won't like this because it says climate change is real.

I don't know of many who don't believe this. Since it has been happening cyclically for hundreds of thousands of years, many want proof that it is caused by man this time.

[BackInTex]

of course you didn't mention the title of the Media Matters article: Ignoring The Facts, Conservative Media Call Bernie Sanders "Crazy" For Linking Climate Change To Terrorism

My point was made. Media Matters is confirming what I said. They just happen to be just as batshit crazy at Sanders and agree with him. I guess you agree with them too? What does that make you? Just as I suspected.