Update

It just looks as if I’ve been lazy. Maybe a little bit lazy.

I have finished Lone Fir: The Cemetery and am waiting for proof copies to come from the press. Now all I have to do is sell it. Can I interest you in a dozen copies? Oh, good.

Elsewhere, including on Ape Shit, I’ve been ranting, but that’s avoidable, and put a number of new cemeteries on Flickr.

Coming up, though I’m not sure in what form, will be some installments on the next project: organizing the epitaphs. Starting with an initial collection of 1700 epitaphs, I’ve whittled it down to, perhaps, closer to a thousand or twelve-hundred of some merit. I’ve assigned each epitaph to one of eleven categories and am currently breaking down further the category of quotes appearing as epitaphs, which I call “borrowed” epitaphs. Right now I’m tracking down song lyrics which fall into two major groupings: Christian songs or pop ballads, with a certain amount of overlap.

I’m still working out the form of presentation, so it’ll be a while before installment one comes out. Have faith. Below is a sample of a database:

Dying to Say This

As Mark Twain intoned, I've got nothing against dying; I just don't want to be there when it happens. Or, as others have observed: death always comes out of season.

You've probably seen these last words before, but they bear repeating:

Pancho Villa

Pancho Villa: “Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something.”

Roman emperor Gaius Caligula: “I am still alive!”

Dominique Bouhours, French grammarian: “I am about to — or I am going to — die: either expression is correct.”

Henrik Ibsen by Edvard Munch

Henrik Ibsen, after his housekeeper told a guest he was feeling better: “On the contrary!”

Karl Marx, to his housekeeper, who had just asked whether he had any last words: “Go on, get out! Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough!”

British surgeon Joseph Henry Green, after checking his own pulse: “Stopped.”

Union general John Sedgwick, sizing up enemy sharpshooters: “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist…”

Marie Antoinette

On her way to the guillotine, Marie Antoinette stepped on the executioner’s toe. Her last words were “Pardonez-moi, monsieur.”