Reflection 3

At the moment, I am trying to put together an outline or storyboard of my ethnography. I think my story will be the "true meaning" of being a funeral director. I want to disprove the idea that being a funeral director is "gross" or "morbid. Though being in the presence of death is a part of being a funeral director, it is not everything. A funeral home is a business and the funeral director is a businessman (or woman). A funeral director has to create a name for himself, he has to advertise, and he has to compete. He is a counselor, an artist, and a nessesity.

My main secondary source is Thomas Lynch's novel, The Undertaking. He is not only a famous funeral director, he is also a poet. He has some pretty amazing and insightful things to say about the funeral business even though I may not like him very much. I also want to get creative with the history of the funeral business starting with the origins of the American funeral, then the old-fashioned home embalmings, and finally present day funerals. Chris Branson gave me some information about the history of Carlisle Funeral Chapel and I have pictures of the old funeral "office" before funeral homes become popular.

I want to do my ethnography as a webpage so it can be multimodal. My plan is to make the sight look like an obituary and have links do different parts of my story. I want one the the links to go to a page about an actual death that occured in Mooresville recently. I talked about it in a previous blog; the murder of Milton Lindgren. Other links will have the history of the funeral business with an interest in Carlisle Funeral Chapel, a page about Southern Illinois Univesity (where Sam goes to school), a page about what a funeral director looks like, and the stories of Sam Perry and Chris Branson.

Video Interview

This weekend, I did a video interview with Sam. It was very casual and was intended just to be a practice run but I think it was pretty good. I'll post it here when I get it edited. This was my first time using this particular camera so I didn't really know what I was doing. Sam was a good sport. 

I didn't script the questions so my grammar isn't the best. We were just at our parents' house and the fireplace was going. I had him sit in front of the fireplace and just asked him a few questions. The fireplace was neat but irrelevant to my project. I wish that we had gone to the cemetery but it was very cold and raining.

Blogging Pays Off

Using the blogs has turned out to be very helpful. I set up separate blogs for Sam and Chris and it's going really well. They both have really interesting things to say and I think that they enjoy writing about their careers.

If you look at their blogs (The Aspiring Funeral Director and The Experienced Funeral Director) they articulate their thoughts so creatively that the blogs themselves contradict my initial idea of a funeral director. They aren't stuffy or morbid at all. On the other hand, they are compassionate, thoughtful, and wise. Even Sam, who is 19 and a sophomore in college, has thought in depth about death and the importance of his chosen career.

So what's next? I haven't decided how I want to present my ethnography yet. I've been playing with idea of creating a webpage that looks like an obituary. I want to have a video interview with Sam and include some pictures and music. I need to find some more secondary sources. I have The Undertaking and I'll probably use that british skeptics book. Chris told me about a documentary but I have yet to find it.

In a few weeks, Sam is coming to Mooresville and we plan to take some video and probably talk to Chris some more. Until then, I'm enjoying their blogs and trying to come up with more resources. 

Milton C. Lindgren, Jr.

Milton died last Monday, October 20th. He was 70 years old and lived in Camby, Indiana just outside of Mooresville. His obituary says that he was an accountant and attended a Lutheran church in Mooresville. He liked to research geneology and family history in his spare time and he was apparently very fond of Daschunds.

What the obituary doesn't say is that Milton was brutally murdered in his townhouse along with his partner, Eric Hendricks who was 73 and confined to a wheelchair. The neighbors of these two men are convinced that it was a hate crime. There were multiple accounts of vandalism on their property saying things like "Faggot" before they were found dead, beaten to death.

Carlisle and Son is doing the arrangements for Milton but not Eric. I haven't talked to Chris about it yet because the memorial is Thursday and he's probably very busy with the family. I'm interested to know why Eric wasn't mentioned in his obituary. If a married couple is killed together, they usually have joint obituaries and especially their funerals together. Why aren't the families acknowledging their partnership? What does Chris think about this? What will the funeral be like?

Since I have a few commitments on the day of his memorial, my mom is going for me. My family is supportive of the gay community and feel like they need to go anyways so I'm going to have her talk to me about what she sees on Thursday.

The Undertaking

I've been reading this book called The Undertaking by Thomas Lynch. Chris and Sam had recommended this author to me for my research and it is turning out to be a very valuable resource. 

The Undertaking is a non-fiction account of Lynch's life as an "undertaker". He is from Michigan and has taken over the family funeral business. He makes his funeral home sound so small town but I found out that the Lynch family owns about six funeral homes in Michigan. The other five funeral homes are under the direction of Lynch's brothers and sisters. Sam dislikes Lynch whereas Chris believes that he is accurate.

So far, I have only covered the first few chapters but it is almost exactly what Chris has told me about the funeral business. It's just that: A business. Lynch covers everything that Chris and I had talked about. Lynch goes fromom the fascination and curiousities people have for funeral directors to the federally-mandated "unit pricing method" for funeral arrangements. 

Lynch also talks about another author who Chris had recommended. Her name is Jessica Mitford, the author of The American Way of Death. Mitford is a British author who writes about the barbarianism of American funerals. In Lynch's and Chris' opinion, her book slanders funeral directors and makes them look like money-hungry businessmen benefitting from the grief of others. 

According to Sam, Lynch is a hypocrite. I do not know exactly why yet but I am getting there. I personally think that Lynch is sort of a snob. He makes assumptions about his customers and seems to poke fun at them. In general, he has a cold, matter-of-fact way of describing his profession but I guess he's right, every job can get monotonous. He says, "The dead I bury and burn are like the dead before them, for whom time and space have become mortally unimportant" and "the dead don't care". 

Report 2

After beginning my ethnography about funeral directors, I am having trouble coming up with a goal for my project. At first, I wanted to research funeral directors to satisfy my own curiosity about them but now there is so much I want to cover that I am not sure where I want to go with it.

So far, I have visited a funeral director and I have been in constant contact with a mortuary science major at Southern Illinois University. Chris Branson is the funeral director that I visited. He is the new owner of Carlisle and Son Funeral Chapel in Mooresville, Indiana. I met him at the funeral home where he gave me a tour and told me quite a bit about the funeral business. Before he met me, he was volunteering at a paper drive in town so naturally, the conversation started with the work he does for the community.

Chris explained to me that part of being a funeral director is being involved with the community. He mentioned at least four different community organizations to which he belongs. The purpose of belonging to all of these organizations is to develop a good reputation among community members so they go to him when they need to organize a funeral. 

Basically, all of the work he does is to promote his funeral business. Everything he does reflects his business. If he goes out to dinner with his family, he must smile and greet everyone he recognizes. He must remain professional but at the same time, compassionate and human at all times. 

When I imagined a funeral director, I imagined a dark and morbid single man living alone but Chris totally contradicts that image. He is your average family man and overall just a nice guy. The mortuary science student also contradicts my idea of a funeral director. His name his Sam and he is also a nice guy. He is young, trendy, and has a positive personality. Following these two members of the funeral director sub-group would be a great argument against the morbidity of the funeral business.

Right now, I am reading The Undertaker by Thomas Lynch. I have only just begun the book but so far, Lynch seems pretty similar to Chris and Sam. Lynch is a poet but also a funeral director from a small midwest town just like Mooresville. I plan to reference this book quite a bit because Lynch says some very intriguing things about his life as an "undertaker". 

After talking to Chris and Sam I want to cover society's need for funerals, the pressures of being a funeral director, and death as a business.

Meeting with Chris

I'm not feeling very inspired to write but I felt like I needed to record all of this information right away before I forgot it all.

I met with Chris Branson today at Carlisle Funeral Home in Mooresville, Indiana. Thanks to him, I have a great starting point for my project. We covered the following things:

- Funerals as a business

- The value of a good reputation

- The struggles funeral directors face

- Controversies

- Traditions

- Having a family

- Education

- A funeral director's day-to-day

- Texts, Documentaries, and other secondary sources