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Today's Transgender Day of Remembrance Honors the Dead
Who gives last rites to the priest? Who installs a new crown in the dentist's mouth? Who buries the gravedigger? Or, more importantly, who gives the eulogy when a funeral home dies?
If you're the family that has held sway over Griffin Funeral Home for 60 years, you give it yourself. The historic, African-American-owned parlor at 32nd and King Drive is closing its doors come New Year's Eve. Griffin has played host to such final goodbyes as those of Jesse Owens and Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. It also shares in Chicago's glorious (and infamous) past, nestled on a plot that once belonged to Camp Douglas, a Civil War internment camp known for its abominable conditions. What a legacy! As it happens, initial founder Ernest Griffin discovered (after he had bought the land) that his grandfather had joined the Union Army at Camp Douglas in 1864. Ah, serendipity.
Ernest died in 1995; remaining matriarch Alyce Griffin, 89, runs the home along with her children. Alas, she's ready to retire and is unwilling to turn ownership over to anyone else, so she's selling the land on which her business is built. There will no doubt be a service for the home itself before the doors are closed forever. Chicagoist plans to raise our glass in memoriam at the stroke of the clock ... provided we haven't blacked out by then.
Image via the Illinois Institute of Technology.
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"There is no ancient
gentleman but gardeners,
and grave-makers,and the Scripture says "Adam digged", could he dig without arms? I'll put another
question to thee, if thou answerest me not to the
purpose, confess thyself"
-The Grave Digger to Hamlet
It's gettin Spooky in here
It's gettin Spooky in here
(Sung to the beat of that catchy track in Barbershop I. I am a honky, so I don't know what's down.)
Yes B-Port it is Spooky down here in the grave
For I have not seen barber shop or barber shop, two or three, but I do know Yorkic!
So tell me Bridgeport boy, are you him? A clown of infinite jest of the most excellent fancy, but soon to be transformed into dirt? Like the politician who thinks he can cheat death by talking a man out of his horse? Or a rich noble women thinking Marshall Fields will save her? Or perhaps a bling bling rapper's dear dead Mom who forgot about the message from the skull of a dead king's jester to a finely appareled women, that no matter how much make-up she uses, she will soon be just another skull to be attended too by, the grave digger's spade!
Alas, poor Yorick! I know You! I know you will!
-Curtain-
Is that some sort of threat Spook?
For the record, I happen to like George Tillman, and most of his films. I happen to feel very sorry for Kanye West right now. And I happen to think that the death of Field's is the sign that the economic boom we've experienced post-World War II is nigh, and the apocolypse is upon us.
We're not that far apart Spook, we really aren't. You just need to be a little bit more inconsistent in your ramblings, and a little less troll-y, and whiney-take-your-ball-and-go-home-when-things-don't-go-my-way (SP00K).
ahhhh screw it Bridge Portie, its only Hamlet, and since I don't know who George Tillman is, lets just call it even and neat as good scotch in a crystal tumbler
have i mentioned i love you lately, spook? any friend of hamlet is a friend of mine.
Spook I enjoyed your prose.
Okay Spook, it's a draw then, we agree to agree and call it a day. George Tillman is the forefather of a nice little film called Soul Food, the now-defunct series Soul Food, and of course, the Barbershop franchise. He's one down brother, because he made positive, family-values themed black films when it was passe to do so (Soul Food), and of course, took it to that coward JJ Sr. during Barbershop - remember when JJ Sr. demanded censorship for the remarks a fictitious character (played by Cedric) made about Rosa Parks, neglecting to mention that what he was really pissed about was that before Cedric's character said "Fuck Rosa Parks," "Fuck Jesse Jackson..." Tell me you remember this, please?
I appreciate the love,hopefully with my revelation that I know hamlet, but am not exactly a friend,we can still be friends :-)
Like Captain Ahab, old Hamlet became obsessed with violence and revenge driven by a more fraternal than paternal Ghost. The boy made a choice, matched with symbolic scorn for Ophelia, it sounds like a certain warrior nation to me.
But I appreciate the grave digger reminding us to keep track of our humanity on a daily basis, because most of us don’t. Some say to be human means (Latin) the act of burying, but I aint gonna get into that, but I believe it.
Bridgeport
Yes I do remember the "fuck Jesse Jackson", which I’ve said too, but I say it with real historical perspective of a man who once stood for something as part of a grand tradition and like another shake spearing play got greedy and now cynically distorts it! But too many folks say fuck Jesse Jackson because they hated him even when he stood for “the people”. I am not of the school that “my enemies’ enemy is my friend”
And to bad the “Fuck Rosa Parks” remark was said outta B.E.T. stereo type stupidity, instead of being raised as an angry question from one generation to people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the NACCP, Urban League, etc, etc.
Questions about how before Rosa parks “sat down” a young 15 year old girl named Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat to a white passenger with out planning and the support of the civil rights movement includding the NACCP where Rosa Parks worked as a secretary. If the “Fuck Rosa Parks” had been directed as part of the fact that Claudette was shunned by the elders of her community (and continues to be) because she was from "the wrong side of the tracks" and was pregnant I’d understand. I'd also understand if the Fuck Rosa Parks was directed at the fact that her estate sued a progressive hip hop group for using her name in a progressive loving fashion in a song, just because the song was a hip hop song.
Yea I get tired of hearing about Rosa Parks in a vacuum too, But to say "Fuck Rosa Parks" just to get a rise and get paid is dangerous and blind stupidity.