Surprises, segregation in graveyards
It turns out that America’s graveyards are much more than keepers of our bodily remains until the organisms within the soil reclaim everything. Cemeteries tell us about our beliefs, principles, economics and cultural values, says Greg Melville in this fascinating examination of how we treat, and mistreat, our dead.
Given the topic, Melville moves briskly and with a keen eye for connections, trends and the absurd.
America’s favorite place to scatter cremains? It may be Central Park in New York City, although the high concentration of calcium in cremains makes it advisable to spread them out widely.
Dying is big business in America; Melville writes that the “death industrial complex” generates $20 billion in annual sales.
The book peeks over the horizon at what’s ahead in the dying business, given how many urban cemeteries are full or nearly so, and having trouble maintaining themselves because they lack new income.
The book’s most powerful sections are those explaining the lengths whites often went to so no Black people would be buried nearby. We shunned early Chinese immigrants when they died, despite their roles in building the transcontinental railroad and western cities. We looted Indian graves and built on top of Indian burial grounds. Not even in death could Black people escape segregation. The book documents how in many states, cemeteries were segregated and remain that way.
Melville has researched, reported and written a powerful book that not only summons us to embrace equitable treatment of all Americans in death but also in life. It’s up to us to remedy the
injustices of the past in America’s burial grounds because as Melville reminds us, “the dead have no voice.” — Jeff Rowe, Associated Press
Anyone who has followed the TV industry
since broadcasts went color will know the name Dick Ebersol. And while those insiders and diehards are the likely audience of this memoir, it’s a fun read for anyone who’s curious about the stories behind some of the biggest shows on television in the last half a century. Turns out Duncan Dickie Ebersol, born 1947 in Torrington, Connecticut, had a hand in a lot of them.
Ebersol’s career started as the first Olympics researcher for ABC Sports, traveling the world to gather stories about the athletes competing at the 1968 Winter Games in Grenoble, France. There was a time when fans watching the Olympics couldn’t Google the name of an athlete and read their bio in seconds. It was Ebersol’s job to find those stories, then make sure the on-air talent and production teams at ABC featured them to attract and retain viewers. It’s a template Ebersol carried over from ABC to NBC Sports when he took over the top
Olympics job there in 1989, helping make NBC the “Olympics Network.”
Ebersol also played a key role launching another iconic TV institution, “Saturday Night Live.” Producer Lorne Michaels is now more synonymous with the groundbreaking sketch comedy show, but it was Ebersol who hired him and made sure NBC executives and sponsors gave him the space he needed to make TV history.
There isn’t a lot in these pages not already reported, but Ebersol does treat readers honestly.
Ebersol bookends the memoir by recounting his personal tragedy, the death of his son Teddy at age 14 in 2004. Teddy and his brother, Charlie, were with their dad in a plane that crashed shortly after takeoff on a snowy day in Colorado. It was a private plane, afforded by Ebersol’s powerful job, and he has lived every day since with a sadness most of us will never know.
There is much more in these pages worth reliving, and Ebersol gives readers added insight into how the moments that made them laugh, cry and cheer at their televisions came to be.