Week 9 and three quarters

Week 9 and three quarters

Actual Updates!: These things don’t necessarily pertain to my project, but they are funeral industry related things that happened in the, yes, 2 weeks since my last post. The project has been kind of quiet for the same excuses . . . um . . . reasons, I mean, that I have given before: School takes precedence. And, I will have you know, that my time has not been wasted in that regard. Oh, no! Since my last post, I took and passed with a 75% a mid-term in Accounting that quite a few people in the class failed; I wrote a short paper on E-commerce (snore), I’m gearing up to write another paper for the same class on Cloud Computing (bigger snore); and I got a better-than-average score on a quiz in Economics, which is an interesting class, but requires much less attention than my other 2 classes.

Halloween: I helped my boss, Heather Dvorak, hand out info, business cards and flowers at a Red Cross/Circle K event at the TRAC in Pasco, WA. It was a nice little event. If you are a resident of the Tricities and you’re looking for a nice, safe, and, most importantly, warm way to Trick-or-Treat with your kids next year, I recommend going to the TRAC. They had live music, a Zombie Walk, a blood drive, prizes that were raffled off (the husband of the event coordinator seemed to be the only person with the foresight to buy tickets since he seemed to be the only person winning), and Trick-or-Treating for the kids.

This was the first year of the event and they allowed the venders to use the booths for free. We arrived 2 hours early so we wound up with a pretty nice spot close to the door. They shut off the lights soon after the event started. This took a lot of the venders by surprise, but luckily, Heather brought lights for added flair and attention. This wound up making us one of the few booths people could actually see when they came in from the lighted entrance way.

I got to spend more time getting to know my boss, I met more of her family and most of my coworkers came in so I got to meet all of them. I’m realizing that this may be a little confusing, so I figure it’s about time I explain:

Dvorak Funeral Home is a very new business. They have a full staff, but very few people work there fulltime. It’s mostly a loose amalgam of funeral professionals and licensed agents for the various services we sell and provide. For now, it’s mostly run by Heather Dvorak out of a storefront in Pasco until we get a larger facility and a larger clientele base. In the mean time I am working at a Starbucks kiosk inside of an Albertsons grocery store in south Richland.

Side note: It’s a rather strange coincidence, but most of the people who graduated with me in the Mortuary program at Mount Hood CC who aren’t yet working full time in the industry or in related fields are working for espresso stands or other coffee shops. Weird. I’m sure there’s a Doctoral thesis in this somewhere. That is, if this occurs in more than just this small, anecdotal grouping that I’ve personally observed. Even then, correlation is not causation, and one must always be cautious when observing facts not to let one’s own confirmation biases influence the conclusion they draw.

Oops, sorry for the pedantic rant. Yeap, it’s confirmed. I’m a college student.

Where was I? Oh yeah, The event at the TRAC (which stands for Trade Recreation Agricultural Center for the non-Tricitians among you or for the Tricitians who had just as hard a time finding out what it stood for as I did, but gave up before I did). If I’d had the foresight, time, will or lighting to do so, I probably could have done the interview of Heather Dvorak I’ve been promising almost since the beginning of this project, but, well, I didn’t. Sorry, I'll get to it eventually.

Last Wednesday: I went to a WSFDA (Washington State Funeral Directors Association) / IEFDA (Inland Empire Funeral Directors Association) meeting in Spokane. For those not in the industry, Meetings like this occur routinely in the fall and spring in different regions of Oregon and Washington. I’m not sure what happens in other states, but I can’t imagine it being too dissimilar. These meetings allow funeral Directors and their staff to meet, greet, network and sneer at other Funeral professionals in their respective areas. In Washington State, these meetings have an educational portion, usually presented by a member of the WSFDA, which fulfills a portion of the continuing education credits needed to maintain a Funeral Directors and/or Embalmer s license in Washington. There’s often a speaker or speakers who give short talks on a subject relevant to the industry or the region. It starts with introductions, then a prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance (to the Flag of the USA, I felt like I might need to clarify for some reason), dinner is served, minutes are read, presentations given, the educational portion, old business, new business, closing, then dismissal.

I missed both of the meetings in our area last year because I had class both days in the fall and the spring. This year was no different, but I went anyway and apparently missed everybody moping about their mid-term scores in my Accounting class. I’m kind of glad I wasn’t there for that.

I went to the meeting in Spokane, rather than a closer one because I knew the meetings were usually in November, but I never heard about one in my area. I figured I was better safe than sorry driving the 2 and ½ hours and not missing out on the CE (continuing ed.) credits. Turns out I was not alone. No one on Dvorak’s Staff was told about the meeting in our area which was held in Walla Walla (1 hour drive, but still closer) Tuesday, the night before the meeting I went to. I found out about this meeting when I checked my phone and saw an E-mail from my boss explaining the situation. She was upset, but it turned out that it was a clerical error that was the cause for none of us being informed.

The meeting was in Downtown Spokane and my hayseed, backwoods self didn’t even consider the idea that I might need change for a parking meter when I got there. As far as I know, there are no parking meters in the Tricities. This is probably because the area is decentralized and very suburban-esque without much urban to speak of. Luckily, a few good Samaritans traded me change for bills so I didn’t have to park miles away from the where the meeting was being held. That would not have been pleasant. It’s cold in Spokane this time of year.

I was early and I ran into a few people from the graduating classes before me at Mount Hood, none of whom recognized me. Oh well, I probably couldn’t pick anyone from the 2012 and 2013 classes out of a lineup either. I got to finally meet Jewell Folsom, the lovely and overworked Executive Director of the WSFDA. I had spoken to Jewell throughout my time in the industry through e-mail and phone, but had never met her until now. She showed her support for my project and seemed genuinely happy to meet me, which I was kind of surprised by because I was sure I had annoyed her on occasion with my questions over the years.  And there will eventually come a day when I’ll stop being surprised that people think this project is a good idea, I’m sure of it.

I met and had some good little chats with a few Spokane area funeral directors. I even met a guy who works for a new funeral business that caters specifically to Catholics. I found this fascinating. According to this individual, the local Diocese decided, not long ago, that they needed a funeral home that catered exclusively to them and their congregants in the Spokane area. They called a few local funeral directors, bought a few facilities, and got up and running. Definitely something I plan to investigate further a little down the road.

Well, if I don’t slow down, I’ll be at this all night.

Here are a few articles I read lately that are somewhat relevant to this project and the funeral industry as a whole that I recommend you all check out.

Here is a great article that was recommended by a classmate. It’s about a small island, called Hart Island, in New York that has a mass grave of mostly indigents and the unclaimed. “Hart is dense with history; it’s been used as a prison for Confederate soldiers, a workhouse for the poor, a women's asylum, and a N[u]ke missile base during the Cold War.”: http://gizmodo.com/what-we-found-at-hart-island-the-largest-mass-grave-in-1460171716

On a somewhat lighter note, a website for The Infinity Burial Project describing their product the Mushroom Death Suit: http://infinityburialproject.com/burial-suit

They would probably hate it that I’m making this observation, but it reminded me of the second episode of the TV show Hannibal (I really love this show) where a killer was growing mushrooms on his still-living victims in the middle of the woods.

A radio news story about the 11 Nations of North America as divided by Colin Woodward.  “Woodward has studied American voting patterns, demographics and public opinion polls going back to the days of the first settlers, and says that his research shows America is really made up of 11 different nations”: http://www.npr.org/2013/11/11/244527860/forget-the-50-states-u-s-is-really-11-nations-says-author?utm_content=socialflow&utm_campaign=nprfacebook&utm_source=npr&utm_medium=facebook

If you’re curious why it’s called the Inland Empire (and no, it’s not because of the 2006 David Lynch): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_Northwest_(United_States)

A news story from a local ABC affiliate about the event at the TRAC: http://www.kvewtv.com/article/2013/oct/31/out-blood-blood-drive/

That’s it for now.

Like last time and all the times before, if you have any questions, concerns, suggestions, spelling or grammatical corrections (how will I ever learn if no one ever says anything), words of support or encouragement, confessions of love, hate-filled rantings of utter distain, or anything else for me, do not hesitate to email me at funhomeambo@gmail.com.

I’ll (not always) post a new one of these every week. Feel free to e-mail me and call me a loser if I don’t live up to my self-imposed deadline.

Hope you enjoyed it and I thank you for reading all of this or skipping to the end, whichever is the case.

Johnathan Hove

 P. S. Yes, that was a Harry Potter reference in the title. I saw an opportunity and I seized it.

Anubis Drives a Tan Suzuki Week 8

Anubis Drives a Tan Suzuki Week 8

Updates: Contacted another Funeral Director Blogger to see if they would be interested in participating in some sort of mutual promotion. I haven’t heard back from them yet. I sent the E-mail on Saturday so I haven’t lost hope just yet.

Just did a Google search for Funeral Director blogs because I’d realized I hadn’t yet done that very simple task. Found a few that I’ll check out at some point when I have more time.

And speaking of not having enough time, I think I might have been a little too ambitious last week when I promised the two segments in this week’s blog. Quite a bit of time will have to be spent researching the contrast/compare sanitary practices and requirements part, time that would be better spent on college coursework. It’s already mid-terms and I can’t remember the last time I saw any of my friends that I don’t work with or go to school with and I think it’s having a real effect on my mood. How I survived for two years in St. Hell (what I called St. Helens, OR. Clever, huh?) I will never know.

Oh, yeah. I forgot. I spent a lot of time getting drunk.

I will be at a Red Cross event at the TRAC in Pasco, WA on Halloween at the Dvorak booth. Not sure what I’ll be doing other than handing out candy, business cards and trying to get people to buy pre-need insurance. I’ll do my best to take notes and will have a full, if probably very boring, report in my next blog posting.

As promised (at least one of the things I promised), this week I will be telling a tale of how working in the funeral industry has led to a particularly awkward situation. I have plenty of stories like this, as do most funeral directors.

Sometime in the fall of 2010 I’d come up with the idea of making a quilt, or more accurately, a comforter out of Crown Royal bags. I had amassed a large collection of them because my main preoccupation while living in St. Helens, OR was drinking Crown Royal by the pint or by the fifth.

Before moving to St. Helens and starting college I’d always been very crafty. I made curtains, pillow cases, cargo pants pockets, a lamp made out of a mop and bucket, t-shirt quilts, I even made a dress once meant to look like the one worn by Zelda in The Legend of Zelda series games for the wife of a friend of mine.

Either because my brain was more than occupied with all of the learning and with the regurgitating of what I had learned into papers, homework and test scores, or because of all of the drinking I was doing, I hadn’t been working on any crafts, doing any sewing or anything really creative that wasn’t for school. Gathering the material for this quilt was an attempt to change all that.

I started by going around to all of the bars and restaurants that served alcohol in St. Helens and asking what they did with the bags that came with the bottles of Crown Royal. I quickly learned which bars and restaurants were the most fruitful in my quest and which ones were a waste of time. I also learned that, instead of getting their liquor from distributors like businesses do in Washington state, Oregon bars and restaurants got their liquor from privately owned liquor stores. Usually the closest ones to their business, but they would often shop around for the best prices.

Over time I developed a schedule for stopping by the best and most receptive and generous bars, restaurants and liquor stores, while occasionally finding new ones to check out. One place that I visited on a monthly basis was this nice little sit-down restaurant in downtown St. Helens. By the way, if you are ever planning on driving past St. Helens, OR on your way to somewhere else, drive down Columbia Blvd. all the way down to the river and stop for a lunch or dinner anywhere that serves food. Everywhere in downtown St. Helens that serves food, serves great food, and now that the Plantation House is gone, it’s all at a reasonable price.

One day while making my rounds, I went in to the little sit-down place and the waitress behind the bar asked me what I was planning on doing with all the bags. I told her about my idea and that I would need several hundred. She then told me that she had a large box full of them in a storage shed full of her and her boyfriend’s stuff. They had gotten the storage shed when they moved to Oregon from Wyoming. She had been planning on going through it soon and would just give me the whole box when she did. I thanked her for the thought and told her that, if it was more convenient then leaving it at the restaurant, she could just drop it off at the funeral home where I lived. She flinched a bit when I told her that, but at this point I had lived there for at least a year and a half so I was used to this reaction and thought nothing of it.

Later on, I dropped in at the same place several times hoping to see her so I could give her a little nudge about going through her storage shed. It was getting close to the time when I would graduate and move away and I wanted to get the box from her if I could before I left. I asked the sweet little blond girl behind the bar for the waitress by name to see if she was there. She said she wasn’t and then said something apropos of nothing that took a second to sink in, but nearly knocked me off my feet when it did.

She said “Isn’t it sad what happened to her boyfriend? And on Valentine’s Day too,”

I remembered Valentine’s Day. Specifically, I remember going on a first call on Valentine’s Day. At this point, going on first calls to Good Samaritan hospital, or Good Sam as we called it, was routine. My boss would call with a name, I’d suit up, get in the van, and head down Hwy 30 to Portland. This night wasn’t any different. I went, got the face sheet (a form that hospitals have on file with patient info like name, date of birth, date of death, next of kin, etc. They give a copy to funeral home staff when we come for a body) from the lobby, got the body from the hospital morgue, and headed back home to put the person in the cooler. When I got the body downstairs I unzipped the bag and stopped for a second. This guy was young, close to my age. This was unusual; most of the people I pick up from Good Sam were elderly. I looked at the face sheet and, sure enough, he was only a year older than me and the cause of death was traumatic brain injury. He didn’t look too bad to me, so I slid him on to a metal tray, set his features, and put him in the cooler.

Fast forward to the day the little blond hostess unwittingly informed me of her co-worker’s unfortunate circumstances. I thought back to the day I had told the waitress to drop the box off at the funeral home. The waitress that I now knew was, at that point, still grieving her boyfriend who she moved here all the way from Wyoming with, supposedly so he could take a job, the job where the brain injury occurred, on Valentine’s Day of all days. I had told her to drop them off at the place where she probably went to arrange his funeral. When she flinched, it wasn’t the normal everyday ‘oh, yeah. I forgot people actually did that as a job’ reaction, it was her reacting to the specter of death walking in to her work, probably the one place she could distract herself from the pain, and reminded her one more time of all that she had lost.

I never went back to that restaurant to ask for Crown Royal bags and a box full of them never showed up at the funeral home, not that I ever expected them to. I wish there was a more interesting post script to this story, but there isn’t. Being in this industry requires you to interact with the public and the fact that you’re going to run into people who’s families you’ve served out in the larger world is unavoidable. The only thing you can do is serve each family to the best of your abilities and help them to say goodbye to their loved ones in a way that brings more joy than pain.

Wow. That got more sentimental than I planned. Oh, well.

That’s all for now.

If you want to know more about the event I’ll be at at the TRAC here is the link: http://www.traconline.com/event-calendar-details.php?event_id=637 There’s not much info.

Like last time, if you have any questions, concerns, suggestions, spelling or grammatical corrections (how will I ever learn if no one ever says anything), words of support or encouragement, confessions of love, hate-filled rantings of utter distain, or anything else for me, do not hesitate to email me at funhomeambo@gmail.com.

I’ll post a new one of these every week. Feel free to e-mail me and call me a loser if I don’t live up to my self-imposed deadline.

Hope you enjoyed it and I thank you for reading all of this or skipping to the end, whichever is the case.

Johnathan Hove

Anubis Drives a Tan Suzuki Week 7 & 1/2           

Wednesday?

Yes, I know this is late, but I truly haven’t had the best week. Shifting schedules at work and an increase in school workload made me reevaluate my priorities. I had already given up a great deal of my social life when I started school again, and when I pit this blog against work and school, the blog came in third.

So, I hope this make you, the reader, think: ‘Hey, this guy made the mature choice. He put career and education first,’ and not: ‘This guy doesn’t have what it takes to follow through on this.’

I talked to my boss about giving me a more regular schedule and she agreed. Hopefully I’ll be able to balance things much better from here on out. Finals week may be a bit of a challenge, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

This Sunday I promise (I know, I know. We’ve heard this before) to have a full post. I’ll go into much more detail about some of the awkward and tragic situations working in this field has gotten me into. I’m even working on an idea concerning the health, safety, training and licensure requirements for Funeral Homes and Prep Rooms (where embalmings are performed) and comparing them to similar standards in another very different type of business that also deals with blood borne pathogens. And yes, it is a secret what the compared business will be, but only because if I told you, you might just do the research yourselves. Then there would be no point in me telling you because you already know.

That’s all for now.

Like last time, if you have any questions, concerns, suggestions, spelling or grammatical corrections (how will I ever learn if no one ever says anything), words of support or encouragement, confessions of love, hate-filled rantings of utter distain, or anything else for me, do not hesitate to email me at funhomeambo@gmail.com.

I’ll post a new one of these every week. Sometimes they’re a little late, but they always get posted eventually. Feel free to e-mail me and call me a loser if I don’t live up to my self-imposed deadline. Thank you, again, Charmane for not letting me slack off on this anymore than I already had.

Charmane is one of those rare breed of friends who believe and encourage you, who never lets you give up on your dreams, and always has time to lend a sympathetic ear. And . . . I just sat here for probably 20 min. trying to think of other ways to shower praise on her while not being overwhelmingly cliché, or inadvertently insulting all my other friends. The support and encouragement among my friends for this project has been universally positive, but Charmane has been the loudest and most . . . um, uh. I’m tired and my writer’s block keeps getting worse. Long story short: She’s an amazing woman and she deserves recognition. I just wish I had the words right now to thank her properly, but I don’t. I hope the thought at least will count for something.

Hope you enjoyed it and I thank you for reading all of this or skipping to the end, whichever is the case.

Johnathan Hove

Anubis Drives a Tan Suzuki Week 6: A day late and an update short.

Anubis Drives a Tan Suzuki Week 6: A day late and an update short.

            No updates this week again. School work took up most of my time last week and my interview subject fell ill. These hick-ups and lulls in activity along the way are to be expected. Rome wasn’t built in a day and >insert here some other cliché that follows disappointment.<

 I am fast becoming aware that most of the work that will be done on this project will have to take place in the few breaks from school and in the 4 months leading up to the start of the project. It has also occurred to me that it might be a good idea to have backup funeral homes in each state just in case the main one backs out for whatever reason. I never thought this was going to be easy and if it was, it probably wouldn’t be worth doing, right?

On the subject of Romance

I am willing to bet good money that no one ever got into the Funeral Industry “for the chicks” or if they did, left the profession quickly, or changed their priorities. I haven’t read any national statistics or anything, but based on my own experience, being a funeral director isn’t exactly a turn-on to the fairer sex. On more than one occasion I’ve had the mood on a date completely hit a wall or take a downward trajectory when I mentioned what I did for a living or what my associates degree was in. Being able to get full preservative distribution into a corpse with a compromised vascular system and/or being able to successfully upsell a casket, perhaps unsurprisingly, isn’t what most women look for in a perspective mate, at least, not in my experience.

            I’ve often wondered why, as a marginally educated man in my late twenties, I’m less successful in the romance department than I was as a high school dropout in my mid-twenties, working 70 hours a week for at or just over minimum wage.

Was it because 40 of those hours were spent working at an adult novelty store? Maybe. Was it because I was 50 lbs. lighter and looked 10 years younger back then? Probably. Is it because now I’m a glaring reminder of mortality and/or I remind most people of the faceless strangers in suits and ties that ran around in the background at Nanna’s memorial service? Nanna, the kindest and most gentlest person from their childhood? Who was all summer days, warm cookies, holiday dinners, warm embraces, and the pure innocence of childhood personified? Who they miss more than anything in the world? Who’s death marked the point in either adolescence or young adulthood when they realized that life is sometimes cold and unforgiving? The moment that it truly and permanently sunk in that they, and everyone they have ever loved or cared about, will die someday? Something tells me I shouldn’t rule it out.

I had someone tell me once that they had a friend who was a funeral director and that this friend told people he stocked shelves at the Gap rather than tell people he was a funeral director. He would lie to prevent the possibility of an awkward moment. I just can’t ever see myself doing that. Not only because I find it hard to lie to people, but simply because I find this profession just too fascinating (surprise, surprise given my present pursuit, right?), even if in doing so, it only serves to perpetuate my serial bachelorhood.

That’s it for now. I was planning on sharing some of the really awkward moments I’ve encountered either telling people where I worked or when people remembered where and in what context they first met me, but how else would I keep you all coming back? That is if anyone is even reading any of these.

That’s all for now.

Like last time, if you have any questions, concerns, suggestions, spelling or grammatical corrections (how will I ever learn if no one ever says anything), words of support or encouragement, confessions of love, hate-filled rantings of utter distain, or anything else for me, do not hesitate to email me at funhomeambo@gmail.com.

I’ll post a new one of these every week. Feel free to e-mail me and call me a loser if I don’t live up to my self-imposed deadline. Thank you, Charmane for keeping me motivated this week.

Hope you enjoyed it and I thank you for reading all of this or skipping to the end, whichever is the case.

Johnathan Hove

Anubis Drives a Tan Suzuki Week 5

Anubis Drives a Tan Suzuki Week 5

Updates: Yes, I actually have updates this week!

Wednesday: Called a few of my old classmates from Mount Hood to see if any of them could or would see about talking to their managers and/or owners at the funeral homes where they work to see if they would be willing to be host funeral homes for my project.

Called a funeral home in one of my Wish List cities (I’ll get to that in a bit) and never got a call back, but I am still determined and will persist.

Persistence:

            As you might have guessed, not having anything to show last week as far as progress really motivated me to at least have something for my readers this week, so I made some calls. I am also proud to report that I will, if all goes according to plan, my first interview for you all next week.

Nepotism:

            One great thing about going to an actual in-class Funeral Service Degree program is the experience of being around and interacting with people who, like you, are either in or have ambitions to eventually be in the Funeral Industry. They become more than just a name on an e-mail or a profile picture on LinkedIn. They become the people you think of first when you learn about a job opening in your area. I can’t count how many times I’ve e-mailed or texted friends I had in the program about openings I’d heard about in the Northwest, or even how many times I’d been contacted by someone letting me know about an opening they had heard of.

            It just goes back to what I’ve said before (or implied at least) about the Siblinghood of Funeral professionals, locally and nationally. The feeling that you get once you’ve spent time in this industry, that we all know how challenging and exciting this job can be. The feeling that when one of us succeeds, we all succeed.

The Wish List:

            When I first started this project, it occurred to me that there were a few cities or areas that I really wanted to visit during the course of this year-long trek. Places that would be rich in the types of stories I would love to hear and retell. If I can’t find a host Funeral home in the areas I preferred, so be it. I’ve said before that this project at all times must give way to the bounds of reality and practicality, but ultimately this is a labor of love for country and profession; a dream made manifest through persistence, hard word and a thousand ways of asking “please?” If fate does not allow the exploration of any or all of the places on this list, then so be it.

The Wish List is as follows:

Sedona, AZ

Why: It’s a hotbed of New-Age culture and counter-culture and I’d love to learn about the different types of funerals, traditional or otherwise, take place in that area.

St. George, Utah

Why: It’s a near-border town with a lot of history (yeah, I’ll just leave it at that)

Las Vegas, Nevada

Why: Not at all why you’d think. Normally I would avoid this type of place like the plague. Crowds of people, bright lights, and crowds of people, non-stop 24 hour activity, lots and lots of people all over the place all in a theme park type environment. I get hives just thinking about it. I don’t like crowds and I don’t gamble, but no one can deny the amount of history in the area, from Bugsy Siegel to the Blue Man Group. And as a kid who grew up with a view of one of the three areas that helped produce the first Atom Bomb, I’d love to visit one of the testing sites just over the mountains from Las Vegas.

Any of the Hydraulic Fracturing Boom-Towns, ND

Why: I’d like to hear how the large influx of population in the area has affected the local funeral industries.

Rowley or Ipswich, MA

Why: Because I’m a huge H.P. Lovecraft fan-boy and I would love to see the area that inspired the classic tale of horror, A Shadow Over Innsmouth.

Anywhere in Harlan County or Harlan, KY

Why: Just me being a huge fan-boy again. I love the show Justified and after watching the 1976 documentary Harlan County USA, I really would love to see the area from the perspective of the local funeral industry.

Anywhere in Carroll County, Virginia

Why: Genetics plays a role in this one. My mother’s family is originally from Carroll County and I would love to see my ancestral home.

Bangor, ME

Why: You guessed it, fan-boying again, this time over Stephen King. I grew up watching movies based on his books, I even read a few of them. And by grew up, I mean I watched Stephen King movies when I was a very young child and I turned out fine. Well, kinda.

That’s the list so far. I’m sure that I’m forgetting some. And I hope you all still take me seriously after reading all of that. That is, if you ever did in the first place.

Here is a link to the full documentary, Harlan County, USA:

http://www.ovguide.com/harlan-county,-usa-9202a8c04000641f8000000000335925

  

          Like last time, if you have any questions, concerns, suggestions, spelling or grammatical corrections (how will I ever learn if no one ever says anything), words of support or encouragement, confessions of love, hate-filled rantings of utter distain, or anything else for me, do not hesitate to email me at funhomeambo@gmail.com.

I’ll post a new one of these every week. Feel free to e-mail me and call me a loser if I don’t live up to my self-imposed deadline.

Hope you enjoyed it and I thank you for reading all of this or skipping to the end, whichever is the case.

Johnathan Hove

Anubis Drives a Tan Suzuki Week 4

Anubis Drives a Tan Suzuki Week 4

Updates: none this week.

            Though, I hinted at this possibility last week, I’m just as disappointed as you probably are. Lulls like this are to be expected from time to time given how long I’ve given myself to plan and do everything else.

Being in school full time doesn’t help either. In fact, after I post this I’m planning on taking an online quiz for my Info Tech Solutions class.

I was planning on posting an Interview of the amazing woman I’m lucky enough to call my boss, Heather Dvorak, but my school work and her busy schedule put a stop to that. Maybe next week.

To fill space I might as well announce my future plans to interview the leaders of a few local religious establishments. For example: the Ark of Salvation Church in Kennewick, the Buddhist Temple and the Islamic Mosque, both in West Richland and less than a 15 minute walk from where I live.

I would share some more biographical Info with you this week, but like I said, there’s school work to get to.

Like last time, if you have any questions, concerns, suggestions, spelling or grammatical corrections (how will I ever learn if no one ever says anything), words of support or encouragement, confessions of love, hate-filled rantings of utter distain, or anything else for me, do not hesitate to email me at funhomeambo@gmail.com.

I’ll post a new one of these every week. Feel free to e-mail me and call me a loser if I don’t live up to my self-imposed deadline.

Hope you enjoyed it and I thank you for reading all of this or skipping to the end, whichever is the case.

Johnathan Hove

Anubis Drives a Tan Suzuki Week 3

Anubis Drives a Tan Suzuki Week 3

Friday: I spoke to a few people at the National Funeral Directors Association and at the Funeral Service Foundation. Everyone seemed very receptive of my idea, but the woman I spoke to at the Funeral Service Foundation said that they don’t normally sponsor individuals, which is completely understandable.

           So, that’s all I have for updates this week. I could try and tell you that it was the last week before fall quarter at school, so I wanted to spend time with friends before all the chaos began and that I worked a lot this week, but, really, I know it’s no excuse.

            But, hey, this means I get to bore you with more autobiographical information that you didn’t want or even ask for! Isn’t it exciting?!

How I ended up in Funeral Service:

           It all started back in early 2008. The economy was booming. Home prices just kept going up and up and seemed like they’d never stop. And why shouldn’t they? The idea of “flipping” a house was so popular that there were a dozen reality shows on TV dedicated solely to following people who flipped houses. (needs citation) But that’s enough sarcastic 20/20 hindsight-ness. No one could have predicted the bursting of the housing bubble (other than a Nobel Prize winning economist, *cough* Paul Krugman). About that time I was turning 25 and it was time to stop being a bum, jumping from job to job and start thinking about what I was going to do with the rest of my life.

            Both of my parents had spent their whole careers as Letter Carriers for the USPS, or United States Postal Service, The only government agency that made money. And still would have if the government hadn’t made it prefund its retirement program for an extra 10 years (I’m not going to say which party was mostly responsible for this simply because I promised myself I’d keep politics out of this blog. Silly self-promises, always getting in the way). I keep getting side-tracked. Anyway, both parents being successful postal workers (meaning they stayed postal workers their whole lives and were never fired, not that they earned awards or made huge sacks of money doing it) made me think that, from a genetic predisposition standpoint, I might make a good postal worker as well.

           At the time, the way you became a postal worker was to sign up to take a multiple choice entrance exam. Exams were given at certain times during the year in each region, regions being large chunks of each state. The score you received on this exam determined where you landed on a call list. The higher the score, the higher on the list. Extra points for being a veteran of the US military, can’t argue with that. If you had the highest score you were the first person they called when there was a job opening.

  

          I, not wanting to spend any more time than I had to in the Tri-cities where I was born and raised, signed up for exams in every region in Washington state except for the ones east of the Cascades and south of Moses Lake. This meant I spent most of the spring and summer of 2008 traveling around all the parts of Washington that were actually evergreen taking the same exam over and over again. I never got more than an 87%. Meh.

For those of you not from ‘round here, there’s a large chunk of Washington, The Evergreen State, that’s just all desert and sagebrush and not particularly ‘Evergreen’. The Tricities is in the middle of that part.

            Then the economy took a header, Lehman Brothers, Fannie and Freddie, blah blah blah, stuff we all remember, and the USPS initiated a hiring freeze. Well darn, what to do now?

            One day I was lamenting my sad predicament in my own sardonic way in my mother’s kitchen while she sat on the couch in the other room watching TV and listened to me whine. She just happened to be watching an episode of Modern Marvels on Funeral Tech and said “Why not look into becoming a Funeral Director?” and, just as she suggested, I thought ‘Why not?’

           So, look into it I did. In Washington State, like most, you needed a license to be a Funeral Director and a separate license to embalm. You were more marketable if you had both. To get those licenses you needed a 2 year degree, a degree in Mortuary Sciences for embalming specifically, and you had to serve an apprenticeship (since then the term has been to Internship because in Washington we just have to be different), 2 years for embalming and 1 year for funeral directing, but both can be served concurrently.

           I was already familiar with apprenticeships from my experience with Trade Unions (I’ll explain later), and the 2 year degree, which normally would have thrown me given that I dropped out of high school, didn’t seem like much of a challenge because it was something that interested me. I figured that the only way that could get a degree was if it was something that really interested me.

Turns out I was right, or wrong given that I’m now in school for Business Management, or right again given that I’m now really interested in the field of Business Management.

           Funeral Directing was also a very practical field, in the way that it is relatively recession proof. And in the fall of 2008 that seemed, and still seems, like a really good thing. I’m also from a hearty German stock and I was raised with the philosophy: Why follow your dreams if it means you’re going to starve to death before you achieve them? Do something that will allow you to feed yourself even if it’s soul-crushingly tedious and/or boring. You can pursue your silly flights-of-fancy in the few minutes you have at home before you collapse into bed at night.

I may be over-exaggerating a bit, but you get the idea.

           I looked into local colleges that offered a 2 year Mortuary Sciences degree. At the time there was only one that had an accredited program, Mount Hood Community College in Gresham, OR. 2 more have since sprung up in Washington and, I’m pretty sure they’re both now accredited, but neither of them have Doug Ferrin as their Program Director and until that changes they will both be inferior in my book.

           I found out what was required, I took the entrance exam, bombed the math portion, but that was workable, got all my shots (hep. B, TB titers and something else I can’t remember were required) and submitted my application. And miracle of miracles, I got in for academic year 2009.

           At this point all I needed to do was figure out how I was going to feed and house myself for the 2 years needed to complete the degree. I first considered buying some sort of motorhome or RV and park in some RV park near the school, but all I could find in anything resembling my price range was something akin to a small Ford Econoline van with a tiny kitchen, sleeping area in the back. I don’t think the thing even had a bathroom. Lot rents in the area of Gresham were also too high, so that idea was scrapped. In hindsight, I could have probably parked it in the back parking lot of MHCC (Mount Hood Community College) by the gym and used the showers and bathrooms there when the doors were unlocked. This, of course, would have probably made me quite the campus creeper and would have, most likely, seriously affected my love life.

           Luckily, I had contacted the Oregon Funeral Directors Association and they had passed my resume off to Columbia Funeral Home in St. Helens, OR and John Potter, the owner of Columbia Funeral Home (and a Saint of the highest order for not firing me at any point during my 2 years there), called me up, gave me an interview, and then gave me a job and a place to stay for the 2 years I went to school. I am forever grateful, as you might have guessed.

            This brings up a good point. If you are a Funeral Director, Apprentice Funeral Director or are an aspiring Funeral Director, for the love of God, join your State Association. The benefits are incalculable. Sure, it might cost a little bit of money, but think of that as an investment. The OFDA got me a job while I was in school and the WSFDA posted my resume on their website back in May and I’ve gotten at least one call a month from someone who saw it offering me a job. I had to turn them all down because they were in other parts of the state or country and I want to finish my Bachelors, but still! At least once a month! Most also provide continuing education, which is required in some (if not all, I’m not sure about that part) states. Just join, you’ll thank me for it later.

            That’s it for now, more to come in the following weeks and months. Probably much more if I don’t get off my lazy, working-full-time-and-just-started-school-again-full-time butt and start doing something update worthy.

            Like last time, if you have any questions, concerns, suggestions, spelling or grammatical corrections (how will I ever learn if no one ever says anything), words of support or encouragement, confessions of love, hate-filled rantings of utter distain, or anything else for me, do not hesitate to email me at funhomeambo@gmail.com.

Here are links to the NFDA: http://nfda.org/

And to the Funeral Service Foundation. Check out their scholarships if you are planning on attending school to become a Funeral Director: http://www.funeralservicefoundation.org/

And to FAMIC, a great program run by the Funeral Service Foundation: http://famic.org/

I’ll post a new one of these every week. Feel free to e-mail me and call me a loser if I don’t live up to my self-imposed deadline.

            There’ll be a little bonus this week to those of you who’ve joined my Facebook group. If you’re not a member yet, join.

Hope you enjoyed it and I thank you for reading all of this or skipping to the end, whichever is the case.

Johnathan Hove

Anubis Drives a Tan Suzuki Week 2

Updates:

Sunday: I created a Facebook group to keep everyone updated on the project. If you’re not a member of the group, join. It’s open to everyone.

I e-mailed my boss at Dvorak Funeral Home in Pasco, WA and she put a link on her website which you can check out here: http://www.dvorakfuneralhome.com/

I also had a lot of my friends share the link I posted on my page. Thank you to all of them for their support of this project.

Tuesday: I got a lot of good Ideas for my project from my friend Janine, who knows a lot more about blogging than I do. Thank you, Janine.

Thursday: My boss, Heather Dvorak at Dvorak Funeral home, informed me that she had contacted Kenneth Howe at Holman Howe Funeral Home in Lebanon, MO and he agreed to let his establishment be a host funeral home for this project.

Friday: Spoke to Kenneth Howe and confirmed his willingness to participate in this project. I also learned that in 2012 he was selected as the Funeral Director of the Year by American Funeral Director Magazine.

I also E-mailed all of the funeral director’s associations that currently have working e-mail addresses (48 total). So far I’ve only heard back from one, but considering that it’s the weekend, even one is more than I expected.

So, as you can see, it has been a pretty exciting week. I’m still overwhelmed with the outpouring of support I’ve gotten from everyone. Even the fact that I already have a funeral home that has agreed to host is a bit hard to comprehend. I just hope I can keep up this level of momentum moving forward.

Questions and Concerns Addressed:

In this section I will attempt to address the very reasonable questions and concerns brought up by the people after reading my last post.

The first one was why I felt it was important to mention that I will make sure to portray each funeral home in a positive light. I felt it was important to reassure any potential host funeral home managers and owners that I will not be coming there to write any sort of lurid exposé of their funeral home. Doing so would be shooting myself in the foot, especially since I will be posting my profiles and interviews weekly. If I were to post something negative about a funeral home in, for example, California that the owner of the North Dakota funeral home didn’t like and they decided to pull out of the project then I would have to scramble to find another funeral home in North Dakota to profile after I’m already underway. I’ve also taken several business law classes over the course of my academic career and I am well aware of the concept of libel. The last thing that I want to do is spend the rest of my life paying for a small gaffe written during what was supposed to be the last great adventure of my young life.

The next question I keep getting is: why not film it? And/or: Why not contact some of the major cable networks and pitch it as a show? So far, my proclamations that I’m too ugly or not photogenic enough for TV have fallen on deaf ears and/or been met with cries of “What about Honey Boo-Boo?” to which, I have no argument. My concern with filming my adventure was that this might make for too much work for me on top of everything else during and at the end of the project, but like my good friend Brandon Goode pointed out: I will not be able to go back and film it afterward. So on these two points, I have bowed to the pressure put on me by the majority. I will try to budget for one, maybe two dashboard cams and perhaps a hand held camera with a stand for interviews. I will also contact the major networks, but only after I’ve got a few more funeral homes signed on to this project. I feel there is no point in trying to pitch such a concept until I’m reasonably certain that it will actually happen.

I’ve also come to the conclusion that I might need to narrow my focus. The main Ideas so far are: 1. Exploring regional cultural and religious diversity through the lens of funeral service, 2. How each funeral home is adapting and has adapted historically to changes in cultural and religious diversity locally, and 3. What each staff member of the funeral homes I visit has learned through their experiences in the funeral industry about the cultural and religious diversity of the areas where they live and work.

Full disclosure: these are all things that have interested me and things that I have become more eager to learn about through my own experiences in the funeral industry in Washington State (where I currently live) and Oregon and I am very interested to learn more about how things are in different parts of the country, but I’ll be the first to admit that this whole idea grew out of my desire to drive across the country spending more than just a few hours in each state, which, is what I’d probably end up doing if I just saved up the gas money and just went without any other goal than to just say that I did it. I knew that in order to actually fully appreciate and experience this beautiful country of ours I needed to have more than just the occasional conversations with bored gas station attendants.  Increased time spent in each state requires increased funding for the trip.  In this brave new world of crowd-funding, all that is needed for funding is an idea that will get people interested and excited, which, somehow, someway, I seem to have stumbled upon through a combination of my background and personal interest. This is all a shock to me in the extreme considering that I have always seemed to be the oddball in whatever group of people I’ve been placed in or associated with throughout my live, even in the Funeral Service program at Mount Hood I was considered a bit of an oddball.

The Title:

Another thing I forgot to cover last week was where I came up with the name for this project, Anubis Drives a Tan Suzuki.

First off, it did not occur to me that when you lump the title together as all one word, as you must do in these situations, that you could conceivably read it as: Anubis Drive Satan Suzuki. This was not at all my intention. To paraphrase a common saying during the McCarthy era: I am not now, nor have I ever been associated with any favorable outlook on Satan. No one has mentioned the possible misreading yet, but I figured I’d try and get ahead of the curve.

Anubis, as many of you might know, was the Egyptian God most associated with embalming. This might be a bit of a stretch as it refers to me because, and don’t laugh, I’m still not entirely confident enough in my own abilities to be left alone to embalm on my own. If left with a body and a deadline, I’m sure I’d just nut-up and do it, but given the fact that I’m not yet fully licensed, that would probably not be a good idea from a legal standpoint. Luckily, no one as yet has put me into that position.

The “Drives a Tan Suzuki” part is self-explanatory.

Let’s get Autobiographical:

I know I promised that I would share a bit of my background this week, but too much happened and too much was left unexplained last week that I felt my time writing and your time reading was better spent with me updating and clarifying.

However, I do feel that I at least owe my audience the story of how I named my car, The H. F. S. Laura, since she will be a crucial part of the story until practicality and the Pacific Ocean demand that I leave her behind. The H. F. S. part is a recent addition. It stands for His Four-door Sedan. The “Laura” part is a much more interesting and slightly more embarrassing story, but it is a story that must be told for the sake of honesty and transparency.

As you might have guessed by now, she was named after a woman, a one-that-got-away. I know the phrase is usually “THE one that got away,” but with someone like me who has such cowardice and such a short attention span when it comes to women, there are often many ones-that-got-away.

Back in 2005/ 2006 I was 22/23 and worked at a gas station/convenience store at the south end of West Richland, WA. About once a month or so this 6 foot plus blond Goddess with a smile that could melt the polar icecaps and doom us all, would come in and buy a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Before I ever worked up the courage to ask her her name or gathered up enough wits when she was there to simply look at her debit card for her name, I just longingly referred to her as The Ben & Jerry’s Girl.

I worked at this gas station for a year and never worked up the courage to ask her out. By the time I put in my two weeks’ notice so I could get a better job, I hoped against hope that she would come in one last time, but she never did.

A year or so later some friends of mine and I decided on a spur-of-the-moment trip to the coast, about 6 or 7 hours away. Because it was probably a good idea to have money for gas on this adventure, I stopped by the Albertsons grocery store where I worked to pick up my latest paycheck.

As soon as I walked into the main part of the store, there she was. She was just as beautiful as she was when I first saw her, as she always was, and probably always will be, but much to my horror she was with one of the most handsome men I have ever seen. I’m not gay in the least, but I can spot when and to what extent I’m out-matched by a member of my own gender. And boy was I ever out-matched. He was one of those guys who exude charm and personality from every pour, leaving a trail of envious men and lustful women in his wake.

I was, in a word, devastated. If she could get a man like that, how could I ever hope to compare or compete? All was lost.

At that point I had had my Aerio for about a year and I still hadn’t settled on a name yet. In my pain and my sorrow, I named her Laura to remind me to never miss an opportunity again, to always take life by the horns and wrestle it and all of its cruelty to the ground.

So far it hasn’t worked. I forget all the time to do all of those very inspirational and cliché things I just mentioned and I’m still a coward when it comes to the fairer sex, for the most part. Oh, well.

I still feel sorry for my friends who were with me that night and had to listen to me whine and moan all the way to and from Ocean Shores. I hope they forgive me.

Postscript: Laura and I are now part of the same social circle. She and most of my friends don’t know this story (until now, at least). And I’m now good friends with Don, the über handsome guy she was with that fateful night. In addition to living up to my initial impression, he’s also very smart, a great conversationalist and an excellent cook. Hands off ladies, he’s taken. Not by Laura, but someone equally as lovely.

With the passing of time I’ve realized how silly I had been that night, for reasons that are obvious and for others I will not get into, but I’ve been told that it is bad luck to rename a vessel. So, my tan 2006 Suzuki Aerio will remain Laura for as long as I own her.

Like last time, if you have any questions, concerns, suggestions, spelling or grammatical corrections (how will I ever learn if no one ever says anything), words of support or encouragement, confessions of love, hate-filled rantings of utter distain, or anything else for me, do not hesitate to email me at funhomeambo@gmail.com.

I’ll post a new one of these every week. Feel free to e-mail me and call me a loser if I don’t live up to my self-imposed deadline.

After this week, I’m going to leave next week’s topic up in the air. Hopefully I’ll have more updates, but if not then much more Bio.

Here are links to my funeral home’s website: http://www.dvorakfuneralhome.com/

And to the Holman Howe Funeral Homes, my first confirmed host: http://www.holmanhowe.com/

Hope you enjoyed it and I thank you for reading all of this or skipping to the end, whichever is the case.

Johnathan Hove

Statement of Purpose:

            The purpose of this Blog will be to document my progress towards my ultimate goal of visiting 51 funeral homes in all 50 of the States in the United States of America +Washington D.C. in roughly 52 weeks. The idea being that I will drive my car to each funeral home and work from Thursday to early Tuesday at each location. I have experience in the industry so I know that weekends are usually the busiest times. I'll help with first calls, help set up services, sit in on arrangements (if the family and funeral home permits me to of course), help dig graves, anything. The whole time I will document my experiences, write up some notes on each town or city I visit and interview the staff and the owners of each funeral home, all while making sure that I portray each funeral home and community in a positive light.

            My hope is to bring a greater understanding to the public about what it is to live and work in the funeral industry as well as learning and teaching more about the rich cultural diversity this beautiful country of ours has to offer.

            Growing up in a non-religious household, I was not informed about religion, religious practices or customs. About 95% of my current knowledge about such things comes from my time in the industry. In my experience talking with friends and peers, I’m not alone. I’m willing to speculate that a large segment of the general public are unaware of the ways and customs of cultures and religions other than their own or even how richly diverse and varied the ethnic and cultural landscape of their own communities really are. I hope to change that with this project in whatever small way that I can.

            I know what you’re thinking now, that I’m some high-minded idealist hoping to change the world. That would be nice, but no. At best I’m hoping that I will be informative and entertaining while filling you, the reader, with the same type of envy and wanderlust that I experience when reading about road trips and cross-country travel.

When:

            Given the vast scope and preparation needed in order to complete this project, I’ve given myself a year to prepare. My hope is to start sometime around the last week of September, 2014. I'm figuring a year will be enough time to plan everything, drum up interest in my project and to raise the much needed funds to do so. I am a college student who will have sizable loans that I'll have to start paying on or deferring 6 months after I graduate.

I am hoping to raise the funding for my project through Kickstarter (I’ll Include the link when it’s all up and running) and through whatever other means necessary, including, but not limited to: sponsorships through trade magazines, national, state and local industry organizations, or even from the funeral homes that, through the kindness of their hearts, choose to host me while I’m on this national adventure. I’ll layout an itemized breakdown of my proposed budget on the eventual Kickstarter page as well as later blog postings.

Getting funeral homes to sign on and host me will be a project in and of itself. Even if my success rate is 1 in 4, that still means I will have to contact at least 204 funeral homes individually. Though, if and when a funeral home does sign on to this project (and yes, I’m speaking now to the segment of my audience that is a potential host funeral home) their funeral home will possibly benefit from exposure to a national audience. They can even promote the project and their participation in it locally, with my full permission, and garner goodwill in their communities. Also, the less-than-a-week visit will give me enough time to get a good feel for the host facility without staying so long that I wear out my welcome.

            As I mentioned before, I’m also a college student. I’m a student in the BAS in Business Management student at Columbia Basin College in Pasco, Washington. My expected Graduation date is June of 2014. This is another reason for my year-from-now timeline, I’d like to graduate.

How:

            As you might have guessed from the title, I drive a tan Suzuki, an Aerio in fact. She is the H.F.S. Laura (I’ll explain in the biographical post next week where and how she got her name). She’s also a 2006 model year with close to 100k miles on her. She’s gone with me everywhere in the last seven years. Bought her new with 23.0 miles on her; she’s been mine her whole life. I’ve spent more nights than I can count sleeping in either the front or back seats on long road trips and I am not at all afraid to do so again. If a host funeral home chooses to allow me to put down a sleeping bag or put me up in a staff member’s home it will be greatly appreciated, but not at all expected.

            I plan to hit each state in a zig-zag, north, south, north again pattern, as hopefully illustrated here: (Not sure if I’ll get the link to work. I’m new to this whole blogging thing) 

https://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=West+Richland,+WA+99353&daddr=Portland,+OR+to:Los+Angeles,+CA+to:Phoenix,+AZ+to:Las+Vegas,+NV+to:Salt+Lake+City,+UT+to:Boise,+ID+to:Billings,+MT+to:Cheyenne,+WY+to:Denver,+Colorado+to:Albuquerque,+NM+to:San+Antonio,+TX+to:Oklahoma+City,+OK+to:Wichita,+KS+to:Lincoln,+NE+to:Sioux+Falls,+SD+to:Fargo,+ND+to:Minneapolis,+MN+to:Des+Moines,+IA+to:St.+Louis,+MO+to:Memphis,+TN+to:Little+Rock,+AR+to:Jackson,+MS+to:New+Orleans,+LA+to:Mobile,+AL&hl=en&ll=37.509726,-79.541016&spn=37.540074,86.044922&sll=46.277211,-119.327152&sspn=0.008053,0.021007&geocode=FVsiwgIdUDbj-CnNjpVVAXCYVDENAm6zj12tNA%3BFfyhtgIdERyw-CkndKl9CwuVVDGRhdH25rk2HA%3BFYqYBwIdm77z-CkT2ifcXcfCgDH0CEYlb98v4g%3BFblh_gEdy-JR-SnLeaFQ7RIrhzGsG0o1-MdpjA%3BFdYQJwIdMJoi-SnRffWkgre-gDGjebPV5tXMOg%3BFcv1bQIdma1U-SntMdGIlD1ShzHKMU1IoLdTWw%3BFZaRmQIdsbQS-SmdtEfpcvGuVDGbnWc2m5hbmg%3BFfaYugIdLmmI-SmXnfqIiG9IUzFQtXnx1FY1Nw%3BFQ2_cwId6pHA-SmT73MudjhvhzErLZePQTAKsQ%3BFd9YXgIdcg---SnPFx8jqoBrhzHWNoon-PSOEQ%3BFS-_FwIduUKl-Sl7gwnT3QoihzH99tm4zvjTwA%3BFfr5wAEdRBsh-imvDtAEr1hchjG8FqAQO-FWCA%3BFSgxHQIddAQw-imB0vh-VIqthzGdOk_RdBKiMw%3BFTkWPwId0cQy-iktGH_Satu6hzE-PdN0v9WWkw%3BFc6pbgIdMcE8-illElbKWb6WhzG53tUfm4U6Yw%3BFReFmAIdWXg8-inXrL3gmLSOhzHP_LKoOv-V3g%3BFQJKywId1Ro7-ilFcWeEjcvIUjHKqpEnpTCqgQ%3BFSZkrgIdEt1w-im9u3eTkDOzUjEH7novhMmfkw%3BFSHGegIdbqNr-innHmHBpJnuhzGy5JEmUSgAcQ%3BFbpmTQIdlKqf-in5ju36qbTYhzFb4Lsiyuo5vg%3BFd5WGAIdLPah-ilFl0PqHn7VhzH-thpgFfOT0Q%3BFXEwEgIdxcV_-imbVh-hNKHShzEXW_MNEPUFNA%3BFQXX7AEdluOf-ikhG3SQfysohjGgOPBB5M0TBw%3BFVoEyQEdFJ6h-illghGyVKQghjG00yJe6FsG2w%3BFdVb1AEd0pHA-imp-EzxHU6aiDEanol3VA7oTA&oq=mob&t=h&mra=ls&z=4

Given that Google will only let you put in 25 destinations at a time and the fact that I haven’t gotten approval from any host funeral homes yet, this is obviously just a rough sketch, but you get the idea, that is, if the link works.

            That is the plan as it now stands, but, like life, it is subject to change due to practicality, funding, or just good old fashioned reality.

            If you have any questions, concerns, suggestions, spelling or grammatical corrections (how will I ever learn if no one ever says anything), words of support or encouragement, confessions of love, hate-filled rantings of utter distain, or anything else for me, do not hesitate to email me at funhomeambo@gmail.com.

            I’ll try to post a new one of these every week. I am about to start school again in a few weeks so it may be hard, but I do my best to be vigilant. Feel free to e-mail me and call me a loser if I don’t live up to my self-imposed deadline though.

            Be sure to read next week’s entry where I talk a little (quite a bit) about myself, what lead me into funeral service, and what lead me to decide to do this project.

            Thank you for reading all of this or skipping to the end, whichever is the case.

Johnathan Hove