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:
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
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