Francis Illington

7 Articles

REPLAY. Unknown regions

Francis Illington

Editor’s Note: This post first appeared February 11, 2011

Describing—let alone defining—the act of death is a fool’s errand. After all, how does one speak of eternity, whether spent in unremembered inky nothingness or fluttering around on angelic wings?

Still, some of us come closer than others in peaking behind the epistemological, spiritual and otherwise cosmological curtain separating the living from the dead. I’ve always liked the term “the sweet hereafter,” even if it’s hard to beat German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who called death “the supreme festival on the road to freedom.” Though a little on the cheery side, it’s important to note that Bonhoeffer did not suffer fools (or evil) gladly, and for his candor on matters ecclesiastical and political was executed by the Nazis at the Flossenburg concentration camp, weeks before its liberation by Allied troops.

Francis Illington

Those Were the Good Old Days!

Francis Illington

Below are headlines and subheads of several nineteenth-century wire stories that appeared in the local press of a small Midwestern city.

Oh, for the days when educated people referred to the mentally ill as “lunatics!” Or, better yet, when unfettered Gilded Age capitalism dismissed the need for beefed-up building codes to protect society’s most vulnerable! The latter point is enough to make the most antediluvian Tea Partier or misguided Paulian libertarian pine for the return of an imagined sepia-toned past of American greatness when our nation was unshackled by the burdens of intrusive government regulations.

Of course, all of this clown ass-ery nonsense brings to mind a quotation from American journalist Franklin Pierce Adams (1881-1960): “Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.”

Francis Illington

My Kingdom for a Urinal Cake Tumblr

Francis Illington

The microblogging platform known as Tumblr (why in the Internet Age have we shed all reasonableness when it comes to spelling is a mystery to this writer) is a perennial fave among those who like to while away the hours looking at pictures of kittens or babies or ponies or rainbows or attractive OWS coeds. For the more ambitious, there are tumblrs ranging from “Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things” to “Michael Buble Being Stalked by a Raptor” to “Unhappy Hipsters.”

Francis Illington

Unknown regions [Updated]

Francis Illington

Describing—let alone defining—the act of death is a fool’s errand. After all, how does one speak of eternity, whether spent in unremembered inky nothingness or fluttering around on angelic wings?

Still, some of us come closer than others in peaking behind the epistemological, spiritual and otherwise cosmological curtain separating the living from the dead. I’ve always liked the term “the sweet hereafter,” even if it’s hard to beat German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who called death “the supreme festival on the road to freedom.”

Francis Illington

‘Hope crushed to earth will rise again in the bosom of a dyspeptic …’

Francis Illington

As part of my job, I spend several or more hours a week winding through reel after reel of local newspaper microfilm. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that there’s no end to the wonders of nineteenth century life. Take, for example, advertisements for patent medicines. See a partial transcription below from a notice for Hostetter’s Stomach Bitters that appeared in a January 1895 daily from a small Midwestern city.

Francis Illington

Astronaut Twins Doom Existence

Francis Illington

Associated Press reports that astronaut Scott Kelly, currently orbiting some 236 miles above earth aboard the International Space Station, will be joined early next year by his identical brother Mark, who is also an astronaut.

Open Letter to Charles Frank “Charlie” Bolden, Jr., Chief Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Dear Administrator Bolden:

Francis Illington
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