Kind Of Death Research Articles

Necrotic Cell Death in Human Amniotic Cells Infected byListeria Monocytogenes

Listeria monocytogenes can cause a placental-foetal infection that results in spontaneous abortion, premature labour, stillbirth, or neonatal sepsis and meningitis. Bacteria cross the maternofoetal barrier at the villous syncytiotrophoblast level and subsequently spread from the placenta to the fetus. L. monocytogenes is able to induce different kinds of death in a variety of cells. Murine hepatocytes, murine T and human B lymphocytes, and murine dendritic cells die by apoptosis, whereas bacterial infection of murine and human macrophages leads mainly to necrotic cell death. As we previously described the efficient infection and growth of L. monocytogenes in a human amniotic cell line, we investigated the fate of these cells in order to analyse the mode of cell death. Our results provide biochemical and morphological evidence of necrotic death induced by L. monocytogenes infection.

Older people “found dead” at home: challenges for the coroner system in England and Wales

This paper arises from current proposals to reform the Coroner Service in England and Wales. In it, we explore the extent to which inquests offer the opportunity to increase our understanding of the situation of older people who are “found dead.” This is a kind of death that might be categorized as a “bad death” and, as such, one that will involve the coroner. Research that has been conducted on older people who have been found dead indicates that coroners’ records are an inadequate source of information. We argue that this is because the system of death certification in England and Wales is focused on the medical cause of death. In consequence, the social circumstances surrounding those who are found dead remain unrecorded. We cannot judge therefore the extent or seriousness of this category of “bad deaths” nor whether social intervention in such cases might have been warranted. We further argue that proposals for reform, which were motivated in large part by the desire to improve the chances of detecting cases of concealed homicide as revealed by the Shipman Inquiry, have missed an opportunity to reconceptualize and broaden the role of the coroner in a way that would increase our knowledge and understanding of the circumstances surrounding other “bad deaths.”

Donation After Cardiac Death: Perceptions Versus Reality

The paper by Rady et al 1 criticizes donation after cardiac death (DCD) on 3 levels: (1) it defies the spirit if not the letter of the dead donor rule; (2) asserts some manipulations of the DCD patient may inappropriately hasten death in patients technically still alive by brain death criteria, and (3) claims DCD is a threat to public trust in the organ donation system. These criticisms should stimulate further debate on these issues. The authors suggest that DCD evolved to access more viable organs from the potential pool. However, some have stated the primary reason was a utilitarian argument to allow families of severely brain injured (but not technically brain dead) patients to circumvent the dead donor rule to donate. If the dead donor rule interfered with the altruistic desire to donate organs from a patient who would die anyway, the dead donor rule was perceived as impedimentia. So there was incentive to circumvent it by creative interpretation. This is a shaky argument. It does not matter if there is an intent to resuscitate or not. Neither the patient nor his or her family can consent to any procedure that will result in death, nor can the family consent to the patient’s being dead in a predetermined number of hours or minutes. Consenting to either of these options is tantamount to consenting to euthanasia. The most fundamental criticism of DCD involves ambiguity in the rules created to determine whether a potential donor’s organs are alive enough to donate but the whole patient is dead enough to avoid vivisection. What ethicists call “irreversible cessation of the integrated functioning of the organism as a whole” (not the whole organism). The rules seem clear. In 1968, the Harvard Criteria objectified the progression of disease, thereby making it possible for clinicians to predict inevitable death, but the Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA) of 1980 made brain death an objective criterion for death. The UDDA specifically required that death be irreversible. This act states that an individual who has sustained either irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions or irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead and that a death certificate may then be filled out. However, the UDDA does not elucidate how these 2 differing standards reflect the same phenomenon, opening the interpretation that there are actually 2 kinds of death: brain and cardiac. This ambiguity made the issue of determining death amenable to a creative interpretation. Pronouncement of death could make brain function irrelevant if the heart stops. A problem with this interpretation is the inability to establish precisely when death transitions from a reversible process to an irreversible event. Brain death is an actual diagnosis of death and is clearly defined in terms of irreversibility. Cardiac standstill is a prognosis of death. When the heart stops, the brain will die in time, but its progress is unknown and unmeasured. Because the point of irreversibility is not known at the time death is declared, the exact time of death cannot be determined. Technically, the From the Department of Critical Care Medicine, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Help is at hand for people bereaved by suicide and other traumatic death

Bereavement following suicide is traumatic. Guilt, shame, stigma and feelings of rejection and isolation set it apart from the sadness following other kinds of death and may make it difficult for the bereaved person to obtain help (Harwood et al, 2002; Hawton & Simkin, 2003; Beautrais, 2004). the necessary official processes surrounding death by suicide, like the police and coroner's investigations, can add to the trauma (Biddle, 2003). This may be compounded by inaccurate or insensitive media reporting. Bereaved individuals are at risk of increased morbidity from abnormal grief reactions (Mitchell et al, 2005) and suicide (Qin et al, 2002), and they often need considerable support (de Groot et al, 2006; 2007).

Apoptic Renal Carcinoma Cells are Better Inducers of Cross-Presenting Activity than Their Primary Necrotic Counterpart

Vaccination with tumor-loaded dendritic cells (DC) is a promising treatment strategy for patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Cells undergoing cell death proved useful as a source of tumor antigen for DC loading. Both apoptotic and necrotic tumor cells have been shown to efficiently load RCC-tumor antigens on DC. However, no direct comparison of these two kinds of death has been attempted in the same RCC. We compared DC pulsed with apoptotic cells, whole cell lysates or their supernatants of the cell line K1, derived from a patient with clear cell RCC, to determine their ability to activate T cells. Monocyte-derived DCs were pulsed with the different sources of tumor antigen, matured and co-cultured with autologouos peripheral blood lymphocytes. After three weekly re-stimulations with DCs, generation of cytotoxic T lymphocytes CTL was assessed by IFN-gamma release in an ELISpot assay in the presence of the sensitizing target. By comparison with lysate, apoptotic tumor cells induced a higher frequency of MHC class I-restricted IFN-gamma releasing lymphocytes. A higher CTL response was induced by pulsing DCs with cell lysate supernatant compared with whole cell lysate. These results indicate that, although necrotic death has been regarded as highly permissive when compared to apoptotic death, the immunogenicity of the death treatment may vary from one tumor to another.

Learning to Live Through Loss: Grief and the Mourning Process

FCS-2267, a 5-page fact sheet by Carolyn Wilken, is one in a series of six publications dealing with grief, death, and loss. This publication gives detailed descriptions of the stages of grief and explains how different kinds of deaths may cause different reactions. Also gives specific guidance on how to help someone who is grieving. Published by the UF Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences, November 2006.

Poly-Glutamine Induces Bax-Mediated Cell Death by Dissociating Ku70 from Bax through Ku70-Acetylation.

Poly-glutamine (PolyQ) diseases (e.g. Huntington's disease and Machado-Joseph disease) are caused by the amplification of CAG repeats in the genes of proteins normally expressed in the cell. PolyQ induces caspase-independent cell death associated with vacuolization in the cytoplasm that is distinct from the previously known cell death types such as apoptosis and necrosis. PolyQ-induced cell death is considered a new type of cell death and the elucidation of its mechanism is being awaited. At present, there is no effective treatment to rescue cells from polyQ's toxicity. Previously, we developed cell permeable cytoprotective peptides designed form Bax-inhibiting domain of Ku70, and these peptides were named Bax Inhibiting Peptides (BIPs). We found that BIP (50 – 200 uM range) blocked polyQ-induced cell death in human epithelial kidney (HEK) 293T cells and human neuroblastoma cell line (Neuro2). PolyQ was expressed by plasmid transfection and cell death was detected by trypan blue exclusion and the release of Lactose Dehydrogenease (LDH) from dead cells into the medium. BIP almost completely suppressed polyQ-induced cell death and vacuolization while caspase-inhibitor (z-VAD-fmk) did not. In Bax-deficient human prostate cancer cell (Du145), polyQ did not induce cell death, but the expression of sub-lethal level of Bax restored the toxicity of polyQ in Du145. Bax changes its conformation when it is activated to mediate cell death and the “active” Bax can be detected by a specific monoclonal antibody (6A7 antibody). By immunohistochemistry Bax activation was confirmed in the neurons of human patients suffering from PolyQ disease as well as in the neurons of a transgenic mouse model of the disease. Previously we found that Ku70 binds and inhibits Bax activation, and that the acetylation of Ku70 releases Bax from Ku70. We found that polyQ binds Ku70 and a Histone Acetyl-Transferase (Creb Binding Protein-CBP), and thus polyQ mediates Ku70 acetylation in the cells. We confirmed that Ku70 overexpression protects cells from polyQ expression whereas Ku70 mutants mimicking acetylated Ku70 did not. Based on these in vivo and in vitro studies, we propose that Bax plays a key role in polyQ-induced cell death and that BIP and Ku70 may be utilized to rescue cells from this kind of death in patients suffering from polyQ diseases.

Harmony, Anamorphosis and the “Conceptual Scheme”

Une tache floue l'horizon de la pensee Terence Cave I In opening chapter of his early study, Renaissance Self-Fashioning (1980), Steven Greenblatt included now famous excursus on subject of Hans Holbein's double portrait, The Ambassadors (1533), and optical technique of anamorphosis. Hans Holbein's well known painting depicts two French envoys to Henry VIII of England, Georges de Selve and Jean de Dinteville, both young, wealthy aristocrats. Like most commentaries on Holbein's canvas, Greenblatt's discussion--a parenthesis in his chapter on Thomas More--places much emphasis on distorted skull, which occupies much of lower quarter of image. Greenblatt offers an extended, acute reading of Holbein portrait and of interpretive unease triggered by skull. Indeed uncanny death's head serves to undermine, for Greenblatt, the very concept of locatable reality upon which we conventionally rely in our mappings of world, to subordinate we so confidently use to larger doubt. (1) Greenblatt's reading makes extensive use of notions of and incompatibility. Speaking of one of figures portrayed in painting, Jean de Dinteville, Greenblatt writes: The incommensurability [between ornament and memento mori] is confirmed by fact that we must distort, and, in essence, efface figures in order to see skull. That this effacement is moving--that it is felt as kind of death--is function of Holbein's mastery of those representational techniques that pay tribute to world, that glorify surfaces and textures of things, that celebrate man's relatedness to objects of his making. The skull, slashing across pavement, intruding upon [its] complex harmonies and disrupting them, (18) is for Greenblatt an analogue for disquieting internal rupture (23) he detects as well in More's Utopia. Greenblatt continues: [The] sense within general frame of work of incompatible perspectives between which reader restlessly moves--is mirrored at virtually every level of text from its largest units of design to its smallest verbal details. [...] This restless shifting of perspective is, I would suggest, close equivalent at verbal level to technique of anamorphosis, whose etymology itself suggests back-and-forth movement, constant forming and reforming. (23) Ultimately, for Greenblatt, will stand as an analogue of textual ambiguity and uncanny shifts of perspective evinced in texts and other objects of cultural study. In broader critical discourse, anamorphosis has recently been very much province of readings informed by psychoanalytic theory. Greenblatt's reading of Holbein's canvas, characteristically, does not draw directly on Jacques Lacan's treatment of same work in Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (Seminar XI). (2) Nonetheless, in recent years, anamorphosis has often been exploited as an analogy for studying such networks as orders or conceptual schemes. Lacan's account of skull as a gaze imagined by me in field of Other [un regard par moi imagine au champ de l'Autre] (Lacan 1973: 79) has been enormously influential, all more so, perhaps, through Slavoj Zizek's rereading of Holbein and Lacan, and his reformulation of anamorphosis as theoretical paradigm for study of ideology and desire. Zizek emphasizes, after Lacan, unreadable blot of skull as necessarily absent object of interpretive desire intruding on inter-subjective symbolic order, both warping it and framing its possibility. (3) In all three readings of Holbein painting I have mentioned thus far, such entities as orders or sign systems are essential to critical project. …

Why Didn’t We Get Them All?

The California Linked Homicide File links two major files containing information on homicides. The basic file includes 34,542 cases from Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR). Using a probabilistic matching program, 32,122 (93.0%) of these cases were linked with information from Vital Statistics (VS) death records. Why weren’t the remaining 7% of cases linked? What makes these 2,420 records different from the cases that were linked? Analysis demonstrated that many of the unlinked cases involved child abuse and that many deaths appearing as child abuse in the SHR were not classified as assault deaths in the VS death records. By broadening the definition of what kinds of deaths in VS death records could be possible links with SHR reports, we were able to marginally improve the overall linkage rate (from 93.0% to 94.2%) and to increase the pool of linked child abuse deaths by 7.1%.

Portrait of the Self

Portrait of the Self

The social meanings of death from HIV/AIDS: An African interpretative view

Death from HIV/AIDS is increasingly common in Kenya. However, the ways in which people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and society more generally make sense of this kind of death has been little investigated. By analysing accounts from a sample of fourteen heterosexual people diagnosed HIV positive and presented for treatment in four specialized clinics in Nairobi, and other accounts elicited from members of the clergy and lay persons, this paper examines how people make sense of death from HIV/AIDS. To be infected by HIV equates to death, and because AIDS acts as a metaphor for moral and physical contamination, HIV infection confers on the individual a spoilt image and identity. This image and identity is projected into life beyond physical death, and is reinforced, popularized and legitimized by Christian and African religious schema in such a way that death from HIV/AIDS is now constructed and experienced as 'permanent'. This kind of death has implications for the way in which people living with HIV/AIDS seek treatment and manage an HIV seropositive status. It is also relevant to an understanding of the ways in which funerals and burials for people dying of HIV/AIDS are now being organized in Kenya.

Re-Figuring the Feminine Voice: Catullus Translating Sappho

Sappho, writing at the origin of lyric poetry, occupies a central place in the development of subjectivity in the West. In her poetry, many have seen the birth of a lyric self, a singular “I” that also speaks as a generalized lyric subject. Page duBois describes Sappho’s crucial role in establishing individual lyric identity: “We see in the work of Sappho the very beginnings of this process, the construction of selfhood, of the fiction of subjectivity at its origins” (1995.6). In Sappho’s most celebrated and most imitated poem, fragment 31, the lyric “I” seems to coincide with the moment of its own death. Fragment 31 is the only extant poem of Sappho that explicitly dramatizes desire for the beloved through a loss of voice that is associated with a kind of death. No poem of Sappho demonstrates more dramatically than fragment 31 the paradoxical relationship between the magical effects of song and the debilitating effects of erotic experience. It is this paradox that seems to make Sappho’s poetry, particularly fragment 31, perpetually translatable.

A queer kind of death

As part of my research into gay and lesbian mysteries, I phoned Barbara Grier, head of the lesbian Naiad Press. While extremely helpful (she offered to send me all the free books I wanted), Ms. Grier seemed a bit puzzled by the subject of my study. “Gay mysteries?” she said. “Isn't that sort of like studying kumquat harvesting in medieval China, or something?” Well, no. With all due respect to Chinese kumquat scholars, studying gay mysteries is not absurdly arcane. This type of mystery is a flourishing subgenre within the field as a whole, one deserving serious attention from students of both pop culture and gay studies. Moreover, in the future, as more and more gays come out of the closet, Americans slowly grow increasingly tolerant of homosexuality, and as the media jump on the bandwagon and begin portraying gays and lesbians more sympathetically, this genre will become even more significant.

Assisted suicide for the terminally ill: Why we must have the choice

As someone who believes in assisted suicide (AS) for terminally ill patients, I find the American Nurses Association and National Hospice Organization's official opposition a cause of profound concern. One of the arguments used by these organizations is that the lack of good palliative care is a major reason people request aid in dying. The assumption is that symptoms can be controlled adequately at all times. To me, such beliefs represent an ideology of a certain kind of death—a good death—espoused in such statements. This essay is an opportunity to express a different reality.

What kind of life? What kind of death? An interview with Dr. Henk Prins.

BioethicsVolume 11, Issue 1 p. 24-42 What Kind of Life? What Kind of Death? An Interview with Dr. Henk Prins Arlene Judith Klotzko, Arlene Judith Klotzko Union Theological Seminary, New York, USA andUtrecht University, The NetherlandsSearch for more papers by this author Arlene Judith Klotzko, Arlene Judith Klotzko Union Theological Seminary, New York, USA andUtrecht University, The NetherlandsSearch for more papers by this author First published: 16 December 2002 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8519.00042Citations: 3AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume11, Issue1January 1997Pages 24-42 RelatedInformation

Endings in Autobiography: The Example of Enfance

any form of narrative. In autobiographical genre especially, they draw attention to narrative as construct. By definition, birth and death belong to field of autobiography. By definition equally, they lie beyond reach of autobiographer. For existential events which are inaccessible, he has therefore to invent literary equivalents.1 Where birth and beginning are concerned, Stendhal gets over ground with an allusion to Tristam Shandy: aprA s tant de considA©rations gA©nA©rales je vais naA®tre. During discussions, it is implied, a longdrawn-out birth process has been taking place. In next sentence, he jumps straight to Mon est d'avoir mordu A la joue ou au front Madame Pison du Galland, ma cousine. HB, when he is born, is born as fully-fledged monster: Je me rA©voltai, je pouvais avoir quatre ans.2 Where death and ending are concerned, autobiographer is equally dependent on sleight-of-hand. Graham Greene chooses title of A Sort of Life on grounds that if one cannot close a book of memories on deathbed, any conclusion must be arbitrary. He then finds a way of doing what he says he cannot do: he chooses, as an ending for that first volume, an experience which is equivalent of death. The publication of his first novel was followed by years of failure of which he says, Failure too is a kind of death.3 Enfance, its author assures us, is not an autobiography: Je n'ai pas essayA© d'A©crire l'histoire de ma vie, parce que elle n'avait pas d'intA©rAat d'un point de vue littA©raire.4 But it belongs—the opening phrases of text itself make this explicit—to that sub-genre of autobiography, sometimes called d'enfance (Jacques Lecarme5), childhood (Richard Coe6—an abbreviation for what he refers to as the clumsy Reminiscences of childhood and adolescence) or simply souvenirs d'enfance as text itself has it. Where beginnings are concerned, genre and sub-genre join forces: Bruno Vercier's study of premier souvenir refers us to Leiris and Loti; Lejeune's piece on rA©cit de naissance makes no generic distinctions.7 What of endings? Jacques Lecarme, in his attempt to define genre, points to difficulty of

Latinos and Anglos: Cultural Experiences of Grief Intensity

There is little research evidence in the United States literature on grief within the Latino culture. The main purpose of this study was to examine differences in grief intensity, following both sudden and expected death, between groups of Latino and Anglo individuals. Volunteer participants, fifty Latino and fifty Anglo, were surveyed using the Texas Revised Inventory of Grief (English version and translated into Spanish) to assess grief intensity. Using primarily a 2 × 2 multivariate analysis of variance, it was found that Latinos grieving sudden death have a significantly greater grief intensity than Latinos grieving expected death and than Anglos grieving either kind of death. Among participants, neither funeral attendance, time since death, nor closeness of relationship had any significant effect on grief intensity. Additionally, among Latino participants, neither participation in a novena nor acculturation had a significant effect on grief intensity.

The Last Temptation of Zarathustra

The Last Temptation of Zarathustra DAVID E. CARTWRIGHT Is not pity the cross on which he is nailed who loves man? But my pity is no crucifixion. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I, t~6/lo. 1 PITY (MZTZZXD) WAS Zarathustra's last sin (letzte Siinde). The final part of Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra shows that Zarathustra overcame this insidious passion and its attendant attitudes like he overcame his nausea at the i would like to thank the reviewers of this article for their insightful remarks, suggestions, and criticisms. References to Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra will be to the part and page numbers of Walter Kaufmann's translation in The Portable Nietzsche (New York: The Viking Press, 1972), to3439 . The second set of Arabic numerals refers to the corresponding page numbers of Also Sprach Zarathustra in Nietzsches Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (KGW), edited by Giorgio Colli und Mazzino Montinari, 3~ vois. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967-78). Zarathustra appears in KGW VI 1. References to Nietzsche's other books will use the following acronyms and the Arabic numerals will refer to section numbers: BT = The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Walter Kaufmann, with The Case of Wagner (New York: Vintage, 1967). HAH = Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). D = Daybreak, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 198a ). GS -- The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1974). BGE = Beyond Good and Ev//, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1966). GM = On the Genealogy ofMorals, trans. Kaufmann and Hollingdale, with Eeee Homo (New York: Vintage, 1968). Roman numerals refer to the essays. T = Twilight of the Idols, trans. Walter Kaufmann, in The Portable Nietzsche. A = The Antichrist, trans. Walter Kaufmann, in The Portable Nietzsche. Roman numerals result from numbering the essays in Kaufmann's table of contents, pp. 464-65. EH = Eece Homo, see GM above. I will employ Kaufmann's abbreviations, p. g57, to refer to sections in specific essays/chapters. All references to Nietzsche's German will be to KGW. I shall generally follow the English translations mentioned above. [49] 50 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 31:1 JANUARY 1993 prospects of the eternal recurrence of the small human and the spirit of revenge. His mastery of this feeling is no mean accomplishment, since pity teaches that life is suffering. Thus pity is called "the deepest abyss" (Z III, 269/ 195). The magnitude of Zarathustra's mastery is amplified, moreover, when we recall that pity is even a God-killer. We are told: "When Gods die, they always die several kinds of death" (Z IV, 373/320). God suffered a twofold death due to pity. The old pope tells Zarathustra that "one day he choked on his all-too-great pity" (Z IV, 373/320), thereby answering in the affirmative Zarathustra's question concerning his strangulation. Here the etiology of God's demise is due to the inherent pathology of pity. Pity is a pill too bitter for even a God to swallow, so it lodges in his throat and chokes him to death. The ugliest man soon follows the old pope and confesses to Zarathustra that he slew God: "His pity knew no shame .... This most curious, overobtrusive, overpitying one had to die.... Man cannot bear that such a witness should live" (Z IV, 379/327). So if God choked to death, it was due to the ugliest man's strangling him. Here God's pity provoked the ugliest man's revenge against the witness. It is significant, then, that Zarathustra actually commits his last sin, survives, and is transformed to speak thusly: "Well then, that [pity] has had its time! My suffering and my pitying for suffering--what does it matter? Am I concerned with happiness [G/f/cke]? I am concerned with my work"(Z IV, 439/ 4o4)." Zarathustra's confrontation with his pity for the higher man is one of the central themes, if not the motif, of Part IV. Its centrality is suggested both by Nietzsche's use of the quote from the infamous "On the Pitying" section from Part II which prefaces Part IV, and Zarathustra's closing monologue, which announces that its transcendence...

A Review of Unnatural Death—Confessions of a Medical Examiner

Abstract Unnatural Death is a mini-primer on forensic pathology for the general public. All kinds of death and medicolegal investigation are presented, chiefly from Dr. Baden's personal experience and consultative work, which includes the deaths of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr.. and John Belushi; the trials of Claus Von Bulow and Dr. Carl Coppolino; and the Attica, New York, prison riot of 1971. Appropriate emphasis is placed on the terminal circumstances, the scene, the toxicology, and the autopsy so that the reader will appreciate that the medical examiner does not work in a vacuum and that the autopsy findings are often consistent with the various manners of death. A drug-dump death looking like a homicide, an alcohol overdose simulating a strangulation, and certified crib deaths that are actually murders give the reader a true sense of the problems associated with such investigations. Dr. Baden also criticizes forensic and medical experts for inappropriate conclusions based upon incomplete consideration of the preponderance of the evidence as well as for basic misinterpretations of the facts.

It's Wonderful Here at Little Riding

It's hotter than we expected, our bodies coated with a gelatin that makes each caress, each laugh, exactly what was going to happen. A feather spins down, and pigeons spur dirt around themselves in the gravel. Hunters arrive, boots pasty with forest, and we all have drinks, the bitter green in the traditional, tiny cups. The stained glass is missing a section, a white sandwich wrapping in a burgundy field, and one afternoon an earth-moving machine rolls a great, spiky tube. We touch the holes it leaves that evening, punctures the shape of peaked roofs sucked into earth. The next day it rains, blank rain too cold to do anything but watch, and the photo album is missing the snapshots of the uncle who killed. One morning workmen masked like people gathering dead rake the smoking deer grass, and the stains in the ceiling are the shapes of animals who would be feeding in the early morning, if there were no fire. And when we at last discover what we expected, a lead pellet in the thigh of a squab, it is a relief, as a syringe is a relief, and it didn't hurt at all, and it's over -and it isn't. There is the fever, and the bad night, the rest of life prevented from a kind of death.