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An amazing and sad story in today’s Seattle Times looks at the construction on the Hood Canal bridge, which has run into snags after uncovering what’s possibly one of the most important archaeological discoveries in the Seattle area.

The excavation inadvertently unearthed Tse-whit-zen, the largest prehistoric Indian village ever discovered in Washington, portions of which date back more than 1,700 years.

With each shovel of dirt, the state and tribe have come to realize what they are grappling with. One of Washington’s largest transportation projects is amid the region’s richest archaeological site, including an ancient cemetery.

Excavation has desecrated grave after grave, including 264 intact human skeletons so far, and more than 700 isolates, or bone fragments. The remains reveal statements of rank, of love and grief: shamans dusted with red ochre; couples buried with limbs intertwined; mass graves, signaling smallpox.

More than 5,000 artifacts have surfaced, including blanket pins fashioned in the shapes of animals; a stone rake for harvesting herring; hand tools; even the intact, sacrificial remains of sea otters offered to the spirit world.

The unprecedented discovery is causing anguish to both sides. Already facing delays costing tens of millions of dollars, the state wants to limit the tribe’s insistence to search for more remains. At risk is the state’s ability to replace the eastbound lanes of the Hood Canal Bridge, a critical project, state officials say, that is more than a year behind schedule.

But the tribe is insisting the state keep exploring for remains the tribe does not want entombed below a 10-acre concrete slab. Such a barrier would condemn the spirits of the dead buried below to be forever separated from their loved ones, said Frances Charles, chairwoman of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe.

So far, the conflict has defied resolution.

(via MeFi)

Taking a break from election news (since it’s too early for results to start coming in yet), Julie Leung pointed out what has to be one of the most seriously disturbing articles I’ve read in a long time. I kept figuring that it had to be a Halloween prank, and kept waiting for a “gotcha!” moment…but it never came.

If burial or cremation isn’t quite your thing when your loved one dies…why not just keep them around?

“Come on, Timmy, blow out the candles before they melt the cake,” she admonishes the dark-haired lad, who is suddenly full of himself now that he’s entered his teen years.

“Why don’t you get Granny to blow them out?” cracks Tim, gesturing toward the elderly lady seated to his right at the dining room table — Robert’s mother, Esther. She, too, is wearing a party hat, though it’s cocked a tad to the side, making the casual observer think she may be suffering from some sort of paralysis.

“You know that Granny Esther can’t do that,” Gloria admonishes. “If you don’t blow out the candles, then there’ll be no presents for you, young man.”

“Whatever!” spits Tim, ripping off his birthday hat and throwing it to the carpet. “This birthday sucks! I’m too old for this. I’m not a baby anymore. I want to go hang out with my friends.”

Tim shoves past his mother and grandmother, and in the process, knocks Esther Dunlop, age 76, to the floor. Esther lies there unmoving; Tim’s sister, Megan, picks up her grandmother and sets her back in the chair, straightening her hair and closing her mouth, which had popped open in the fall. The ease with which the skinny 14-year-old has righted the older lady is almost startling, given Esther’s seemingly sturdy frame.

No one says anything about the cake or the candles, which have since burned themselves out and are sending up wisps of smoke, like incense at a Mass for the dead. The imagery is appropriate. What is not readily apparent from this scene is that Mrs. Dunlop expired in June because of a massive cerebral hemorrhage; she died instantly as she lay on the couch in the Braswells’ home, where she had lived for several years, watching a rerun of her favorite show: CSI: Miami. What now sits before Timothy Braswell’s melting ice cream cake — blue hair and all — is her lifelike, taxidermied corpse.

Supposedly the company Preserve-A-Life, Inc. specializes in “humidermy” — taxidermy for deceased people.

I checked PAL’s site, and there’s nothing on the page or in the source to indicate that this is a hoax. The article is from the Phoenix New Times, which seems to be a real paper. So far, everything looks legit.

However, doing a whois search on preserve-a-life.com reveals that the preserve-a-life.com domain was registered by NT Media, LLC, and has a contact e-mail address of dom-admin@NEWTIMES.COM. New Times‘ site claims that it is a ‘publisher of alternative newsweeklies’ — and just happens to be the publisher of the Phoenix New Times.

So at the moment, I’m pretty sure that this is a Halloween hoax. Admittedly, a rather sucessfully creepy hoax…

Renee Carson of Mesa didn’t have enough money to have the whole body of her son, Marine Lance Corporal Jefferson Carson, done.

She opted for a head-mounting, and a military burial for the remainder of the corpse paid for by the Corps. Renee confirms that Preserve A Life waived its \$1,700 fee for the war hero. It was a good thing, too, that she chose the limited procedure, since Jeff Carson’s body was mutilated when he stepped on a land mine while attempting to take an Iraqi child and a fellow Marine to safety during the first few days of the invasion. The mine blew him apart as he was holding the little girl in one arm and dragging his buddy with the other. The child was saved, but he and his buddy weren’t so lucky. Both were awarded the Purple Heart posthumously, and Carson received the Medal of Honor. Wearing his camouflage hat and a stern expression, Jeff Carson’s head is displayed on a living room wall next to his framed medals, a signed letter from President George W. Bush, and photos of the 20-year-old in and out of uniform.

In retrospect, I’ve gotta admit I’m impressed. As I said at the beginning, I kept thinking that this couldn’t be real, and kept waiting for the “gotcha” moment, but then it never came. I’m not normally taken in by things like this — the combination of a healthy dose of skepticism and an admittedly sick sense of humor usually helps me ferret things out pretty quickly. This one got me, though, if only for a few minutes.

Realistically, there’s likely no real chance that they’ll win this case, but I’m definitely in support of equal rights for breasts (and not just because I’m a big fan of breasts in general — there’s definitely an element of sexual discrimination in here).

Athela “Beaner” Frandsen is like many 15-year-old girls — she loves science, computer games and her pet rat, Luna. But just beneath the surface of the quiet-voiced, well-mannered Melbourne teenager exists a passionate women’s rights activist who has been battling the court system since the age of 9.

Her struggle began a few weeks before her 10th birthday, when Athela got bad news from her mother, Jan.

“When I was playing at the park as a young girl, I would get hot, so I would just take my shirt off like the other boys my age did to cool down,” says Athela. “But one day, my mother informed me that once I turned 10, I would no longer be able to take my shirt off to cool down because the law doesn’t allow girls over the age of 10 to do so. I didn’t think this was very fair.”

Her parents, Melbourne naturists Jan and Marvin Frandsen, agreed.

“It broke my heart to have to explain to her that she was considered different than the boys her age,” says Jan. “I didn’t want to tell her because she was just about to turn 10, and that’s an age when a lot of little girls have a drop in self-esteem.”

Frustrated, Jan says she began calling old friends to see if they were interested in joining a lawsuit against Brevard County. Eight other women, ages 38 to 75, said yes, including a school teacher, a co-founder of a Fort Pierce nudist community and an ex-NASA worker who pled guilty to sprinkling white powder in an envelope with her water bill during the nation’s anthrax scare. Together, the women have been nicknamed the Topfree 10.

“I just began calling anyone I could think of to see if they’d be interested in coming together to fight the law,” says Jan, “Two of the women I knew from church, and the rest were from different walks of life.”

Once she garnered support for their cause, Jan approached married Merritt Island attorneys Mark and Lisa Tietig. Mark Tietig emphasizes that the case has less to do with a women wanting to go topless, and more to do with equal rights.

“This case is about changing a law that actually criminalizes and punishes women for doing something men can do,” says Mark Tietig. “It’s essentially one of the last laws on the books that works that way.”

I’m pretty sure that the societal taboos are a little to ingrained in our culture for this to go much of anywhere. Still, the group makes some really good points:

“Basically this type of law labels a woman as being genetically inferior,” she says. “The law then becomes government-sponsored discrimination … . Once you place a woman in an inferior position automatically from birth, it becomes a small step to other unequal treatment.”

[…]

In the lawsuit, the Topfree 10 points out that the only legal means to expose female breasts is for the gratification of others, not for a woman’s comfort.

“Only by baring breasts in a commercially sexual context; e.g., for strip-show spectators, commercial marketers, or others with interests apparently deemed more compelling and/or immediate than the woman’s own interests, heath, or comfort; may women legally bare their breasts in public at times other than those when their breasts are allowed to be exposed for breastfeeding children.”

Jan says people who view breasts in an uncomfortable manner because of their sexual connotation need to “grow up.”

“It’s ridiculous to define women by their gender. It’s like saying that black people by their color or Indian people by their heritage are dangerous [and should be criminalized],” says Jan, “when they should be judging people by who they are and what they do.”

Topfree member Shirley Mason thinks this lawsuit isn’t about exposing breasts; it’s about exposing discriminatory laws. […] “If it’s not the color of skin, the age of skin, the covering and uncovering of skin, then it’s the gender of the person’s skin that people find a reason for irrational prejudice and discrimination,” says Mason.

You go, girls.

“Remember (Mood II Swing)” by BT from the album Remember (1997, 7:36).