A drumroll please: Seven weeks later, an obituary for Mark Chapman

NORWALK, Conn. — It’s the last collaboration Mark and I will ever have – we teamed up to write his obituary.

I found an obituary on his computer and I added to it. Then I suffered through the indignities of modern newspapers and got a shortened version published today in his hometown daily, the Cape Cod Times.

Much better than the CCT version is the one published here on NancyonNorwalk, but you won’t find it on the homepage. Eric created a page just for the obituary, which you can find here.

If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you’ll find a 2001 video of Mark singing at Don’t Tell Mama in New York City.

A very important part of text, the part people have been asking me about, is also at the bottom. We are having a memorial service for Mark at 2 p.m. Oct. 29 at Mill Hill Historic Park.

Writing an obituary is a lesson I would rather have not learned. He took care of the mundane parts, the list of the survivors, as well as the color – all the interesting parts are his.

I added things that I thought people should know, like the line about him working his ass off to support us when Eric was young. Not that he stopped working his ass off. It’s just that as he got older the extra gigs were more along the lines of things he would have done for fun.

Except karaoke. He hated hosting karaoke.

I managed to dodge the landmine he left in his obituary. I realized that he had left out my sister before I had it published.

Then I figured out how to get it into a newspaper. Mark was always railing about newspapers charging for obituaries, how wrong he thought that was. Yep, I paid through the nose. Not only that, but they tell you that you have to go through a funeral home. Excuse me, I can write, I don’t need to pay a go-between.

I admit I probably annoyed the nice guy on the other end of the phone a little bit when I told him I wanted to cut what I had sent him. He would have to input the entire story again, he said. Oh, well.

I find this ironic at least – Mark was always stressed about spent money and then he goes and writes a long obituary. C’mon.

Of course, we realize that newspapers need revenue. It’s just a shame they do it by gouging grieving people.

So, speaking of journalism, let’s try to give Mark more of a sendoff with a reference to a recent news item.

It’s a little old – Sept. 4 – but here’s an excerpt:

“The news chases squirrels, calls them rabid, and shoots them.

“Every damned day, news organizations scan the horizon for any distraction they could call a scandal — squirrel! — and, finding none, they just dredge up yesterday’s road kill and repeat it all again, over and over, asking the same questions that are so obvious as to be rhetorical but that nonetheless fill hours of airtime.”

That’s from a column written by blogger Jeff Jarvis, a City University of New York journalism professor, and published on Medium.com. Jarvis really is a blogger – he writes opinions. In this case he’s unabashedly writing from the point of view of a supporter of Hillary Clinton, taking shots at the mass media for the way they are covering the presidential campaign.

I’m not sure what to say about it, which is why the article is stale. Mark would have dashed something off instantly but I thought maybe I’d think about it for a while. I still have nothing.

So how about you? Someone recently suggested a Sunday column called “What Would Mark Say?” Read the Jarvis post and then speculate below.

One thing, I’m sure Mark would agree with his comment about campaign surrogates being a ridiculous beltway/TV invention. He’d also agree with another line: the failure of journalism is proven by this ridiculous election.

I scrolled down Medium.com trying to find more up to date thoughts on journalism but pickings were scarce. One candidate was another one praising Clinton, unfortunately, but the idea is that main stream media has been so caught up in covering insults that it hasn’t done research into facts. The Clinton campaign has filled the void, and that’s why Clinton is widely considered to have won the debate, according to the story.

A little more digging turned up another Jarvis post, chiding the media and suggesting a post mortem after the election.

So, now that we’ve thrown a little journalism criticism into the Sunday NoN, let’s do a little homage to Mark’s “Things you should (or might wanna) know” columns, which I know we are all missing. I found a tidbit and I thought I might dig around and find other interesting items for an entire column but I am struggling… sorry, I can’t replace Mark. But anyway, would you believe that Realtor.com named Bridgeport one of the top 10 American metros for alternative spirituality?

It’s true. Daytona Beach, Fla., is number one, Colorado Springs, Co., is number two and way down the list at number seven is Bridgeport. It’s in the top 10 because of the “surprising number of top New Age and alternative retailers that call the urban center home,” Realtor.com says.

The median list price for a house is $159,000, Realtor.com points out, apparently trying to sell people on the idea of moving there.

Anyway, that’s it for me. Chew on all of that for your Sunday.

So, excuse me, I’m off to learn more lessons; I, who hate planning, have a memorial service to put together.

Maybe I should get some help in Bridgeport.