Here In Spirit: Dads In A Teapot

One often wonders what to do with a loved one’s ashes after they have taken that Final Taxi ride and have been cremated. Do you leave them in an urn on the mantle? Do you scatter them in their favorite vacation spot?

Doing something out of the ordinary, British man has had his father’s ashes turned into a teapot.

John Lowndes, 54, says it’s his way of remembering his dad who used to love putting the world to rights over a pot of tea.

“I think he’d understand. The only thing more appropriate would have been a pint glass,” he told the Daily Mail.

His father Ian, 75, died a decade ago after a short illness.

Lowndes said: “Every evening I’d come home from work and find Dad in the garden or in his cottage. We’d go and knock on his door and invite him over for a cup of tea. He usually had some words of wisdom.

“Those cups of tea with Dad were special and when he died I really missed them.”

For a decade his father’s ashes sat in a box in the hallway of Lowndes’s home in Broad Haven, as he tried to decide on a fitting resting place.

“Then I was chatting to a friend whose grandmother had passed away,” he said.
“We got talking about grief and I told her that if I had one wish it would be for another cup of tea with Dad. She turned to me and said “I can fix that”.”

Mr Lowndes was introduced to potter Neil Richardson, whose firm, Here In Spirit, makes ceramic urns and vases using the ashes of the departed.

Richardson incorporate your loved one’s ashes into a joyous commemorative artwork using a practice called Raku. Raku is an ancient technique of glazing developed in East Asia during the 15th century. Richardson has been a student and teacher of Raku for many years and each piece of ceramic art that he creates is completely unique. At Here In Spirit everyone’s ashes are treated with every care and respect.

“I’d not been asked to make a teapot before but I was more than happy to oblige,” he said when talking about Mr. Lowndes’ decision. “We believe that great solace can be found through daily contact with art that genuinely contains an element of the relative, partner or friend we have lost.”

Civil Rights Activist and Actress – Mary Taylor Zimbalist

When the American civil rights movement leader Martin Luther King led the march in 1965 from Selma Alabama to the state capital of Montgomery, several famous people stood beside him. Among them were Harry Belafonte, Tony Bennett, Frankie Laine, Peter, Paul and Mary, Sammy Davis, Jr. and actress Mary Taylor Zimbalist.

It is Mary Taylor Zimbalist that has taken her Final Taxi at age 93.

Zimbalist was born Mary Taylor in Manhattan on February 13, 1915 to one of New York’s prominent families. At the age of sixteen, a diagnosis of bone-marrow cancer forced Mary to leave her boarding school and she received the new and very experimental treatment of radiation, which left her leg permanently injured. While recovering, Mary continued her studies in New York, and began work as a photographic model.

Known for her exotic beauty and graceful demeanor, she was quickly given a modeling contract with Vogue, and became one of Cecil Beaton’s favorite subjects, evidenced by pictures of Mary in all of Beaton’s significant collections.

Mary subsequently studied acting, and worked in summer stock theatre. In 1936, on the strength of her modeling, Mary was offered her first significant role in a film, “Soak the Rich” by Paramount Pictures. Soon after, she became a contract actress for Metro Goldwyn Mayer, and moved to California.

In 1939 Mary appeared in the film “Lady of the Tropics,” which was produced by Sam Zimbalist, who was to become her husband.

In 1941 MGM lent Mary to Warner Brothers for two films, “Blossoms in the Dust” and “Shining Victory”, but when World War II broke out in December, she left acting to work full time as a nurse’s aid for the Red Cross.

Mary and Sam were politically active in many movements, including fighting the Hollywood Black List and McCarthyism in the late 1940s and 1950s.
In the 1960s, Mary was active in the civil rights movement, marching in Selma, Alabama with Martin Luther King.

Mary’s marriage to Sam Zimbalist ended with his sudden death due to a heart attack in 1958, just as he finished Ben Hur, for which he was the producer. Mary accepted the 1959 Academy Award for Best
Picture on his behalf.

Mary had first heard J. Krishnamurti ,a popular writer and speaker on philosophical and spiritual subjects, in a public talk he gave in Ojai, California in 1944. . His subject matter included: the purpose of meditation, human relationships, and how to enact positive change in global society.

In 1964 Mary began assisting Krishnamurti intermittently and in small ways. He asked her to be a founding trustee of the trusts and schools he created in Europe and America. She was active in the founding of the Oak Grove School, Ojai, California and Brockwood Park School and Center, Hampshire, England. She remained an active and beloved figure in all the organizations until the end of her life.

“It A Wonderful Life” Actor – Bob Anderson

My wife likes to tell people I have a “It’ A Wonderful Life” philosophy of life. I do believe that everyone’s life is important. We all have a part in the way this world is.

The reference is, of course, from 1946 film produced and directed by Frank Capra and starring Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed. It takes place in the town of Bedford Falls where plays Stewart as George Bailey, a man whose attempted suicide on Christmas Eve, gains the attention of his guardian angel, Clarence who is sent to help him in his hour of need. Much of the film is told through flashbacks spanning his entire life as we see all the people whose lives have been touched by George and the difference he has made to the community in which he lives.

During those flashbacks young George is played Bob Anderson. It is Anderson who has taken his Final Taxi at age 75.

Robert J. Anderson grew up in Hollywood to a movie family. His father, Gene, was an assistant director and later a production manager. His uncles were directors William Beaudine and James Flood and his brothers and cousins were editors and production managers.

Anderson’s introduction to films began when he was literally snatched from his crib by relatives to appear in a movie scene that called for a baby..

He was 7 when he appeared in the 1940 Shirley Temple film “Young People” and went on to appear in other movies such as 1945’s “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.”

But he was best known for his role as the young Bailey in Frank Capra’s 1946 “It’s a Wonderful Life.” In one scene, the story called for him to spot a potentially fatal error made by a drunken druggist, played by H.B. Warner.

Warner took the role seriously and on the day of shooting had been drinking and was “pretty ripe” as the scene called for Warner’s character to slap the boy.

Anderson told the Los Angeles Times in 1996 that the scene and its rehearsals were painful.

“He actually bloodied my ear,” Anderson told the paper. “My ear was beat up and my face was red and I was in tears.”

“At the end when it was all over, he (Warner) was very lovable. He grabbed me and hugged me, and he meant it,” Anderson said.

After “Wonderful Life” Anderson played in “The Bishop’s Wife” (1947), and in Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah ( 1949) among others. He also appeared on TV, including a supporting role to Disney’s “Spin and Marty” characters in the 1950s. I remember seeing this during the reruns of the Mickey Mouse Club.
Anderson enlisted in the Navy during the Korean War, serving as a photographer on aircraft carriers. After the war, he spent four decades in the movie industry. From the 1950s through the 1990s he worked steadily, rising from second assistant director to production manager for movies and TV shows.

Pringles Can Inventor Buried In His Own Package

I remember my mother buying “Pringle’s Newfangled Potato Chips” sometime in the 1976. It was not long before when everyone at my school was bringing in these tube cans of chips that all looked exactly alike. I didn’t like them because of that. Every Pringles looked just like the other and tasted that way too. Where was the diversity?

Pringles are a brand of potato snacks produced by Procter & Gamble. Pringles were first sold in the United States in October of 1968; they were not rolled out across America until the mid-1970s. The name was chosen from a Pringle Avenue in Finneytown, Ohio because it had pleasing sound.

According to the patent , Pringles were invented by Alexander Liepa of Montgomery, Ohio. Science Fiction and Fantasy author Gene Wolfe developed the machine that cooks them. It’s famous logo is a stylized representation of a man with a large moustache and parted bangs.

Pringles are especially known for their packaging invented by Fred Baur, which consists of a tubular can with a foil-coated interior, and a resealable plastic lid. It is Fred Baur who has taken his Final Taxi, but that taxi takes the shape of one of his famous designed cans. For Baur has asked for his ashes to buried in one of the iconic cans.
The man who designed the Pringles can had part of his cremated remains buried in one, his family says.

Fredric J. Baur, of Cincinnati, was an organic chemist and food storage technician who specialized in research and development and quality control for Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co.

Baur filed for a patent for the tubular Pringles container and for the method of packaging the curved, stacked chips in the container in 1966, and it was granted in 1970, P&G archivist Ed Rider said.

The 89 year old inventor’s children said they honored their father’s request to bury him in one of the cans by placing part of his cremated remains in a Pringles container in his grave in suburban Springfield Township.

The rest of his remains were placed in an urn buried along with the can, with some placed in another urn and given to a grandson.

My question is: was Baur buried in a 170g, 163g, 50g, or 23g size can?

PODCAST: Harvey Korman- Comic of Burnett Show & Blazing Saddles

Download MP3 of Podcast- Click Here

Harvey Korman, the comic actor who won four Emmys for his work on “The Carol Burnett Show” and appeared in the movie “Blazing Saddles,” took his Final Taxi at age 81.

Korman won the Emmy awards for his television comedy roles on “The Carol Burnett Show,” where he performed from 1967 to 1977 in a cast led by Burnett and including comedian Tim Conway.

His film roles included playing Hedley Lamarr in “Blazing Saddles,” a 1974 spoof Western directed by Mel Brooks. He also performed in Brooks’s film “High Anxiety” in 1977. In 1983 he appeared in “Curse of the Pink Panther.”