{"id":14988,"date":"2013-06-19T08:00:01","date_gmt":"2013-06-19T12:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=14988"},"modified":"2013-06-22T20:10:34","modified_gmt":"2013-06-23T00:10:34","slug":"my-life-is-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/19\/my-life-is-death\/","title":{"rendered":"MY LIFE IS DEATH"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Dr. Lester Adelson, 1960s<\/p><\/div>\n

Lester Adelson,<\/strong><\/span> the former chief deputy coroner of Cuyahoga County, was fun and morbid. He said he wanted to write a book called My Life is Death<\/em>.\u00a0 He\u00a0 said he missed ice picks.\u00a0 \u201cNothing against frost-free refrigerators,\u201d he said. \u201cBut back when people went at it with sharp objects, they could generally be stitched back together again.\u201d*<\/p>\n

He was at the coroner’s office 37 years.<\/p>\n

Adelson said to me, \u201cThe only violent natural death is lightning, you follow?\u201d<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

He said<\/strong><\/span> lightning — the electric charge — zaps you immediately. \u00a0 You die by “lightning.”\u00a0 If you drown or get hit by a tornado,\u00a0 you don’t die by \u201ctornado\u201d or \u201cdrowning.\u201d\u00a0 You die of more arcane causes.<\/p>\n

Adelson said, \u201cI don\u2019t remember my mother\u2019s labor pains, but you\u2019re born in someone else\u2019s pain — your mother\u2019s — and you die in your own.\u201d<\/p>\n

He liked to quote Shakespeare.<\/p>\n

Coroner \/<\/strong><\/span> Shakespeare \/ bowtie \/ Harvard grad \/ Jew.<\/p>\n

Interesting.<\/p>\n

Dr. Lester Adelson.\u00a0 He even wrote an article for the New England Journal of Medicine<\/em> (Feb. 4, 1960) about the various deaths in Hamlet<\/em>.\u00a0 Claudius poured poison into the ear of Hamlet’s father.<\/p>\n

Adelson wrote: “When one considers the sensitivity of the human ear, including the external auditory canal and the eardrum, it appears difficult to accept the proposition that a drug can be poured into the ear of a sleeper without arousing him, as the Ghost asks one to believe.”<\/p>\n

“If the elder Hamlet’s eardrum had been perforated . . . ”<\/p>\n

Adelson retired from the coroner’s office in 1987. He died at 91 in 2006.<\/p>\n

<\/em>—–<\/p>\n

*from a <\/em>Plain Dealer editorial, 3\/20\/06.<\/em><\/p>\n

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—<\/span><\/p>\n

“No More Greasy Fries,” the vid:
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