Bury Deceased Standing
To Save Space

The state government of Victoria in Australia recently approved allowing a new cemetery in Darlington to economize on space by burying bodies in upright positions.

Was The Hole Four Inches
Long or Wide?

A male inmate and a female inmate in a Turkish prison were given additional four-month sentences in February for destruction of property after they were convicted of having made a 4-inch hole in the wall separating their cells and using it to conceive a child according to Istanbul's largest morning newspaper, Hurriyet.

Plans for Whore "Camp" Sink
Effort To Save Historic Brothel

Rudy Giecek's plans to save an historic building which had housed a famous brothel in Butte, Montana when it was a copper mining boom town foundered after he joined forces with a group called the International Sex Worker Foundation for Art, Culture and Education. The "coalition" announced plans for an annual sex-worker festival in Butte called Whore Camp.

That frightened some local residents into thinking that prostitution might make a comeback. (Not all residents were frightened. Some were excited.)

"Bringing back prostitution was never on our agenda," said Norma Jean Almodovar, the group's founder and president and a longtime campaigner for prostitutes' rights. "There were a group of bluenoses who said, 'We don't want to celebrate this, or to remember that Butte had had such a huge red-light district, and that it had been such an important part of the city's history.' "

Giecek, who grew up in Butte - his father was a copper miner and union organizer until he was blinded in a mine accident in the 1950's - bought the building in 1989 and converted it into a museum. The crisis over the future of the museum was triggered when burglars stripped it of many of its artifacts.

The thieves were apparently startled by something and fled, leaving light fixtures, doorknobs and other objects on the floor in boxes. Perhaps, Giecek said, it was Elinore Knott's ghost who disturbed the thieves.

Ms. Knott killed herself in an upstairs room at the Dumas in 1955. The local newspaper account that Giecek has posted at the museum - untouched by the thieves - said Ms. Knott was to be taken away from the brothel life by her lover. She committed suicide, her bags packed and ready by the door, when he never showed up.

The fate of the brothel remains in limbo and Giecek, who has health problems, belatedly acknowledges that the idea of a Whore Camp didn't strike residents as a positive move. Duh!