Frederic Hill, 102, rode the rails in Depression-era America

Ida and Fred were married in 1938 and lived at the Chase Hill farm, where their son, Brian, and daughter, Kathleen, were born. Fred then built the first of our two houses in North Stonington where daughter, Barbara, and son, Paul, grew up. There was a sauna in the basement. He usually heated it up every weekend and friends and neighbors would come over to participate, as was the tradition in Finland. Dad liked a hot sauna and he would roar like a bear when he was done.

Stig Kernell, 92, writes short, sweet obit

A Swedish man elected to keep the news of his death short and sweet, instructing a funeral agency to publish an obituary containing only the words 'I am dead', grabbing national headlines in the process. (H/T to Tanya Irwin

The NYT's Margalit Fox on writing obituaries

That, in essence, is the deep, sometimes bittersweet pleasure of the job – the chance to see, through the lens of personal history, how the world, for better or worse, got to be the way it is.