Gallows Humor #2 -- Ka-Bluey

Gallows humor #2.  (posted on FB July 21, early, copied to blog 7/24.  “Ka-Bluey”)

Day 2, and I have run out of dead baby jokes.

J. K. Rowling is a dry droll writer.  She has a new novel out, written under a pseudonym, “Robert Galbraith” (as in J. K. Galbraith, I think.)  It’s a detective story, with some standard arrangements: one damaged, scarred, ugly but somehow very attractive man, and four gorgeous women.  The gorgeous wife who just dumped him calls him “Bluey.”  Rowling, who once worked with torture victims, does not explain the nickname (typical of her style), but it’s pretty clear (typical of her style).  See, he was in Afghanistan, with an elite British army unit, and was injured in an explosion.  One leg went ka-bluey.

Sick-o.

Sept 14, 2013, there will be memorial services for children killed by abortion and dumped 25 years ago.  The 25 year thing is not about children, nor about their parents; it’s about a service organized by Monica Migliorino Miller, for children whose bodies she retrieved, 25 years ago.  She and some other faithful Midwesterners have asked body-snatchers from all over the country to join them in prayer on that date.

Okay.

The DC area service will be in Fairfax, Saturday, 9/14.  Details TBA.  Eight people worked from August 1986 to March 1987, taking bodies out of dumpsters at four abortion clinics in Maryland and DC.  One of the bodies in the memorial at Franciscan University, outside the Portiuncula.  Some were taken by Providence Hospital pathologists.  75 were buried in a quiet private graveyard.  The largest group were buried at a church in Fairfax.

The bodies we didn’t take out of the “waste stream” ended up in different places.  In Virginia, they went to the dump in Lorton.  The dump is off Gallows Road.  The place to dump is (was) labeled: “Citizen Disposal Facility.”  That’s blunt.

ChristyAnne Collins Dickson, Juli Loesch Wiley, and I have written in different places about our experiences during those painful days.  Each of us wrote in first person singular, and it is not obvious from what we wrote that we were working together.  We were cooperating.  I do not know whether any of the other five wrote about their experiences.  They included: Fr. Vincent Fitzpatrick, from the diocese of Fargo; Vincent’s father, a physicist who worked on acoustics at Carderock; Dennis Burdick, and Harry Hand.  There was one other person who was with me when we found the first bodies, who has always wanted to be kept out any public comments; I have not checked to see if that still applies.

Vincent took a lot of careful pictures.  It was interesting to see people’s reactions to the photos, over some years.  Most people didn’t react to the photos; they reacted to the fact that I had them.  They thought I was nuts.  Probably right.

My story about these events is available in an appendix to a book on the rescue movement.  I’ll post the excerpt – free, so I won’t be accused of plundering dumpsters to make a buck.