In Fairbanks, the responses are more complex. Here a community of scientists knew him not through his parents’ poetry, but through the ingenuity of his research into freshwater ecosystems. They knew him from ice fishing and cycling, from gardening or making pottery. And with his death there is building resentment, a sense that his life and death are being distorted by strangers, depicted as either the inevitable after-effect of his father’s infidelities or somehow genetically foreordained by his mother’s demons.

The story of Nicholas Hughes' death continues here in NYT.

Isn't it sad, to hang yourself and be written up in NYT not as yourself but as an extension of much, much more famous kins.

I know "Nicholas Hughes Commits Suicide" doesn't have the same ring as "Son of Sylvia Plath Commits Suicide". Even if such a headline had been run, I might not have clicked on it.

Mr. Hughes’s early life was darkened by shadows of depression and suicide. Ms. Plath explored the themes in her 1963 novel “The Bell Jar,” which follows an ambitious college student who tries to kill herself after suffering a nervous breakdown while interning at a New York City magazine. The novel reflected Ms. Plath’s own experiences, including her early struggles with depression and her attempt at suicide while working at Mademoiselle in New York as a college student.

After a stay at a mental institution, Ms. Plath went on to study poetry at Cambridge University, where she met Ted Hughes, who was on his way to world fame as a poet. The two were married in 1956, and had two children — Nicholas and Frieda — but separated in 1962 after Mr. Hughes began an affair with another woman, Assia Wevill. Ms. Plath killed herself at the age of 30 by sticking her head in an oven in her London home on Feb. 11, 1963, as Nicholas and Frieda slept nearby.

Six years later, Ms. Wevill, who had helped raise Nicholas and Frieda after Ms. Plath’s death, killed herself and her 4-year-old daughter, Shura. Ms. Wevill styled the murder-suicide in the same manner, using a gas stove.

I've never heard of Nicholas Hughes before this. But I find the whole thing, from his family history to his own personal demons, remarkably tragic.

So for what it's worth, Nicholas Hughes Commits Suicide.

what if your life was over in 6,697 polaroids?

image from here

Jamie Livingston received a Polaroid camera in 1979 and starting taking pretty much a picture a day. 6,697 Polaroids chronicle the last 18 years of his life. The collection was turned into an exhibition by his friends. The pictures can be seen here, and you can read more about Livingston here and here.

From the moments he captured, his life looked rich and fulfilling until he was dealt that unexpected hand. That's the beauty and sorrow of photography. You can choose the moment and mood you want to capture and even then, that's not the whole story because it's up to the individual viewer to interpret it as he or she wishes. Like how a friend found the whole thing creepy and depressing when I was thinking it was incredibly beautiful and moving, I suppose.

Just think. If you were to chronicle your own life picture by picture, day by day, what would the final story be like?