Stroganoffed

Scott Hardie | April 8, 2013
If you haven't heard, there was a fuss over scientist Yvonne Brill's obituary, in which she was praised as a mother, wife, and homemaker long before her critical work on America's satellite grid even came up. The opening sentences: "She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. 'The world's best mom,' her son Matthew said."

Like the Atlantic, I'll give the benefit of the doubt to the obituary's author that it was written that way in an attempt to create levity and break free of the standard memorial format, and not written that way out of willful sexism toward a woman who accomplished so much in a field still dominated by men. If so, the writer really chose a poor subject for this experiment with a lighter format.

Unlike the Atlantic, I'm not convinced that the boring old formula for the obituary needs to stay the way it is. Making a mean beef stroganoff is the kind of colorful specificity that brings Ms. Brill to life in words. My creative writing professors would have praised it over the same-old.

It got me thinking: If you were to write your own colorful obituary, leaving out the boring biographical stuff and focusing instead on the little details that made you an interesting person to know, what would you say? You have a three-sentence limit, to make it interesting.

Samir Mehta | April 10, 2013
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Scott Hardie | May 18, 2013
Scott loved games: He claimed to have perfected Ticket to Ride, but preferred more random games like King of Tokyo, where his favorite monster was Gigazaur. Committed to enjoying life, he spent more time managing his Netflix queue than his savings account. After trying every diet product in the freezer aisle, he became a connoisseur of Lean Cuisine: Beef chow fun was the best; butternut squash ravioli the worst.