Why Obscure Obits?

Singing the Praises of the Unsung

I confess I’m an obituary guy. Probably not as obsessive about it as others, but I do surf the interwebs for recent deaths on a daily basis. My main sources are online newspapers, Wikipedia, and breaking news on social media. The latter usually deals with famous or important people of whom most of us are aware. So do newspapers. Wikipedia can offer some information about lesser know personalities who just passed away.

As a bilingual person, I check Wikipedia in both English and Spanish. One of the interesting things I’ve discovered is that the home page of “en español” usually offers a much longer list of people who passed away than its English counterpart. And when I say “much longer” I mean it’s sometimes double or triple in size. (When one checks the actual “Deaths” page, it evens out.)

I have a good friend who also tracks obits. We joke that sometimes our whatsapp chat — soon to be on Signal? — looks more like a necrology column than a conversation between two pals. But because of our backgrounds and interests, we mostly post to each other about deaths related to baseball, cinema, and well-known Venezuelans (who in most cases are not famous worldwide).

So why start this publication. It happened today, February 1st, 2021. I ran through both the Wikipedias I usually check, and a name (and photo) in the Spanish one caught my attention.

Goddess Bunny.