ISDP: Don’t Mess with Texas Edition

The daffodils are out in force on the grounds of First Nerve Manor and the lilacs are about to burst forth. Good news for fragrance lovers. But for those with nostrils tuned to the macabre side of the smellscape, this month’s pickings from the gloomy field of decompositional olfactology are equally impressive. We begin with some contributions from the great state of Texas.

On March 28, the Houston Chronicle’s Dale Lezon reported that the decomposing remains of a man were found “in an apartment just east of downtown Houston late last night after neighbors noted a foul odor in the area.”

A few days later in Corpus Christi, television station KZTV reported that an autopsy was planned in the suspicious death of a person whose body was found in an apartment near Blucher Park. “According to police, neighbors called 911 after they detected a bad smell coming from the apartment.”

Then, just this week, the spotlight shifted back to Houston where we meet our latest Norman Bates Award nominees: 48-year-old twin brothers Edwin Larry Berndt and Edward Christian Berndt.

Twin Houston men were charged Tuesday with the murder of their 89-year-old mother after police say the pair allowed her to die on the floor in their foyer after she fell, then lived for three months with her decomposing, bug-infested corpse.

Associated Press writer Ramit Plushnick-Masit (no relation to Damit Mashie-Niblick) provides details:

Edwin Berndt said he and his brother were watching the BCS Championship football game when their mother “came in ranting and raving and she then fell down and did not get up.”

For the first day, Sybil Berndt was conscious and able to speak, but did not ask for any help, Edwin Berndt said. His brother said they didn’t give her any food or water while she lay on the floor.

Three days later, on Jan. 13, the elderly woman died, Edwin Berndt told police. He told them he remembered the date because it was a day after her 89th birthday.

Good grief.

Here’s an item for all you Hoarders fans:

The Cook County Medical Examiner’s office said an 80-year-old woman whose body was found in her Chicago town house buried under piles of debris died from natural causes.

The badly decomposed body of Cecylia Opilka was found Thursday by workers responding to complaints of a bad smell coming from the house.

And finally, a study in journalistic contrasts. Here’s the Quietly Canadian headline: “Man’s body found in Ottawa apartment”.

Cops discovered the body after neighbours complained to the landlord about a foul smell on the 11th floor of The Oaks apartment building.

And here’s the classically hyperbolic screaming header from that treasury of ISDP material, The New York Daily News:

Rotting, mutilated body of 400-lb. man found in bag in Bronx housing project

Amid the usual stuff about a bloody hatchet and cleaning products strewn about the room, there’s this key sentence that also serves as a nice caution about the hubris of naming public buildings after living people:

Patrol officers responding to a different incident at the Justice Sonia Sotomayor Houses in Soundview caught a whiff of a foul odor coming from another apartment, the sources said.

In other words, the discovery of the rotting, mutilated 400-pound victim was due to someone with a fine nose for police work. Ann Arbor columnist Rich Kinsey touches on some of the unpleasant aspects of what police call “well-being checks.”

It all starts with a call from someone who is concerned about a family member, friend or neighbor who they have not heard from in several days.

Some of the worst calls come from letter carriers who notice a foul odor and are worried about a person who has not collected their mail for several weeks.

Still want to go to police academy?

While checking around the home, officers will literally be “nosing around” using their sense of smell to detect the foul odor of decomposition.

So long until next month!

UPDATE April 16, 2011

We should have, uh, dug more deeply into the case of Mrs. Opilka, the recently deceased hoarder. It turns out she lived with her 43-year-old son Ronald, also a hoarder. He was on the scene when police arrived; asked for his ID, he pulled out his wallet as well as a bag of pot. He appears to be of questionable mental capacity, but that doesn't stop us from nominating him for this year's Norman Bates Award.

To Rake for Ambergris in the Paunch of the Leviathan

Presently a breeze sprang up; Stubb feigned to cast off from the whale; hoisting his boats, the Frenchman soon increased his distance, while the Pequod slid in between him and Stubb’s whale. Whereupon Stubb quickly pulled to the floating body, and hailing the Pequod to give notice of his intentions, at once proceeded to reap the fruit of his unrighteous cunning. Seizing his sharp boat-spade, he commenced an excavation in the body, a little behind the side fin. You would almost have thought he was digging a cellar there in the sea; and when at length his spade struck against the gaunt ribs, it was like turning up old Roman tiles and pottery buried in fat English loam. His boat’s crew were all in high excitement, eagerly helping their chief, and looking anxious as gold-hunters.

And all the time numberless fowls were diving, and ducking, and screaming, and yelling, and fighting around them. Stubb was beginning to look disappointed, especially as the horrible nosegay increased, when suddenly from out the very heart of this plague, there stole a faint stream of perfume, which flowed through the tide of bad smells without being absorbed by it, as one river will flow into and then along with another, without at all blending with it for a time.

“I have it, I have it,” cried Stubb, with delight, striking something in the subterranean regions, “a purse! a purse!”

Dropping his spade, he thrust both hands in, and drew out handfuls of something that looked like ripe Windsor soap, or rich mottled old cheese; very unctuous and savory withal. You might easily dent it with your thumb; it is of a hue between yellow and ash color. And this, good friends, is ambergris, worth a gold guinea an ounce to any druggist. Some six handfulls were obtained; but more was unavoidably lost in the sea, and still more, perhaps, might have been secured were it not for impatient Ahab’s loud command to Stubb to desist, and come on board, else the ship would bid them good-bye.

Does This Count as a “Gourmand” Fragrance?

Time for a little comic relief, via Danica Lo at Racked. Presenting Bacōn by Farginnay.

But really, I think Taco Bell got there first.

New York Health Nannies Launch a Stealth War on Perfume

New York City Health Nanny Thomas Farley, MD, MPH

We’ve pointed on many occasions to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ever-increasing intrusions on personal liberty: from banning trans fats in restaurants to banning outdoor smoking in parks and on beaches. We believe a nanny coalition of greens and progressives that meddles with your fried food and grabs the cigarette from your hand will have little compunction in taking away your right to wear perfume.This strikes some of our readers as needlessly alarmist: after all, trans fats and smoking are “unhealthy” while perfume is merely an aesthetic pleasure.

Well, less than two months before the fragrance industry’s 2011 FiFi Awards at Lincoln Center, the New York City Health Department has launched its first salvo against perfume use.

MANHATTAN -- Health Department officials are practicing what they preach with a new set of strict workplace rules. The rules, called “Life in the Cubicle Village,” prevent employees from using strong fragrances, bringing smelly food back to the office and posting office decorations that might be offensive to other colleagues, the New York Daily News reported.

This stealthy move by New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Farley is an unambiguous first step toward a city-wide workplace fragrance ban.

New York is arguably the world’s capital for scented commerce. All the major fragrance houses and many of the best known perfume brands have offices in the city. It is also home to the industry’s biggest trade association, The Fragrance Foundation.

Will they stand up to the nannies and defend our right to create and wear perfume?

Rochelle Bloom, this is your moment.

Olfactory Art in Southern California: Brian Goeltzenleuchter

This sounds interesting. On April 16, Aldis Browne Fine Arts, Inc. in La Jolla, California will introduce Avant Nez, a project by conceptual artist Brian Goeltzenleuchter. His previous forays into olfactory art involved creating scents for institutional spaces. In the new project his focus is on individuals:

In this, his inaugural dialogue with individual patrons, Goeltzenleuchter has developed an artistic process entailing three pre-arranged sittings to define the context for an evocative and intense journey into the creation of a client's personal fragrance, bottled within a sculpture designed by the artist.

If you are in the vicinity, try to wangle an invite and let me know what you think of his work. (How many Californians does it take to attend a gallery opening? Twenty: one to go and nineteen to share the experience.)

And while you are in La Jolla, stroll a couple of blocks over to Pannikin Coffee & Tea. Had brunch there last fall and it was most enjoyable. I’m not the only one who thinks so.