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Now that Larry Craig has reached iconic status, something he never came within a million miles of before the men's room incident, should he be cut some slack for his unspeakable crime?
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Son of a bitch, I just ate:
Heather Walsh-Haney bursts through the door and hurries past the long table where the skeleton of a man who was once a professor lies, past the rows of human skulls, the candles and the old leather-bound books until she stops and takes a breath.
''It smells a little like decomposition in here,'' says Walsh-Haney, a forensic anthropologist who hopes to open Florida's first body farm. ``Sweet and musty, don't you think?''
At 39, she already spends most of her days working among the dead, mining bones for what they reveal about life stories and crimes, mysteries and clues. Her ability to divine answers to the primal questions of ''Who was this person?'' and ''When did he or she die?'' has taken her from the broken ground of New York after 9/11 to New Orleans, where Hurricane Katrina pushed bodies from their rightful burial sites. And she travels throughout Florida, investigating whether the skulls found in cauldrons have been acquired legally for use in religious ceremonies.
Hers is a relentless and complicated postmortem business. Between helping police and medical examiners throughout the state -- and teaching at Florida Gulf Coast University -- Walsh-Haney works to advance the field of forensics.
Along with the university, she hopes to establish an outdoor research facility in which donated corpses are allowed to lie out on the open ground while forensic anthropologists and criminologists study the mechanics of decomposition.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
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