Stewart Lytle, who also gets the photo credit, wrote a nice article on “Michael Updike: Gravestones Don’t Have to be Morbid,” which was published by The Town Common, “The Largest Independent Weekly Community News for the North Shore of Mass. and Coastal NH.”
A familiar site at Updike Society gatherings, Michael Updike is equally familiar on the North Shore art fair circuit. Pilgrims to the Plowville (Pa.) cemetery who go there to see the headstone Michael carved for his father are also familiar with his work, characterized by a heartfelt impulse or emotion offset by a wry-and-dry sense of humor.
“Updike has carved headstones for Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket, Gumby and a frog, ‘who gave his life for science,’ read his epitaph,” Lytle wrote. “Updike created a gravestone for a possum, to absolve his guilt for killing one as a child. He sold the possum memorial slate to a woman who also suffered guilt from a possum’s death.
“On a long thin piece of slate, he carved a headstone for a grasshopper he once crushed with a rock. He placed a rock on top of the slate.
“He is also the carver of the penguins that float near the shore of the Merrimack. He carved the penguins to humor his children, or more likely himself. But many a car driving on Water Street have pulled over to make sure they were not seeing an illusion.”
Updike collectors take note: The extensive collection of Michael Broomfield (of Broomfield & De Bellis bibliography fame) is for sale, item-by-item, from 
Maria Lester, director of The John Updike Childhood Home that is owned and operated by the 501c3 John Updike Society, received word recently that the museum at 117 Philadelphia Ave. in Shillington, Pa. was awarded a $25,000 Chairman’s Grant from the head of the National Endowment for the Humanities.