Having exhausted the angles of Ted Kennedy's life and death, Boston's newspaper of record yesterday took the extraordinary step of addressing the Senator's afterlife. Actual excerpt from Sunday's Boston Globe:

Q. Is Senator Kennedy going to heaven?

A. Catholic theologians say that is a question for God, not church officials or any of Senator Kennedy’s fans or foes.

Former Boston Phoenix contributor James Surowiecki -- now the New Yorker's financial columnist -- sat down with BARNEY FRANK in late August to talk about the state of the economy and, somewhat more sexily, about the health-care town-hall debates. ahead to the 13-minute mark This was just a few days after Frank had conducted just such a town-hall in Massachusetts -- which we covered extensively

Leave it to Ted Kennedy to depart this planet with one final bombshell -- a shocker, delivered at graveside, that's already being dissected by pundits, would-be biographers, Catholics . . . oh, and probably the fact-checkers at Time magazine. In the final act of a closely-choreographed farewell -- much of it reportedly planned by Kennedy himself -- Ted Kennedy's voice came alive from beyond the grave as read by Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, Archbishop Emeritus of Washington, DC.

Here's the official program distributed to attendees at Ted Kennedy's funeral in Mission Hill, courtesy of the Kennedy family. Or click through AFTER THE JUMP to get the updates the press is receiving from inside the church. 

The cinematic view of Boston behind the speakers tonight at the Kennedy Library -- which we glimpsed earlier today at somewhat closer distance -- reminded us of an anecdote that the great Boston documentarian Erroll Morris made sure his subject told in The Fog of War, his feature-length portrait of Robert McNamara.

As his good friend Paul Kirk just mentioned, Ted Kennedy enjoyed singing -- even though his enjoyment of singing was in inverse proportion to his talent. We say this as a compliment -- it takes a big man to sing off key, on mic, with one of the world's most popular symphony orchestras. And after watching the following clips, you can only come away with the impression that he loved singing so much he simply couldn't help himself.

Someday we'd like to meet the guy who types the messages and flips the switch so that every digital bus and traffic display in Boston suddenly proclaims "Go Pats!" or "Go Sox!"-- or, as is the case today, "Thanks Ted." As we traveled south on I-93, the signage already knew what we were up to, blinking out directions to the JFK Library even before we hit the tunnel.

As we were perusing the internets this evening to figure out where we're going to stow the car tomorrow morning when we go down to Columbia Point to say a personal farewell to Senator Ted Kennedy -- we declined the three-hour-wait tonight -- we found ourselves Googling the Bayside Expo Center, which is providing free parking and shuttles to JFK Library for the occasion

1. PerezHilton R.I.P. Ted Kennedy //bit.ly/qNMf4 So sad. 26 Aug 2009 from web
2. kayhanley @perezhilton It's time for all of us to fight for everything Ted Kennedy stood for. Civil, human and workers' rights. Now. #tedkennedy 26 Aug 2009 from web
3. ricky_martin R.