Green Revolution Hits Dead End In Georgia Cemetery Proposal

Wall Street Journal ^

[freekitty]

Best post.

[wbill]

I vote for a Viking Burial. Would put the “Fun” in Funeral. Dunno how “green” they are, though.

[wbill]

my family will be given instructions NOT to spend a nickel on a fancy funeral

I dunno about a fancy funeral, but I like a good old-fashioned Irish wake.

We had one for my grandfather (his request....). Good to get the family together, better to have a fun time when we do it.

[wbill]

Jeez, you beat me to it. Great minds, and all that....

[Izzy Dunne]

That suits me just fine. The whole embalming thing is a pretense about avoiding decomposition, and an attempt to pretty up the body so the funeral goers won't be shocked.

And the vault idea was a way to cover up the idea that embalming is a nasty, toxic process.

Whereas, if you stick my body six feet under, with nothing but a burial cloth, then there are no side effects.

[autumnraine]

I agree with you.

I personally want to donate my body to science, cremate the rest and turn the carbon ashes into diamonds for my children.

And I’m not kidding.

[MooseMan]

Well I ain't afraid of dyin', it's the thought of being dead

I wanna go on being me once my eulogy's been read

Don't spread my ashes out to sea, don't lay me down to rest

You can put my mind at ease if you fulfill my last request

Prop me up beside the jukebox if I die

Lord, I wanna go to heaven but I don't wanna go tonight

Fill my boots up with sand, put a stiff drink in my hand

Prop me up beside the jukebox if I die

Just let my headstone be a neon sign

Let it burn in mem'ry of all of my good times

Fix me up with a manequin, just remember I like blondes

I'll be the life of the party even when I'm dead and gone

Prop me up beside the jukebox if I die

Lord, I wanna go to heaven but I don't wanna go tonight

Fill my boots up with sand, put a stiff drink in my hand

Prop me up beside the jukebox if I die

Just make your next selection and while your still in line

You can pay you last respects one quarter at a time

Prop me up beside the jukebox if I die

Lord, I wanna go to heaven but I don't wanna go tonight

Fill my boots up with sand, put a stiff drink in my hand

Prop me up beside the jukebox if I die

Oh, prop me up beside the jukebox if I die

[NaughtiusMaximus]

If this is going to become popular, I suggest that when you bury Uncle Charley, “the old hippie,” you get him underground PDQ. If you think he smelled kinda gamy while
he was alive . . .

[skepsel]

Hmmm, I always wanted my friends to hire a drift fishing boat for the day, attach a wood chipper to the stern, put me on ice with the beer and bait and hang out with their chum one last time!

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

It makes a lot more sense to do like natural history museums do to animal cadavers, who use insects to clean the bones of animals before displaying them.

It makes a lot more sense than using, and possibly polluting, a whole bunch of land, or using up a heck of a lot of fuel for cremation, along with the exorbitant price of embalming and coffins.

Afterward, there would just be clean, dry bones, that would take up a fraction of the space, or could be easily incinerated for ashes, and artificial parts. The dead insects could be used as fertilizer.

If it has any “ick” factor, it is not as bad as burial, which does much the same thing, but slower and with nastier insects.

[DesertRhino]

I am truly coming to *hate* this bizzare cult. If they can see an environmental issue in EVERYTHING we do,, why cant i see America hating and communism in every thing they do?

[aberaussie]

When my brother died as a child in the 1950s, the funeral home people told my mother, who was devastated of course, that he would look just the same if they were to open the casket years later and look in on him. She actually had that opportunity when she and my dad decided to move him from one cemetery to another in the town where they decided to be buried. She did not do it - I shudder to think of what she would have found. I am sure the funeral home would not have allowed it anyway.

I really do not understand the whole embalming, putting in a sealed casket, and burying process. Why do we do that? Why not just put the body in a shroud six feet under? The thought of trying to preserve the body chemically in a casket creeps me out.

[Izzy Dunne]

I don’t know why. Perhaps you could ask the folks who see it as a “bizarre cult” or think of it as a hippie greenie thing.

[aberaussie]

Funny...usually I don’t agree with the hippie greenies! ;-)

[packrat35]

I always wanted to be strapped to a depth charge myself

[GadareneDemoniac]

They picked an odd place to promote this idea — back in 1993 (IIRC) there was one heck of a flood that ran the Ocmulgee River over I-16 and coffins from Riverside Cemetery were popping out of the ground and floating downstream. I imagine that the folks in Macon don’t want to hear about any “innovative ideas” about burying folks.