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On a clear day at Nome City Cemetery (AK), you can watch planes take off over the Bering Sea. Within the field of white graves, you might also see a small black obelisk that shines brilliantly when it catches the sun. Getting closer, you’ll note an unmistakable symbol engraved near its base. It’s not a cross, nor a Star of David, but a sacred container of sorts in many American households: a tub of Cool Whip.The grave belongs to Bonnie Johnson, a mother, former flight attendant, and creator of a cookie recipe whose batches always arrived at birthdays, holidays, and...

Cemeteries pay zero property taxes, something the mainstream media will NEVER tell you. That means the funeral home businesses that own that type of property make a fortune off of funerals, but pay no property taxes. I am an old man and just learned that yesterday and I read extensively. Interesting that the media doesn't see fit to print all that is news.

As on every Memorial Day, small flags will be placed next to neat, respectful rows of headstones at military cemeteries across America. Neat and respectful is not how you would describe Mare Island Naval Cemetery – a forsaken plot of hallowed ground that fell between the cracks of Pentagon base closings and the city of Vallejo’s bankruptcy. The oldest military cemetery on the West Coast is in utter disrepair. It is the final resting place for 800-plus veterans, including a few who fought in the War of 1812 and three Medal of Honor recipients. The daughter of Francis Scott Key,...

Hillary Clinton will clinch the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday, Fox News projects, becoming the first woman in American history to top the ticket of a major political party. Eight years to the day after she conceded to rival Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary,

DUDLEY, Mass. (AP) -- On the site of a long-idle dairy farm, leaders of a local mosque hope to build a final resting place for about 500 Muslim families - to the dismay of many residents of this quaint town in central Massachusetts. In arguments cemetery developers and activists decry as thinly veiled bigotry, neighbors say they fear burial practices could contaminate groundwater because Muslims traditionally do not embalm bodies and bury their dead without coffins.

After just two minutes of floor debate late Tuesday evening, the House passed a measure to prohibit the display of Confederate flags on graves in federal cemeteries. Despite the lack of fanfare, the vote marked the House's first entry into the debate over removing the Confederate flag from federal property that went beyond codifying already established policies. Rep. Jared Huffman's (D-Calif.) amendment to the 2016 Interior Department spending bill seeks to end a policy that allows a temporary display of the flag in cemeteries under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. It sailed through on a voice vote after...

One of the criticisms of modern liturgy, and especially modern Church music is that we sing so highly of ourselves. We are the “aware, gathered community” that, according to one song, has been “gathered in, and sung throughout all of history!” Another song seems to suggest that we have the power to “sing a new church into being.” Apparently the one Christ founded needs replacing?A popular song back in my college years was “We are the light of the world!” And while it is true that Jesus called us this, the context is clear that he meant it more as...

It is no surprise to learn that, as land values continue to rise, space for cemeteries gets scarce. I have seen more and more mausoleums be built at the local cemeteries, and they are getting taller as the years go on. But the picture to the right really takes the concept to new heights! The picture is The Memorial Necrópole Ecumênica III, a vertical cemetery in Santos, Brazil. It is the world’s tallest cemetery, with burial spaces on 32 floors. There’s also a restaurant, chapel, lagoon and peacock garden. It has become one of the most popular tourist attractions in...

For more than a year, Assembly Speaker John Pérez dated a Hollywood funeral director who faces fraud allegations in one of the biggest financial scandals to rock the U.S. funeral industry. During their relationship, Pérez, a Los Angeles Democrat, mixed political business with his personal life in ways that showed poor judgment, ethics experts say. A Pérez spokesman said the lawmaker conducted himself appropriately during a casual dating relationship. Tyler Cassity, proprietor of a boutique cemetery called Hollywood Forever as well as a Mill Valley cemetery, and defendant in a $600 million fraud lawsuit in his native Missouri, accompanied Pérez...

Cemetery Guns and Grave Torpedoes Newspaper editor Arthur Brisbane once said, “The fence around a cemetery is foolish, for those inside can't get out and those outside don't want to get in." However, this has not always been the case. For centuries graveyards had to content with the scourge of grave robbers who preyed on the valuables of corpses, and even the corpses themselves. This threat led to an industry solution—grave guns. Cemetery Guns Set-guns, defined as a gun that is set to fire on any intruder that encounters the wire that sets it off, have been around since at...

HARTSDALE — A state agency has told New York's animal cemeteries to stop burying the ashes of pet owners alongside their beloved cats, dogs and parakeets. The order from New York's Division of Cemeteries comes as a growing number of Americans are deciding to share their final resting place with their pets.

Jakarta, Indonesia (AP) - Explosive material recovered from the scene of two suicide bombings at hotels in the Indonesian capital is "identical" to that used by the Southeast Asian terrorist network Jemaah Islamiyah in earlier attacks, police said. An unexploded bomb left in a room of the J.W. Marriott in Jakarta resembled devices used in attacks on Bali and one found in a recent raid against the network on an Islamic boarding school in Central Java, national police spokesman told a news conference Sunday.

RITTMAN, Ohio - The cracking of rifle fire silenced the twittering blue jays, blackbirds and killdeer. As members of the color guard lowered their rifles, the smell of bitter smoke drifted over the family and friends of former Army Sgt. Ellis Hale, a Vietnam War veteran who died of prostate cancer at age 59. Sniffles and gentle sobs accompanied a recording of taps. Moments after the final note, Sherry Hale walked down a curved brick walkway past the saluting line of representatives of the country's past wars. Head bowed, she clutched to her chest the American flag that covered her...

Exodus 3 1 Meanwhile Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. Leading the flock across the desert, he came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There an angel of the LORD appeared to him in fire flaming out of a bush. As he looked on, he was surprised to see that the bush, though on fire, was not consumed. 3 So Moses decided, "I must go over to look at this remarkable sight, and see why the bush is not burned." 4When the LORD saw him coming over to look at it more...

Through thousands of military burials, Memorial Honor Detail volunteers at Riverside National Cemetery have folded the American flag 13 times and recited the significance of every fold to survivors of those being laid to rest. The first fold, a narrator tells relatives, represents life, the second a belief in eternal life. The 11th fold celebrates Jewish war veterans and "glorifies the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." A single complaint lodged against the words for the 11th fold recently prompted the National Cemetery Administration to ban the entire recital at all 125 national cemeteries....

n Friday night at the Roans Prairie Community Center, Mark Holmes was there to show the film documentary, "Truth Be Tolled," directed by San Antonio resident William H. Molina. Mark has an enlarged map of Grimes County showing the proposed path that the Trans Texas Corridor will take. When I first got upset about this project was when I found out that it would elimate the Historic Oakland Cemetery. When looking at the map, I found that this is not the only cemetery in our area that will suffer. Others included are Independence Cemetery right off FM 2620, Shiro Cemetery...

The wickedly funny and witty political columnist and bestselling author Ann Coulter (or as I call her the blonde bomber) once wrote that when liberals pass by a graveyard, they see potential voters. I would take it further: when liberals see hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens swarming over our unprotected borders, they see potential voters. An added bonus is that these illegal aliens can't speak English and are ripe for indoctrination by the Democrat Party's Hispanic overseers within the "liberal plantation." Do you think this writer exaggerates? Just look at the recent congressional race in southern California between Bilbray...

(AP) SYDNEY, Australia. Brothels and cemeteries don't mix and should remain at least 660 feet apart, a local government official said Tuesday. Paul Pisasale, the mayor of Queensland state town of Ipswich, is part of a movement being led by the Urban Local Government Association to prevent brothels from being built near cemeteries. Prostitution is legal in Australia in limited circumstances. "There's a lot of families and services that are going on and the last thing you want is someone conducting a spiritual service and a cemetery reflection time for family and a brothel going on next door," he told...

WASHINGTON, May 23, 2006 – Recognizing the need for a federal agency to take the lead in honoring U.S. servicemembers who died on foreign soil, Congress enacted legislation in 1923 to create the American Battle Monuments Commission. The U.S. cemetery in Cambridge, England, contains the remains of 3,812 of American war dead from World War II. Courtesy photo  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. "The American Battle Monuments Commission maintains and oversees American cemeteries and monuments around the world. They are commemorative sites honoring our nation's war heroes," retired Army Brig. Gen. John "Jack" Nicholson, secretary and chief executive...