Death in Tuscany

I am lying on a hillside in Tuscany pretending to be dead.  My body cells merge with the grass and dirt.  I would be the organic being I strive to be.  A wind courses through the trees, the few left by  industrious firewood harvesters.  They are wise enough to leave shade trees, well-spaced saplings and venerable flowering fruit trees.  

An octopus-shaped cloud obscures the sun.  A few minutes ago it was a flying goddess with a swan on her back.  The clothes under my body would be better on, but then have buried me naked so I know I am alive.

Had to happen sooner or later: Caskets and funeral planning are coming to the mall. 

CBS News reports that Forest Lawn - cemetery of the stars - has established kiosk sales points in SoCal suburban malls.

The death business might be in decline if they're coming out from behind shuttered and curtained "funeral homes" and setting up consultation centers in commercial shopping centers.  Will this mean more transparency in the American business model of fleecing relatives of the dead with overpriced sateen and velour lined boxes sealed in expensive hardwood coffins and even more expensive metal containers?  So wasteful.  

Jessica Mitford's milestone investigation The American Way of Death points out that while the death industry might try different window dressing, it is still  bunko.  Funeral directors and their ghoulish henchmen the embalmers, need more regulation.  Competition should be encouraged; Americans need a low-priced option  -- simple containers and inexpensive burial or cremation options.
Embalming is not necessary and not required in many locations.

Intelligent and eco-sensitive folks can arrange burials efficiently and relatively waste-free with a cardboard casket or natural burial at many locations.

Meanwhile, a company called Til We Meet Again which specializes in lifestyle caskets and military funerals, has opened stores in Arizona, Louisiana, Kansas, Indiana and Texas, according to the CBS report and the company's website.

Stack the Deck

A Labor Member of Parliament from Scotland proposed in 1996 that London opt for double-decker graves to accommodate its problem of overcrowded cemeteries.

The plan to deal with over-crowded cemeteries with double decker graves was finally approved in 2008.

Lost Head to Skull Collector

The University of Chicago Press has issued a paperback edition of The Skull Collectors, just the type of book Open Grave enjoys.  Author Ann Fabian  reports the collecting habits of Philadelphia physician Samuel George Morton and his 1,000 skulls acquired from around the globe.  Dr. Morton was intent on cataloging racial differences and just might have had a pre-determined outcome in mind.

His work was re-evaluated in 1978 by Stephen Jay Gould who used updated statistical analysis to find the skulls about equal among the five groups Morton identified.  Gould also noted Morton selectively included or excluded specimens and rounded off data.  His analysis was published in The Mismeasure of Man published in 1981 and revised with a new introduction in 1996.

After reading about Samuel Morton's skull-typing work, one possible impulse would be to hasten to the Biodiversity Heritage Library at Internet Archive to read online or download a copy of Crania Americana.

Though Morton's comparative study of the skulls of aboriginal peoples in North and South America is flawed science, at least there are stunning illustrations.

Photograph of a lithograph illustration from Crania Americana.
Photo: University of Pennsylvania Museum 

Scuba Cemetery

Eternal Reefs and other companies like Great Burial Reef  and Living Reef Memorial offer underwater memorials for the deceased.  Reef balls or other concrete structures hold remains of family members or a community. The cremated remains mixed with concrete to create a reef ball weigh more than 50 pounds and sit underwater in a hive shape structure that can weight up to 4,000 pounds.  It's not going to get lost at sea.

Burial Reef
Photo: treehugger.com

Ancient Burying Ground of Hartford, Connecticut

Wonder if  Skull and Bones, the secret society for boys-not-yet-men at Yale University

Skull and Bones, Yale University
Photo: en.Wikipedia.org

ever cruised the 30-odd miles from New Haven up to Hartford to practice their skulduggery at the Ancient Burying Ground of Hartford?

The Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven was closer  -- there's even a section just for Yale College -- but can't you just see those rich bad-lads tossing bootleg bubbly in Dick's Stutz-Bearcat and motoring to Connecticut's other city on a midnight lark?   

Gravestones of the Lawrence family
Ancient Burying Ground, Hartford, Connecticut
Photo: Connecticut Historical Society
and Connecticut History online

Dating to 1640 and continuing to the 1800s, the burial ground is the oldest historic landmark in Hartford.

The headstones range from plain style with just the facts about the deceased to stones with carved ornamentation of death's heads, angels and cherubs.  Ground stones, tablets and table stones mark the final resting places of Hartford's early English and French Huguenot settlers.

A brochure produced by the Ancient Burying Ground Association outlines a self-guided walking tour with detailed information  on notable headstones, genealogy and regional history.

A short video on the graveyard provides historic and cultural orientation.

More information:

Connecticut Visit - Ancient Burying Ground of Hartford

Connecticut Historical Society Museum & Library

Connecticut History

Holy Casket Makers!

Wood coffin made at Saint Joseph Abbey.
Photo: CatholicNewsAgency.com

The 37 monks at Saint Joseph Abbey near Covington, Louisiana support their monastery by selling simple handmade wooden caskets.  The relatively modest coffins sell for $1,500 to $2,000 -- far less than the typical burial casket with all the trimmings offered on the funeral director's sales floor.

The state's funeral directors believed they had a lock on the sale of coffins, caskets and other trappings of burial.  The Louisiana State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors tried to shut down coffin making and selling at the monastery, citing a state regulation crafted to benefit the funeral directors and embalmers, that the casket market is only open to licensed funeral directors. 

The monks enlisted the help of the Institute for Justice to initiate a legal action to repudiate the state-wide grip the funeral managers had on all funeral-related business.

"The great deference due state economic regulation does not demand judicial blindness to the history of a challenged rule ... nor does it require courts to accept nonsensical explanations for naked transfers of wealth," Circuit Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham wrote, referring to the long sweet deal the funeral directors held over all aspects of funeral services and equipment in Louisiana. 

As of March, 2013, the monks can make 

Saint Joseph Abbey monks at work.
Photo: ReligionNews.com

and sell the wooden coffins and the funeral directors can't stop them.  As reported in Religion News.com, the  Appeal in the U.S. Fifth Circuit came out on the side of consumers and the monastery-based small business: "Funeral homes, not independent sellers, have been the problem for consumers with their bundling of product and markups of caskets. The “grant of an exclusive right of sale (for licensed funeral directors) adds nothing to protect consumers and puts them at a greater risk of abuse including exploitative prices.”

The "coffin cartel" --as one blogger put it-- funeral directors aren't going to let their cash cow go easily. In July, 2013, the Times-Picayune reports, the Louisiana embalmers and funeral directors petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn federal district and appeals court rulings in favor of the monks' right to free enterprise, the making and selling of wood caskets.

More:

Barnes, Robert. A victory for monks in fight over caskets. The Washington Post, October 25, 2012, p. A3.

Sullivan, Laura (host). Louisiana Abbey Finally Able to Sell its Caskets. All Things Considered. National Public Radio, March 31, 2013.