Resurrecting Six Feet Under
I’m delighted to host a post by Brian Jenner. Brian is a words-for-hire person (I know how that feels) who does everything from gilding the tongues of politicians to writing terrifically good books. This summer he is holding a Six Feet Under convention in Bournemouth. As soon as I heard about this I fired off […]
Crestone End-of-Life Project
Crestone Colorado is a bit like Totnes on steroids. It is home to all manner of nice folk and all sorts of religious communities. Alternative. (To capitalism on steroids). Crestone is home to one of only two legal open-air cremation sites in the US. That’s two better than the UK, where open-air cremation was declared […]
A time to die
Every week in the Spectator magazine Peter Jones takes an occurrence or development in contemporary society and politics and considers it in the light of what the ancients did when faced with the same circumstances. This week he considers the art of dying. I’d now bung you a link but I can’t: the Speccie does not […]
Caw blimey
Here’s a roundup of my week’s tweets — and not a weak link in any of them. Before you look through them, make sure you haven’t missed this week’s most important discussion. It was about shrines and it features two of this blog’s brightest and most questing minds, those of Rupert Callender and Kathryn. Find […]
Decompiculture and the Mushroom Project
“Decompiculture is the growing or culturing of decomposer organisms by humans. The term is intended to establish a contrast with the term agriculture. Agriculture encompasses the production systems based on the culture of herbaceous plants and herbivore animals. In effect, agriculture is human symbiosis with select organisms of the herb-herbivore-carnivore food chains comprising the live […]
Exclusive! Dover undertaker achieves UK first.
I was going to blog today about the public meeting at Redditch town hall to debate the contentious matter of whether or not the crem should be used to heat a nearby swimming pool. I wanted to give you a blow-by-blow account. But in the event it was a non-event. There were perhaps thirty people […]
A Good Goodbye
“Sometimes the best way to move recalcitrant parents or spouses along on preplanning [for death and its aftermath] is to make your own arrangements first. That’s what my husband and I did, telling his parents we were going cemetery plot shopping and asking if they wanted to come along. They came, they saw, they bought, […]
Gilded poo
It’s been a dispiriting couple of days. Once again the damned Co-op Funeralcare has re-announced the obvious in yet another self-serving survey and, incredibly, reaped a rich harvest of column inches in the UK’s newspapers. You’ve almost certainly encountered some of it. I wasn’t going to rise to it. At this time of the year […]
Upper class tweets
GoodFunerals Charles Cowling Satan’s skull found in New Mexico! http://bit.ly/fcDVTO GoodFunerals Charles Cowling Why do the clergy prefer funerals to weddings? Good account here from a C of E priest: http://bit.ly/ieIhzc GoodFunerals Charles Cowling What is a bhusa yong? Lovely photographic account here of a Thai funeral and open air cremation http://bit.ly/fcbNLH GoodFunerals Charles Cowling Good looking books […]
In the midst of death let there be life
There’s been a lot of interest in the US this week in what their media reckons to be a startling new trend. Owners of funeral homes, which over there are much roomier than ours, are reacting to shrinking profits – the impact of the rise in cremation and the slump in the economy – by […]
