Categories
Cemeteries Monuments + Memorials

Year End Look at Arlington Cemetery’s Future

Restoring Arlington Cemetery
Washington Post Editorial Board (December 27, 2010)
What does it mean to restore accountability in the nation’s cemetery?

This is a good, succinct Washington Post Editorial on everything that’s gone wrong at Arlington Cemetery. This last year has been particularly bad for Arlington Cemetery and you can read Death Ref’s coverage of those problems here.

The Washington Post Editorial Board also mentions the fixes being implemented to help remedy the problems. One key improvement will be the the use of a computerized tracking system for all the graves. It is hard to believe, given Arlington Cemetery’s national significance, but before now all the graves were kept track of on pieces of paper.

 

That system didn’t work particularly well. In early December, for example, the Washington Post ran a story on 8 sets of cremated remains found buried in the same, single gravesite. What was most interesting about that specific case was that the US Military brought in an Army Anthropologist (who usually works on gravesite forensic investigations) to ascertain what happened.

So, on the whole, 2011 will be a tricky year for Arlington Cemetery.

Especially since US Military personnel continue to die overseas, and those individuals deserve what the Department of Defense calls a dignified transfer to the grave.

Categories
Afterlife Burial

Jewish Burial Gets Back to the Roots

Reviving a Ritual of Tending to the Dead
Paul Vitello, The New York Times (December 13, 2010)
A new generation of Jewish volunteers is learning how to prepare a body for burial using techniques that attend to “the feelings of the dead.”

It has been a good year for people who want to re-discover the roots of Jewish funereal practices. Last March I posted a story about a documentary film which documented a group of Jewish women preparing a dead body.

What is really interesting to me is how Jewish (and Muslim) customs are being studied by non-Jews and non-Muslims for their own dead. Indeed, a good number of Natural Burial and Home Funeral proponents borrow ideas from both Islam and Judaism.

This New York Times is a variation on that theme, where non-Orthodox Jews living in Brooklyn want to learn what is done when a person dies. I also find this situation more and more, where a certain religious group suddenly realizes that most of its members do not know what to do when a member of the faith dies. I’ve spoken with funeral directors who have been asked point blank what a certain religious faith requires– from members of that faith.

Everything eventually gets sorted out but it still makes for awkward conversations.

I wouldn’t mind knowing, either, what these funeral practices look like in 1000 years.

That to me is the most important point to contemplate: what stays and what goes.

What does it all morph into since dead bodies will most certainly still be around.

Categories
Death + the Economy Death Ethics

Body Fishing Up Ahead

Bodies floating in the Yellow River near Changpo Village in China’s Gansu Province. Photo credit: Tom Lasseter/MCT

This story has affected me in a way that many others about death have not. The complete and utter sense of tragedy permeating it is hard to shake and the mental imagery conjured up while reading it is the stuff of nightmares. In what has got to be one of the more grim and disturbing jobs in the world, CNN and other outlets reported this week on the “body fisherman”; mostly men who trawl for murder, suicide and the occasional drowning victim that floats down the Yellow River, about 20 kilometers to the west of Lanzhou, China. Those who perform this grim work advertise their services and cell phone numbers on hand painted signs that read “Body Fishing Up Ahead”.

The story, which has been picked up here and there since September, appeared in the Asia Times and various McClatchy news service outlets. Most recently, CNN reported on it just this week.

There seems to be two overarching threads in these stories. Some believe the people who would do such work are nothing more than ruthless mercenaries taking advantage of grief-stricken families. Charging what would be exorbitant fees—even by Western standards—the fisherman turn bodies over to families only as a fee is paid. Others say that the work they do is a necessary public service that local authorities cannot or will not provide. Who is right? It is clear that there are no easy answers and very little offered in the way of solutions to help stem the deathly tide.

In 2008, a documentary called The Other Shore, brought the practice to light for those outside of China. The film profiles Wei Zhiqian from Xiaoxia village in Gansu, a longtime body fisherman who recently ended his life’s work due to the building of a giant dam upriver. In his place, new families have taken over the trade despite increasing pressure from authorities to stop. There is still potentially much money to be made.

Lun Lun, 24, stated to CNN, “I have worked on this section of the river for several years. I’ve seen hundreds of bodies float downstream. They gather around here and we fish them out one by one. I’d like to say I’m a boat operator but really, I search for the dead.”

While China’s economy continues to grow, perhaps other unforeseen odd and gruesome jobs such as this one will present themselves. Scores of bodies will be needed to support and feed the industrial engine of the world’s second largest economy. It is sad to think that many of those bodies will be casualties in this accelerated march toward “progress” and empire building.

Categories
Death + Technology Death + the Economy Funeral Industry

Coffin Making: Now with Barcodes and Touch Screens

Bringing the Coffin Industry Back From the Dead
How barcodes and touch screens are resuscitating a casket factory
Ben Austen, The Atlantic (December 2010)

Modern, industrial casket making is a manufacturing business like any other, but for the fact that most people never think about modern, industrial casket making. The above article in The Atlantic does an excellent job of capturing how American casket making has become a largely automated industry, similar to the auto business.

This article is also about changes to the American labor force but in a decidedly niche business. It turns out that the American casket industry is suffering from many of the same problems faced by manufacturers all across the country. You can read about many of those death and dead body industries in the Death + the Economy section.

Out of curiosity, I went to YouTube to look for casket/coffin making videos and found the following vintage 1970s film. The YouTube video is actually instructive because it shows how the casket industry used to manufacture caskets before the introduction of the automation technologies.

Categories
Death + Humor Death + Popular Culture

Undead Enough for Modern Life: Zombie Rumination

My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead
Chuck Klosterman, New York Times (December 3, 2010)

Hey, DeathRef Gentle Readers. Meg Holle, Resident Zombie, here (yup, that’s me up top). As an undergrad at the University of Minnesota, my favorite class was “Monsters, Robots and Cyborgs,” offered by the Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature department — probably unsurprisingly, the same weirdos who gave John his Ph.D. in Dead Bodies.

When I wasn’t deconstructing explosive alien birth scenes, asking, “Do androids dream of electric sheep?” or linking the puking, peeing, pustulated, bleeding, crucifix-masturbating girl in the Exorcist to Mary Douglas’ Purity and Danger, I was learning about zombies. Fast zombies, slow zombies, Haitian zombies, zomaggedon, mass consumption, consumerism and Marx.

If this sort of nonsense is also a pet interest of yours (or the subject of your dissertation), check out Chuck Klosterman’s piece in the New York Times:

This is our collective fear projection: that we will be consumed. Zombies are like the Internet and the media and every conversation we don’t want to have. All of it comes at us endlessly (and thoughtlessly), and — if we surrender — we will be overtaken and absorbed. Yet this war is manageable, if not necessarily winnable. As long we keep deleting whatever’s directly in front of us, we survive. We live to eliminate the zombies of tomorrow. We are able to remain human, at least for the time being. Our enemy is relentless and colossal, but also uncreative and stupid.

 

Battling zombies is like battling anything … or everything.

While there’s no arguing with the mindlessness of modern-day life, Klosterman would have done well to explore more in depth the alternating popularity of zombies and vampires. Vampires peak during economic prosperity — democrats and decadence, soul-sick in opulence, when the only thing wrong with everything is our megalomaniac selves. Zombies, on the other hand, embody the times when everything is wrong with everyone else — waterboarding, bailouts and unemployment.

Of course there is overlap. Marketing works wonders, and fake opulence or the hope thereof (e.g., the first two years of the Obama administration) still counts, and it’s not like those wars ever actually went away. But still. There is more to our monsters than the new black being the old black, unlike the old old black… which is also… coming… back.

Zombie Meg signing off — BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAINS!

Categories
Cemeteries cremation Death + Technology Eco-Death Funeral Industry

The Ultimate in Going Green: New Research into Postmortem Options with John Troyer

Crematorium to Keep Mourners Warm by Burning Bodies of Loved Ones
The Daily Mail (January 08, 2008)

 

Eco-Death Articles and Information
Put Together by The Death Reference Desk Cadaver Team (Meg, Kim, and John)

So in January 2008, I read an article in the UK’s Daily Mail about a Manchester crematorium that captured its heat exhaust, filtered out mercury and other problematic materials, and then re-used the heat for keeping the attached chapel warm. The Daily Mail is a notoriously scandal mongering tabloid so it was clear that this story was supposed to cause some kind of outrage. The problem for the Mail was this: no one complained about what the crematorium was doing and, more importantly, people really liked the idea.

I read this article while I was still living in America and well before I knew that I would end up working for the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath.

But then I got my current job at the University of Bath and one of the first things I did was start a project which examined how Bath’s local crematorium, Haycombe Cemetery and Crematorium, used heat capture technology.

This is a drastically shortened version of a story which has taken me on postmortem adventures that I never imagined.

So on December 21, 2010 at the Bryant-Lake Bowl Theatre in Minneapolis I am giving a talk about these adventures along with a broader look at the topic of ecologically friendly forms of final disposition.

Or, finding a greener shade of death.

The Bell Museum of Natural History’s Cafe Scientifique program is presenting the talk and I am extremely honored by this fact. Here is the official announcement:

The Ultimate in Going Green: New Research into Postmortem Options
Consumers are increasingly interested in the environmental impact of their personal choices, including their own end of life decisions. John Troyer, Deputy Director of the University of Bath’s Centre for Death and Society, will discuss the environmental impact of traditional burial and cremation practices, as well as new research into crematorium heat-capture technology which eliminates both mercury emissions and offers a potentially viable energy source.

 

Doors open at 6 p.m.
Food and Drink Available for Purchase
Tickets: $5-$12 Pay what you can
Call 612-825-8949 for reservations

 

ABOUT THIS MONTH’S SPEAKER

John Troyer received his doctorate from the University of Minnesota in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society in May 2006. His Ph.D. dissertation, entitled “Technologies of the Human Corpse,” was awarded the University of Minnesota’s 2006 Best Dissertation Award in the Arts and Humanities. From 2007-2008 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University teaching the cultural studies of science and technology. John is currently the Deputy Director and Death and Dying Practices Associate for the University of Bath’s Centre for Death and Society. Within the field of Death Studies, he analyzes the global history of science and technology and its effects on the dead body. He is a co-founder of the critically acclaimed Death Reference Desk website (www.deathreferencedesk.org), a frequent commentator for the BBC, and his first book, Technologies of the Human Corpse (University of North Carolina Press), will appear in 2012.

The University of Bath’s Centre for Death & Society is the UK’s only centre devoted to the study and research of social aspects of death, dying and bereavement. It provides a centre for the social study of death, dying and bereavement and acts as a catalyst and facilitator for research, education and training, policy development, media, and community awareness.

 

ABOUT CAFE SCIENTIFIQUE

The Bell Museum’s Café Scientifique is a program for adults that brings research from the University of Minnesota and beyond into some of the Twin Cities’ most unique and atmospheric bars and restaurants. The Bell Museum’s Café Scientifique explores science and natural history from distinct and surprising viewpoints, drawing connections between scientific research, culture, environment and everyday life.

Café Scientifique is co-sponsored by the Bryant-Lake Bowl.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
The Bell Museum of Natural History

Categories
Cemeteries Death + the Economy Death + the Law

Bring Out Your Dead Checkbook

FTC Proposes New Guidelines for Collecting Debt from Dead People
Ylan Q. Mui, The Washington Post (November 22, 2010)
The Federal Trade Commission is seeking to revise the protocol surrounding two of life’s touchiest subjects: debt and death.

 

Are Cemeteries the New Safe Investment?
Patrick Collinson, The Guardian (October 16, 2010)
With a shortage of space in cemeteries, private operators claim there are healthy returns to be had by buying burial plots

Here are a couple different angles on the economics of modern death. The top article examines the ever expanding world of debt collection from the dead. Postmortem debt typically falls on a spouse or family member, but a proposed policy revision will widen the pool to include other legal representatives.

ZombieTaxDead81706-761370

The Death Reference Desk has been covering various aspects of the postmortem economy so these debt collection issues come as no surprise. An entirely different side of these economic concerns is the money that some investors are pouring into life-insurance policies. Meg wrote about that situation here. And everyone can read about the economic problems people face with death and dying under our insurance tag.

Some of the earliest death and the economy articles that I followed, involved unclaimed bodies filling morgues. These aren’t unidentified bodies, rather dead bodies where the next-of-kin know that the corpse is in the morgue but cannot afford to have the body sent to a funeral home.

And then there is the Cemetery-as-Investment side of these economic question. The Cemeteryscapes blog did an excellent post on this very topic. The Guardian article at the top also discusses how London cemeteries are becoming possible investment opportunities.

Buyer beware. That’s all I’m saying.

These cemetery discussions reminded me of an early Death Ref post that I did on a cemetery in foreclosure in California.

It was an exceptionally sad story then and remains so today.