St. Joseph Abbey’s Monks Battle State Funeral Industry Regulators for Right to Sell Caskets Ramon Antonio Vargas, The Times-Picayune (August 13, 2010) Monks Fight for Right to Sell Caskets Locally Debbie Glover, St. Tammany News (August 15, 2010) One of the lesser-known classic blunders is trying to prevent jovial Benedictine monks, living peacefully in their [...]
Consumer Advocates Want More Competition in Casket Market April Dembosky, Marketplace (August 2, 2010) American Public Media’s Marketplace has a short radio segment about a consumer advocacy group suing the three major casket companies for monopolizing the market. A federal judge will decide later this week whether the companies’ distribution policy of selling caskets to [...]
Auction House Drops Elvis Embalming Tools Andy Grimm, Chicago Tribune (July 23, 2010) Elvis Embalming Tools Withdrawn By Auction House Leslie Hindman Auctioneers, Chicago I know for a fact that many people saw last week’s news item about the instruments used to embalm Elvis Presley going up for sale. I know this because many people [...]
Seems like funerals or memorial services are either getting simpler or more complex these days. Green burials and simple home rituals are gaining momentum, but so are high end funeral extravaganzas that spare no expense. In an article that appeared in yesterday’s U.K.-based Independent newspaper, “the rise of the distinctly unconventional celebrity send-off is proof [...]
Digital Death Day Virtual Life after Death Peregrine Andrews, BBC News (May 22, 2010) Last week, May 20th, was the first Digital Death Day, an unconference in California of funeral directors, digital identity professionals, attorneys, technologists, entrepreneurs and obituary enthusiasts to share concerns and probably a few crazy-interesting ideas about managing digital identity after death. [...]