Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial

Εξώφυλλο
Simon and Schuster, 16 Ιαν 2007 - 208 σελίδες
By the time Nate Fisher was laid to rest in a woodland grave sans coffin in the final season of Six Feet Under, Americans all across the country were starting to look outside the box when death came calling.

Grave Matters follows families who found in "green" burial a more natural, more economic, and ultimately more meaningful alternative to the tired and toxic send-off on offer at the local funeral parlor.

Eschewing chemical embalming and fancy caskets, elaborate and costly funerals, they have embraced a range of natural options, new and old, that are redefining a better American way of death. Environmental journalist Mark Harris examines this new green burial underground, leading you into natural cemeteries and domestic graveyards, taking you aboard boats from which ashes and memorial "reef balls" are cast into the sea. He follows a family that conducts a home funeral, one that delivers a loved one to the crematory, and another that hires a carpenter to build a pine coffin.

In the morbidly fascinating tradition of Stiff, Grave Matters details the embalming process and the environmental aftermath of the standard funeral. Harris also traces the history of burial in America, from frontier cemeteries to the billion-dollar business it is today, reporting on real families who opted for more simple, natural returns.

For readers who want to follow the examples of these families and, literally, give back from the grave, appendices detail everything you need to know, from exact costs and laws to natural burial providers and their contact information.

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Περιεχόμενα

Preface
1
The Embalming of Jenny Johnson
7
After the Burial
31
Natural Burial
49
Burial at Sea
69
The Memorial Reef
87
The Home Funeral
103
A Plain Pine Box
121
Backyard Burial
139
The Natural Cemetery
155
Acknowledgments
177
Index
183
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Δημοφιλή αποσπάσματα

Σελίδα 7 - Show me the manner in which a nation or a community cares for its dead, and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender sympathies of its people, their respect for the laws of the land, and their loyalty to high ideals.
Σελίδα 101 - And it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have, in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea — whether it is to sail or to watch it — we are going back from whence we came.
Σελίδα vii - In the sweat of thy face shah thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shah thou return.
Σελίδα 75 - WE therefore commit his body to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body, (when the sea shall give up her dead...
Σελίδα vii - A rock decays and forms the soil. In the soil grows an oak, which bears an acorn, which feeds a squirrel, which feeds an Indian, who ultimately lays him down to his last sleep in the great tomb of man— to grow another oak.
Σελίδα 80 - God, our shipmate, and we commit his body to the depths. . .Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord bless him and keep him. The Lord make His face to shine upon him and be gracious unto him. The Lord lift up His countenance upon him, and give him peace.
Σελίδα vii - ... waters. No one has suspected Paul of speaking in parables, yet in this instance he did. Wisconsin not only had a round river, Wisconsin is one. The current is the stream of energy which flows out of the soil into plants, thence into animals, thence back into the soil in a never ending circuit of life. 'Dust unto dust' is a desiccated version of the Round River concept.
Σελίδα 36 - His clothing was soaking in his own fluids, with a white, hairy-looking fungus growing everywhere.
Σελίδα 83 - Scattering the cremated remains over or consigning a corpse to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and the Gulf of Mexico. The...

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Mark Harris is a former environmental columnist with the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. His articles and essays have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, E/The Environmental Magazine, Reader's Digest, and Hope. He lives with his family in Pennsylvania. Visit his website at www.gravematters.us.

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