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#103856 05/31/03 04:26 PM
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Carpal Tunnel
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RE:... Why would anyone want to be buried in something that they would end up leaking out of???

you'd rather have your bones swim in your own purtifaction?

some of us sort of believe, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.. (i plan on being creamated, no sense taking up 6 feet of earth and 20+ years just to become ashes.. )

in years past (think of Hamlet) they used to just bury the dead in simple wood coffins, and every 20 to 30 years recyle the 'church' yard and use the space again.. the grave digger was doing just that, when he unearthed yorick's skull (one of the thicker bones in the body, and slower to decompose) the misc. bones that were unearthed were all packed into a single coffin and reburied (usually--sometimes, the bones were set into displays..especially in catacombs of italy, but also in many other parts of the world.

the idea of having space in a grave yard for perpetuity is pretty silly if you ask me!-- yes, a wicker coffin, melt away, turn back to earth, and be done with it.

(NYC 'potter's field " turns over the graves about every 30 years.--it was seen in a movie last year(with michael douglas, -- i forget the name... but the female lead was played by a girl who acted disturbed, "i'll never tell" was her sing song line in the movie-- and her father had been buried in potters field.. the dramatic end of the movie is all on Harts Island, were potter's field is located. (working there is a city jail release program.. prisonerss can sign up to dig the graves (trenches really) and are trasported by boat from Riker's Island to Hart Island-- the water of Long Island sound are deep, and have very strong currents, so its hard to escape) it is considered a choice assignment, as the island is quiet, country like, and no one stares at the prisioners. The dead come in by ferry, from City Island (all of these island are considered to be part of the Bronx), and can be found on most NY city maps (but not alwasy named.)


#103857 05/31/03 06:28 PM
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Pooh-Bah
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I think that the Parsees have it right. Just leave the body to the birds. Sweep up Uncle Jimmy Plumberwalla's bones at a later date. All you need are high walls to discourage the crows from lifting the bigger bones, anyway, out of the funeral compound. No need for land for graveyards, even for 20 years.


#103858 05/31/03 06:41 PM
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journeyman
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I always thought that cremation was the way to go too... But here in Georgia we got to rethinking this idea when Mr. Ray Brant Marsh who ran the Tri-State Crematory was found with some 339 bodies decompsing in sheds, in the pond and elsewhere on his land. First he said the incinerator was broken, but it wasn't. Then when the police found pictures of bodies in various states of decomposition on his computer, it seemed that he was not just a crook who took money from people for nothing, but also deeply disturbed.




#103859 05/31/03 08:11 PM
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Pooh-Bah
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Well, doesn't that just burn you up? Well, no, I guess sometimes it doesn't, even when it's supposed to!


#103860 05/31/03 08:27 PM
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journeyman
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Here in Georgia Funeral directors are seriously looking into alternative methods of corpse disposal due to the bad publicity this whole affair has generated. There is a new method called "water reduction" (or "tissue digestion" if you are speaking about livestock.) In a few hours the equipment can dissolve the tissues of a corpse and reduce it to 2 or 3 percent of its body weight. What remains is a pile of decollagenated bones that can be crumbled in one's fingers. Everything else has been turned into a sterile coffee colored liquid that can go right down the drain. This method makes good sense since it destroys pathogens and prions and does not pollute the air like incinerators do. And since no natural gas is used it is about 10 times cheaper than incineration. (Yes.. all this I learned in the book Stiff.)


#103861 05/31/03 08:48 PM
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Carpal Tunnel
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tross, you are going to fit in well here... so tell me, why is it you are interested in losing the title stange?

a bit too close to the truth for your liking? tell us more about stiff (i haven't heard of it) i am rereading Salt...
and salting bodies went out of style with the egyptians...


#103862 05/31/03 09:02 PM
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journeyman
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"Stiff, the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers" by Mary Roach. It's about all the ways we use cadavers; from medical school practice dummies to car crash tests to a field full of decomposing bodies out behind the University of Tennessee Medical Center. This is where they study the rate of decomposition of corpses in various locations like under trees or out on the lawn, clothed or unclothed. Without this facility and the research that is conducted there, forensic specialists would not have been able to tell how long a body had been dead when the police find one.

I actually asked for this book for my birthday this year and my Mom got it for me. (Hmmm... maybe I should stop posting so I can keep myself a stranger, because maybe I am, more-so than others...)

I actually read a review of the book in Entertainment Weekly and it piqued my curiousity. I do have a morbid curiousity about death and things like that. The book is really facinating. I may not want to see with my own eyes the things that she describes, but that's what's so great about books. You can learn about anything.


#103863 05/31/03 09:06 PM
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Carpal Tunnel
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keep myself a stranger, because maybe I am, more-so than others...)

Wait'll you get to know us a little better before you make that claim. Stranger is relative.


#103864 05/31/03 09:13 PM
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sounds interesting.. one of our family stories, is about an elderly cousin, Annie, who died aged 93, in the mid 1980's. as a young girl, she wanted to be a doctor. but as the daughter of irish immigrants, she had neither the money nor the connections to make it happen.. she settled, reluctantly, on nursing. She attended nursing school at NY Bellevue hospital. she keep up with alumni newletters, and read that there was a shortage of cadavers.. so, when she died, she finally got to go to medical school! she never got past anatomy.. but fugal to the end, part of the deal was that the school paid for her burial afterwards.

her memoral service and wake was a grand one.. not often a funeral is also a commencement cerimony too! (one of her kids (age 60 or so) was a bit embarassed at first.. but she was always the most conservation one in the bunch, the rest of the family thought it par for the course for Annie.


#103865 05/31/03 09:22 PM
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Carpal Tunnel
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Stranger is relative.

That's keeping her *honest, Father.


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