Woolen Caskets & Unfortunate Ads| 4M #191
Welcome to the hundred-and-ninety-first edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, 4M #191, where we’ll serve up bite-sized, easily-digestible nuggets of the deathcare news you need to crush conversations in the week ahead. Bon appetit!
RI now closer to NOR & AH
On Friday, Rhode Island’s House of Representatives approved with a 53-13 vote bill H5110, which would approve both natural organic reduction and alkaline hydrolysis as new methods of disposition. The bill now moves to the senate for review and approval.
OK board resurrected
Just days after Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt vetoed a bill that would have extended the state’s funeral board’s sunset period for another year, the state legislature approved a bill that gave the board another four years of life — without the governor’s signature. House Bill 2286 “recreates and sustains the Oklahoma Funeral Board until July 2029,” and will become law because Stitt did not sign or veto the bill within five days of it landing on his desk.
Cozy caskets
A New Zealand family has found a popular new use for the wool their business has produced for two generations: Low-emission caskets and urns. The caskets, each of which includes three fleeces of washed wool, are reinforced with jute straps and can support up to 220 kg, or about 485 pounds. The owners shared that the practice of using wool when caring for the dead goes back to the 1700s, when Parliament dictated that all bodies should be wrapped in woolen shrouds before burial.
Oops … they did it again
In yet another case of unfortunate advertising placement in the UK, a poster promoting an art exhibition called “Arise Alive” has been posted alongside a sign pointing to a Cornwall crematorium. As this isn’t the first time questionable ads have been placed here (we told you about a McDonald’s ad for the McCrispy chicken sandwich in this exact spot a few years ago), one has to wonder if the “gaffe” is actually intentional. After all, why else would you be reading about an otherwise obscure art show across the pond right now?
Meanwhile, in Russia …
Even as Russia continues pouring billions of dollars (or rubles) into its ongoing conflict with Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has pledged $250,000 to the continued preservation of Lenin’s 101-year-old corpse — and it’s not one of his more popular decisions. When Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union and an icon of communism, died in 1924, his body was scientifically preserved and encased in a glass box within a custom mausoleum as a “symbol of Russia’s past, present, and future” and a reminder that “the revolution never dies.” Although Lenin’s corpse is “refreshed” annually, the mausoleum has fallen into disrepair with crumbling, moldy walls and an unbalanced ventilation system. In a recent survey, 30% of Russians said it’s time for Lenin to be buried, while another 27% believe he should be buried if it would prevent “further division.”
