Chicken Wings & Monumental Puzzles | 4M 250
Happy 250th!! How appropriate that the 250th edition of Connecting Directors’ Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup (or “4M” to our friends) comes while we’re all still basking in the glow of our country’s 250th birthday! Well, while we would love to bring you a curated collection of patriotic curiosities from the world of deathcare, the news cycle didn’t fully cooperate. Even so, we hope you had an amazing holiday — and that you were actually allowed time off to celebrate.
That’s pretty odd, fellas
The manager of the Odd Fellows Memorial Park in Tumwater, Washington is tired of walking into his cemetery on July 5 and finding “chicken wings in trees, kicked-over historic headstones and porta-potties on gravesites.” It seems that Odd Fellows’s position on a bluff offers some of the best views of a local country club’s annual Fourth of July fireworks show, so every year folks flock to the site to celebrate — with chicken wings and porta-potties in tow. This year, the manager also found vehicle damage and broken water faucets on top of the usual damage. He’s now asking the cemetery board to block the property from public use during future shows, and we wish him luck.
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A new, more appropriate, home
Over the last few decades, dozens to hundreds of monuments erected in memory of Confederate soldiers have been dismantled or destroyed, never again to be prominently displayed. At least one of those monuments, however, is gaining new life in a new, more appropriate location than its former home in a public square. On July 13, cemetery workers in Pensacola, Florida began tackling the logistical puzzle of reassembling a massive multi-ton, multi-piece Confederate monument on top of the grave of a former Florida governor. Gov. Edward A. Perry, the 14th governor of the state, was a Confederate general who served under Gen. Robert E. Lee during the Civil War.
Can the math actually math?
Bless her heart (this is “SMH” in Southern). In a recent edition of The Conversation, Lund University Professor Emerita of Ethnology in the Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences Lynn Akesson attempts to do the math on the environmental impact of today’s disposition methods. The article is titled “Composting and water cremation: how the eco credentials of alternatives to burial add up.” I eagerly read the piece, hoping to see her results … but they weren’t there. After digging into all of the various elements that need to be considered in any computation of environmental friendliness (flowers, transport, working conditions, location, religious beliefs, etc.), Akesson concludes: “Ultimately, the question is not simply which method is the most environmentally friendly, but how societies negotiate the balance between ecological responsibility, cultural values and respect for the dead.” Sigh.
