Dust To Dust...

Courtesy Ann Althouse, guestblogging over at Instapundit, comes this timely (to me) and interesting link to an article on the 'green' funerary practice. This subject does not raise any particular flags, nor engender a rant from me. The article was well written, and I think the author had fun doing it. Read the article, paying attention to the choice of phrases. For instance, a man who "... reopened the long-moldering cemetery last fall.". Another instance (emphasis mine): [...] In the green scheme of things, death becomes a vehicle for land conservation and saving the planet. "It is not enough to be a corpse anymore," said Thomas Lynch, an author, poet and Michigan funeral director. "Now, you have to be a politically correct corpse." But just what is a politically correct corpse is an increasingly thorny issue. In recent months, there has been a struggle for the soul of the emerging industry between... This passage, however, raises a question: [...] Dr. [Billy] Campbell also said he thought that refrigeration would be promoted rather than embalming, which still endures in the older, conventional part of the cemetery, accomplished by a freelance embalmer, known as Dead Ed, on a bicycle. [...] I have re-read this paragraph several times, and aside from the profession (Freelance Embalmer?) and the person's nom de guerre (Dead Ed?), I cannot figure out how he embalms corpses on a bicycle. All in all, an interesting read. Having attended nine funerals in the past nine months (my travel day yesterday was for the ninth), it struck a chord. Technorati : Cemetery, Death, Embalming, Funeral, Funerary, Mortuary