These days, DIY is all the rage. From home wedding Pintrest pages to YouTube tutorials about tiny homes, the information age has empowered us to roll up our sleeves and get our hands messy. Besides being able to put your own creative spin on the project, doing things yourself also saves big bucks. Conventional funerals, on... Continue Reading →
When winds howl and the sea surges, hurricanes can do terrific damage not only to the places of the living but also to the resting places of the dead. Trees fall, shrubs drown in salt water, and tidal surges deposit building rubble, cars, and boats in cemetery grounds. But the cemetery groundskeeper and family plot... Continue Reading →
The inner workings of the human anatomy have fascinated scientific minds for thousands of years. The trouble is, the inner workings only keep working when they stay inner; if you try to watch them in action people might call you names like “the Ripper” or “murderer.” Dead bodies, therefore, are the go-to resource for the... Continue Reading →
It really can’t stay (Baby it’s cold outside)The corpse has got to go away (Baby it’s cold outside)This funeral has been (Been hopin the frost would thin)So very nice (Oh, no the ground is frozen in ice!) Fun fact, the top five deadliest months in the U.S. are also months with significant snowfall. January holds the number... Continue Reading →
The International Association of Pet Cemeteries and Crematories estimates there are around 700 pet cemeteries in the United States. This number is likely much higher since many pet cemeteries are informal and never registered. Unlike human cemeteries, the regulations for animal burial are much looser and so pet cemeteries are easily forgotten or abandoned. Such... Continue Reading →
No, Stephen King, not THAT pet cemetery. The residents of these burial grounds might not be able to sit, but they do stay. Humans have extended funeral rituals to their furry family members for millennia and animal graveyards often mirror human ones. These are the largest, oldest, and most famous, plus one that is fading from memory. The oldest... Continue Reading →
The human experience is a constant negotiation between civilization and nature. We are ultimately animals, products of our biology and the environments that shaped our evolution, and yet we work hard to conquer and control nature. Our greatest weapon we have invented in the war against nature is culture, which we wield in the face... Continue Reading →
Cemetery, graveyard, churchyard, boneyard, potter’s field, burial ground, final resting place, necropolis, marble town. There are so many different terms for the places where we bury our dead that the differences between them become blurred. Google Book’s NGram Viewer allows us to see how often some common terms for burial places have been published in... Continue Reading →
As long as we have been aware of our own mortality, humans have transferred their fear of death onto the dead. Stories of ghosts and spirits risen from the grave have been passed down through centuries, and even today many shudder at the thought of passing by a graveyard at night. Later, with the dawning... Continue Reading →
Playing Marbles for Keeps 