Forest of Memories

Times and Star

CONTROVERSIAL plans for a green burial ground at Lorton are likely to be refused, more than two years after they were first submitted.

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By Jodi Peterson, Dear friends

Singer/songwriter John Winn of Grand Junction, Colo., tells us his latest CD, Wild Stallion, contains a song titled “Mother Earth” that was inspired by one of our Writers on the Range opinion columns. “Just bury me out on the lone prairie” appeared on Jan. 12, 2004, and described author Patricia Walsh’s wish for a “natural, environmentally sound burial.”

John writes: “Patricia talks about her desire to be buried without embalming in her favorite flannel shirt and sweatpants and sheepskin slippers, wrapped in one of her favorite flannel sheets, out in the prairie somewhere. I always had the thought that I’d like to be buried in a Kansas cornfield in a similar manner, refertilizing the soil.”

The up-and-coming green burial movement dovetails nicely with environmentalism, “non-organized” spirituality and genuine, noncorporate culture.

By Todd Spencer, Common Ground

It’s hard to write about death with funk playing. I’ll have to turn this nasty funk tha hell down. Nothing less “goth” than funk music, it turns out.

OK. Imagine your grandmother’s organ playing.

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A hands-on, spiritual facet of the green burial movement takes the funeral director and the funeral home out of the picture

By Bill Strubbe, Common Ground

Home funeral guide Jerrigrace Lyons, director/founder of Final Passages in Sebastopol, was the first to facilitate a green burial at Fernwood.

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By Bill Strubbe, Common Ground

Six feet under will never be the same if artisans catering to the green burial movement have their way. Whereas once a family’s standard internment choices might include the The Bel-Air Mahagony, The Regency or The Count Dracula (coffins that typically run from $2000 to $10,000), “green death” craftspeople are creating classy, earth-friendly coffins and urns, and many are based here in NorCal.

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Green burial lets humans feed the daisies, not just push them up

By Jaye Christensen, Common Ground

Last year 22,500 cemeteries across the United States buried 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid, 104,272 tons of steel, 2,700 tons of copper and bronze, 30-plus million board feet of hardwoods and 1.6 million tons of reinforced concrete.

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Baby boomers are taking green living to the final frontier — with green burial.

By Sharon OBrien, Your Guide to Senior Living.

Pioneer practice of green burial makes a comeback with baby boomers

Green burial has a much smaller impact on the environment than traditional casket burial, and is intended to provide environmental and ecological benefits over time.

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Qualicum News. Parksville, B.C.

They say such nice things about people at their funerals.

Makes me sad to realize I’m going to miss mine by just a few days.

– Garrison Keillor

We humans do a lot of stupid things in a lot of stupid ways but few can match the way we let ourselves be treated after we croak. I’m talking about our terrestrial sendoff. Can you think of any other ritual as bizarre and illogical as the conventional burial experience?

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By Bridget Wayland, Harrowsmith Country Life Magazine

You recycle. You carpool. You go organic. If you re an ecoconscious person, you try to minimize your impact on the planet every chance you get. How ironic, then, if all the virtuous principles you lived by get overturned in the end-the very end.

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By Lenette Hall

Ashes to Ashes Dust to Dust.  Many families are choosing to take a very natural approach to cremation by going “green”.  Although biodegradable and green burial cremation urns are most often associated with those that are extremely environmentally conscious, many people are beginning to see the benefits of eco-friendly burials.

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