[Greenbuilding] Green Funerals

[bill.allen at verizon.net]

LOVE the idea of using already disturbed land like highway medians, etc. with a tree planted on top.  You are on to something there!!!!

-----Original Message-----
From: RT <Archilogic at yahoo.ca>
Sender: greenbuilding-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org
Date: Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:41:47 
To: Green Building<greenbuilding at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Reply-to: archilogic at chaffyahoo.ca,
 Green Building <greenbuilding at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] Green Funerals

On Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:48:44 -0500, Clarke Olsen <colsen at fairpoint.net>  
wrote:

> Sky burial: the corpse is left on a platform for the birds, out of reach  
> from those predators who might acquire
> an appetite for Long Pig, and out of sight for the squeamish.

Geeze, I knew that I shouldn't have opened my GB list mail in the middle  
of a weekday afternoon.

I wasn't going to comment on the postings to the "Green Funerals" thread  
until some day when the List is quiet but Clarke sucker-baited me with  
this one.

While I like the idea of sky burials (moreso than the Two Steves ideas of  
chopping up our loved ones into little pieces and using them for animal  
feed), there's still the issue of what to do with the bones once they have  
been picked clean by the scavengers.

There is an old Chinese practise that is somewhat similar to sky burials  
where the corpse is buried temporarily for three years and then exhumed  
after decomposition of the soft tissue has been completed and the bones  
are cleaned and transferred to an urn for permanent storage.

But back to the idea of sky burials or Steve S's advocated Masai practise  
of leaving the corpse just outside of the village for animals to eat...

I remember a couple of winters ago when taking the mutts out for their  
romps in the surrounding coutryside, whenever we got near to a particular  
woods they'd disappear into the same area every day and not come out again  
until repeated call-back commands were issued.

One day instead of calling them back, I went into the woods and tracked  
them down.

It turns out that they had a deer carcase (presumably injured by a car and  
had gone into the woods to die) that they had been snacking on, nicely  
refrigerated by the Kanata winter so that the meat was as fresh and  
colourful as the day the deer died.

It took them a good two weeks to finish it off IIRC.

I can imagine a pet owner out for a walk with their kids and pets in the  
country on a Sunday afternoon and going looking for a pet who was ingoring  
their call-back commands and then coming upon a grisly scene of Muffy  
snacking on the corpse of a recently passed-way neighbour or friend or  
relative. Ggggnnna-aa.

Nope. I think burial is a better option.

Another person suggested that burial was "unsustainable" because it takes  
up so much space.

OTOH, an argument could be made that cemeteries create invaluable  
greenspace in urban areas, the vegetation helping to clean and filter the  
polluted city air.

Combining this notion with Mike O's idea of land trusts...

What if everywhere a body is buried, a tree is planted directly over the  
corpse ?  In urban areas, there's no reason why boulevards could not be  
provided on every street for this purpose. As with cemeteries, that area  
would be considered "sacred ground" and by Law, could not be disturbed, in  
perpetuity.

Of course, like Masai animal feeding-burials and First Nations Peoples'  
sky burials, Sacred Boulevards would never happen in North America.



-- 
=== * ===
Rob Tom
Kanata, Ontario, Canada
< A r c h i L o g i c  at  Y a h o o  dot  c a >
(manually winnow the chaff from my edress if you hit "reply")

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