Way to Go, Obama

I loved this when I read it earlier this week:

Last week, Republican Senator Jim DeMint made it pretty clear why the opponents of health care reform are fighting so hard. As he told a special interest attack group, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” Here’s how the President responded:

Think about that. This isn’t about me. This isn’t about politics. This is about a health care system that is breaking America’s families, breaking America’s businesses and breaking America’s economy. And we can’t afford the politics of delay and defeat when it comes to health care. Not this time, not now. There are too many lives and livelihoods at stake.

We only want what you have, Senator DeMint, affordable healthcare.

Prom Night in Mississippi

Last night we watched on HBO the outstanding documentary, Prom Night in Mississippi. Both my husband and I were in tears during this film.

I cringe when I see CNN promoting another Black in America documentary. Prom Night in Mississippi is black in America. Prom Night in Mississippi is white in America. Apparently Latinos have not migrated to Clarksdale, Miss., yet. No other demographic lives there.

The movie is shocking to me, as it reflected life in my small home town forty years ago. The high school prom was canceled. Reasons were never given, but it was because the school board feared blacks and whites partying together. I cannot believe that in some parts of America, things have not changed since the 60s and early 70s when forced integration occurred. In 2008 Mississippi, separate proms were planned for white kids and black kids. Morgan Freeman and the students changed all that.

I have admired Morgan Freeman as an actor. I could listen him to read the phone book (if it still exists). I knew that he was a humanitarian in his small community where he once lived. Now he is my hero. He changed the community by having one senior prom.

More bodies go unclaimed as families can’t afford funeral costs

Burials are very expensive. We need to come up with an alternative. I like the home burial idea reported by the New York Times.

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By Molly Hennessy-Fiske
July 21, 2009 The poor economy is taking a toll even on the dead, with an increasing number of bodies in Los Angeles County going unclaimed by families who cannot afford to bury or cremate their loved ones.

At the county coroner’s office — which handles homicides and other suspicious deaths — 36% more cremations were done at taxpayers’ expense in the last fiscal year over the previous year, from 525 to 712.

The county morgue, which is responsible for the indigent and others who go unclaimed, saw a 25% increase in cremations in the first half of this year over the same period a year ago, rising to 680 from 545.

The demands on the county crematorium have been so high that earlier this year, officials there stopped accepting bodies from the coroner. The coroner’s office since has contracted with two private crematories for $135,000 to handle the overflow.

“It’s a pretty dramatic increase,” said Lt. David Smith, a coroner’s investigator. “The families just tell us flat-out they don’t have the money to do a funeral.”

Once the county cremates an unclaimed body — typically about a month after death — next of kin can pay the coroner $352 to receive the ashes. The fee for claiming ashes from the morgue is $466.

Source: latimes.com

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Tags: US Economy | Tech & Biz

Home Burials Offer an Intimate Alternative

This is a great idea. I want to be cremated. I once cremated a pet lizard in my backyard. His molecules returned to the Great Beyond as they should.

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By KATIE ZEZIMA Published: July 20, 2009

PETERBOROUGH, N.H. — When Nathaniel Roe, 92, died at his 18th-century farmhouse here the morning of June 6, his family did not call a funeral home to handle the arrangements.

Sebastian Hinds

The home funeral for Nathaniel Roe, 92, who died in Peterborough, N.H., on June 6. His family handled the arrangements.

Cheryl Senter for The New York Times

Chuck Lakin assembling a pine coffin in April on his home workbench in Waterville, Me.

Cheryl Senter for The New York Times

Mr. Lakin works with a wood plane and a practiced eye.

Mr. Lakin’s bookcase coffin, which is two seven-inch-deep boxes hinged together.

Instead, Mr. Roe’s children, like a growing number of people nationwide, decided to care for their father in death as they had in the last months of his life. They washed Mr. Roe’s body, dressed him in his favorite Harrods tweed jacket and red Brooks Brothers tie and laid him on a bed so family members could privately say their last goodbyes.

The next day, Mr. Roe was placed in a pine coffin made by his son, along with a tuft of wool from the sheep he once kept. He was buried on his farm in a grove off a walking path he traversed each day.

“It just seemed like the natural, loving way to do things,” said Jennifer Roe-Ward, Mr. Roe’s granddaughter. “It let him have his dignity.”

Source: nytimes.com

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Tags: New York | Family | Environment | home burial