The GFG Blog
2010May
Who’s working for who?
Charles
May
28
3 comments
Secular funeral celebrants cling to the fiction that they work for their clients. They don’t. Their clients get to choose the coffin they want (they might go for something really expensive) but they don’t get to choose their celebrant, they get lumped with their celebrant. Celebrants work for funeral directors, who hold
Music for a goth funeral
Charles
May
28
2 comments
The other day, Jamie, or was it Paul Hensby? at My Last Song challenged me to come up with a good song to play at a goth funeral. The fact that I couldn’t think of one was not significant: I listen to very little music. I can’t even think of
Would you credit it?
Charles
May
28
No Comments
Here’s an interesting insight from the US into the robustness of the business model of Services Corporation International, the clumping, predatory and often bungling funeral chain which begat our very own Dignity Caring Funeral Services. Dignity is not a notably bungling organisation, but the challenges they both face are related:
DIY embalming
Charles
May
27
4 comments
A touching and moving little film here which will appeal to home funeralists and those who want to reduce funeral costs. NOTE: It carries a four-star Squeam Warning. Don’t watch if you think it may upset you.
Blessed are the bad?
Charles
May
27
1 comment
There’s an interesting piece (if you find this sort of thing interesting) in the Australian magazine Eureka Street, a very interesting looking publication promoted by the Australian Jesuits, but remarkably non-doctrinaire and broadminded in its treatment of things. The piece, by Andrew Hamilton, a theologian from Melbourne, debates the sort
What is a funeral for?
Charles
May
27
3 comments
A survey of this blog’s favourite obits’ page in the Times Colonist in Victoria, on the west coast of Canada, yields features of interest. 12 deaths are recorded this week. So far as I can see, there’s not a single funeral among them. The breakdown reveals: 3 celebrations of life;
Much to celebrate?
Charles
May
26
11 comments
When wireless listeners switched on for the BBC Home Service (now R4) news on Good Friday, 1930, the announcer began in familiar terms in his familiar dark brown voice: “This is the BBC Home Service. Here is the news. There is no news today.” The resulting startled gap was filled
Memo to self
Charles
May
23
7 comments
Most people think of a memorial as a sole-purpose ‘something’, there to do exactly what the shot-blast lettering says it’s there to do. A headstone, for example. Headstones are self-absorbed, stand-alone symbols. They add nothing to their surrounding headstones, neither do they detract from them. They do not beautify the
More lapidary obits
Charles
May
21
1 comment
Here are some latest extracts from my favourite obituary pages, in the Times Colonist, Canada. What I admire about the best of these is their lapidary nature, their restraint, their decorum. Above all, I admire the careful thought that has gone into epitomising the person who has died. In just a few words a
