The depths they go to
In Palmerston, New Zealand, permission to inter ashes in a new natural burial ground has been put on hold. The council wants a period of consultation in order to arrive at a “a better understanding of what sort of natural burial ground people want” in the light of the assertion by a councillor that “cremation […]
Dig it shallow. They don’t.
Filming the Good Funeral Awards with Sharp Jack Media, the production company making the documentary for Sky, entailed going all over the country to shoot people in action and get their backstories. It was fun. Perhaps the most fun was watching the crew on ‘just another job’ become emotionally enmeshed by the loveliness of the […]
Jolly rottin
On the North Island of New Zealand, Whangarei District Council has been researching natural burial for the last three years. Three years? Yes, they want to do it as it should be done. Cemetery manager Helen Cairns says: “When we do get natural burial – if we get natural burial – we want to make sure […]
Publishing event of the year!
The Natural Death Handbook, Fifth Edition A thoroughly updated and revised edition of the Natural Death Centre‘s celebrated handbook. Now presented alongside a new collection of essays on death, dying and funeral practices by doctors, historians, authors, poets, theologians and artists including Richard Barnett, David Jay Brown, Dr Sheila Cassidy, Charles Cowling, Bill Drummond, Stephen Grasso, […]
Dissolution
Bill Jordan is on a quest to have (when the time comes) his corpse laid out on the surface where it will be able to give most back to the ecosystem. He wants “to know I’ll be going back into the air, the soil, the rain, the mist, the snow–back to the ecstasy I […]
Bill’s bones and other stories
You may have missed the comment below by Cynthia Beal on Bill Jordan’s piece about how he wants to be buried on the surface (when he dies) where he can be of most use. Read it here. Cynthia is formidably bright and enterprising, not to mention generous and kind. She lives in Oregon. At a […]
Absolute rotter
Here is the best post this blog will ever publish, so don’t glance at its length and give up. Read on! Today is all about Bill Jordan. I first heard from Bill back in December 2010. This is what he said: I am an aging reformed biologist, now more or less a writer, but more […]
Really getting real
When Americans decide to do things differently, it seems to me, they make a clean break. Brits, on the other hand, carry over a lot of familiar stuff from the past. I mean, how often does a natural burial ground witness a scene like this? And which has the courage of its environmental convictions and […]
Not so first as he thinks
From Australia’s Herald Sun: A CANCER victim yesterday became the first person to be buried upright at Australia’s only vertical cemetery. Allan Heywood lost his battle with cancer last Tuesday and was buried in the unusual, space-saving grave in the new vertical cemetery outside Camperdown in western Victoria. “It’s nice to be first at something. […]
