Publisher: BBC News, Tokyo
Author: Roland Buerk
Publish Date: October 13, 2009
Article Excerpt:
… The vast majority of Japanese are cremated.
In a ceremony relatives collect the ashes, picking up pieces of bone with chopsticks, and placing them in a ceramic urn.
The remains are then buried, usually under a family tombstone.
But in the high-rise graveyard, the urns are stored on shelves instead.
One half of the building is a warehouse for the dead, filled from the ground floor to the shadows high above with row upon row of rectangular metal boxes.
“You can put ashes for two people in one box,” said the monk. “So 7,000 people maximum in this space, [when] for a normal graveyard you would get 100 graves in this area [of land].”
A key selling point of the graveyard is that the ashes can be retrieved for loved ones to honour the departed.
Visiting bereaved families swipe a card in a reader attached to a computer to activate a robotic arm in the darkness of the vault…
After running across an interesting thread on Ask MetaFilter regarding tips about selling or marketing cemetery plots, I thought some of the advice might be of value to the readers of Cemetery-Plot.com.
The forum post comes from Lauralee Smith who asks:
Trying to sell four adjacent cemetery plots. Funeral home suggested Craigslist ads, which I am currently running with pictures and *very* competitive pricing. No nibbles. Unconvinced that people in the market for such things actually read Craigslist. Need brilliant ideas on how and where to reach potential customers for cemetery plots in greater Seattle area. (Skywriting is out.)
Fellow forum users share some good tips in some of the reply threads that follow her question. Here are a just a few:
List in Local Want-ads: “My guess it that people looking for cemetery plots in this day and age probably aren’t scouring the internet, but rather, would look in the same place they’d look to find local garage sales. Where i grew up, that was the PennySaver – a nearly free weekly paper full of classifieds and a smattering of local news. Looks like in Seattle it’s the Little Nickel?”
Donate it for the tax deduction: “If you can’t find a buyer you might consider donating them to a local hospice. You would get a nice tax deduction (if the hospice is a non profit) and the hospice patient with no means to buy a plot would have one less thing to worry about.”
Go local: “Other funeral homes? Church bulletins? If it is a city or town owned cemetery you could try the town offices. Most certainly the target group reads the local Irish Sports page (The obits page), a small classified placed on that page should do it.”
Be aware of the local cremation rate: “…As for selling them, the odds are not in your favor. There’s next to no aftermarket for graves in the US, especially for areas with a high cremation rate, and Seattle’s cremation rate is well over 50%.”
Use an online listing service: “… We are considering using the site [another forum member] linked to, GraveSolutions. (a name which I find quite funny).”
Publication: Personal Blog of John Young
Author: John Young
Publication Date: October 7, 2009
John shares his thoughts about the recent land set aside in Fort Collins Colorado cemetery for green burial.
I still prefer to be barbecued. Or broiled — however it is that my remains can be reduced to the kind of dusty nutrient that makes fields and ravines grow greener.
If it can’t be the Viking way — by floating pyre — let my bones retire the cremation way.
That doesn’t mean that folks promoting a new, back-to-nature form of burial haven’t got my attention and admiration. The same goes for local governments that are making it possible. For some unfathomable reason, their numbers are few.
Fort Collins, Colo., the new city of my residence, is one of the nation’s first to facilitate so-called green funerals — burials in which the body truly is committed to the soil with or without preservatives, and in a container that will decompose along with it. Hear, hear. Let a thousand flowers bloom with this approach to dying and decomposition.
Publication: Journal-Courier, Jacksonville, IL
Author: Cody Bozarth
Publish Date: October 11, 2009
Article Excerpt:
Even death is becoming high-tech.
The city’s cemetery board hopes to soon have a digital record of graves that would allow people to go online and locate anyone’s final resting place.
“Anyone can get on the Internet and type the deceased’s name and find what [plots] they own, where they’re at and other information,” Jacksonville Cemeteries Superintendent Jim Pierson said.
The project would involve a global positioning system-coordinated digital mapping of the city’s cemeteries.
Much of the funding for the project would come from an estate bequest, but additional funding sources are still being sought.
After its completion, it should provide for superior record-keeping as well as public research.
While this project is being designed as a public service, it also benefits those who operate and maintain local cemeteries.
Article: 13 On Your Side: A look at cemetery fees
Publication: WZZM 13, West Michigan
Author: Bob Brenzing
Publication Date: October 23, 2009
Article Excerpt:
When a family member dies, it’s a difficult time to make significant decisions. That’s why many people pre-purchase burial plots or pre-pay for funeral arrangements.
But, when Sandy Cobb tried to donate the pre-purchased plot she didn’t need, she was shocked by the cost…
As a veteran of the Women’s Army Corps, Cobb decided to donate the plot to the West Michigan Veterans Assistance Program. “They told me I would have to bring a person able to sign for the veterans with my self and $395 for a transfer,” says Cobb. “That’s where the story kind of stopped.”…
Looking for that final resting place can be a bit of task, unless the location of the cemetery where you’d like to spend eternity is right down the street from where you live. How can technology help? A recent Google Maps mashup gives us a brief vision on how this activity may be conducted in the near future.
The service, specific to the city of Krakow, Poland, allows you search for the grave of any individual, then transports you to the deceased’s specific grave plot. The map includes overlays for all of Krakow’s cemeteries that shows the individual grave plots within each cemetery.
Would you access a service like this if implemented in your city to find out where you’d like to be buried and what kind of company you’ll keep there?
Article: Lawer is accused of selling fake work visas
Publication: LA Times
Author: Raja Abdulrahim
Publish Date: October 19, 2009
Article Excerpt:
…They also seized 30 vacant burial plots and 20 blank grave monuments at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier that allegedly were purchased with proceeds from the visa scheme.
Cemetery plots are a novel investment because they appreciate at a rate of up to 10% a year and are less susceptible to economic downturns, authorities said.
“It’s unique in the sense that we haven’t run into this before that an individual seeking to hide proceeds goes out and purchases cemetery plots,” said Jorge Guzman, Immigration and Customs Enforcement assistant special agent in charge. “There are always new ways in which criminals will try and hide money, but this is by far one of the most unique.”…
Article: Cremation: a popular end-of-life option
Publication: The Mukilteo Beacon
Author: Jim Miller
Publish Date: October 20, 2009
Article Excerpt:
…Over the past 30 years the cremation rate in the United States has grown by leaps and bounds, jumping from only 6 percent in 1975, to 19 percent in 1995 to nearly 40 percent today. And by 2025, that number is expected to reach over 55 percent.
After forbidding cremation for centuries, the Catholic Church began allowing it back in 1963. However, it still prefers the traditional burial. Others religions that allow but discourage cremation include the Mormon Church, Reform and Conservative Judaism and Southern Baptist Convention, while Protestant Churches are much more accepting of the practice. Religions that forbid cremation are Islam, Jewish Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox churches…
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