Greetings from the luckiest girl I know!

Cleanup continues one flower bed at a time. Looks a little tidier.

And brighter!

This just in: Dirtsister just inherited millions!

While traveling I use the yahoo portal to access email and love the spam filtering feature. But I would have missed this gem in the mailbox today from Mrs. Hannah Jack Williams a complete stranger who found my profile on the internet! Read on….

Good Day,

My name is Mrs.Hannah Jack Williams I am a dying woman who has decided to donate what I have to charity through you.You may be wondering why I chose you.
But someone has to be chosen having gone through your profile on the internet.I am 59 years old and was diagnosed for cancer about 2 years ago,after the death of my husband who had left me everything he worked for.I have been touched by the Lord to donate from what I have inherited from my late husband to charity through you for the good work of humanity,rather than allow my relatives to use my husband’s hard earned funds inappropriately.

Please pray that the good Lord forgive me my sins. I have asked God to forgive me and I believe he has because He is a merciful God.

I will be going in for an operation tomorrow morning I decided to WILL/donate the sum of $3,500,000(Three million five hundred thousand dollars) to you/Organization for the good work of the lord, and also to help the motherless and less privilege and also for the assistance of the widows according to (JAMES 1:27).

At the moment I cannot take any telephone calls right now due to the fact that my relatives are around me and my health status.I have adjusted my WILL and my Executor is aware I have changed my will,you and him will arrange the transfer of the funds from the Private Finance company to your humble self.This decision was taking after going through your personal profile. I wish you all the best and may the good Lord bless you abundantly,Please use the funds well and always extend the good work to others.Contact my Executor with this specified Email:

with your full names, contact telephone/fax number and your full address and tell him that I have WILLED($3,500,000.00) to you and I have also notified him that I have WILL-IN that amount to you for a specific and good work.Thanks and God bless.

NB: I will appreciate your utmost confidentiality in this matter until the task is accomplished as I dont want anything that will Jeopardize my last wish.And also I will be contacting with you by email as I don’t want my relation or anybody to know because they are always around me.

Regards,

Mrs.Hannah Jack Williams

Today’s Tip: If it seems to good to be true…….

Greetings from the Garden!

Busy trying to balance business and managing the household. Upon our return from an intensive sunlight therapy session we were reminded that February is the worst month for Dirtsister’s mood. Cold, darkness and death start to take it’s toll. Plus, we still have massive cleanup duties in the yard from the storm damage.

Luckily, we are thinking green, the sun is shining and will dedicate a couple of hours “meditation” in the garden of life. We anxiously await the arrival of the “claw truck” to remove the debris. Better come on, Dirtsister is ready to burn it.

On other matters, will Anna Nicole ever be laid to rest? FGS, give the woman some peace.

Talked to a client in WA today, she’s thinking Spring also and creating a sacred spot for her grandmother in a woodsy area near her home with a three foot angel, surrounded by flowers that her grandmother loved.

In other news, Duke University alumni can scatter remains at Duke’s new Sarah P. Duke Gardens for $25K.

Stumbled on to an photographic exhibit by Dick George “Descanse En Paz” (RIP), I’d like to know where he is currently exhibiting, but if you are in the southwest and can find a current schedule, GO. This will appeal to the folk art set, trash to treasure and so on. Dirtsister was moved and will try to post some of his art.

Something to do before you die: Interview your friends on video.

Greetings!

Inspired by three beautiful things.

Morning coffee with toes in the sand.

Green flowering vegetation.

Thawing out after a long winter.

Today’s tip for better living: Learn to drive a stick shift.

Greetings!

A moment of silence for the passing of a great mind…

Inventor of the TV remote dies

By SHANNON DININNY
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

BOISE, Idaho — Hit the mute button for a moment of silence: The co-inventor of the TV remote has died.

Robert Adler, who won an Emmy Award along with fellow engineer Eugene Polley for the device that made couch potatoship possible, died Thursday of heart failure at a Boise nursing home at 93, Zenith Electronics Corp. said Friday.

In his six-decade career with Zenith, Adler was a prolific inventor, earning more than 180 U.S. patents. He was best known for his 1956 Zenith Space Command remote control, which helped make TV a truly sedentary pastime.

The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded Adler and co-inventor Polley, another Zenith engineer, an Emmy in 1997 for the landmark invention.

Adler joined Zenith’s research division in 1941 after earning a doctorate in physics from the University of Vienna. He retired as research vice president in 1979, and served as a technical consultant until 1999, when Zenith merged with LG Electronics Inc.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published his most recent patent application, for advances in touch screen technology, on Feb. 1.

Adler is survived by his wife, Ingrid.

Then, a bit of weird news:

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Police called to a Long Island man’s house discovered the mummified remains of the resident, dead for more than a year, sitting in front of a blaring television set. The 70-year-old Hampton Bays, New York, resident, identified as Vincenzo Ricardo, appeared to have died of natural causes. Police said on Saturday his body was discovered on Thursday when they were called to the house over a burst water pipe.

“You could see his face. He still had hair on his head,” Newsday quoted morgue assistant Jeff Bacchus as saying. The home’s low humidity had preserved the body.

Officials could not explain why the electricity had not been turned off, considering Ricardo had not been heard from since December 2005. Neighbors said when they had not seen Ricardo, who was diabetic and had been blind for years, they assumed he was in the hospital or a long-term care facility.

Todays Tip for better living: Laugh so hard you wet your pants!

Greetings!

Do you believe in psychics? Today on Oprah, she hosted John Edward and Allison DuBois and Oprah seemed skeptical. There were some interesting theories on how these mediums receive messages from “the other side”. Quantum physics, vibrations and frequencies, things that make you go hmm-mmm.

Regarding crossing over, we had an interesting conversation with members of the Hummingbird Medicine Band, Southeastern Cherokee Council regarding their funeral rituals. They refer to the deceased as “travelers” and believe that after the spirit is released from the body, it remains in nature. It’s considered disrespectful to mention the name of the deceased for a year after the “journey” has begun.

Architecturally speaking of spirits leaving the body, here’s an interesting site on abandoned buildings.

Observation: We’ve noticed several clients who willingly fork over their credit card information, but are reluctant to give out their email address for tracking info.
Tip for better living: Forecast the Future.

Greetings and Happy Valentine’s Day!

Here’s a couple of items we’ve learned this week:

Naps can save your life.

When you look into someone’s eyes (the pupils) you can see their brain.

Red, truly is a power color, symbolizing good, evil, and wealth. In China, brides wear red because white is the color of death and mourning. Red is the color of the Catholic church. Satan is known to appear in red. The Spanish Empire had the monopoly on the color red, creating the dye from the a small red producing insect found in South America.

We study color in the garden. Aristotle declared that the colors of the world were created where darkness and light met, and that the simple colors are the colors of the elements: fire, air, water, and earth.

Regarding urns, our research indicates that blue is still America’s favorite color. Many women are fond of purple. And for the naturalists, Wood is Good.

We are happy to report that we were able to assist a family in California and save them several hundred dollars on their urn selection. Same urn at the funeral home was $675.00. Makes me question my prices.

The mortuary actually had this urn in stock. Many of the funeral homes we deal with stock samples or work from catalogs and carry a very limited supply of expensive urns. When asked the question, do your cremation families make an urn purchase at the funeral home? Guess what the answer is.
Today’s tip for better living: Go deep.

Greetings!

No death talk today.

A couple of topics that have been on my mind; Time and Politics. Two of the major reasons I cashed out of the corporate world. Let’s start with politics. Not office politics, that’s a manageable sport. Dirtsister speaks of the real deal, the hustle, the spending orgy known as the Campaign. Here we go. The media is already ramping up for the next wave and I’m reminded of the promise that I made to myself during a stint at the tee-vee factory: flee before the next election.

One of my favorite authors, the good Dr. HST, accurately describes a medical condition known as “Campaign Bloat”. A swelling of the adrenal glands. “The body’s entire adrenaline supply is sucked back into the gizzard, and nothing either candidate says, does, or generate will cause it to rise again…and without adrenaline, the flesh begins to swell; the eyes fill with blood and grow small in the face, the jowls puff out from the cheekbones, the neck-flesh droops, and the belly swells up like a frog’s throat…the brain fills with noxious waste fluids, the tongue is rubbed raw on the molars, and the basic perception antennae begin dying like hairs in a bonfire.”

Smells like burning feathers.

Time. I found this interesting question posed on verypink and wondered what Dirtsister would tell her 15 year old self. Hmmm.

Always fascinated with ancient civilizations, we found this blurb regarding time: “The Mayan calendar, devised several centuries before the birth of Christ, is still more precise than the one we use today: They had the solar year broken down to exactly 365.24 days, and 12 lunar months of 29.5 days each. None of this sloppy “leap year” business, or odd-numbered months.”

Today’s tip: Know six things you would do if you were president.

Greetings!

While we never followed the movements of Anna Nicole Smith when she was alive, somehow we’ve been sucked into the complications swirling around the paternity of her baby girl and 10 year legal battle for her late husband’s 1.6 billion dollar estate.

Dirtsister was unaware that ANS and J. Marshall’s son even fought over who would get Paw-Paw’s remains! The court determined the widow and son would split the ashes.

It’s a busy week in the garden and we’re happy to report that most of the debris from the January ice storm has been removed. Now we are hearing locals complain about tire tracks in their yards and “Where’s my FEMA check?” Please.

During the ice storm we visited with a client in upstate New York who remarked that it’s been an unusually warm winter and was 60 degrees that day. They are reaping the rewards of the warm winter now, buried in five feet of snow.

Here’s your tip for the day: Have a secret hiding place!

Greetings!

Yesterday’s post regarding death masks and infant mortality was a disturbing topic, but it triggered a memory about my late grandfather’s habit of photographing the corpse at the funeral, he did it with all of our family members and I remember thinking it was odd. My mother may have returned the favor at his funeral but I don’t recall.

Anyway, I wanted to know, where did this bizarre custom come from? I didn’t spend a lot of time on the research, but it looks like the novelty of photography in the 1800’s spurred the trend. For many families it may have been the only photograph of the deceased ever taken.
After viewing some of the poses on the Memento Mori site, I’m delighted that this morbid fad faded away.

No pictures please, move along, there’s nothing to see.

Today’s tip for better living: Turn off the t.v. and go look at the stars.

Speaking of television, I’m guessing that Astronaughty Lisa Nowak is relieved with the wall to wall coverage of Anna Nicole….not one word on Lisa’s crazed antics today.

Greetings! Today has been a nutty day and February is Heart Month, so let’s get started.
We’ll start with Anna Nicole Smith, 39. Died of a broken heart. We’ll wait for the medical examiner’s report, but trust me….broken heart. Pray for her baby. So many complications in that story, interesting case study for the law students. Not to mention feeding frenzy by the media.
Speaking of babies, the loss of a child is too painful to write about, we talked to a family today that lost a babe due to a freak accident in the home. Heartbreaking.

We love all things Egyptian and overheard a recent visitor to the Tut Exhibit in Chicago describing the some of the death masks on display. Evidently, it was common practice to make masks of infants, including the still born. Heart stopping.
If there is any good news to be found in all of this, the infant mortality rate has plummeted. The numbers have completely shifted.

From funeralwire.com, here’s a quote from Van Pine, president of American Funeral Consultants, New Paltz, N.Y. “In the course of human history, most cultures have been made up of parents who buried their children, because most deaths occurred to young people,” Pine said. Today’s Baby Boomer funeral directors “are really sort of the tail end of…the first generation where children are burying their parents. This is a huge shift.”

This change has been little noticed because it has unfolded over generations, as better sanitation and healthcare – as well as cures to numerous childhood diseases – have gradually reduced the death rate among the nation’s young people. But take a look at this longer view that Pine provided of the average age of Americans at the time of death:

1900: 0-14 – 53% 65-plus – 17%
1950s: 0-14 – 9% 65-plus – 53%
Today: 0-14 – 2% 65-plus – 75%

A century ago, Pine said, his great-grandfather worked as a funeral director and had two livery set-ups: a black hearse with black horses for adults, and a white hearse with white horses for younger folks who had died. “They ran the white hearse more than they did the black hearse,” he said. “All the customs that we have were built around burying young people….The needs (of families) began to shift some time in the ‘30s, and the ‘40s and the ‘50s, and we didn’t necessarily recognize it.”

Look at those statistics again: A century ago, only one-sixth of funerals were likely to be arranged for a parent 65 years or older; today, more than three-quarters of funerals fit that bill. That means younger and younger people are involved in the funeral arrangement. “People are burying and cremating different kinds of people. The relationships are different,” Pine adds. “The meaning of life and death is different…Many funerals in the past were to recognize that which never could be, because it was the death of a child. And today, we’re recognizing that which was.” In other words, today’s funeral arranger is more likely to be an adult child who wants to help create a meaningful, personalized and even celebratory event for a parent who lived a full life.

That’s enough about that. Here’s today’s tip for better living:

No matter your gender: Own some go-go boots.