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mental health

Connections to the Past and Hillbilly Death Customs

March 12, 2007 urngarden.com

Massaged a particularly tight bed today, it hadn’t been turned in a long time, tore it up and had a brilliant idea. Will work on the redesign. My elbows hurt, lots of rocks and clay.

Just when I start to doubt myself and question the path I’m on, we have a breakthrough!

In the mailbox: “Please help me. Joan Fonfa is an old friend with whom I have lost touch. I knew Larue as a pup and all of Joan’s other dogs, Nigia, Tigera, and LaRue. Please, I google Joan’s name every year or so hoping to find her out there. This is the lst I have found her. Please will you contact me and help me to contact her?”

We assisted Joan last year when her precious LaRue passed, Joan chose the Purple Passion Urn, although she preferred to think of it as LaRue’s Purple Palace! Joan is one of a handful of people I’ve met in the last couple of years that have purchased or built a home based on their pet’s needs.

Anyway, let’s get real….most people don’t visit the Urngarden unless they have to…and Joan called last week regarding another sad matter. The end.

Until this weekend…Joan’s long lost friend Googles her, lands in the Urngarden and I called Joan to give her the contact info. She was surprised and delighted.

Next, we’ll dig up some connections to the past, we discovered an old favorite on the bookshelf “Ozark Magic and Folklore”, by Vance Randolph.

We’ll start with death signs and wood, since many Ozarkers have lots of firewood from the recent ice storm:

“The typical hillman avoids any firewood which pops or crackles too much, in the belief that burning such wood will bring about the death of some member of his family. To burn sassafras wood is supposed to cause the death of one’s mother , and although sassafras makes very fine charcoal, no decent native will burn it, or even haul it the kiln, unless his mother is already dead. There is an old saying that the Devil sits a-straddle of the roof when sassafras pops in the fireplace.”

It is very bad luck to burn peach trees, and dreadful results are almost certain to follow.

The transplanting of cedar trees is a bad business, and the old-timers thought that the transplanter would die as soon as the cedar’s shadow was big enough to cover a grave. A man told me that the curse could be “throwed off” by putting a flat stone in the bottom of the hold where the cedar is planted, but others shook their head at this theory. I know of some boys who hired out to transplant cedars in a nursery, laughing at the old superstition, but their parents were horrified and ordered them to quit the job immediately.

The prejudice against transplanting cedars is known all through the Ozarks and parts of the South. There are people in southwest Missouri who will not under conditions plant a willow. I once asked a hired man to “stick” some willows in a gravel bar, in order to turn the creek the other way and prevent it from cutting into my field. Without mentioning the matter to me, he hired another man to attend to this. “It’s sure death for us folks to fool with willers,” he explained later, “so, I just got one o’them Henson boys. The Hensons is eddicated, an’ they don’t believe nothin'”.

When a big tree dies without any visible cause, it is a sign that a human will die before the year is out, exactly one mile north of the tree. If nobody lives there, it doesn’t matter, the old folks insist that a man, woman, or child will die at the designated spot anyhow.

Tip for today: Google a long lost friend.

Filed Under: Advertising, cremation, mental health, pet urns Tagged With: cedar trees bad luck, hillbilly death customs, hillbilly death ritual, ozark death customs, ozark folklore, Vance Randolph

Crossing Over

February 15, 2007 urngarden.com

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.

Filed Under: mental health Tagged With: Crossing over, Quantum Physics

What Is Time?

February 12, 2007 urngarden.com

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.

Filed Under: Confessions, mental health Tagged With: Campaign Bloat, Election Fatigue, Hunter S. Thompson

Memento Mori

February 9, 2007 urngarden.com

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.

Filed Under: art, Confessions, Memorial Service Ideas, mental health Tagged With: death masks, funeral photography, memento mori

February Heart Break Month

February 8, 2007 urngarden.com

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, 40s and 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.

Filed Under: cremation, funeral service, mental health, obituaries, urns Tagged With: Anna Nicole Smith, funeral livery, infant mortality, Tut exhibit

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