Bob Butz's blog

Hard to believe there are really people left in the world who don't know that a conventional funeral is expensive.  Around $7,000 is still considered average; though, the anecdotal evidence I've heard from people who had to bury someone recently puts the price more at $8,000 to $10,000.  Yikes.

The "sticker shock" of conventional burial is driving people to seek other alternatives...green burial among them.  And that's what this AARP Bulletin, The High Cost of Dying, by former Time magazine writer John DeMott, is about.

One of my favorite green burial blogger/advocates I discovered while writing Going Out Green was the UK's Charles Cowling.  One of those wonderful and sadly all-to-rare writers who are able to be witty, serious, and funny all at the same time, Cowling regularly updates his blog with a great mix of solid information, commentary, and news from the green burial scene (both here and in England).

Today, Cowling has a link to the 2001 art house film, Thanatopraxie: Der Letzte Weg.  If you're interested in getting an 11-minute eyeful on how an embalming is done, this is probably as close as you're going to get short of enrolling into a mortuary college program.  No narration.  No music.  No bullshit.

The nearest friends can go
With anyone to death, comes so far short
They might as well not try to go at all.
No, from the time when one is sick to death,
One is alone, and he dies more alone.
Friends make pretense of following to the grave,
But before one is in it, their minds are turned
And making the best of their way back to life
And living people, and things they understand.

—Robert Frost, Home Burial

The New York Times ran another "green-burials-are-catching-on-in-these-tough-economic-times" article yesterday.  Check it out here.