Bodybags Redux

Last summer there was a case where an Ohio woman used a Kentucky funeral home to cremate her son & had the funeral director split the ashes into 4 bags. The woman was infuriated that he used leftover WalMart bags while the funeral director was kind of freaked out about splitting up the remains.
How the laws in Ohio & Kentucky apply here, I don't know. I couldn't find anything in Ohio about splitting up cremated remains.
You cannot commingle multiple people's remains but you can scatter ashes where other people's ashes have already been scattered which sounds like commingling to me but what do I know?
In Florida the court recently ruled that cremated remains are not 'property' and, as such, cannot be divided. That makes sense to me but then I am more into burial so maybe that influences my opinion as I wouldn't dream of being chopped up and sending an arm here & a leg there.
Meanwhile, I think Ohio should go back to the drawing board.

Florida case here

Ohio/Kentucky case here

Previous blogpost here

Floating Eternity - The Offshore Columbarium
ferreal
Due to a lack of land space for graveyards near Hong Kong, Bread Studio has concocted a floating columbarium complete with, ready? - rotating walls.
yup, the shelves full of urns will be on a moving track rotating along the deck on the oval shaped vessel. I guess when you go to visit, you need to follow your deceased loved on'e ashes around the boat.
It's also got a restaurant & hanging bamboo garden!
So, here's my question - would this be viable floating along the Ohio, Mississippi & Missouri Rivers (with or without the moving shelves) ?

Read more

More Damn Reasons to go Zombie
The Dayton Daily News reports the cremated remains of 56 people were found in the home of a former funeral director. Fortunately the remains were labeled.
This post is also a test of using the html5 video stuff.

UPDATE: ok, by my tests, the html5 video junk is working in iOS; Linux Firefox; Mac Firefox, Safari Chrome; Win Firefox, Chrome, Opera. No go on Internet Explorer & Chrome doesn't even launch on Fedora anymore. This seems to be an issue for Chrome on a number of Linux distros.

You're Going to Burn
well, if you want - and more and more people do. Cremations are becoming more and more popular in America with over 40% of all deaths being handled by cremation. Just 50 years ago that number was 3.5%. Could all the cheesy zombie movies produced since then be a reason?
To deal with this change, Springfield's 240 acre Ferncliff Cemetery has installed a crematory - only the second in town.
As more and more people are opting out of burial other options for dealing with your dead ass are being explored like alkaline hydrolysis (liquifying). Now we need to look at open air cremation as well. With about 110,000 dead Buckeyes a year, we should have every available option for our remains.

Frogtown Noose Son article here.

Wormfood
While Ohio refuses to allow open air cremation & water cremation, a new body disposal system has been created by Swedish entrepreneur Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak. She touts it as eco-friendly as her freeze drying process turns the body into fertilizer.

"This ecological alternative to cremation or conventional burial involves freezing the body to minus 18 degrees before being submerged in liquid nitrogen. The then very brittle corpse is turned into a fine powder by a short vibration of specific amplitude, removing the 70 per cent water component from the remains by so-called freeze drying followed by burial in a biodegradable box made from corn starch in a shallow grave."

How long will Ohio drag it's heels on this one? Another chance to reduce government intrusion in our lives & offer Ohioans more choice & allow more products for the funeral industry likely to go unheeded.

Irish Times story here.