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At my age (76) I suppose it is natural for my mind to touch upon those things that will be done to my corpse after I have no more use for it... me being dead, you know.
While I don't really care what happens to my remains after death, I find it distasteful to imagine that any silly superstitious ritual or stupid symbolism be attached to my passing away... such as a funeral ora burial in the ground.
Why do we bury the dead in the ground? Well, I went to the trouble of looking up and reading about the subject:
Burial of the dead in the ground has been traced back over 100,000 years of civilization as evidenced by the Grave of Qafzeh in Israel, a group tomb of 15 people buried in a cave along with their tools and other ritual artifacts. The earliest grave uncovered thus far in Europe is that of the `Red Lady of Wales' which is 29,000 years old.
Early people believed that if a person was not buried properly that person could return as a ghost to haunt the living. There are some feeble-minded humans living now who still believe it.
I hope that after I die I will not be buried in the ground. I hope to be cremated and my ashes disposed of without ceremony.
Not that I really give a crap, though.
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Did You Know . . .?
The ampersand today is used primarily in business names, but that small character was once the 27th part of the alphabet.
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HISTORICAL EVENT
On this day in 1957, under escort from the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, nine black students entered all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Three weeks earlier, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had surrounded the school with National Guard troops to prevent its federal court-ordered racial integration. After a tense standoff, President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent 1,000 army paratroopers to Little Rock to enforce the court order.
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WORD FOR TODAY
sybaritic
adjective
fond of sensuous luxury or pleasure; self-indulgent.
"their opulent and sybaritic lifestyle"
synonyms: luxurious, extravagant, lavish, self-indulgent, pleasure-seeking
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William Cuthbert Faulkner
(Sept 25, 1897 - July 6, 1962)
William Faulkner was an American writer and Nobel Prize laureate from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays, and screenplays. He is primarily known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where he spent most of his life
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