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Welcome
Taphophilia (dot) Com...
A repository of morbid curiosities:
Thanatology and Taphophile Issues, Cemetery,
Funeral Industry and Death Related News.
What's New at Arcadia
Historic Burial Grounds of the New Hampshire Seacoast By Glenn A. Knoblock
Arcadia Publishing has releases a new title in the Images of America series, the historic account of the cemeteries along the New Hampshire Seacoast. This collection is a must for anyone interested in local history, genealogy, or colonial-era art. Please visit Arcadia Publishing to purchase your copy of Historic Burial Grounds of the New Hampshire Seacoast and browse other cemetery books!
Green-Wood Cemetery By Alexandra Mosca
Arcadia Publishing announces the release of the historic account of one of New York's most famous cemeteries. Aracdia Publishing's Images of America series has an extensive catalog of many cemetery publications! Please visit Arcadia Publishing to purchase your copy of Green-Wood Cemetery.
Announcements
Quoting Death in Early Modern England: The Poetics of Epitaphs Beyond the Tomb By Scott L. Newstok
An innovative study of the Renaissance practice of making epitaphic gestures within other English genres. A poetics of quotation uncovers the ways in which writers including Shakespeare, Marlowe, Holinshed, Sidney, Jonson, Donne, and Elizabeth I have recited these texts within new contexts. Visit Palgrave Macmillan and purchase your copy today!
Living by the Dead By Ellen Ashdown with illustrations by Mary Liz Moody.
A memoir about living beside a cemetery--and about the members of my family who came to rest at Roselawn Cemetery in Tallahassee, Florida. Please visit Kitsune Books for more information.
Graveyards of Chicago: The People, History, Art, and Lore of Cook County Cemeteries By Matt Hucke And Ursula Bielski.
Discover a Chicago That Exists Just Beneath the Surface - About Six Feet Under! Take a tour of Chicago's permanent residents! Please visit the Lake Claremont Press website to purchase your copy of Graveyards of Chicago today!
Epitaphs: The Magazine for Cemetery Lovers By Cemetery Lovers
For information regarding subscriptions, single issues, submission guidelines, deadlines, classifieds or advertising for future issues, please visit The Cemetery Club.
Guardians of the Soul: Angels and Innocents, Mourners and Saints with photography by John Bower and foreword by Claude Cookman
Indiana's remarkable cemetery sculpture is now available. Please visit Studio Indiana for more information.
West Springfield Massachusetts: Stories Carved in Stone by Rusty Clark
Features information on early New England gravestone carvers with more than two hundred photos and illustrations. Please visit the Dog Pond Press website.
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Tuesday, 02 November 2004 |
Cremation, travel an uneasy mix
By ELLEN SUNG, Staff Writer
Grieving families choosing a cremation urn consider many factors: material, cost and style. They don't usually think about X-ray readability.
Under new federal security rules, cremation urns are no longer sacrosanct when it comes to screening at the airport. Travelers trying to carry urns on board must send them through X-ray scanners, but the problem is that X-rays can't penetrate some urns to read the contents.
When that happens, security screeners take the urn, swab it for explosives and send it to the belly of the plane with the luggage -- an unhappy option for a family in mourning.
That's where Patricia Bondor of Clayton enters the picture. Bondor, co-owner of Raleigh-based Cremation.com, is on a self-appointed quest to develop flight-friendly urns.
"I feel bad when I check my baggage," Bondor said. "I hope I get my clothes. I can't imagine 'I hope I get my mom.' " Bondor, whose Web site is a virtual Yellow Pages of the funeral industry, has no financial stake in the urn evolution. But she hopes the federal Transportation Security Administration will endorse a standard design for urns, so passengers can carry the ashes of their loved ones.
Bondor met recently with TSA representatives, urn manufacturers and travel security experts to see whether there is a way to devise "TSA-approved" cremation urns.
Urn manufacturers are still deciding whether to pursue the official flight-friendly label.
It is tricky to determine which cremation urns are readable by security scanners. Wood and plastic urns usually can be scanned, but airport scanners might not be able to penetrate urns made of other material.
Bondor tried her own test at Raleigh-Durham International Airport in September, running a dozen urns filled with cremated pig bones through the X-ray scanner. An X-ray expert in England had told her the density mattered, so she wanted full urns.
Most of the urns passed. But Bondor said thicker urns might not be readable.
The issue gains urgency as more Americans choose cremation. In 2002, one in four Americans who died were cremated. By 2025, an estimated 43 percent of those who die in America will be cremated.
Last month, John Kane, 50, of Cary took a cherry wood cremation box with the remains of his wife, Yukiko, to RDU. Yukiko Kane, 56, had been a software engineer at IBM for more than 20 years; the couple had marked their silver anniversary a year earlier. John Kane was carrying her ashes home to Japan to be stowed in four resting places according to Buddhist custom.
Because the box was wood, it was easy for security screeners in Raleigh, Washington and Japan to see the contents. But if he had chosen a thick pewter urn, he likely would have had to send Yukiko's remains into baggage -- and he would have been terrified of losing them, he said.
"It had to be with me," Kane said. "And I would make a big fuss if they tried to get it off of me."
Until the standards are created, travel security authorities strongly recommend that people travel with cremated remains in a cardboard box or temporary container, then move them into a permanent urn on arrival.
Switching boxes "can be not a great thing to go through," said Scott MacKenzie, vice-president of urn manufacturer MacKenzie Vault Inc., in East Longmeadow, Mass. "They would rather travel with one urn that Mom or Dad are going to stay in."
http://newsobserver.com/news/story/1787065p-8079690c.html |
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