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A repository of morbid curiosities:
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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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Human Crematorium Finds Home With the Holsteins |
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Thursday, 27 May 2004 |
GUILFORD, Vt. - Most everything on Bob and Jackie Gaines's 200-acre dairy farm blends right into the pastoral setting: the 60 Holsteins, the tractors and heavy equipment, the wooden shack where a son makes maple syrup in the spring.
Then there is the human crematory.
Located in a small gray building on the other side of rural Route 5 from their home, the crematory diverges a bit from the farm's bucolic atmosphere.
But it does have the advantage of assuring the survival of a two-century-old family business.
Called Vermont Blessings, the crematory opened in December and belongs to Jim and Ellen Curley, but sits on the Gaines's property. The alliance was set last year when Mr. Curley began a second career as a crematory operator after 25 years as a management consultant.
Vermont was certainly a promising place for the venture. Forty percent of people who die in the state are cremated, according to the Funeral Consumers Alliance, a nonprofit watchdog group, compared with a national average of 25 percent. Moreover, there are only six other licensed crematories in the state.
As he made plans for his start-up, Mr. Curley realized he had a problem: His own 67-acre spread, straddling the side of a small mountain, would be inaccessible for clients in the winter. So, last summer, he knocked on the Gaineses' door and asked if they would be willing to let him set up shop on their farm, which produces milk, cream, maple syrup and alfalfa, and where Mrs. Gaines breeds and boards dogs and operates haunted hayrides in the fall.
Mrs. Gaines was skeptical at first. A crematory might emit unpleasant odors or pollutants, she fretted, or be seen as an eyesore, or damage the farm's reputation. She had already rejected an overture from a man who had wanted to develop a huge chunk of her land into a storage facility.
But she trusted the Curleys. And she realized that the additional income would keep her farm in the black and assure its eventual passage to the hands of her three grown sons, the ninth generation of Gaines farmers.
"Our first and foremost concern is to continue our dairy farm," Mrs. Gaines said. And so Mrs. Gaines, her husband, Bob, and her father-in-law, Bob Sr. took a chance on the Curleys.
And the gamble has paid off, they say. The crematory emits no discernible odors or pollutants that they know of. The building that houses it sits on a hill and resembles a wooden shed with stained glass windows above and on both sides of the door, fitting in unobtrusively with the landscape. And none of the Gaineses' neighbors have publicly complained about it, though they had a chance to do so before the permit was granted.
"We joke and say it's the nicest building on the farm," Mrs. Gaines said.
Best of all, the money they receive from the Curleys is helping keep their farm afloat, she says. (She would not disclose the size of the payments.)
John McKiernan, director of the Small Business Development Center at Boston College, said small businesses often come up with innovative ideas to stay alive. For example, farmers, he said, have recently been renting out space for cellphone towers to make extra money. While subletting space is a common small-business practice, Professor McKiernan said, it is usually for the short-term, not a long-term agreement like the one reached between the Curleys and the Gaineses.
"Small businesses are really quite innovative in coming up with things," Professor McKiernan said. "There's no particular pattern to them. It's 'who do you know who has something that I can use?' "
Mr. Curley charges $975 for a customized cremation package, which includes pickup and transport of the body and urn. He declines to say how many cremations he has performed, but insists business is doing well. He has lined up about 25 prearranged cremations, he says, and hopes to obtain a license to run a funeral home and perform services within the next year.
Joshua Slocum, the executive director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, which is based in Burlington, Vt., said Mr. Curley's fee seemed excessive, saying somewhere from $500 to $800 would be more reasonable. Mr. Curley, however, said the fee guaranteed a personal service not available elsewhere.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/27/business/27sbiz.html |
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