Tag: Green

Memorial Park

Random Thoughts

I had an idea. I’m pretty sure it is crazy. I’m also pretty sure that’s why I like it.

A Memorial Park.

Imagine a place, a decently sized green space. With flowers and trees, open grass spaces, maybe some picnic tables, a bit of playground equipment perhaps, and all surrounded by a wall.

Now imagine this place is a cemetery.

Not filled with tombstones with coffins buried beneath them. The only people interred here are ones who have been cremated, and their ashes mixed in with the soil. When you brought a loved one to be laid to rest here, you would bring the container of ashes, you’d be allowed to inter a small portion of it yourself at a ceremony at the location of your choosing. The rest would be interred later by the staff, spread out all over the park. Your loved one would get an engraving in a brick on the wall, or in a sidewalk or path.

And the park would be open to the public, for picnics and play.

Would you want to bury your loved ones there? Would you want to be buried there?

There are, I think, some beautiful cemeteries in the world, filled with gorgeous statues and crypts. But most cemeteries are lines of bland headstones, markers on a patch of earth beneath which a coffin, often expensive, rests holding the remains of a person. They are, by and large, generically depressing places, devoid of life, and I just don’t think that it how I would want to spend my eternity.

I want to build my Memorial Park, but I have no idea how to go about it or if it would be worth it. Is it even legal to have an area where cremation ash is interred into the soil and people are allowed to play there? Is it sanitary?

These are questions I suppose I should look into, though at least on some level is has to be okay because 6 years ago there were people interring ash beneath trees.

Vote Early, Vote Often

Random Thoughts
Vote

VoteI’m not really telling you to commit voter fraud. Very little voter fraud is actually committed by the voters – although Republicans would have you believe that all voter fraud can be eliminated by requiring proper identification at the polls. No, most fraud, if there is any, occurs in the counting and tabulating. Boxes of mail-in votes lost or “forgotten”, counting being handled by clearly partisan people, early votes being “invalidated” and the voters not notified or not allowed to re-vote, and so on. Voters don’t really commit fraud, political parties and corporate entities do… you know, the things that don’t actually vote, and thus don’t need an ID.

Beyond the malarkey of voter ID, you should, if at all possible, vote. There is no reason not to.

Don’t like either of the major party candidates? Then consider voting 3rd party to vote “against” the major parties. Sure, those 3rd parties aren’t likely to win, but every vote they can get helps them become more established and maybe next time, in 2016, they’ll actually get invited to the debates unlike this year’s lockout. Even if you don’t agree with the 3rd parties, vote for one against the major parties since you don’t like them either. Right now, the current goal is for one of both of the biggest 3rd Parties, Libertarian and Green, to get 5% of the popular vote. At 5%, a party qualifies for public money in the next election. And if you ignore all the pitfalls of campaign finance, qualifying for public funding is a major step is being accepted as legitimate, or being actually seen by more people, of getting on more ballots, of getting media attention, of changing the way our system works (or doesn’t work). A vote for a 3rd Party isn’t a wasted vote.

No matter how you decide to cast it, vote.

It’s your right. Exercise it.