BS: So where are you going to be scattered?

Subject: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Shanghaiceltic
Date: 29 May 04 - 09:12 PM

I saw this on the on-line Telegraph. I thought the idea of scattering from a Starbucks cup an interesting one.

Me I'll have my ashes scattered in my garden. But not too soon!

Alistair Cooke's ashes scattered in Central Park
By Kate Howard
(Filed: 30/05/2004)


Alistair Cooke got the last laugh when his family secretly scattered his ashes in New York's Central Park from paper cups in defiance of a city bylaw prohibiting such acts, it was revealed last night.

The late presenter of BBC Radio 4's Letter from America reportedly wanted his cremated remains to be spread in the park, which was overlooked by his apartment. Jane, his widow, and his daughter Susie, an Episcopalian minister, organised the undercover operation which involved 10 family members and friends.

The group, including Patti Yasek, Cooke's long-time secretary, went to a branch of Starbucks where they had a coffee and then walked out into Central Park with the empty cups. Cooke's ashes were divided into each cup and then Susie used a red pashmina to signal to her mother - who had remained inside the apartment - that the secret service was about to begin.

Zeb, one of Cooke's grandchildren, who has had astronaut training, used his specialist knowledge to check the wind direction. The group formed a circle and the ceremony began. They recited the 23rd Psalm and Johnny, Cooke's son, sang a ballad. They then said a prayer of thanks for Cooke's life, before tipping their coffee cups and dispersing his ashes.

Unconcerned about the consequences of breaking the bylaw, Mrs Cooke said: "Central Park was a real favourite of Alistair's. The police might come here now. I suppose if they do, I'll just have to hide under the bed."

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 29 May 04 - 09:36 PM

I have already started - my brains are already scattered...

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 29 May 04 - 11:09 PM

I'm perverse. And warped. I'd like mine dumped down a storm drain. Or perhaps a sewer.

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Bobert
Date: 29 May 04 - 11:19 PM

Hey, I like the idea of ashes being scattered where ever the deceased wishes....

Make mine on the gardens I have planted, thank you.... No reason to waste any nitrogen...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Bobert
Date: 29 May 04 - 11:20 PM

Ahhh, excuse me, potash in this case....

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 29 May 04 - 11:28 PM

I'm already scattered, so I am hoping to be gathered instead.

Or, put me in some kinda instrument varnish and lay me down nice and smooth.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Gurney
Date: 30 May 04 - 03:14 AM

Me for the Oggin. Mack/Misophist, if you opt for the storm drain, see you.

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 30 May 04 - 03:58 AM

On the basis that I know my soul will go to Heaven.....they can do what they like with what's left. Be Blessed.

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 30 May 04 - 04:52 AM

His son needed astronaut training to get the specialist knowledge that would enable him to work out which way the wind was blowing?!
Ye Gods! Hasn't the dumb cluck ever heard of a wet finger? LOL

Johnny :0) (not flaming, trolling or any other kind of -ing, just totally bemused at that apparent overkill)

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Mooh
Date: 30 May 04 - 06:55 AM

There's a favourite place along the lake where my Dad's and my sister's ashes were scattered, likely there, but no time soon.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 30 May 04 - 07:04 AM

Think I'll have some of the finer ashes mailed to Bush. Might as well scare the hell out of him when there's no way he can retaliate!..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: kendall
Date: 30 May 04 - 07:23 AM

Good thought, Ellenpoly!
I'd like mine scattered over Penobscot Bay here in Maine.

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: jacqui.c
Date: 30 May 04 - 07:40 AM

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: sian, west wales
Date: 30 May 04 - 07:45 AM

I want to be put in a big rocket firecracker and launched from a ship in mid-Atlantic.

sian

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Bill D
Date: 30 May 04 - 12:07 PM

some on the East coast of the US, some on the West coast.....that ought let the oceans carry me off (eventually) to all those places I never got to in life!

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: GUEST
Date: 30 May 04 - 12:12 PM

I find it hard to believe that all the ashes of an adult male could fit into 10 Starbucks cups.

So what did they do with the rest of him?

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: kendall
Date: 30 May 04 - 12:46 PM

Can't decide, Jacqui?

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Mudlark
Date: 30 May 04 - 01:19 PM

Altho my body resides in hot hill country, my soul is with the ocean, just over the coastal range. So the mighty Pacific would be as good a place as any. But if, by the time I'm cremated, there are no ritualists left among my friends, then any landfill will do.

I agree with Guest, however, as to volume. Even supersizing wouldn't cover it.

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Peace
Date: 30 May 04 - 01:40 PM

I will be attending medical school for the first time in my life when I'm dead.

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: jacqui.c
Date: 30 May 04 - 02:05 PM

Kendall - The previous entry was at my son's and I couldn't do a reply for some reason.

Brucie - great idea - it has crossed my mind but since, when I'm dead it will matter more to those who are left than to me - I'm going to let them make the decision. It all gets recycled one way or another anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 May 04 - 06:53 PM

It doesn't matter. It'll go back to the World in general, like my hair clippings and all the other material stuff I've left behind over the years.

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Peace
Date: 30 May 04 - 07:03 PM

I don't wish to seem indelicate or opportunistic, Little Hawk, but it occurs to me that should you pre-decease me, you shan't have any use for the blow-up dolls. It would be--at a time of your chosing--a wonderful act of cross-Canada friendship were you to include a small clause in your Last Will and Testament directing the person who will carry out your final wishes to send them to Alberta. Postage paid of course.

I certainly have no hopes that you WILL pass away before I do, it would be a shame to let the various dolls go to waste.

Thank you.

brucie

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Deckman
Date: 30 May 04 - 07:17 PM

"Bride Judy" has always been of the belief that her death will proceed mine. Should that happen, I have promised to scatter her ashes at the place where she was concieved. She knows this place and she and I have visited it several times. It's now part of a National Park on the Olympic Pennisula. Bob

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 May 04 - 08:11 PM

I'm glad you took the trouble to express those thoughts in a suitably sensitive and delicate manner, Bruce. I will indeed include such a clause, and I will also leave you my collection of "come-hither" devices, namely:

an industrial strength moose caller

a sheep caller

a goat caller

a groundhog caller

a duck decoy

a box of alligator-skin condoms

another thing you blow into that says, "I'm filthy rich and I have a Porsche and a nine-inch tongue! And I'm NOT from Ohio."

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: katlaughing
Date: 30 May 04 - 08:48 PM

Mine are to be mixed with those of various pets who've gone before me, then placed near my paternal grandparents' graves, provided the yuppies who are taking over the western slope of Colorado leave the cemetary intact. To date they have carved away one hill beside it and put a four-lane road on the other side, with a golf course to come. ARRRggghhhhh!!

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 31 May 04 - 05:24 AM

Actually, like brucie, I'm also giving my body to science. I'm hoping they'll find some use for all the parts I never figured out how to use.

After they're done, I have a fantasy of being made into a skeleton and ending up in a classroom somewhere with adolescent boys standing in front of me and making rude comments.

..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: kendall
Date: 31 May 04 - 07:49 AM

Ellen, you could imitate that skeleton that walked into the bar and ordered a beer and a mop.

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Deckman
Date: 31 May 04 - 09:59 AM

Ellen ... you can't fool me ... I can see right through your comments! Bob

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 31 May 04 - 10:58 AM

Glad you two make no bones about your feelings here...

..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Metchosin
Date: 31 May 04 - 12:10 PM

Re ashes in a Starbuck's cup, if they were "grandes", they would be more than adequate. My father-in-law's ashes, of which we recently "disposed", would have fit in a one US gallon paint can. 10 grandes would be the equivalent of an imperial gallon, which is larger.

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: kendall
Date: 31 May 04 - 07:37 PM

Ellen, you trying to "rib" us?

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: GUEST
Date: 31 May 04 - 10:36 PM

I would like my ashes to be spread in the gut between Kennebec Point and Stage Island on the incoming tide.

Peter

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Pogo
Date: 31 May 04 - 10:56 PM

I read somewhere a few years back about how they had invented this biodegradable green football looking container for creamatees. The idea being to put the ashes in it and float it out to sea where it eventually dissolves and scatters said ashes.

That's the way to go now...in a funky green Nerf football-looking thing that melts in water! {O) woo-hoo!

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Peace
Date: 31 May 04 - 11:05 PM

The funeral parlor will not allow me to have my brother's ashes. They say it's the law. They say he HAS to be buried. It does not make sense to me.

My alternative to attending medical school is to be cremated, put into nickel bags and given to my friends. Seems I won't be able to do that. However, I hope I have a few years left to find a loophole in THAT one.

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Metchosin
Date: 01 Jun 04 - 02:20 AM

They are telling you porkers brucie, at least according to the Alberta Funeral Service Association

My suggestion would be a stern letter to them from a lawyer of your choosing.

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Deckman
Date: 01 Jun 04 - 11:17 PM

brucie ... they are jerking you around. Get a lawyer NOW. The second filthiest industry is the death industry ... cemetaries and mortuaries. Bob

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Scooby Doo
Date: 02 Jun 04 - 02:29 AM

I am off to medical school,then paupers grave in Cardiff,South Wales,UK.

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Spot
Date: 02 Jun 04 - 10:44 AM

Hello everybody...I want to be put in a particular beck at the top o' Kirkstone Pass in t'English lakes...I spent many an hour tryin to ride my trials bike up it clean and never did....I lived at the bottom of the pass for years ..my lad knows the spot!! He never cleaned it either!!

                   Regards to all...Spot

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Peace
Date: 02 Jun 04 - 04:28 PM

Thank you very much for that information. My apologies. He recently died in Quebec. But thank you very, very much for your concern, advice and encouragement.

Bruce M

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Kim C
Date: 02 Jun 04 - 04:32 PM

I don't know. That's a good question, and one that I have pondered more than a few times. There are so many places I have loved, I'd have a hard time picking one. I sort of like the idea of being scattered at sea, though.

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Burke
Date: 02 Jun 04 - 05:47 PM

My step brother apparently expressed a wish to be scattered on his mother's roses. The family couldn't deal with that, so they didn't. They've since be buried in his grandfather's plot.

Put my ashes in a cardboard box & bury it on top of my mother.

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Jeanie
Date: 03 Jun 04 - 03:42 AM

Woodland burial in a woven willow coffin here at Herongate Wood

Whenever I have attended funerals in crematoria, I have always found it difficult to ignore the feeling of it being a 'conveyor belt' process, despite all efforts to make the occasion personal. As soon as I heard about this 'green' burial site near to where I live, I knew this was the way I want to go out from here - though I feel that none of us really 'goes' anywhere very far !

A sleep I shall have,
A rest I shall have,
Yet death will be but a pause;
For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours and yours.

- jeanie

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Raptor
Date: 21 Jun 04 - 11:33 AM

I want to thank those who started and contributed to this thread!

Last Night Myself and 4 University friends of my Wife scattered Her ashes around The University of Guelph campus, and in a couple of other beautiful places in Guelph Ontario Canada A city she loved so much.

We carried her around in 5 Large Tim Hortins Coffie cups

Driving down to Guelph, on the same route that I hichhiked hundreds of times to visit her, Was one of the hardest things I'd done in my life.

Raptor

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Micca
Date: 21 Jun 04 - 12:27 PM

I think, for sheer inspired imagination the late, great, Rod Shearman would be hard to beat, he asked that some of his ashes be scattered along the footpath between the campsite and the pub at Towersey Festival, so that when we Festival attenders are staggering back after the pub shuts the slopping of beer from our tankards would at least give him a chance of a drink!!! and it was done according to his wishes, the remaining ashes were launched onto his beloved London River at Sunset.



" Sing no sad songs for me
live like tomorrow will never be"

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: open mike
Date: 21 Jun 04 - 04:16 PM

this assumes everyone is planning to be scattered,
rather than buried. It is often difficult to get
a simple pine box and burial without formaldehyde,
other pickling substances and chemicals...it the
old, simple way available any where these days?
i believe it was Jessica Mitford who wroet American Way
of Death, exposing some of the foibles of the
funeral, and mortuary "industry" in 1963
-here is the sequel "revisited"
http://dir.salon.com/books/sneaks/1998/07/29sneaks.html

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: gnomad
Date: 21 Jun 04 - 06:56 PM

I don't think I can express it better than McColl:

Take me to some high place of heather, rock and ling
Scatter my dust and ashes, feed me to the wind
So that I will be part of all you see, the air you are breathing
I'll be part of the curlew's cry and the soaring hawk
The blue milkwort and the sundew hung with diamonds
I'll be riding the gentle wind that blows through your hair
Reminding you how we shared
In the joy of living

Nowhere specific, but that is the place alright.

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: open mike
Date: 21 Jun 04 - 07:13 PM

one of my favorite songs is Bristle Cone PIne
where the song says:
when it somes my time it would suit me just fine
to sleep at the feet of the Bristle Cone PIne....
and as i would slowly return to this earth
what little this body of mine might be worth
would soon start to nourish that tree
and it would partake of the essence of me...

Bristle cones are thought to be the oldest living things on earth.
They live above the line where most trees can survive 10-12,000
feet elevation on the wind swept ridges of the Great Basin.

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Rapparee
Date: 21 Jun 04 - 09:22 PM

I believe that Orthodox Judaism doesn't permit of embalming and fancy coffins. I know that the beliefs of the Amish don't, nor does Islam. Or have your friends tell the undertaker that you were a Jain, but because the Towers of Silence are too far away you have to be buried unpickled in a plain box.

Me, I want them to use whatever parts are useful to others. My eyes have seen beauty, let others share that. My heart has served me well and perhaps it can serve another as well. My liver...well, it might not be in such good shape by then, but perhaps someone can squeeze out some use between the alcohol therein. They can take what they need with my blessings.

Then cremate me. Preferably on the deck of a longship, my worldly goods piled around me and my wife lamenting my passing as the ship disappears over the horizon. But since my wife has made some small objections to this, well, grind me up fine and toss the ashes into the ventilation system of the last library I worked at.

That way, when they dust, someone will remember me and say, "DAMNIT! He couldn't even die without making more work for us!"

Subject: RE: BS: So where are you going to be scattered?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 21 Jun 04 - 09:30 PM

i'm not bothered waht they do with my body wehn i'm ded, but i want them to use any usefull bits to help other people, then chuck the leftovers away.