BS: Save a Brit Cemetery

Subject: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 28 Dec 05 - 06:44 AM

FYI. Perhaps some with interest in historical things and places may be interested in this. Brief enough to post, but link to where I saw it is included:

Posted Friday December 23, 2005 at ARC Announcements

[quote]
Help Save The English Cemetery in Florence
The English Cemetery in Florence is famous throughout the world for the beauty of its monuments, and the fame of its residents. Hiram Powers, the noted American sculptor is buried there, as are Arthur Hugh Clough and Walter Savage Landor.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning is also buried in the cemetery, in a most striking tomb designed by Lord Leighton. A number of friends of Florence Nightingale are also interred here, as are veterans of the Battle of Waterloo.

The Swiss owners of the English Cemetery driven by financial considerations now want to abandon it. More enlightened people wish to preserve this monument to distinguished visitors who died in nineteenth century Florence. A Petition has been initiated to preserve the cemetery, and for it to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The petition needs 1000 signatures.

Please sign the petition. Its address is: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975
[endquote]

John

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: katlaughing
Date: 28 Dec 05 - 10:44 AM

Thanks for the alert, John. We've signed it.

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 28 Dec 05 - 11:41 AM

Cemeteries are a total waste of space

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Dec 05 - 11:43 AM

As are some people I could mention.

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 28 Dec 05 - 11:49 AM

You don't have to talk about yourself like that Guest... Plenty of people already have that opinion of you

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 28 Dec 05 - 03:33 PM

So if the same were extended to include war memorials (many of which are the only record of the deceased's name and sacrifice) would you still be as complacent?

Many cemetaries in the UK are the last green space in the city. They support many and varied forms of flora and fauna, without which, our lives would be poorer and duller. They contain personal records and memories that future generations should be able to see and many tombstones are works of art.

It doesn't matter what religious beliefs you hold, what thoughts on the afterlife you have, cemetaries and graveyards are an important part of the lives of many people and should be conserved - not at any cost - but certainly at the cost of money grabbing developers who want to pave over the world.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: number 6
Date: 28 Dec 05 - 03:50 PM

clinton .... what else should we use the space for .... malls,combo of strip malls and box suburban housing, hey how big box stores. Don't retort with some idea about housing for the poor, or farmland ... especially here in Canada there is plenty of space for that ... but then again, that's a topic for another thread, and another time.

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 28 Dec 05 - 04:23 PM

A place to respect.

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: open mike
Date: 28 Dec 05 - 04:48 PM

Cemetaries are a great resource for genealogists.
I have visited many a grave yard office to help
loved ones obtain information including obituaries,
and other such data for completing family trees.

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: number 6
Date: 28 Dec 05 - 05:13 PM

Monuments to the common man.

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 28 Dec 05 - 05:58 PM

not sure i want to be that common

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 28 Dec 05 - 06:25 PM

"what else should we use the space for ...."

The same thing we should use all the faggoty-golf-courses for... parks...

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 28 Dec 05 - 06:51 PM

When you walk around a graveyard and read the inscriptions these were people loved by someone and comfort was found by loved ones visting their final resting place after their loss.These sites which hold remains and should be given the respect they deserve.

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 28 Dec 05 - 07:52 PM

Cemetaries are parks.

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: number 6
Date: 28 Dec 05 - 08:06 PM

Clinton doesn't get it though.

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 29 Dec 05 - 03:11 AM

Oh no... I *get* it... A lot of people have a morbid, medieval, superstitious attachment to dead bodies.... As if, somehow they were anything more than rotting meat...

They're wrong

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 29 Dec 05 - 03:34 AM

Sounds to me like Clinton's trying to to adopt the Klyngon faith.

(Anyone know how to say "just kidding" in Klyngon?)

John

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 29 Dec 05 - 03:46 AM

let's open a cyber book of rememberance for all the brits who snuffed it in Florence - it would be cheaper.

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: number 6
Date: 29 Dec 05 - 08:59 AM

CH ... you seem to have a 'thing' with meat ??

BTW ... you don't necessarily bury corpses in a cemetary ... you can just erect a monument or bury one's ashes.

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 29 Dec 05 - 11:36 AM

I know of many tombstones that have no bodies beneath - the body in question being somewhere in Flanders, in Korea, in the wrecks of the 'Black Prince', the 'Invincible' and the 'Titanic'.

It's a focus point, a lasting memorial to one who is no longer there.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 29 Dec 05 - 12:15 PM

It's a waste of marble, granite, or at the very least, grass....

What you did in LIFE should be your memorial... not some lump of rock

There's a small town in Sweden that has a MUCH better idea... They take the body, and after harvesting all the organs that might be useful, they sorta freeze-dry the rest, smash it into a powder, then put that powder into a bio-degradable bag with the root ball of a young tree and plant that tree...

Beats any chemical process, hermetically sealed coffin or urn sat on any mantelpiece

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Dec 05 - 01:40 PM

Jeeeeesh ..... Clinton.

Waste of granite ..... no shortage of that out here!!!

Waste of grass ?!?!?!?!

Ok ... plant a tree instead of a granite over one's body. Hell give yer body to science, but if one's family wants to have some sort of memorial, it's there right to do so and to put it in a common park were everyone can do the same.

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: number 6
Date: 29 Dec 05 - 01:47 PM

Me above at 1:40

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 29 Dec 05 - 03:33 PM

"if one's family wants to have some sort of memorial"

Keep it on private land, like all your other family matters

Plow dead bodies into the rivers... we need the phosphates for farming

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Dec 05 - 05:14 PM

You can't keep a corpse in a fourteenth floor flat. It contravenes some kind of law against keeping corpses in fourteenth floor flats.

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: number 6
Date: 29 Dec 05 - 05:21 PM

You can't plough dead bodies into a river!!!!! Hell, ya can't even throw old kitty litter into one without getting fined.

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: Jimmy C
Date: 29 Dec 05 - 08:49 PM

JohninKansas,

I tried to sign on but was asked some perosnal questions like


1 - What political Party" best represents my ideas.

2 - How many children do I have etc.etc.

Did anyone else get these questions ?.

Why would they be pertinent to the topic ?.

I am in Canada, but when I go home to Ireland I always visit the graves of my parents and the gravesite is the only "CONNECTION" I still have with them.
Not everyone can do something significant in this life by which they are known and remembered, for many a gravestone is the only thing to show that they were here.
I do have one area that I disagree with when it comes to funerals etc, and that is the use of expensive and often scarce wood used for the coffins, we can still respect our dead and give them an honourable send-off without sacrificing our trees. Other than that I think gravesites are hallowed ground and should be maintained,preserved, and respected.

Subject: RE: BS: Save a Brit Cemetery
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 30 Dec 05 - 12:25 AM

JimmyC -

My post was just to bring the notice to the attention of people who might be interested, and frankly I only opened the actual petition site once to make sure the link would work. I didn't get any questions, but then I didn't attempt to make any entries to the petition. It just gave me a blank for name and another blank for address (or maybe it was email address???).

We've done some poking around in cemeteries to try to track down some lost ancestors, and it is one of the few places you can go without paying extortion to Ancestry-dot-com. And I recently sold a family lot I didn't know I had to some people who wanted to put a marker near their family for someone buried in Colorado. People do expect cemeteries to be a place where history is preserved. And like funerals, they're of no use to the dead - they're for the living to come to grips with the fact that one is gone.

At this point, I didn't feel like I had a sufficient "personal interest" to jump on the petition; but I have poked around a bit to see what some of the markers/monuments look like, and there's both art and history there, probably worth preserving; so I may get back to sign soon.

The website is a "petition mill" so I suspect if you got questions of the kind described they come from the site operators and not from those who posted this particular petition.(?) If that's the case, a connection with this particular partition would not be expected. It's just the site being nosy.

John