The RAnts of RA

How does it feel to know you aren’t immortal? You have to admit when people like Patrick Swayze and Farrah Fawcett pass away, it kind of leaves a hole and with a feeling of impending doom. Really now, if they can expire — anyone can. They were larger than life. The kind of people who take up all the space in the room.

I saw a picture of Patrick on the cover of a rag at the checkout stand the day before he passed away. If he’d have ran me over with his wheelchair I wouldn’t have recognized him. How hard it must have been for him to accept his circumstance after being so vital and full of life.

I was young and beautiful once, with my entire life ahead of me. When did everything change and I ceased to be young? It’s like I woke up one day and I had went away and left this old person in my place.

In some ways it can be very liberating. Clerks no longer card me to purchase cigarettes, I’ve even occasionally been bestowed with the coveted “Senior Citizen Discount.” Wow!

However, there are some wonderful advantages to pressing 50. A person of advanced years is free to speak his or her mind 99% of the time. They are likely to be married or even widowed at this stage in their life — they have nothing to gain by beating around the bush.

Heck, who has time to beat around the bush? Life is flying by at the speed of sound. Do you remember when you were a child and 16 seemed like a million years away — it couldn’t get here fast enough. Today, if you blink it’s tomorrow and the memory of yesterday is fading fast.

I don’t know if it’s just me or not but when stars like Patrick and Farrah die of diseases such as: cancer, leukemia, and multiple sclerosis it is no small thing. Perhaps, it’s because they are so famous that the possiblity of getting a fatal disease strikes just a bit harder. Maybe individuals who work in Hollywood are working under poor conditions? Are they exposed to more pollution and hazardous materials than the average Joe? Or is it just the luck of the draw?

I don’t know the answers but I sure am curious.

I would hate to think we were loving these people to death. If working in the movie industry is responsible for stars dying from chemical exposure — we are paying to have them killed. That’s a hard pill to swallow.

On the other hand, they are in an aggressive business, they should know what the risks are and this is America, if hollywood stars want to risk their own health in return for a few bucks — who are we to stop them? After all, God gave us free will. Doesn’t it strike you as a little odd that God grants people free will, but our government tries to grant us less?

Free will comes with responsibility to live with the natural consequences of our own actions. As my sister is so fond of saying, “Put your big girl panties on…” I can never remember how that ends, but you get the picture.

The only thing worse that being made a fool of is being made to feel like a fool. I guess that means it’s ok to look foolish to everyone else, just so long as you don’t feel foolish. I hate it when extreme environmentalists tell half-truths and outright lies in order to push their global agenda at the expense of all logic.

I recently wrote a brief commentary, "Exploring Arctic Melt," about the Nova DVD, "Extreme Ice." The problem is I’ve watched the movie over a dozen times and I can’t get it out of my system. I am really angry about it.

I realize that photojournalist, James Balog means well. I’m certain he has a real concern for habitat and that the work he’s doing is important. That is not the point. I simply fail to understand, how he can totally blame "global warming" and "greenhouse gases" on our climate changes, yet he fails to see the significant roll scientists themselves have played in the accellerated melting of polar ice caps.

Balog took great pains to point out how the more porous the ice becomes, the faster the ice melts, as more of the surface is exposed to air and the subsequent water that follows. Then immediately drills more than half a dozen holes in the ice, to facilitate his descent into a crevasse.

For a hundred years scientists have been exploring our polar regions. Extreme Ice even went so far as to show a huge freezer with thousands of samples of ice core drillings. Do they really not see the corelation? Watch the program and see if you don’t agree, this is a huge flaw in their logic.

I’m not saying that scientific exploration is the major cause of global warming. What I am saying is, if we know something is harmful – shouldn’t we stop doing it? Shouldn’t we practice what we preach. Balog wants everyone else to do their part, but he isn’t willing to forego the temptation to explore these regions, at the expense of the environment.

I think we should all do our part to protect our environment – we live here. But let’s be honest about things and stop spreading lies and misleading people.

Is an eco-friendly burial for you?

Have you caught Forecast Earth by The Weather Channel? It’s an interesting relatively new show that – even as a non-environmentalist, I find informative and helpful. When the show first aired, I was expecting to hear more hype than substance but what I found was well researched, common sense segments that made me think. Not only was the show about how to preserve the earth – as God intended (not that they ever once mentioned God); the show could actually help me save money. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like to save money.

I saved the Forecast Earth episode entitled Amish Go Solar? to our DVR, which by the way in my opinion, no home should be without – no home with a television that is. The story I was most interested in was about an environmentally friendly cemetery. The informative piece about the Ramsey Creek Preserve was very helpful to me on a personal level.

My mother wants to be cremated, a practice I detest because of references in the bible and the representation of fire and it’s uses. My father’s entire family is buried at Sharon Hollow Cemetery, near Manchester, MI. A simple, yet quiet, dignified place, where I always felt welcome to come and lumber about, while talking to my brother, daddy and the others.

I recall how expensive daddy’s funeral was and the thought of putting my family through a huge expense like that is hard to fathom. Who can afford life insurance these days?

Ramsey Creek Preserve was everything good a funeral and death should be. It actually made me feel good about leaving this earth to meet my maker. Instead of embalming fluid, vaults and metal caskets, bodies are laid to rest in a natural state, in a nature park, surrounded by birds, trees, flowing water, and even music on occasion. What a beautiful place for a body to spend eternity.

In doing my research on natural burials, I located the Fernwood Cemetery in Marin County. The Fernwood property is 32 acres with part of it set aside for natural burial. They have sold one hundred plots in the natural burial area and have already had fifty natural burials. Natural burial appeals to many different people and faiths. Cassity and Campbell both report having worked with religious people to whom natural burial appeals because they say it is more closely tied to how burials were done historically.

This is an idea that just makes good sense. It’s a win-win situation all the way around. A natural burial makes good financial sense; it renews the land, provides more natural spaces and won’t fill up anytime soon. I would love to read comments on this subject for those who have buried someone using this method or are considering it.

Related Articles

• Eco-friendly Burial
• Memorial Ecosystems
• Ramsey Creek Preserve
• Honey Creek Woodlands
• Forecast Earth – A Green Burial
• Mark Harris Discusses A “Natural Way of Burial”