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Eunoia
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Oh, and after the death of his old dog, Kosmo, he also has a new bulldog puppy, Clara, since September 2018 :-)
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Monday, November 28, 2022
Choosing a burial siteAs I get older(78) my health gets slowly worse and my fitness slowly decreases, as is to be expected. So I have been setting my affairs in order, prior to the day when I shuffle off this mortal coil. Mostly burocratic stuff, paying off any debts and ensuring that SWMBO is taken care of, as she is likely to survive me. Depressing stuff, but it needed to be done. However, there was one enjoyable aspect, which was choosing a burial site we both really liked. I'll show you a photo below.Now in this area of Germany, most graves are in religiously affiliated yards. Christian graveyards mostly, within towns/villages. Sometimes even separate ones for catholics and protestants, I've been told. Jewish graveyards were put outside the town walls since medieval times; the nearby village of Haaren being a case in point. And since we are atheists, we didn't want to go in a Xian graveyard, littered with crosses etc as they are. So we looked for alternatives. Friend Stefan was buried at sea; biker friend Norm cremated and his ashes scattered on Snaefell, the IOM mountain of the TT race course. Meg was shipped back to Scotland to be buried there. None of these options appealed to us. With three exceptions, you can choose where and how you are to be buried. Exception one is if your corpse is too radioactive, in which case the authorities will put you in a thick-walled lead coffin (like Madame Curie). I have less than 9000 Bequerels, so that wouldn't apply to me :-) Exception two is if your corpse is a biohazard in which case the authorities will bury it in a restricted area. This has been done since medieval times, separate graveyards for pest corpses put far out of town, there is one 3 miles outside nearby Neuenbeken, for example. Incidentally (sic), dying of Coronavirus does not make you a biohazard. Exception three is a pauper's grave, paid for by the local council. Within the last decade or so the idea of the Friedwald (peace wood) has gained popularity here, an idea we like, so we've looked at several and chosen a new one nearby. This is an area in the woods where your cremated ashes are put in a (biodegradeable?) urn and buried near the roots of a tree. Either anonymously or you can choose the tree yourself (we are going for a silver beech). So we are reserving two adjacent spots for the next 25 years and will have a small metal name-plaque put on the tree trunk. No crosses, half-moons, stars of David etc are allowed in this Friedwald as it is non-denominational. There are benches for visitors to sit and contemplate and there is a parking lot outside the Friedwald for visitors. Plus it is nearby so SWMBO will not have drive far should she wish to visit. I don't expect or want any other mourners :-) This is what it looks like there now :- 
Now doesn't that look pretty and really peaceful? Makes me happy. PS : I would still like to see the great supernova due in 2023 before I go :-) Comments (3) The ones I come up with myself are usually awful puns; this one is for Mike.
About 120 years ago there was a victorian businessman who specialised in products made using mercury, a liquid metal element.
He made stuff such as thermometers, barometers and even the motor driving the time machine he had invented. One day potential investors visited and
wanted to know where he got all his mercury from, as it was fairly rare back then, and they wanted to minimise their risks.
He said, the mercury for the thermometers and barometers came from holes in the ground in Montana.
And for the time machine? they asked of him.
He replied "The time machine is from Hg wells."
Comments (3) There were two variants, closed and open, looking like these two.
But over the last two decades, people have bought
their own mobile phones and demand for coin operated telephone boxes has fallen so far that they are no longer profitable.
It costs on average more to empty the coin boxes than the coins they contain. May be the ones at airports and train stations make sense; I doubt it though.
And so it was decided to scrap the coin operated telephone service completely. This will happen on 22nd november. Then step by step, the last telephone boxes will be removed, sometimes spectacularly.
Just last month, the one at the dead-end of Königsee Lake in Bavaria was flown out by helicopter; I`d have loved to have seen that. What that must have cost!!!
You can buy one if you want to; albeit just the housing without the phone & coin box. A local farmer did so and now it stands down a lonely farm road,
next to the crop-weighing bridge, so you and the weigh-bridge printer are in the dry on rainy days. Another local guy bought one of the open type, tipping it on the side,
and using it as a kennel for his yard-dog. I'm told a house of ill-repute in Berlin has a closed one, where you can reminesce about fingering one another like in the old days. Hopefully it has music
piped in, Tina Turner's Steamy Windows for example. In the UK some old phone boxes have been reused to house defibrillators. In Canada some are forest outhouses.
In Denmark there are campsite showers, elsewhere they are overnight shelters for the homeless. Just use your imaginations.
Not all countries have taken this drastic step yet, so there are still old telephone boxes of all shapes and sizes throughout the world.
For example, when you walk across the border from La Linea in Spain into Gibralter, the first thing you see (after 3 yards) is an old red UK-style phone box :-)
I will miss that dial tone though!
Comments (3) Here is that video of the crash, not
for the squeamish.
In the Korean war there was a similar ram-kill. An F4U Corsair prop fighter with jammed guns deliberately rammed a korean twin-engined bomber, knocking it out of the sky.
Itself only bent its propellor and managed to glide to a safe landing in friendly territory. I forget the pilot's name.
Sad to see one of the last flying P-63s destroyed. Never formate on someone you can`t see.
If our formation flies into cloud, we tuck in even tighter!
Comments (1)
Palindrome fans ask : Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?
Replying to Roger Stone who was denied a final pardon : No, sir, prefer prison.
Whereas Trump's version might just be : Golf? No sir, prefer prison flog.
Nasa tracks Santa's sleigh at Xmas, so we guess that : A Santa dog lived as a devil god at NASA.
The 24 hour sports car race at Le Mans is often won by : A Toyota. Race fast, safe car. A Toyota.
Mid term elections in the USA coming up, so : Rise to vote, sir.
Mid term elections in the USA may result in : Star comedy by Democrats.
These are some places to discover palindromes :
Burggrub, Germany. Kinikinik, Colorado, United States. Glenelg, Scotland, and Wassamassaw, South Carolina, United States.
You would not believe how difficult it was to proofread this blog article!!!
Comments (3)
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Blog Dewey Decimal Classification : 153
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