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Showing posts with the label Massachusetts

Getting grounded: a rise in green burials

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After Lawn Love came out with a list of the most popular states for a "green" burial , it gave me pause: just what is a green burial, do I want one, and why hadn't I (Miss Green) ever heard of one? I had always figured cremation to be the greenest - or arguably, GREENER - alternative. I had seen death as bifurcated - I will be burnt or I will be buried. Scratch that, my body. I will be somewhere else, I hope, sipping a Mai Tai with Elvis, my mom and Uncle John. Connecticut is 24th in the nation for green burials, but Massachusetts is an impressive fifth. (Analyses of these figures is on Lawn Love's site.) A green burial, turns out, can take several forms - from choosing a Redwood we like (while alive!) and buying the little plot of earth around it (then buying a plaque to mark our spot) to, more popularly I think, being buried in a green fashion by forgoing embalming fluids or a toxic burial containers in favor of one that is biodegradable. Connecticut has Better Plac...

Covid-19 comes to Massachusetts, while Connecticut prepares but doesn't panic

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As you probably know by now, the world is facing a pandemic in the form of Covid-19 whose course is uncertain except for the assurity that it will get worse before it gets better. According to Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN, if contracted it is 20 times as lethal as the flu, even though the annual flu is more pervasive. The older you are, the greater the chance that you will develop the most severe symptoms. Most people will not die from the virus if contracted, but so much is still unknown, as Dr. Gupta would be the first to say. I have looked at the maps and see that Africa, for example, obviously must have more cases of the virus than are shown. I also reckon that many people may be symptomatic and not reporting, either due to naivety, inability to report (perhaps they are in remote locations or there are financial/language barriers to their being able to report), or fear of being ostracized. The best place to find information about the Covid-19 pandemic (also called Coronavirus) is...