by Justin Nobel

Captain Johnny Lee skippers a 48-foot Sea Ray, called Great Faith and during busy summer weeks does a burial a day. He charges between $450 and 500; burying a casket in the ground can cost $10,000. (Photo courtesy of Capt. Johnny Lee)

“Facing west from California shores, inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound, I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity, the land of migrations, look afar.” – Walt Whitman (1860)

Walt Whitman grew up in New York City and traveled to California as a young man. He penned this passage long before his death, but for many Californians, the Pacific Ocean that inspired this poetry is not just a symbol of manifest destiny but an expression of ultimate destiny.

“Due to the number of ‘transplanted’ residents in California, many of them have no affinity to a cemetery with an urn garden or columbarium,” said Kevin Hacke, executive director of the Cremation Association of North America (CANA). “Many folks moved to California for proximity to the ocean, so families look at scattering at sea as a logical final disposition of their loved ones.”

Sea scattering, or the burial of human remains at sea, a tradition oft used by the United States Navy, has gained popularity amongst civilians in the past several decades, at least in California. “Great Lakes states are more likely to have a relationship with a cemetery,” said Hacke.

The trend may be linked to an increase in cremations. Just thirty years ago, full body burials were the norm and only about 5 percent of Americans were cremated, according to CANA statistics. By 2006, cremation rates had jumped to 34 percent. But just how the rise in cremations may have influenced sea scatterings is unknown; many families distribute cremated remains on their own and these actions are tough to track. Read the rest of this entry »

by Justin Nobel

"Keep your line to heaven open - go to the afterlife in a Nokia," reads an African website that sells fantasy coffins. "The face of the phone opens to make the lid. Whatever brand you want our carpenters can make it for you - even blue tooth!" (Photo courtesy of www.eshopafrica.com)

Pastor Williams Ofori-Attah’s Sunday sermon struck a chord his countrymen are all too familiar with, lavish funerary spending.

“Children of the dead must not be compelled to do things which their resources cannot meet,” said Ofori-Attah, according to a Ghana News Agency article.

“How can the people of a nation, which is fighting to reduce poverty, continue to dissipate valuable resources on funerals,” the preacher asked.

Ofori-Attah is a leader in the Church of Pentecost in Ghana, a West African country whose Ga people spend half a year’s salary on some funerals. Rites include a procession of gyrating mourners that knock on the doors of both friends and enemies of the deceased, whom are transported in fantasy coffins, handcraft caskets that can take the shape of anything from a passenger jet to a uterus.

“These are not just quirky contemporary art pieces,” says Christine Mullen Kreamer, a curator at the National Museum of African Art, in Washington D.C, “they fit very clearly into a longer tradition of funerary practices.”

Celebratory and stylish send offs pervade the African continent but the Ga, who craft their wares in open-air shops in Teshie-Nungua, a suburb of the capitol city of Accra, have taken their handiwork global.

Special coffin orders include a Nokia mobile phone and a full-sized Ferrari by an art gallery in Moscow, a Teddy Bear by a Dutch web company, the Empire State Building by a New York journalist and a half-sized Subaru Impreza by Top Gear, a British auto show. Other shapes that have drawn attention: a carrot, a pineapple, okra, a pile of cloth, a machine gun barrel, a handsaw, a carpenter’s vice, a gas truck, a beer bottle and a cigarette. Coffins can be associated with vocation, but also a vice, or a wish. “Someone buried in a KLM airplane coffin does not mean that person was a pilot, or has ever even flown,” says Kreamer, “but may mean the person has always wanted to travel.”

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