1 hour ago, birdguy said:

It doesn't need to be over a rotting corpse.  

As some sort of Romantic, I don't think of a rotting corpse. I think of someone resting in a safe place and I like to see the name and some appropriate poem inscribed for all to see. Also, I like to look at the other headstones to see what other people are buried there and how long they lived. It's always sad to find an infant's grave.

Also, I imagine the byproducts of natural decomposition would be more beneficial to the planet than the byproducts of cremation but, as usual, I could be wrong.

Edited October 18, 20214 yr by dmwalker

I agree natural decomposition in the earth would be more beneficial that cremation.  But it takes a long time and only if you are buried without a coffin or jus a pine box (which are available).  Green burials are becoming more popular including burial in baskets or biodegradable bags.  I suspect in a few years you will go to a cemetery and see the grass is greener over some graves than others.  If it were legal you could bury the bury the person under the lawn in your front yard.  Not only could you put some sort of marker there but you could also have picnic from time to time to honor the deceased.  And people would be ringing your front door bell asking what kind of fertilizer you use.

When my parents died their ashes were taken out to sea and scattered into the Pacific Ocean (at different times several years apart).  If we had wanted to my brother and I could have had a picnic just off the road in Marin Headlands and lifted a toast of fine wine to them.

I know exactly the hillside I scattered my daughter's ashes in the mountains a couple hundred feet above the hiking trail.  In later years when Betty and were hiking on that trail we would stop and say, "Tammy's up there somewhere."

Noel

 

On 10/16/2021 at 2:25 PM, Mallard said:

I was on a couple of those - an early Bronze Age smelting site in the French Alps, a lost castle that used to guard the entrance to one of the valleys in the Black Forest and the remains of a fortified house here in Dublin.

O don't look Ethel but there's a lost castle hidden in our garden! Too late! She's already out there dropping her handkerchief in front of those ghostly knights riding by.

59 minutes ago, birdguy said:

And people would be ringing your front door bell asking what kind of fertilizer you use.

Then watch their faces when you dryly reply, "Oh, that's Ole Granpa and Granmy keeping our lawn so spiffy and bright!"

If you check out the 1987 Jethro Tull album, Crest of a Knave, the second track on side one is a song called Farm on the Freeway. The album explores a lot of interesting themes in its lyrics, but on the face of it, Farm on the Freeway is a simple song about a farmer who loses his beloved property when a massive highway is built in its place because it is compulsorily purchased from him by the Government, against his will, leaving him with just his truck and the money from the purchase, which he did not want, instead wishing to keep his farm.

The story in Farm on the Freeway's lyrics is inspired by a real-life event and the myth which surrounds it, whereby Ken Wild, a farmer in the UK, steadfastly refused to allow the M62 Motorway to be built on his property (the motorway was built between 1960 and 1976) since it would have required the demolition of his farmhouse, Stott Hall Farm, which was built in the 1700s. So to placate him, the motorway splits in two and the two carriageways go either side of the farmhouse and there is an underpass which allows access to it. Whilst it is true that Ken Wild did indeed refuse to move out of his farmhouse and protested about the building of the M62 on his land, the two carriageways which pass either side of the building do so not solely as a result of the protest, but also because it was easier to split the motorway into two carriageways in a few places because of the terrain it is built on, since it is in fact the highest motorway in England, being 1221 feet above sea level at that point and encounters some fairly inhospitable terrain. It splits into two carriageways in a number of other places as well because of this, as the pic below shows in the distance beyond the farm, so it was a combination of practicality and the wish to avoid controversy:

Most people in the North West of England are familiar with the farm which inspired this track, since the M62 is the motorway you go on when travelling between places such as Liverpool and Manchester when en route to Yorkshire and it's obviously an area which Tull front man Ian Anderson knows well from having toured extensively around the UK. There are a number of songs by the band inspired places near the M62, including Flyingdale Flyer, which is a song about a potential nuclear missile attack being picked up on the massive Pave Paws phased array radar which is at the nearby RAF Fylingdales.

A more amusing story concerning the Crest of a Knave album however, is the controversy over the album's Grammy-winning opening track, Steel Monkey. The track itself came about as a result of the band messing about with a sequencer and coming up with a riff which they thought sounded a lot like the rhythm track on several singles which were released off  ZZ Top's Eliminator album, and so they did what was essentially a bit of a spoof of those tracks, also spoofing the look of ZZ-Top too in a video they produced for the track. To their surprise, the track was actually a fairly big hit in the US, managing to make the US top ten, although it didn't do nearly so well in other countries. Nevertheless, that chart success in the US led to a lot of people hearing the album. And largely on the strength of Steel Monkey sounding a bit like ZZ Top, the album was somewhat bizarrely nominated for the 1989 Grammy award for the Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance Vocal or Instrumental, an award which many believed would be an absolute cakewalk for Metallica's ...And Justice For All album, even though in truth it's not really one of their best albums, but they were nevertheless flavour of the month in heavy rock at the time, so it seemed like it would be a sure win for them.

As such, when Tull's record company told them they'd been nominated and they asked if this meant they should go to the award ceremony, they were told 'no don't bother, you've got no chance of winning it', so they didn't go. Metallica, who like most people, were convinced they were going to win it, did attend and in a scene reminiscent of Zoolander, they were actually on their feet and en-route to the stage to accept the award when they had to sheepishly go back to their seats and sit down as it was announced that Tull's Crest of a Knave album had won. In fairness to Metallica's drummer Lars Ulrich, in 1992 when Metallica did win the Grammy for the Best Heavy Metal album, in their acceptance speech, Ulrich joked 'We would personally like to thank Jethro Tull for not releasing an album this year!'.

Following a number of protests that Tull, who are not really what you'd call a Metal Band given that they mostly play acoustic instruments and Anderson is mostly on the flute, won the award, in typical mickey-taking fashion in an advert for the album which was placed in the music press on the strength of that win, Tull jokingly pointed out that the Flute is indeed a heavy, metal instrument. Interestingly, as a result of the controversy surrounding that win, the single Grammy category for Rock and Heavy Metal albums, like the carriageways of the M62 which go around that farm, was subsequently split into two separate ones to avoid further controversy.

Edited October 19, 20214 yr by Chock

2 hours ago, Chock said:

since it is in fact the highest motorway in England, being 1221 feet above sea level at that point and encounters some fairly inhospitable terrain.

I have to smile at that.  When I lived in Colorado driving on paved roads with passes over 12,000 feet is not uncommon.  I've driven to the summit of Pikes Peak (14,115 feet) and Mount Evans (14,530 feet).  I live in Roswell (3,650 feet) and Ruidoso, the next city/town to our west, is over 7,000 feet.

Noel

42 minutes ago, birdguy said:

When I lived in Colorado driving on paved roads with passes over 12,000 feet is not uncommon

I remember driving from Moab, Utah, to Denver, Colorado. We bought some bags of potato chips early in the journey and, when we were approaching the Eisenhower Tunnel at 11.000 ft, the lower air pressure caused one of the chip bags to burst open with a loud.pop.

1 hour ago, birdguy said:

I have to smile at that.  When I lived in Colorado driving on paved roads with passes over 12,000 feet is not uncommon.  I've driven to the summit of Pikes Peak (14,115 feet) and Mount Evans (14,530 feet).  I live in Roswell (3,650 feet) and Ruidoso, the next city/town to our west, is over 7,000 feet.

Noel

True but it's not the height above sea level of it which makes it ropey on that motorway. Colorado is mostly above 5,000 feet, yet it gets an average 31.7 °C temperature in the summer; this is over twice the average temperature in Yorkshire for summer. It's the latitude and proximity to the UK's east and west coasts which make the weather inhospitable there sometimes. Denver is at around 39°N latitude, whereas that farm is at 53°N, so it's very often in low cloud with cold temperatures because the sea really isn't that far away in either direction.

This is pretty much the same weather as you find in the Dark Peak a bit further south where many of the lakes are. It is notorious for having aeroplane wrecks all over the hills because of that dodgy weather and low cloud, there's a ton of them, lots from WW2 and much of that wreckage is still there. Although the weather can be fairly nice sometimes, it's worth noting that the damp climate was one of the main reasons why the cotton industry was based all around that region since it helped to keep the cotton imported from the US in good condition before it was made into cloth in the industrial revolution, although another reason was the propensity of rivers which could be harnessed to power the mills.

An interesting fact about this is that, during the US Civil War, the mill workers in the NW region of the UK all went on strike in 1862 as an economic sanction against the Confederacy, to damage their economy by hitting the southern slave plantation's main source of income hard. This is why there is a statue in Manchester of Abraham Lincoln, on its plaque, it has a reproduction of the letter Lincoln wrote to the workers of Manchester, where he thanked them and acknowledged the hardships they went through in going on strike, particularly since this was at the time against the authorities wishes and went on for a prolonged period where they were without pay, in order to help to defeat slavery.

We don't say 'it's grim up north' for nothing lol.

Edited October 19, 20214 yr by Chock

28 minutes ago, Chock said:

the mill workers in the region all went on strike

“There’s trouble at t’mill,”

That's why I'm a desert rat Chock.  I don't think I could stand to live in the sort of climate you describe.  I would be terribly depressed.

Noel

The British Isles are subject to a lot of coastal upwelling, where cold water 'wells up' from the bottom to the surface causing coastal fog, drizzle and rain.  It's what makes London famous for it's fog.

It goes on the west coast of North America which caused Mark Twain to comment once, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."  I was born nd raised in San Francisco and remember the permanent off shore fog which rolled in early every morning and stayed until it warmes up about noon time.  But San Francisco is hilly and the eastern side of the city doesn't get it as bad as the western side.

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/tutorial_currents/media/supp_cur03b.html

Noel

4 hours ago, birdguy said:

I have to smile at that.  When I lived in Colorado driving on paved roads with passes over 12,000 feet is not uncommon. 

I fondly remember my dad having to change the jets in the carburetor when crossing over the Rockies back in the old days...

36 minutes ago, n4gix said:

I fondly remember my dad having to change the jets in the carburetor when crossing over the Rockies back in the old days...

How about sticking clothes pins on the fuel lines to prevent vapor lock?  Did you also hang a desert bag on the front bumper to keep it cool?  The water inside the bag, not the bumper!

 

Waterbag yes.  Clothespins no.  That was when I was a kid in California and we went camping in my Dad's old Reo Flying Cloud.

Noel

Water bag yes, not just to keep the radiator cool either. The cooled water was nice to drink as well. My dad bought a 1952 Pontiac Chieftain shortly after he and mom adopted my vagrant self!