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GOLDENDALE, Wash. – Steve Sall moved forward on uneven, rocky terrain in his motorized wheelchair and came to a stop at the edge of a sweeping vista of ponderosa pines and bright pockets of yellow wildflowers. Sall wanted to see the canyon he used to hike before Lou Gehrig's disease left him near death. Three months later, the 61-year-old Sall was laid to rest in the forest. He would be among the small but growing number of Americans choosing environmentally friendly burials. The so-called "green burials" are a departure from the norm in that they don't use concrete vaults, metal...

A Memorial To Serve A Family For A Lifetime by Jo Dermody NOTE from Dan Zanoza, RFFM.org's Executive Director: The following is the final installment in RFFM's three-part series in honor of Memorial Day. The essay was first posted on February 25, 2010. Mrs. Dermody wrote this response after reading an RFFM.org column titled, "Arlington National Cemetery's Old Guard: Not All of Washington, D.C. Shut Down During Snow Storm" by Lyle J. Rapacki http://rffm.typepad.com/republicans_for_fair_medi/2010/02/arlington-cemetery-honor-guard-not-all-of-washington-dcshut-down-during-snow-storm-by-lyle-j-rapacki.html. Mrs. Dermody gives a poignant and touching description of her husband's (Major John Dermody, USMC Retired) burial at Arlington National Cemetery. Though John Dermody does not...

ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY - 23 year old, Staff Sgt. James R. Patton, an Army Ranger, stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia, was laid to rest yesterday, at Arlington National Cemetery. Accepting the flag was his young widow, Beatriz and infant daughter, Cecilia. His parents and sister-in-law also received flags. Staff Sgt. Patton was remembered today by many. He was a member of Company B, 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. In addition to his wife and daughter, those attending were his parents, siblings, in-laws, multiple family and friends, military comrades, including the Patriot Guard Riders. Staff Sgt. Patton died April 18, 2010,...

The families of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are being told to wait -- sometimes two months -- until their loved ones can be buried with full honors in Arlington National Cemetery. The hallowed memorial site, which handles up to 27 burials a day, is so overwhelmed with the bodies of elderly veterans and young soldiers that families are told they'll have to go without full-honors ceremonies if they want a timely burial, according to a spokesman.

RITTMAN, Ohio - The cracking of rifle fire silenced the twittering blue jays, blackbirds and killdeer. As members of the color guard lowered their rifles, the smell of bitter smoke drifted over the family and friends of former Army Sgt. Ellis Hale, a Vietnam War veteran who died of prostate cancer at age 59. Sniffles and gentle sobs accompanied a recording of taps. Moments after the final note, Sherry Hale walked down a curved brick walkway past the saluting line of representatives of the country's past wars. Head bowed, she clutched to her chest the American flag that covered her...

ANCIENT BURIALS REVEAL FOREIGN LINKS IN PREHISTORIC SCOTLAND By Richard Moss 19/02/2008 Site plan, showing in red the features excavated in 2005. © AOC Archaeology Group Recent analysis of 4,000-year-old pots recovered during an excavation of two graves at Upper Largie, near Kilmartin in Argyll and Bute, has provided exciting evidence linking prehistoric Scotland with the Netherlands. Analysis of the pots by Alison Sheridan, of National Museums Scotland, has revealed early international-style Beakers of the type found around the lower Rhine, which is the modern-day Netherlands and a strange hybrid of styles that suggest Irish and Yorkshire influences. “These finds...

For dozens of soldiers who guarded Tucson during its frontier era, eternal rest has been anything but peaceful. Originally buried in a military cemetery Downtown, soldiers from the Civil War and ensuing conflicts with nearby Apache tribes were later exhumed and taken to the relocated Fort Lowell, which had moved from the city's center to the banks of the Rillito River. But the exhumation work, done by a doctor during the summer of 1884, was far from thorough. Remnants of the soldiers — along with a few full skeletons — left behind recently were discovered during archaeological work under way...

Europe's prehistoric hunter-gatherers may have practiced human sacrifice, a new study claims. Investigating a collection of graves from the Upper Paleolithic (about 26,000 to 8,000 BC), archaeologists found several that contained pairs or even groups of people with rich burial offerings and decoration. Many of the remains were young or had deformities, such as dwarfism. The diversity of the individuals buried together and the special treatment they received could be a sign of ritual killing, said Vincenzo Formicola of the University of Pisa, Italy....

DUBLIN -- In a stainless-steel cabinet between two gurneys, Josh Moonman stores bottles of a pink fluid, labeled with skulls and crossbones, that is used for embalming bodies. "If I were to open one of those lids now and let you smell it, it would knock you back," says Mr. Moonman, an embalmer for Ireland's Fanagan Group of mortuaries. Because the fluid contains formaldehyde, which is poisonous, European Union regulators are considering banning the chemical as a potential threat to human health and the environment. Among the worries, environmentalists say: decaying bodies leaching toxic chemicals into the ground. But a...

A multi-faith cemetery will have all its graves aligned with Mecca, despite Christian burials traditionally facing east. CHRIS BIRKLE finds out how Christians and Muslims feel about the controversial council decision In today's secular society you could be forgiven for not knowing which direction Christian graves face. Ancient tradition shows they should look east in anticipation of the second coming of Jesus Christ. But all headstones at the new £2.5m High Wood Cemetery in Bulwell will be plotted to face north-east, in line with Islamic faith. Muslims believe the dead look over their shoulder towards Mecca, towards the south-east

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- An Australian company has been given approval to begin work on a cemetery where bodies will be buried vertically to save space and minimize impact on the environment, a spokesman said Thursday. Tony Dupleix, director of Palacom, the company given permission for the cemetery, said the plan would involve no-frills burials, using a simple body bag rather than a casket. "When you die, you are returned to the earth with a minimum of fuss and with no paraphernalia that would affect the environment," he said. The cemetery, proposed for a field in Derrinallum, 110 miles west...

Boulder, CO (LifeNews.com) -- In the latest development in a controversy over a Colorado church burying the remains of babies who died from abortions at a late-term abortion facility, the mortuary that provided the church with the ashen remains has apologized. Meanwhile, a local hospital said it will institute new rules on what happens to the remains of babies that die from abortions, stillbirths or miscarriage there. Sacred Heart of Mary Catholic Church became the subject of a local and national controversy when it announced that it had been burying the babies for a decade at a memorial located on...

Staten Island, NY (LifeNews.com) -- A leading pro-life Catholic group says it supports a Colorado Catholic church's decade-long practice of offering a proper burial for thousands of babies who have died from abortions. The Colorado church is coming under fire for burying the babies it received secretly from a local mortuary. Fr. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, says there is nothing wrong with the practice, even though abortion advocates are strongly opposing it."Some pro-abortion activists will protest the Church of the Sacred Heart of Mary Church in Boulder, for having held a religious ceremony to bury the...

A Tribute to the French: Eleven thousand soldiers lay beneath the dirt and stone, all buried on a distant land so far away from home. For just a strip of dismal beach they paid a hero's price, to save a foreign nation they all made the sacrifice. And now the shores of Normandy are lined with blocks of white: Americans who didn't turn from someone else's plight. Eleven thousand reasons for the French to take our side, but in the moment of our need, they chose to run and hide. Chirac said every war means loss, perhaps for France that's...

JERUSALEM, Dec. 29 - The Israeli police filed criminal indictments on Wednesday against four antiquities collectors, accusing them of forging biblical artifacts, many so skillfully that they fooled experts. Some were even celebrated briefly as being among the most significant Christian and Jewish relics ever unearthed. The police and the Israel Antiquities Authority said their investigation had focused on several major forgeries, including a limestone burial box, or ossuary, bearing an inscription that suggested that it held the remains of Jesus' brother James. The Antiquities Authority declared the ossuary a forgery last year. The authorities also described as counterfeit a...

  The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights & the Environment Law refutes Israeli claims of staged Jenin 'burials' 8 May 2002 E-MAIL THIS REPORTEnter recipient's e-mail: On Sunday, May 5, LAW organized a press conference in which it refutes Israeli claims that Palestinians had staged fake 'burials' in Jenin. The fake 'burials', the Israeli army spokesmen say, were an attempt to "prove" that there were many more Palestinians killed than actually were. However, at the press conference, LAW showed and compared footage taken from an Israeli military drone on April 28, 2002, and footage taken by...