Funeral Wisdom of the World

On May 11 we will be celebrating Mother’s Day in the US. In some ways it is our own unique holiday. This holiday is one of the most popular and commercially successful US holidays. It is the most popular day of the year to dine out at a restaurant in America. And it still remains heavily marketed concept.

But originally this holiday was intended as a call to unite women against the war in 19th century. A social activist Julia Ward Howe horrified by casualties of the American Civil War wrote the Mother’s Day Proclamation in 1870. Her call for peace and disarmament failed and did not get formal recognition at first. Only many years later some states started celebrating Mother’s Day and, eventually, Woodrow Wilson made it into a national holiday in 1914.

However, the idea of the holiday was loosely imported from the old British holiday that has the identical name. The original Mother’s Day started in England somewhere in the sixteenth century. At first it was not viewed as a holiday but more as a Christian practice of visiting one’s mother church annually. Then it grew into a day when mothers had a chance to reunite with their children. It was especially important for young working women and apprentices who were allowed by their masters to visit their families.

Nowadays, in Britain this holiday partially lost its religious meaning. On Mother’s Day people celebrate and give thanks for mothers. The holiday falls on the fourth Sunday of Lent which exactly three weeks before Easter Sunday.

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Elvis Presley funeral took place in 1977.  Over thirty years passed but the persistent rumor that the rock star did not die still consume imagination of people, creating some kind of national phenomenon and unusual funeral tradition.  Although the idea that the Presley is alive and kicking and live in hiding for so many years seem bizarre, to say the least, it does not go away even in XXI century.

If he were alive, Elvis would be in his seventies and would most likely be amazed at all the stories about him circling the country .  Rumors and gossip reached the new heights by adding all possible conspiracy theories - from an empty casket  to extraterrestrial involvement.  An army of impersonators seem to spread these stories around for publicity and advertising reasons.  It is a sure bet that any tv program or show about Las Vegas will have Presley’s song or a short tune in it.

I wish there would be simple answer, why people just don’t let Elvis rest in peace.  His former fans - baby boomers,  have already retired or in the process of retiring.  I don’t think that they are the ones who perpetuate the stories about undead Elvis Presley.  Generations of talented musicians that came after him, respect the “king”, but don’t spread the rumors either.  Except, maybe, the guy from Oasis who claimed in 2007 that he was drowning but Elvis Presley saved him

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I believe there is only one Museum of Funeral Customs in the world. It is located in Springfield, Illinois, near Oak Ridge Cemetery, the site of Abraham Lincoln’s tomb. Our funeral home directory invited us, web analysts, to visit the museum with their staff.  The museum contained exhibits dealing with American funerary and mourning customs and various related collections. Basically, it provides resources to scholars for researching funeral customs, hosts tours and special events.

We were amazed to find all kinds of funeral paraphernalia from various cultures and times. Personally, I liked rare books collection on embalming dating as early as the 16th century. We saw at the museum recreated 19th century middle class American home funeral setting, recreated embalming room from Jazz generation of the 1920s. There were exhibits of embalming equipment and instruments, examples of postmortem photography and even the scale models of Lincoln’s tomb and funeral train.

Naturally, there is humor in everything, even death. We found confirmation of this when we visited museum’s gift shop. It did not make much sense to us that this shop was selling plain polo shirts or sweatshirts. But my co-workers and I purchased plenty of hilarious stuff, like milk chocolate coffins, wooden and silver casket key rings, casket-shaped paper weights. One of our guys still wears at work the t-shirt with a morbid sign that says “Everybody’s Gotta Go Sometime…”

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During the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD), China officially became a Confucian state and prospered domestically: agriculture, handicrafts and commerce flourished, and the population reached over 55 million people. It lasted over four hundred years and it is one of the greatest periods in the history of China. In the 1st century BC China made numerous attempts to consolidate a road to the Western world and India, both through direct and diplomatic relations with the countries located further west. This is when Silk Road network of routes came into existence.

Chinese army regularly policed the trade route against nomadic bandit forces. In the 1st century AD China even sent an army of seventy thousand soldiers and light cavalry troops to secure the trade routes far west across central Asia to the doorstep of Europe. It even set up base on the shores of the Caspian Sea to cooperate with Parthia. China subsequently sent numerous embassies, around ten every year, to other countries reaching as far as Syria.

Around 36 BC Chinese forces encountered and clashed with Roman soldiers in Sogdiana for the first time in the recorded history. These Roman legionaries may have been either irregular warriors or a part of Mark Antony’s army invading Parthia. Chinese got out of this battle victorious, thanks to their crossbows, whose bolts and darts seem easily to have penetrated Roman shields and armor.

In spite of this within several years an intense trade between China and Rome soon followed, probably with Parthians as middlemen. Famous Chinese silk became in fashion among Romans, who thought that it was obtained from the trees. This obsession with silk went so far that its importation caused a huge outflow of gold out of Rome. There is evidence that the The Senate issued, in vain, several edicts to prohibit the wearing of silk, on economic and moral grounds. Senate proclaimed that silk clothes were decadent and immoral.

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Romans borrowed Greek crossbows and utilized it in their military campaigns to a certain degree. After the fall of Roman empire when the Dark Ages came, there is not much evidence related to crossbows. Obviously, they were used by medieval soldiers, because we have extensive evidence on fights with crossbows during the battle of Hastings.

Crossbow soldier had numerous advantages in comparison to longbow archer. It was one of the reasons why European armies used crossbows extensively till sixteen century.
It was extremely easy to train anybody to use a crossbow within a week or so, while it took years of practice and for an archer to master shooting from a longbow.

The late medieval version of a crossbow which was called an arbalest completely pushed the longbow out of the battles. Arbalests were much larger than original crossbows and had greater strength and force. These weapons could easily penetrate most knights’ armor. Arbalests were sometimes considered inhumane or unfair weapons, since an inexperienced crossbowman could use one to kill a knight who had a lifetime of training.

In 1139 Pope Innocent II even put a ban on arbalest, but medieval crossbowmen still existed, and continued to kill knights.  Mercenary troops of crossbowmen were in high demand those days because of their skills - they could shoot two bolts per minute easily.  And the commanding officer of the crossbowmen corps was one of the highest and privileged person in any army.

Later development of a crossbow allowed to use it in the cavalry. But the times of gunpowder weapons already began. Musketeers replaced crossbowmen and proved to be deadly against cavalry of heavy armored knights.  Muskets could neutralize even the most heavily armored cavalry forces. Their widespread use put an end to the rule of a crossbow and completely changed the face of warfare.

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