Author Archives: Antal Polony (Blog Writer, SevenPonds)

“Final Rights: Reclaiming the American Way of Death” by Joshua Slocum and Lisa Carlson

A valuable book that sometimes suffers from an overly glib tone

Joshua Slocum’s and Lisa Carlson’s book, Final Rights: Reclaiming the American Way of Death, is one part in-depth expose of all things deplorable and funeral, and two-parts step by step manual detailing the different states’ laws regulating this shadowy industry, … Continue reading

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As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner

How the Bundren Family’s Journey to Bury Their Dying Matriarch Speaks to Life as Much as Death

Faulkner was a “Southern” writer, in the vein of Flannery O’Connor, but like O’Connor, his works tend to speak to larger themes. His third novel, As I Lay Dying, concerns a relatively simple set of events: the death of the … Continue reading

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Earth Laid Upon a Corpse

An ancient Scottish burial rite, still practiced to this day, symbolizes the connection and divide between the soul and the material body

In the Scottish Highlands, a tradition of burying the deceased with a wooden plate, placed on the chest, piled with a mound of mixed salt and earth, has endured throughout the centuries, passed down from generation to generation, and remains … Continue reading

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Buddhism and the Eastern Middle Ground

In Buddhist tradition, our death falls into a plane of existence that continues even after our final breath

The relation of life to death, what happens after the end, what we do with the years we have and what we leave behind, remains perhaps the most consistently affecting and important issue plaguing human life. Religions throughout the ages … Continue reading

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Death’s Dynamism in Aztec Civilization

Where the manner of death was more important than the manner of life

Just as nearly every civilization throughout time, religion played an extremely important role in Ancient Aztec civilization. With over 1,000 gods, 14 heavens, 9 hells, and the sheer ubiquity, intricacy and flamboyance (for lack of a better term) of countless … Continue reading

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“They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad to realize that I’m going to miss mine by just a few days.”

-Garrison Keillor
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