{"id":2347,"date":"2011-02-06T12:54:47","date_gmt":"2011-02-06T19:54:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2347"},"modified":"2011-02-06T12:56:42","modified_gmt":"2011-02-06T19:56:42","slug":"an-old-fashioned-funeral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2347","title":{"rendered":"An Old-Fashioned Funeral"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the southern Colorado town of Crestone, a woman gets an old-fashioned funeral.<\/a><\/p>\n

Belinda Ellis’ farewell went as she wanted. One by one, her family placed juniper boughs and logs about her body, covered in red cloth atop a rectangular steel grate inside a brick-lined hearth. With a torch, her husband lit the fire that consumed her, sending billows of smoke into the blue-gray sky of dawn.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

People do still occasionally light funeral pyres. The Pagan Book of Living and Dying<\/a><\/em> (1997) describes one such in Texas. When I read that chapter, I suddenly understood references in Classical texts to “funeral games.”<\/p>\n

It takes hours for the pyre to burn down, so what do you do in the meantime? Race your horses? Play volleyball?<\/p>\n

But disregard the next-to-last paragraph in the Yahoo article\u2014the legendary stuff.\u00a0 Crestone is a quirky place<\/a>\u2014and people work to keep it that way\u2014but overall there\u00a0 is more “fakelore” generated about the San Luis Valley <\/a>than about anywhere else in Colorado. People even say that I was born there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the southern Colorado town of Crestone, a woman gets an old-fashioned funeral. Belinda Ellis’ farewell went as she wanted. One by one, her family placed juniper boughs and logs about her body, covered in red cloth atop a rectangular steel grate inside a brick-lined hearth. With a torch, her husband lit the fire that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23,96],"class_list":["post-2347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-colorado","tag-death"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-BR","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8019,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8019","url_meta":{"origin":2347,"position":0},"title":"Western Polytheists Have a Long Way to Go","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 8, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"For example, at our funerals, where are the dragon dancers? The all-female marching bands? The strippers? \"I want it to be boistrous. My father liked this kind of atmosphere.\" These Taiwanese make a New Orleans funeral look positively Lutheran. And it's much the same in mainland China, where the spicy-funeral\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"China\"","block_context":{"text":"China","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=china"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8060,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8060","url_meta":{"origin":2347,"position":1},"title":"Thoughts after a Funeral","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 27, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A member of my little rural volunteer fire department died last week at the age of 47.((It was not a line-of-duty death; other causes)) So the chief, the treasurer, and I put on our rarely worn dress uniforms for the funeral \u2014 M. came too \u2014 and we went off\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":62,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=62","url_meta":{"origin":2347,"position":2},"title":"‘Ghosts’ in print","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 6, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"My essay \"Ghosts\" has been published in the November issue of Colorado Central magazine. Naturally, I'm delighted that the editors, Ed and Martha Quillen, liked it, even though it is probably more \"literary\" than their usual editorial mixture.I wrote it last May, composing parts in my head while driving the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"writing\"","block_context":{"text":"writing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=writing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1164,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1164","url_meta":{"origin":2347,"position":3},"title":"Off to CESNUR","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 11, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"After the better part of two days on the road, M. and I arrived this afternoon at a Homestead Suites hotel in Salt Lake City, where I will be attending the CESNUR conference.The trip started off on a sour note, because my previously trusty-if-aging G4 PowerBook laptop developed a series\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"CESNUR\"","block_context":{"text":"CESNUR","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=cesnur"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":844,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=844","url_meta":{"origin":2347,"position":4},"title":"Cremation, public lands, and commerce","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 30, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Ladies in White, three women in Missoula, Montana, tried to start a business scattering human ashes--what the funeral industry calls \"cremains\"--on national forest land.The U.S. Forest Service doesn't like the idea, because they see a \"slippery slope\" towards permanent monuments:But the Forest Service has long had a firm policy against\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":534,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=534","url_meta":{"origin":2347,"position":5},"title":"Seventy-two Virgins","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 13, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"\"The Religious Policeman,\" my favorite Saudi expatriate blogger, has some ideas about the 72 virgins that supposedly await Muslim martyrs. His posting is just more fallout from an Arab-language television program that frankly uncovers the link between sex (or lack of sex) and martyrdom. More here, including a quote from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Aphrodite\"","block_context":{"text":"Aphrodite","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=aphrodite"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2347"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2349,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2347\/revisions\/2349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}