The Family Plot Blog
Video: Bourbon Tasting and Preneed Funeral Insurance
Offering free bourbon and chocolate tastings is an effective way to get people to visit your trade show booth. The fine folks at Global Atlantic Financial Group hit all the right notes at ICCFA in Nashville. In this video, Maureen Carney, Director of Business Development - Sales for Global Atlantic, shares how they are able to get 6% growth on their preneed insurance policies. A note to those who preplan and prepay - in most states, you buy an...
What You’ll See at the 2017 ICCFA Expo
Fresh from attending the 2017 International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association convention and expo in Nashville, TN, here come the videos! Learn about new developments in the funeral industry on display at the exposition through the videos coming online through The Family Plot Blog and our YouTube channel. Upon entering the doors to the exposition hall, you immediately run into the greeting booth put together by FuneralOne. It's a...
Fun Photos from the ICCFA Convention
The annual convention and expo of the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association (ICCFA) opened yesterday in Nashville, Tennessee. The event was originally slated to be held in Charlotte, North Carolina, but was moved when that state passed its "Bathroom Bill" discriminating against transgender people. Here are some fun photos taken at the expo on Wednesday. More to come soon...
April 23: ABQ Death Cafe
The next Albuquerque Death Cafe is scheduled for Sunday, April 23, from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. at Gail Rubin’s home. The objective of the Death Cafe is “To increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives.” It’s an interesting, unstructured conversation – open and free-flowing with no specific agenda and respectful of all points of view. It’s an opportunity to discuss what’s on your mind or in...
Favorite Film Harold and Maude Holds Time-Tested Laughs
In The New York Times article, "A Movie Date With My Younger Self," film writer Mark Caro asks if “Harold and Maude,” a favorite film from his youth, can still hold its charms all these years later. The 1971 movie received bad reviews in The New York Times and Variety when it first came out, yet it became a cult classic on the college circuit. Happy birthday to Bud Cort, who played Harold! Today is his 69th birthday. Has he aged as well as this...
Checklist: Memorable Life Celebration or Funeral Must-Haves
Funeral Checklist Wondering what information you'll need to create a moving, memorable memorial service or funeral? Use this handy checklist of questions to have answered BEFORE a loved one dies. Many of these questions are directed to "you," but you can direct them to someone else. Have arrangements been made for cremation or burial with a funeral home/cemetery, cremation service provider, or body donation service? What is the contact...
Respond to Friends’ Pet Loss with Sympathetic Calls, Letters
Today's Dear Abby column addresses how important it is to respond to friends who experience the death of beloved pets. Grief over pet loss can be more intense than reactions over people who die. If you see news about a friend's loss of a pet on Facebook, write a supportive comment. Even better, pick up the phone and talk to that person. If you are a card-sending person, send a sympathy card. There are cards specifically created for pet loss....
These Newly-Dead Game Couples Tested on Last Wishes
Couples scrambled to sign up to play The Newly-Dead Game® at the 2017 Frozen Dead Guy Days festival! What's The Newly-Dead Game? The Newly-Dead Game was conceived as a way to help start funeral planning conversations in a fun, non-threatening way. The game is based on elements of the classic TV show The Newlywed Game, but the questions in The Newly-Dead Game revolve around how well the couple knows each other's last wishes. Four questions are...
Why You Want a Physicist to Speak at Your Funeral
You Want a Physicist to Speak at Your Funeral A physicist can provide non-religious perspective on a death. For those who want a funeral or memorial service without any mention of religion, you may find this reading to be helpful. It comes from a transcript of a speech given by writer and performer Aaron Freeman on NPR News' "All Things Considered." You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving...
‘Patient’ is a Compelling, Honest Look at End-of-Life
One of the most compelling interviews I've done on A Good Goodbye Radio was the February 2014 conversation with Dr. Jeffrey Piehler. His New York Times essay about making his own casket while facing Stage 4 prostate cancer, titled “Ashes to Ashes, but First a Nice Pine Box” was incredibly powerful. The process of hand-building his casket with a woodworker friend revealed important lessons about life, love and death. Patient: A Surgeon's Journey...
Crazy Festival Gets Quirky Media Coverage
Frozen Dead Guy Days is a most unusual festival, and it generates international media coverage. The Daily Mirror in the United Kingdom featured the festival in this Weird News story, 'Enjoying being alive by celebrating death' at the Frozen Dead Guy festival. It was especially gratifying to see a mention of The Newly-Dead Game®, which first debuted at Frozen Dead Guy Days in 2011: Some of the activities are designed to test essential skills,...
Time to Be Cool at Frozen Dead Guy Days!
This weekend, the wild and wacky Frozen Dead Guy Days festival takes place in Nederland, Colorado. Yes, there is a real frozen dead guy at the center of it all, kept in a dry ice-filled crypt in a shed in this tiny mountain town west of Boulder. The festival includes a parade of hearses, coffin races on a snowy obstacle course, costumed polar plunging, frozen turkey bowling and salmon tossing, lots of live music, alcohol, and much more -...
Five Ways to Make Your Death More Eco-Friendly
As baby boomers start facing their own mortality, the idea of eco-friendly funerals is becoming more widespread. Have you seen the statistics about the staggering amount of resources used in conventional burial? According to National Geographic, “American funerals are responsible each year for the felling of 30 million board feet of casket wood (some of which comes from tropical hardwoods), 90,000 tons of steel, 1.6 million tons of concrete for...
March 25: ABQ Death Cafe
Mark your calendars to attend the next Albuquerque Death Cafe, scheduled for Saturday, March 25, from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. at Gail Rubin’s home. The objective of the Death Cafe is “To increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives.” It’s an interesting, unstructured conversation – open and free-flowing with no specific agenda and respectful of all points of view. It’s an opportunity to discuss...
The One Who Dies With The Most Toys… Still Dies
New T-Shirt from A Good Goodbye States The Obvious If you love T-shirts with snappy sayings, snap up the latest T-shirt from A Good Goodbye. Declare the obvious with this existential statement: "The One Who Dies With The Most Toys... Still Dies." Available in Medium, Large, Extra-Large, and XXL in always-in-fashion black with white text, these T-shirts come in comfy, long-wearing 50/50 cotton/polyester. Each shirt comes with a brochure of handy...
Why Not Join the Lively Woodworkers in Coffin Clubs?
According to a story in The New York Times, D.I.Y. coffin clubs bring people together to build their own burial containers, which they playfully call "underground furniture." People aged from their 70s to their 90s get together weekly to do woodworking and make their own coffins, the six-sided boxes that are wider at the shoulders and narrower at the feet. A casket is a rectangular box. The coffins can be used as aboveground furniture, such as...
Radio Interview This Saturday: What You Need to Know
Got burning questions about cremation? Perhaps green burial sounds more appealing (if you were going to die - NOT!). Do your loved ones know what you might want, whenever that last day may come? If you've got questions about funeral planning, advance medical directives, upbeat ways to start "the talk" and other end-of-life issues, get your questions answered by The Doyenne of Death® Gail Rubin on the Jeffrey Candelaria Radio Show on Talk Radio...
Feb. 25: Gail Rubin on Jeffrey Candelaria’s KKOB-AM Show
Got questions about funeral planning, advance medical directives, cremation, and other end-of-life issues? Get your questions answered by listening live this Saturday afternoon, February 25 to the Jeffrey Candelaria Radio Show on Talk Radio 770 KKOB AM, 94.5 FM. Listen live online! Gail Rubin, CT, The Doyenne of Death®, will be his guest in the studio from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. You can join the conversation live by calling the studio line at...
Death Education is a Lot Like Sex Education
Fans of The Doyenne of Death know that my motto is "Just as talking about sex won't make you pregnant, talking about funerals won't make you dead." I'm so glad to see an expert on medical care discussing end-of-life issues with a similar light touch on a serious subject. Dr. Jessica Nutik Zitter, who practices critical care and palliative medicine at Highland Hospital in Oakland, CA, wrote this New York Times opinion piece, "First, Sex Ed. Then...
An Honest Obituary for an Evil Man
One of the life lessons death teaches us is that we are remembered by how we treat other people. This obituary featured on the website of the Carnes Funeral Home in South Houston is going viral. It is notable for its honest appraisal of a life lived as a warning to others. As Shakespeare wrote in Julius Caesar, "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones." Leslie Ray "Popeye" Charping was born in Galveston,...
March 10-12: Frozen Dead Guy Days!
More than 20,000 people will attend the 16th annual Frozen Dead Guy Days (FDGD) festival in Nederland, Colorado, 17 miles west of Boulder, March 10-12, 2017. Reader’s Digest and readers of USA Today named FDGD one of the top five winter festivals in the country. This quirky celebration of all things dead and frozen receives national media coverage every year. The event features coffin races, a parade of hearses, costumed polar plunging, frozen...