Staff Book and Media Recommendations

A Cemetery Special

A PBS Documentary

I checked this out because someone I know has a morbid fascination with cemeteries. Not with death in particular, just with the funeral industry - funeral homes, caskets, headstones, embalming (sounds like fun), and cemeteries. So I had a feeling this DVD would hold some interest for him.

Surprisingly, unless the viewer has a superstition about cemeteries - or perhaps no sense of humor - this DVD would be interesting to just about anyone. As the viewers, we are taken on a journey around the country to visit all kinds of different cemeteries, from the beautiful, to the artistic, to the natural, to the distinctly odd. We visit a city near San Francisco where there are more dead residents than there are living...whose motto is, "It's great to be alive in Colma." From the wild chickens of Key West to the wilds of Alaska - through it all, we see the various rituals and ceremonies involved, not always memorial or funeral-related, that take place in these cemeteries, such as Memorial Day events, student field trips, and "Arts in the Park" events. We visit the quarry where the granite is taken for all the headstones and then visit the factory where many artists carve the granite into statuary and headstone designs for these cemeteries.

The special features are worth a look too, particularly where they ask people where they plan to be buried. The answers they get to that question are enlightening and um, thought-provoking, to be sure.

This documentary takes a very light touch to its subject, humorous at times, solemn when it needs to be. As long as you don't feel death and burial are too serious a subject to laugh at now and again, this DVD is well worth watching. ~ Jana Atkins

Reviewed March 2010