An April 5th article from Associated Press asks “What do we do with the bodies?” It seems that big-city morgues and funeral homes are already overwhelmed even before the pandemic hits its peak. 1,000 bodies per day are expected soon.

The pandemic is forcing us to re-think a lot of our customs. Cadaver disposal is certainly one of them. The highly-lucrative funeral home industry won’t like it, but we need another solution.

The Old Way

Currently, grief stricken families pay out thousands of dollars and untold misery while disposing of their cadavers. Even cremation, which sounds cheap and simple, costs a lot. I understand that the Islamists use cremation, but I wonder if it’s simpler or cheaper than what the Christians do. Jews skip the crazier aspects and hurry their cadavers into the ground, but there’s still a lot of ceremony.

I have wondered how much useful real estate is being taken up by graveyards. I don’t know how much it is, but I know it’s growing and I’m pretty sure it’s useless.

Once the authorities finish all their paperwork, they release the corpse to the funeral home. There, the Christian thing to do is to suck out the guts and internal organs and substitute filler and chemicals. Then the cosmetologist pretties up the ugly remains so people will say, “he looks so peaceful” as they parade past.

Usually, a preacher gets his chance to say almost anything over the remains. Some of it may be true, but, in some cases, the preacher didn’t even know the dead person. One thing for sure, the preacher will take advantage of the occasion to proselytize for his particular set of beliefs.

A growing trend is toward “green funerals.” The grief-stricken get their cadaver back into the environment, usually in the form of compost. I imagine it is difficult for them to fight off the religious relatives who will insist on church involvement anyway. If the person died of Covid-19, nobody is going to want them in their compost.

Just about the only way to get around the funeral and religion industries is to donate one’s personal cadaver to a medical school. I did that decades ago, but I have a feeling that they wouldn’t take a body festering with Covid-19 germs, so the medical school escape route is probably closed.

Not everybody disposes of their cadavers the way we do in America. I understand there are still some Zoroastrians in the Middle East. They encourage buzzards and other scavengers to carry off as much as they will eat. But I’ll bet they wouldn’t do that with a Covid-19 victim! Diseased buzzard poo might end up in their vegetable garden!

If American bodies continue piling up from the pandemic, neither the Christians, the medical schools, nor the Zoroastrians have a practical solution for disposing of all these germy bodies. Fortunately, I do.

CHOP THEM UP AND POUR THEM

I thought of this before I saw the movie “Fargo.” We could adapt wood chippers to atomize cadavers. Most of the result would be liquid, so it could be poured into a hole. Probably 4-5 feet deep and 10 inches in diameter would hold a body.

Then we could sprinkle on some tree seeds and cover with our the dirt we just dug up. Just so we’d remember who went where, we could put a little brass plate on top. Then we could move a few feet over and start on another corpse. It probably wouldn’t take more than 10 minutes and $100 to get rid of the remains, and we would be planting some nice trees where, someday after the pandemic, the relatives could remember the deceased in a nice shady spot.

I’m well aware that mortuaries and religious fanatics are not going to like my suggestion for what to do with hundreds of thousands of virus victims. I encourage them to come forward with theirs.

–gene lantz

I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” program every Saturday at 9AM Central Time. If you are curious about what I really think, please check out my personal web site

Go Digital!

As physical meetings become too risky, the progressive movement must rely on electronic communications. If you want to help, or if you want to learn how to help, please sign up for our Digital Organizing Committee by clicking here. After you sign up, forward the link to others.

We need much better communications, but we have made some progress:

The Dallas AFL-CIO Web Site includes the latest labor news from our nation, our state, and our Central Labor Council. It also has sections that can be used to educate and activate us.

The Dallas AFL-CIO Facebook page is our main day-to-day, hour-to-hour outreach. We currently have almost 2,000 “likes.” You can help strengthen this platform by going to the page, clicking on the three dots ***, and then clicking on “invite friends.”

Labor is also active on Twitter and Instagram.

Our radio show just won an award “Best Radio Show” from the Texas State Teachers Association:

We have a regular monthly column in the “Union Craftsman” newspaper. We try to get “earned media” by publicizing labor events to newspersons, but we have had very little success. We could develop a systematic effort to get letters-to-the-editors published.

Great improvements could be made by our network of digital progressive activists!

–Gene Lantz

Almost all of our relationships are adversarial. As school children, we compete for grades. As workers, we compete for promotions. We’re pushed into being adversaries in all our relations, but the only way to solve today’s problems is as partners.

Today’s pandemic, today’s worldwide economic crisis, today’s immigrant crisis, today’s environmental crisis, and today’s war crisis, whether we think of them as separate or linked, can only be solved through international cooperation. But several governments, including ours, are moving in the opposite direction. Just when international cooperation is critical, the government of the United States brays, “Me first!”

This week, President Trump unilaterally banned European travelers. He didn’t even give them a courtesy call. He has consistently broken every kind of international agreement that would have made us healthier and safer. Today’s pandemic is bringing it all into focus, but it’s been going on for some years.

People are not naturally competitive. Humans would not have survived in the wild if we hadn’t learned to cooperate. As hunter/gatherers we cooperated within our own clan. In City-States we cooperated within our own limited area. As nations, we cooperated over a much broader area. But, so far, we have never been allowed to practice cooperation across the planet.

Our better thinkers have known about the necessity of cooperation at least since World War I. At war’s end, they set up the League of Nations. It was weak and didn’t stop the “me first” people from creating World War II. At the end of the Second World War, our better thinkers set up the United Nations. Our worst thinkers have been trying to tear it apart, and they have damaged it considerably, but it still exists. It’s largely ignored in America, but it still exists.

The “me first” people have to be overcome. We have to demand international cooperation. It’s the only way out of the messes we’re in!

–Gene Lantz

I’m on radio KNON’s prize-winning “Workers Beat” program at 9AM Central Time every Saturday. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site