For the second time since 2000, I have encountered the unrelenting greed of Service Corporation International (SCI). In 1960, my parents, Herman and Arthur Mae "Smitty" Hankins, bought four plots in Greenlawn Memorial Park, a cemetery located in Groves, Texas, adjacent to Port Arthur, where I grew up. Around 1998, SCI acquired the cemetery from the family that had owned it for 100 years.

In 2000, after the death of my younger brother, his cremated remains were buried in one of the plots with the approval of Paul Pond, cemetery manager, and Craig McGee, the Area Manager for SCI at that time. Their approval came only after a prolonged negotiation made necessary by the desire of SCI to extract the most money possible out of every opportunity, often by relying on its own policies.

Read the full article in The Rag Blog

Several years ago, while working for one of the funeral corporations, a client family approached me about purchasing their casket from an outside source. It was my first introduction to Trappist Caskets but not my last. A couple of Catholic churches were spreading the idea to parish families. Of course, my superiors were not fans and in fact, grew quite angry with the churches for the recommendation. Today, whether you are of Catholic faith or another faith, I can join the churches in recommending Trappist Caskets.

AskBury calls itself an independent referral service that makes its money through voluntary referral fees from funeral homes. Every page of its website says: "AskBury is NOT a funeral home, cemetery, or cremation society."

But wait. Actually, it is.

It turns out AskBury is connected to Brewer & Sons Funeral Homes, a family-owned business since 1965 with seven locations in west-central Florida, including two in Tampa.

These are the Islamic Laws according to the Fatawa of Ayatullah al Uzama Syed Ali al-Husaini Seestani. This is the English Version of Taudhihul Masae'l, translated by the World Federation of KSI Muslim Communities, P.O. Box 60, Stanmore, U.K. HA7 4LQ.