Chris Riley is the San Mateo County Organizer for Compassion & Choices’ newly launched Death with Dignity Campaign (https://www.compassionandchoices.org/2014/07/03/california-kicks-off-dwd-campaign/). She will discuss how this Campaign is leading the effort to make aid in dying open, accessible, and legitimate in the state within five years.
Carol Wegenast, a Physician’s Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment (POLST) trainer for the Coalition for Compassionate Care of California (http://www.coalitionccc.org/)
Click here to view Carol’s Slides.
Barbara Engdahl from Compassion and Choices (http://www.
Humanist Community Forum (2014-03-23): End of Life – Know Your Options and Control Your Destiny from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.
Deborah Meckler is President of the Funeral Consumers Alliance of San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. The Alliance is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping people find meaningful, dignified and affordable death care for themselves and their loved ones. Besides leading the Alliance, Deborah is also actively working to make ‘green burial’ an option on the San Francisco peninsula. She has a B.S. degree in natural resources management and has worked as a land steward and as an environmental consultant.
Green burial is a topic that some members will be acquainted with and others may know nothing about. To quote from the Funeral Consumers Alliance website, ‘Green burial is a way to return human remains directly to the earth so that they will biodegrade naturally and become soil. It is a way to deal with human remains with as little resource use, energy use, and land disturbance as possible’.
Please come and learn more about this important, environmentally sound option for dealing with the final disposition of human remains, with the dual benefits of keeping pollutants out of the soil and, at the same time, helping to preserve open space in a near-natural state.
More information about green burial and the Funeral Consumers Alliance is available at www.fcapeninsula.org/.
Slides of the presentation are available. You may also view the notes by clicking on the blurb in the upper left-hand corner of each slide. This presentation with the notes contains considerable, valuable research information.
Deborah also recommended two books on the subject of funerals: The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh and The American Way of Death Revisited by Jessica Mitford.
Humanist Community Forum (2013-02-03): Death Care Options: Your Rights, Your Choices, Their Impacts (Deborah Meckler) from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.