Louisiana Monks challenge state law making their work a crime… making & selling caskets

It’d be funny if it weren’t sad.

Or, would it be sad if it weren’t funny?

Either way, it’s sad and funny.

Or, should that be ironic?

Whatever it is, it’s weird… and unjust.

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It’s Illegal for Monks to Sell Caskets In Louisiana

By Claire Suddath on June 01, 2012

The monks just want to sell caskets. That’s the simple plea of a relatively simple case, in which a Louisiana monastery—St. Joseph Abbey, about an hour outside New Orleans—is suing the Louisiana State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors for the right to sell their handmade wooden caskets. Only licensed funeral establishments can sell caskets in Louisiana, which means that St. Joseph’s monks would have to hire a funeral director, install embalming equipment, and construct a funeral parlor even though they have no plans to embalm the deceased or perform actual funerals. “They would have to take an exam about the whole panoply of funeral directing,” says Scott Bullock, an attorney with Institute for Justice, which is representing the monks. “It’s like telling someone who sells shoes that they have to first become a podiatrist.”

Photograph by David Moore/Gallery Stock

St. Joseph Abbey, founded in 1889 as part of the Order of Saint Benedict, has been producing caskets for as long as its monks can remember, but until recently, they were only used for the private burials of their own members. In the 1990s they built a few coffins for the funerals of local bishops and the Catholic community began to take notice. “People would come to our funerals and see them and ask

An encouraging story from Alabama! State Troopers start Heli-Rescue unit.

Some say it’s easier to criticize than praise. Where there may be great truth in that simply because of our human nature, it doesn’t mean that we should continually negatively criticize. And so, acknowledging that, I present the following GOOD NEWS story for your perusal.

Would to God, there were more like them.

Which brings me to this point – which I’ve previously shared: Maintenance is the most important and most under-rated job in all the world.

Why?

Everything requires maintenance – our bodies & lives with nutrition, exercise and hygiene, our relationships with communication and forgiveness, our clothing, our residences, our pets… everything requires maintenance. And it’s much easier to get things started than it is to maintain them.

To start something without a plan for future action – and indeed, all planning is for future action – which includes a means and method of provision for ongoing maintenance is not merely short-sighted, it is ignorant.

Let’s hope and work for such positive change.

Alabama State Troopers using new helicopter, training to become force in rescues

Published: Monday, March 12, 2012, 9:15 AM     Updated: Monday, March 12, 2012, 9:26 AM

By Jeremy Gray — The Birmingham News

Hanging from the end of a line attached to a helicopter, Alabama state Trooper Shane Hobbs "rescues" Trooper Mack Ward, in the red helmet, from the woods during a training session. (The Birmingham News/Joe Songer)

After Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, Alabama State Troopers flew in helicopters over Mississippi and Louisiana, dropping food, water and insulin to families stranded by the storm.

“People were making signs in their yards with sticks and clothes — We need help,” Chief Pilot Lee Hamilton said. “We kept making those drops over and over again, daylight to dark, for about seven days.”

One thing troopers couldn’t do for those stranded survivors was lift them from the wreckage and fly them to safety. “It would have been nice to have been able to pick these people up, especially the ones who were hurt,” Hamilton said.

Four years later, equipped with a more powerful helicopter and following the methods of the U.S. Coast Guard, troopers were finally able to start performing the kind of air rescues Hamilton wished they could have made during Katrina.

In 2005, troopers had an aviation unit, which searches for

After the Tornadoes: Toward Understanding

Simply type the words “Alabama tornado” into any search engine and there’ll be hundreds, if not thousands of entries returned. Add to those words “April 27, 2011” and not only will your search be further refined, but you may gain a whole new perspective on the destructive forces of nature.

Unless you’ve been hiding in a cave in Tora Bora for the last several years, or were recently buried at sea, you’ve probably read or heard about the hundreds of tornadoes that struck throughout North and Central Alabama, bringing  with them resultant death, and widespread destruction.

Sure, we’ve all heard jokes about Alabama,

Tornadoes… and More things than you can shake a stick at

Sure… the title is a colloquialism. However, that does not make it any less true.

Only the blithely ignorant would not be aware that the South has experienced utterly devastating tornadoes recently. The utter scope, breadth, magnitude, number and extent of the literally hundreds of tornadoes that struck principally in Alabama have literally knocked the state for a loop.

Complicating matters was a hitherto unheard-of event